Deb Ingersoll, CSP, Managing Director

When I stepped into CSP, it felt like jumping onto a fast-moving train. Organizations were navigating mergers, funding shocks, governance questions, and real uncertainty, so the work moved fast because it had to.

I focused on keeping pace: delivering, responding, adapting, doing. 

Then came the inevitable middle-of-the-night realization that I was watching the scenery when I should have been driving.

And here’s the part that makes me smile (and cringe) a bit: I completed a thesis on organizational culture just a few years ago – and drafted a practice-based “lessons learned” brief four months ago, so I knew better on all levels. I was curating for others what we needed for ourselves – culture, shared standards, internal flow. But we kept doing what so many organizations do: letting the urgent lead, and postponing the foundational work because it takes time and attention we don’t feel like we have.

Seven months in, we’re slowing our cadence to lay the foundations properly—not because the work has gotten easier, but because we’ve admitted we can’t sustain the work without them.

None of this is novel. You probably know it, too. Our aha moments may be a reminder of what we all know—and still sometimes let slide.

1. You can’t scale without dwelling in the messy middle first.

There’s a certain kind of momentum that looks like progress… until you realize it’s just speed.

We started by relying on relationships, instinct, and a lot of responsiveness. That worked—until it didn’t. So we’re formalizing shared standards and creating clearer pathways. Not to professionalize the life out of it, but to reduce ambiguity and make the work steadier for everyone involved.

Slowing down is hard. It’s also the only way we can see to scale without burning people out.

2. Culture work is not a luxury.

Culture shows up whether we plan for it or not. It’s a strategic necessity that requires attention and focus.

If we don’t center our values and the behaviors to bring them to life, if expectations and norms aren’t named, and if it’s not all woven into daily operations, they surface later as friction and tension, usually at the worst possible moment.

So we’re trying to do the thing we encourage others to do: make the invisible visible early, while there’s still room to work with it.

3. Tools reduce burden—when they’re lived, not imposed.

We’re building guides and internal resources—mostly because we got tired of reinventing the wheel (and carrying too much in our heads).

We’re also learning the obvious: a tool isn’t helpful if it needs a long explanation or lives in a folder no one touches.

The goal is simple: less working from a blank screen or sheet of paper, less cognitive load, and a clearer “next step” when things feel messy.

4. External credibility depends on internal coherence.

Donors can feel it. Organizations can feel it. Teams can feel it.

If you’re saying one thing publicly and operating another way privately, even unintentionally, people notice. Sometimes it shows up as confusion. Sometimes as mistrust. Often as that vague sense of “something feels off.”

We noticed it when we were clear externally about our standards for transition work, but internally still making some decisions ad hoc. Or when we emphasized shared ownership without fully clarifying who held which decisions.

So we’re doing the unglamorous work: tightening decision pathways, aligning budgets with capacity, and making sure our internal practices reflect the clarity we talk about publicly.

My small set of reminders

Not advice. Just what we’re living, in real time:

• Don’t skip the culture work because it feels secondary.
• Build tools that make decisions lighter, not heavier.
• Check for coherence: does your internal reality match your external story?
• Transformation and sustainability are not single decisions. It’s a sustained practice.

We’re building, learning, adapting. And catching ourselves doing the same things we’re trying to help others avoid, which, honestly, is part of the point of sharing this. After all, we’re stronger when we’re in this together, messy bits and all.