The big picture:

For the first four and a half years after winning a very competitive national $50 million grant, collaborative innovation lab Smart Columbus was laser-focused on transforming transportation in the community. When that grant came to an end, the team found themselves tussling with big questions: Should they continue the effort? And if so, what should they be focused on?

To support their transition into the unknown, Smart Columbus brought in Storyforge. Through intensive stakeholder interviews, deep mindset work with the leadership team, and clarifying their strategy and  their story with a single guiding framework, Smart Columbus was able to transform from a short-term narrowly focused project to a long-term sustainable impact organization.

Hailey Allison, Director of Operations at Smart Columbus, reflected on the clarity that gives the team confidence to navigate the undefined space where their work takes place:

“Two and a half years ago, Smart Columbus had a lot of ideas and a lot of could be or may bes  – seeds of what we might do. Now two and a half years later, our work is much more defined – and not just what we’re doing, but how we’re doing it that is much more defined. We’re not just creating as Smart Columbus and then deploying and hoping it sticks. We’re really bringing people together to understand the problems, to co-create solutions, to think about what could be the future of Columbus together.”

The challenge:

Smart Columbus was founded in 2016 after the city was awarded the federal Department of Transportation US Smart Cities Challenge and became America’s Smart City. For the following four and a half years, the team knew exactly what its purpose was: to achieve the grant deliverables, all around transforming the way people think about transportation in the community.

But once the 5-year grant was coming to an end, the team found themselves at a crossroads. While the public-private resources brought together as Smart Columbus still had big potential for positive holistic impact in the community, the days where they could simply execute against an external mandate were numbered.

The team began discussing how to prioritize what could be next, but trying to pin down purpose, mission, beliefs, and values for the next evolution of the organization was both slow-going and messy.

“We wanted to continue doing similar work by bringing the community together, by bringing leadership together to talk about what could be in the future and how to make Columbus a more future-forward place that benefits all residents. But what all those projects looked like in practice wasn’t totally defined, and we had a brand new team come on all at once..” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

They knew they needed help to evolve  from a time-bound project team with clear mandate, into a collaborative innovation lab working in a permanently undefined space of possibilities.

After working with Storyforge:

Smart Columbus engaged Storyforge to help them through the transition. Together, they gathered stakeholder insights to help bring their next step into focus.

“The Storyforge team met with all of our stakeholders: board members, community members, people associated with our work, and really got to the essence of what’s valued about the value of what we do. What are we doing for the community that nobody else is doing? Where is there opportunity for this vehicle of Smart Columbus to add even more value?” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

When those insights were distilled, Storyforge and the Smart Columbus team were able to apply the learnings to their purpose, simplifying and codifying the work the team had been doing into a framework that fit on a single page. “And we have that page hung up in our boardroom,” explained Jordan.

The key to Smart Columbus’ evolution turned out to be moving away from trying to define exactly what they would be doing in the coming years, and instead to codify the how. 

“We had thought about the what as a focus for our organization. So should we be a transportation focused organization? And I think the insights as they came back revealed that, really, it’s the how of the team that makes our organization add value to the community. Instead of orienting our purpose around the issues that we’re working on, orient it around how we solve those issues, and allow this vehicle to move to the various issues as the community evolves and the needs change. That set of insight and that nuance really changed the way we think about our purpose and the way that we think about our strategy moving forward. And because of Storyforge, we’ve been able to operationalize against that, both from a culture and from a tactical perspective.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

The how-based framework became the foundation for the team’s forward motion. Over the course of the following year, they did intensive mindset work to integrate the framework across key members of their leadership team – which is what instilled in each of them the confidence to move forward into less defined spaces together. 

“I think we spent the better part of a year just taking it one piece at a time: What is our vision? What is our purpose? What’s our mission? Not just to read the text and have it be a static document, but to talk about it, define examples of it, and to then operationalize it. Now, for those of our current team that went through that whole process, we can talk about it like the back of our hand.” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

This clarity and alignment has allowed the team to wield their framework as a filter for decision-making, focusing their attention and resources where they’re positioned to make the most impact.

“If we wanted to deploy autonomous vehicles within Columbus, we could absolutely do that. And that would be a new and next technology and would be really cool. But what problem is that solving? And that’s where I think the framework really helps us make decisions: to not only deploy technology for community good, but to do it in a way that’s actually meeting the community where its solving a need, not just deploying technology because we can. If it’s not solving human problems, then what value does it really have?” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

As Smart Columbus aligned behind its framework, the many projects the team supported started to all make sense as part of a singular connected effort to build a more prosperous, equitable, sustainable community of the future. 

