Staying True to Our Core Values
The VISION 2021 Series highlights how our members are shaping their future visions with key lessons from 2020. This conversation is with Nancy Lord Lewin, who is the founder and CEO of Asana Consulting. We discuss how the pandemic helped Nancy crystallize her priorities and how her team co-creates a nurturing work culture that centers well-being.
Having previously worked in places that left a lot to be desired when it came to gender equity, work-life balance, and wellbeing, Nancy started Asana Consulting to continue doing the work she loved while re-centering wellness and family. Launched in 2014, Asana Consulting is a strategic communications and marketing company serving for-profit and nonprofit organizations and entrepreneurs. Over the years, the team of one expanded to eight, consisting predominantly — albeit unintentionally — of women-identifying members.
Over the course of 2020, Nancy developed a renewed sense of gratitude for her decision to design a company around a set of core values. These values have been developed by Nancy and her team; and they became the most steadying force for guidance through the tumultuous times brought by the COVID pandemic.
Working in even greater intentional alignment with their values provided Asana Consulting with an asana (practice) that generated fortification and clarification at multiple critical junctures as the team faced decisions about how to keep the business going, provide value and support to its clients and community, and stay healthy amidst the public health and social justice chaos of last year.
Heading into 2020, the shared intention at Asana Consulting was to recover and rebuild from a “year of big challenges.” The team initially designed their strategic priorities around strengthening operations, getting revenue back up, and launching their new website. They also aimed to launch new services, including communications coaching and branding workshops for leaders and their teams. They had their biggest client to date under contract in January and multiple other dream clients clicking along through their pipeline as the new year rolled out.
However, all of Asana Consulting’s forward momentum stopped when the global pandemic began. COVID’s descent prompted Nancy to pause all efforts to launch new services and develop new products with the goal of preserving resources. They slowed down and focused on quality over quantity as it concerned marketing and incoming work. Intentional survival and growth moving forward became their goal.
The pandemic shifted the team’s focus away from cultivating new relationships and toward nurturing those that already existed. Fortunately, the project with their biggest client to date was “pandemic-proof” — this work financially sustained the company amid a gutted pipeline of COVID casualties and layered crises.
Emphasizing timing and seasons, Nancy shares that the disruptive and stressful effects of the pandemic on her team’s personal lives largely informed their move to center existing client relationships and fewer projects.
Nancy says the team is now in the works of revisiting relationships and projects that were temporarily paused last year, and turning its energy back towards innovation and growth. Personally, Nancy found the emphasis on pivoting to be overwhelming. “I’m not wired for hustle anymore,” she says.
“I really needed to focus on what was happening at home and in my business in alignment with my values and my priorities. As a woman, a mother to two teen daughters, and an entrepreneur, I put my sanity — and I mean that in the truest sense of the word — whole wellness, intactness, holistic integrity — front and center. That is a supreme responsibility and daily struggle as a mother in America and one hell of a feat to keep at it. But trust me, I’ve learned the hard way all bets are off on me, my kids and my business thriving if I’m tanking.”
At the same time, members of the Asana Consulting team navigated changes and stresses through the pandemic: starting graduate school, becoming first-time moms, divorce, and grappling with illnesses, job losses, and the deaths of loved ones in Baltimore and around the country.
It just didn’t make sense to Nancy to drastically overhaul their business, and perhaps most importantly — the team didn’t want to either. Instead, they wanted to take care of each other during the pandemic and beyond, while also taking care of the business they make happen every day.
Key Practices for Fostering a Nurturing Work Culture
I asked Nancy what practices their team adopts to foster a nurturing work culture. Nancy shares that these practices occur as early as the interview process, beginning with a simple exercise such as asking potential candidates to describe their dream job. She also is a big fan of using the StrengthsFinder 2.0 approach to build her team. These exercises help the team center individual strengths and interests to shape their collective work for the highest possible outcome for everyone the company serves.
“For me, the best team is where strengths are celebrated and people are empowered to work from their strengths,” Nancy emphasizes. “The multiplier effect of that is phenomenal.”
Establishing boundaries and encouraging a spirit of adaptability are two other practices that especially stood out to me as Nancy continues sharing. Team schedules are self-determined, reflecting a larger move towards greater work flexibility as a result of remote work during the pandemic. They also operate with a mutual commitment to communicating when their roles need to be adjusted or when they see ways to optimize the team and client experience.
Increasingly, the team is also looking to nature and aligning their work with the seasons. This alignment happens naturally, with their busiest season for client work coming in spring, summer, and early fall; and their slower time coming in late fall and winter.
The team now plans around this seasonality. They take a full pause over the December and New Year’s holidays to soak up time with loved ones and have time for personal holistic restoration. In January, they do reflections, visioning, and strategic planning for the year ahead. This takes everyone into the business development season of Q1-Q2 equipped with clarity and focus on their role, their priorities, and supported by optimized operational practices.
In the spirit of adaptability, Nancy says she’s excited “about all parts of my life feeling more in alignment.” Although the past few years have been hard ones in many ways for Nancy — both personally and professionally — she says she’s thankful to have the vision, tools, practices, talented team, and a great support system. All of these bring continual benefits that become especially evident in challenging times.
She’s also excited about the eventual return of travel, to continue watching her two girls transition into young women in the world, and “about the ways our city, country, and planet are starting to heal.”
Additional Readings & Resources
Visit Asana Consulting’s newly launched website. You can also subscribe to their newsletter via their website for the latest updates.
Follow Asana Consulting on Facebook, Instagram, and Bookshop.
Connect with Nancy on LinkedIn and check out her personal writing.
