UPlift Collaborative: Resilience Reimagined
Garages, coffee shops, dorm rooms. You never know where the spark for a new business will come from. For us, it was at the table during Thanksgiving of 2021.
After over a decade working together in management consulting, at both Big 4 consulting firms and smaller boutique consultancies, we had seen some recurring patterns: we were able to make a bigger impact in our work when we were working together (maximizing our complementary strengths), leading with our values and focusing on issues we cared about – those affecting us and our families’ daily lives. But we were the proverbial cogs in the organizational machine – we couldn’t always choose who we worked with, the type of work we did or how to approach it.
Then COVID-19 hit. Many businesses were forced to reimagine how they operated to sustain themselves and support their people. As playbooks were being rewritten or altogether thrown out, our clients were craving something different from their consultant relationships – a more human-centric and empathetic experience. We were itching to help!
The next Thanksgiving, we sat around the table with our families talking about how we might do things differently, if we could do things our own way. “Why don’t you just do it yourselves?” Kavita’s mum asked. “Clients will come because they want to work with you, what are you waiting for?” (Note: As an Enneagram 8, she loves to challenge and inspire action – in this case, we were glad for the encouragement!) A few days later, we were in Kavita’s basement, sketching out the idea for our new company, UPlift Collaborative (we didn’t have a napkin, but we did have butcher paper and colorful markers!).
The concept was simple: making client service nimbler and more creative, with an emphasis on humanity and compassion. Our focus on building trusting relationships would give us a boost – a network model would allow us to cultivate this creative, flexible approach that our clients have come to know and love, while also supporting a community of entrepreneurs, whom we trusted and loved working with.
Three years later, reflecting on our own journey and the clients for whom we’ve helped spark and navigate transformational change, here’s what stands out: ultimately, it all comes down to resilience.
Resilience is the art and science of moving forward through life and business transitions.
Building a resilient organization takes more than a great idea, a hardworking team and the ability to muscle through any challenging situation just to get to the other side. It’s about developing a strong core by creating empathetic cultures, relevant structures and actionable strategies. It’s about showing up and persevering, yes, but it’s also about ebbing and flowing in the “everyday” while staying true to your longer-term vision and taking steps of growth on a strong foundation.
In our experience, the most successful organizations are the ones that endure, regardless of what comes their way. Resilient organizations are better equipped to anticipate, adapt to and navigate change – they thrive in uncertainty and are able to turn challenges into opportunities.
At UPlift Collaborative, our vision is to embed resilience in every aspect of an organization to harness the power of their people to create enduring success that uplifts all. By embracing a human-centered approach to leadership, and shifting from power over to power with, we can transform limitations into opportunities and build resilience that benefits everyone. That’s why we care about helping our clients be the most resilient version of themselves – today and well into the future.
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About UPlift Collaborative
UPlift Collaborative (UPlift) is a women-owned/operated management consulting firm, where we focus on organizational resilience by helping our clients build more sustainable teams, strategies, and cultures.
UPlift is special largely because it is a business passionately and intentionally crafted by our co-founders, Kavita Sienknecht and Kristin Centanni. Here’s a bit about them, in each other’s words:
Kavita is very strategy minded – she can see the connections across many seemingly disparate concepts/topics and weave them together in a comprehensive, yet easy to understand way. She is also a wizard at designing impactful images and storytelling to explain even the most complex strategy in a way for everyone to ‘get’.
Kristin has been described as a “titan of industry and domestic goddess” – building authentic connections and building deep, trusted relationships with clients and partners is her superpower. And she is a master at navigating “tough” conversations!