“The framework is a center of gravity that’s bringing all of our projects together. We have really big projects. If you saw them separately, you would think that they are not related, or they’re run by separate teams. But in fact, it’s a very collaborative team working across these subjects, because we are unified in the sense of this new and next approach to the community. And it’s the innovation muscle and the how that is unifying how we work across these various issues.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director 

“We’re not just doing stuff as Smart Columbus and then deploying it and hoping it sticks. We’re really bringing people together to understand the problems, to co-create solutions, to think about what could be the future of Columbus together. And we weren’t in a position where we even had the language to describe that two and a half years ago.”  – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

“We have since landed two massive projects of over 38 million dollars in investment within our community that we have the privilege of operating our community information exchange and all of our digital equity work. We are in more and more convenings with stakeholders. We have launched different partnership convening modalities where we have leadership groups come together and do sprints. We’ve been able to bring residents together that are helping us to co-design what some of these solutions are gonna look like. We have become more and more familiar with the unknown of the future. And the framework is again our anchor in all of that.” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

Go deeper: on Storyforge’s impact

• On framework as a daily direction-setter: “It’s the first thing we give to every prospective hire and new hire. It’s kind of our guiding document. We do quarterly offsites with our team that Storyforge facilitates where we’re continuing to internalize what those words mean, how our daily work ladders up to it.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

• On building external partnerships: “Everybody on the team can talk about who we are and what Smart Columbus is. There’s not just one entry point into our organization any longer. We’re forming partnerships through every member of our team, whether they’re an internal role or an external role. That helps the organization grow and our work extend into new communities and new areas. So that’s really, really valuable.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

• On a common mindset across all stakeholders: “Doing this work is really hard. You’re dealing with so many stakeholders and so many complexities, so many layers of interests and perspectives and politics and whatnot. So it’s important that anyone who is coming in to do this work alongside us, that they share a common mindset really for how we are tackling these really complex problems. The mindset work that we did has enabled us to take a step back and even better identify within ourselves and our current team, what are the factors that drive success – and then we’re able to use that as a filter for thinking to bring on new employees or new vendors.” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

• On broadening perspective: “Our work is stakeholder-rich, probably like everybody’s work if you think hard enough about it. There’s a lot of people that touch our work, benefit from our work, or care about the types of issues that we want to tackle. Broadening the inputs gave us a more fuller picture of where value could be created and where value needs to be continued. I think that was really instrumental in us having confidence about how we move forward… to break the boardroom, I guess is a good way to say it! – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

• On a framework-based culture: “We’ve put new talent into our team, and we’ve reorganized against the framework by attracting talent that really believes in the mission that we’re trying to achieve. And that’s something that motivates people to want to be here. The more we commit to this framework, we’re starting to see how it is embedded and threaded through everything that we do. It becomes this just kind of very visible component to how we think, how we act, and how we make decisions. And that’s really been a totally different way of operating for us since 2021, and it has proven to be incredibly focusing for our organization.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

On working with Storyforge:

“Storyforge is an extended part of our team. And you’ve worked with us for so many years that you know our organization just as well as our full-time team members.”  – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

“It’s good as a leader to be a part of sharing the space with my team as a team member and not being the one to facilitate and lead the conversation all the time. And it’s just so hard to facilitate and contribute at the same time. Having Storyforge be that facilitator of our collective thinking keeps me in a position that I really value, which is at the table with them and helping them feel like their voices are being heard and there’s a collaborative democratic process to how we’re thinking about the organization we want to become.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

“Storyforge is also a really good thought partner as problems emerge. It’s really nice to bring in Storyforge when we’re having a variety of challenges, whether it’s organizing this thing for some organizational change we’re about to go through, or hey, we have a gap in this capacity in our organization. How can we think differently about this? And Storyforge is quick to have a creative way to approach it or pause for a brainstorm session or has an extended part of their team that they can bring to add into our team. It’s been a lot more than just the formal deliverables.”  – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

“Working with Storyforge is so personable. It truly does feel like you are a team member of ours and have our best interest at heart, which, you know, working with different vendors, you never know exactly what the outcome is gonna be.” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

“There’s no problem that we’ve thrown at [Storyforge] that you haven’t helped in some way for us to figure out. Whether it’s within your scope, or out of scope, or scoped as undefined, you’ve been able to help us navigate it. You are just a wealth of knowledge and expertise.” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

“If we need to throw something together quickly, or we’re in a session and we have an outside speaker and something’s changing, you’ve got a toolkit of solutions to make our time well spent and really adapt to whatever our team needs in that moment and whatever we’re working on. And I think that that’s really valuable.”  – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

“You know, we’re a pretty young team. We’re getting our bearings as an organization and defining our value for the community. And so having you just be a true champion of our work and advisor to us is just such a blessing and a gift. You go above and beyond to work with us. I know that Storyforge is very passionate about working with organizations that are mission-driven. I think that that’s true because I see the passion that’s brought to the work with Smart Columbus, and it’s really special. We’re very grateful for you!” – Hailey Allison, Director of Operations

“Working with Storyforge is great. It’s like working with a friend. I consider you a friend, and I think that makes going through challenges really hard. I think I’ve cried on calls with you. I think I’ve been overwhelmed on calls with you, and then I’ve also been just so elated and happy and everything’s fine. I’ve gone on a roller coaster of this journey with the organization, and you’ve been there every step of the way, and that’s different than a transactional relationship.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

“It’s hard being in leadership. It’s lonely sometimes. And not just being in leadership, but then having to change an organization. It’s been nice to have a partner there to think with and to strategize with and who believes in you. And that means everything in the world.” – Jordan Davis, Executive Director

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