Human First Works
Founder Coaching We work with talented leaders who seek to be stronger. We help them develop and improve their interpersonal skills and adopt best leadership practices. We also support succession planning for those ready to step back as well as conflict resolution amongst co-founders. The Result: As a founder, you will be able to express and pass on your vision, build lasting and powerful relationships with those around you, and count on a team that will be ready to tackle any challenge and evolve alongside you. Business Assessment We use a proven process to evaluate the reality of your business and identify gaps, find growth opportunities, and provide a new and unbiased perspective on your available options. After that, we provide a roadmap for filling those gaps effectively, approaching any challenge, and seizing every business opportunity. The Result By leveraging this comprehensive business assessment, you will get clarity on where to focus your attention, a fresh perspective on existing options, and a thoughtful process for making the choices that will move your business forward. Sales Acceleration We help you understand what is holding back your sales and what you need to re-invigorate growth. Through a review of your satisfied clients, we help you clarify the optimal market fit for your offer and enhance the discipline and processes of the current sales efforts to support that strategy. We can identify, interview, and recruit qualified sales talent and even help you improve the compensation plan. The Result: You will be able to understand what moves your target audience and what affects your business sales. We will help you anticipate any issue, take quick action to fix your strategy, and optimize the processes to increase sales. Values Aligned Strategy We build off our business assessment to leverage a clear view of the opportunities and threats facing your business. We link that with the core values of your organization and combine all of that with a view of the right roles and responsibilities to achieve the visions. Then we help you set realistic and purposeful goals and provide clear decision-making guidelines. When everyone moves towards the same vision, shares a sense of ownership and accountability, and has the freedom to experiment, they’ll do their best to ensure that every goal is met. The Result: You and the team will have a clear, actionable, and energizing plan that aligns with the values of you and the team. If you’re having an off-site planning session or an interim strategy check-in, leveraging us will facilitate your planning initiatives. We will help you connect your organization’s goals with the most viable future reality. Team Chartering We identify parts of the team that need additional support and provide the tools they need to succeed based on the 6 essential conditions of a successful team, research done by the brilliant Harvard scholars, Ruth Wagemand and Richard Hackan. The Result: Rooted in these ideal practices and shared commitment, we unlock your team’s ability to collaborate effectively, fail fast, learn quickly, get results, and be happy. By amplifying individuals and investing in teams, we ensure that everybody knows their value within the organization. Organizational Design We bring the future of work into the present through a practical and minimalist approach to organizational design using the latest thinking from agile, lean, and responsive practices. We introduce you to both emerging and tested work paradigms and help you tailor them to the particular needs of your business. The Result: Rigid structures waste resources on practices with poor ROI, while no structure wastes them on wrangling others and redoing work. Together, we will uncover the right balance between structure and autonomy.

Purpose

Purpose
Helping leaders build leaders by putting people first. Translated to goals this means:
Purpose before Profit
Networks​ over Hierarchies
Empowering instead of Controlling
Experimentation as part of Planning
Transparency over privacy
Vision & Mission – Human First Works
100 million people working sovereignly.
To us, sovereignty means working with autonomy, creativity, respect, passion, and a shared purpose.
Reaching this goal seems like it will take many people working many lifetimes to accomplish. So we set this out as an aspirational reach. We believe in the awesome power of Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (aka BHAGs) to galvanize like-minded people towards something that is bigger than any one individual. It is a pursuit that is intrinsically valuable.
We know we are not the first to care about this, and we certainly hope we are not the last. We recognize that we are standing on the shoulders of many, many people that have come before us. Some of whom we know. Many that we sadly do not. In addition to the power of BHAGs, there are many other beliefs that this goal is rooted in.
We believe:
Work in its current form with leaders telling people what to do is broken and that broken work is breaking our society.
People are smart and can fix almost anything given enough time and resources
Everyone has talents and most people will skew towards good when given the opportunity
Personal leadership (self-determination) is a right. Team leadership is an opportunity.
The best way to solve hard problems that matter is to build more team leadership
The fastest way to build team leadership is to enable systems where people can step up as a leader.
Most decisions are best made with strong input from the people closest to the problem, or ideally solved by the people experiencing the problem.

How?
We adapt and lead.
We take the long view over the immediate.
Our questions of you will test your goals and agendas.
We are empathetic and provide focus, calm, and expertise.
We take pride in lifting the capability of our clients on their journey.
We are transparent, honest, and independent.
We foster a culture of respect, curiosity, and aspiration.

At Human First Works, we provide custom coaching programs with skill and clarity of purpose, fostering a culture of respect, curiosity, and aspiration. We can do this because we have built and refined multiple tools from best practices we’ve discovered through observation or learning from experts. These tools and approaches can be adapted to the unique requirements of each company and its teams. We find being flexible yet directed supports clients well, from needs discovery and stakeholder buy-in to multiple business transformation projects. We are transparent in how we spend our time, the support we provide, and our costs.

Our favorite clients are companies that have 20-200 employees, are not-for-profits, B-Corps, or are founder or employee-owned, have leadership that cares deeply about their people, and have a mission to improve the world. We focus on helping grow socially responsible organizations and leadership that works to develop high-performing, sustainable workplaces that benefit all stakeholders, which includes employees and founders, investors, customers, and vendors.

Travis Marsh

Founder & Managing Partner, Human First Works

Find out more

We believe it is vital to state clearly to the world the set of our beliefs about Inclusive Capitalism. As such, we start with our Statement of Guiding Principles for Inclusive Capitalism. Knowing that words alone are not enough, each of us is making a series of commitments about how we will operate our institutions so that they help achieve Inclusive Capitalism. These commitments are forward-looking statements based on current goals, expectations and assumptions, which are not guarantees of future performance. For more information, please refer to our Terms of Use

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Summary

Human First Works will enhance employees' transferable skills and meta-skills through our Workforce Development Program. In 2024, we aim to have 100% of full-time hires and part-time hires enrolled immediately upon hiring, with the program lasting 1-2 years.

Activities & Initiatives

Human First Works will enhance employee engagement and development by fostering a comprehensive understanding of individual strengths and weaknesses, delivering personalized feedback, aligning it with personal aspirations, customer demands, and HFW's needs, and consistently refining development strategies. This commitment will be measured by the implementation of a structured feedback and development process, targeting a 95% satisfaction rate among employees by the end of the fiscal year.

Measures & Targets

Human First Works will measure progress by tracking the completion of 3 major milestones on each participant's development plan, with a goal of achieving milestones that are transferable and applicable to future employment.

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Recognizing it will take alignment of all our organizations to scale impact globally, we invite you to join the movement as a Steward of Inclusive Capitalism. Together, the collective action of Council members will contribute to a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable future for all people and our planet.