CIO Bulletin

Path Forward Consulting: Providing strategies to turn companies into high-performing organizations

Consulting firms add value by providing expertise in the moment and building capacity for the long-term. In today’s day and age, it is important to prioritize organizational culture as a business asset. Organizational development is a discipline where organizational behavior is taken into account to study and understand how groups within an organization interact and perform. Finding a consulting firm that can shift organizational behavior will not only benefit the company but also its employees.

Path Forward Consulting (PFC), as a brand, is well known for their cutting-edge, custom-designed solutions that are generated from their observations of the market and its client needs. They are a firm that delivers services that shift organizational behavior for the betterment of your business.

CIO Bulletin had the privilege to interview PFC’s CEO, Allison Manswell.

Q. How did Path Forward Consulting get its start? Can you describe the company's development from its inception to its current position?

Path Forward Consulting was born from the desire to provide organizations with the highest quality of training, consulting, and coaching that I always wanted to receive from vendors when I was the head of leadership development and a decision-maker for a Fortune 100 company. I wrote a book called ‘Listen In: Crucial Conversations on Race in the Workplace’ and left that corporate role to work as a lead consultant for a DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) firm. It was a wonderful learning experience, and I soon realized that my depth of experience and specific skills would translate perfectly into building a firm that leveraged the two foundational elements that allow DEI to flourish: organization effectiveness and leadership development. Five years later, PFC has grown into an internationally recognized brand that serves Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and small and mid-sized organizations in talent management and organizational development.

Q. What values and tenets guide Path Forward Consulting's operations?

PFC values are:

People: Our solutions are dual focused on people and business impact, in that order. We focus on the human element of HR and prioritize our team as part of how we do business.
Impact: We exist to make an impact on the lives of people in historically marginalized groups through their employment with our clients. We focus on adding value to organizations by showing them how to leverage 100% of their talent.
Integrity: We approach every decision with a commitment to doing the ‘right’ thing, regardless of whether it is recognized by others. We focus on being trustworthy, reliable, and valued advisors to our clients.
Innovation: We are creative, agile, and future-focused in our thinking and execution of ideas. We focus on high-quality, high-impact work products that are delivered as promised, on time, and on budget.
Accountability: We hold ourselves and each other accountable for our responsibilities and our actions. We focus on mature responses to problem solving and next steps.

Q. How crucial is innovation to Path Forward Consulting's expansion?

Besides being one of our original four values that the company was founded on, innovation is crucial to our operations.

As Path Forward’s leader my personality and approach to organizational development have never been ‘cookie-cutter’ or ‘off the shelf’. It is a unique combination of a highly creative thinker and a detail-oriented project manager who can bring ideas over the finish line. They are known as consummate thought partners who bring out the best ideas in others. Their brain gravitates towards what is new and has never been done before.

We often receive comments from our clients about our approach to standard topics being different and highly effective because it gives the learner a new way to understand an old concept.

Our daily operations are built for innovation in everything we do and how we complete our tasks. For example, every meeting begins with an opportunity to dump out thoughts that might be distracting to the current meeting. It could be something you do not want to forget to tell a teammate or a random thought unrelated to the current topic. We all have personal habits that incorporate a blank sheet (paper or digital) so that our thinking is not confined by lines.

Q. What new services and programs has Path Forward Consulting introduced for its clients?

Building the Leadership Pipeline Program was the first program ever designed and deployed, initially for employee resource group leaders. The content and infrastructure of that group have been recycled and integrated into many other projects.

The DEBI (Diversity, Equity, Belonging and Inclusion) Action Learning Cohort was developed as a response to the many new DEI positions created in 2020. The target audience was interested but too overwhelmed to participate at the time. And now, in mid-2023, we are in conversations to implement that program internally for a large organization. Our Senior Executive Leadership Focus (SELF) Program started with the goal of connecting senior leaders from different organizations in a safe environment to solve common challenges. We found that our clients preferred to host that program internally so that they could work through issues privately.

We have created several training programs in direct response to specific issues or client requests. Combating microaggressions became a critical part of how organizations renegotiated employee interactions during the Return to the Office Change Management Plan after the pandemic. Our course on Understanding Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression (SOGIE) was developed from scratch in collaboration with a team of subject matter experts. One client engaged us to support each of the ethnic celebration months with a series that included supporting Muslim, Asian, Differently Abled, and Hispanic colleagues and delivered throughout the year.

Q. How does Path Forward Consulting's leadership encourage innovation within the company?

Encouraging innovation feels easy and natural when the leaders in the company are naturally gifted in the area.

At PFC, mistakes are not seen as a big deal if people take accountability for what did not work and make corrections quickly. The freedom to make mistakes is critical to innovation. Another way we do so is by having our team members ask the types of questions that promote creative thinking.

Q. What goals does Path Forward Consulting have for the future?

PFC’s major goal is to continue to be a market leader in organizational effectiveness, talent management, leadership development, and DEI through the integration of key concepts to gain tangible results. The secondary goals are to maintain and increase the current success rate of 95% of business generated through client referrals and expand the brand to become as well-known for its leadership and organizational culture portfolio as it is for talent management and DEI.

A brief biography of the Founder and CEO, Allison Manswell

Allison V. Manswell is a seasoned talent management executive with over 25 years of proven experience in human resources, organizational effectiveness, employee and leadership development, diversity, and inclusion interventions with Fortune-ranked companies, mid-size organizations, and boutique consulting firms. She is an author and serves as a subject matter expert on race. In her extensive career, Allison has worked with organizations that include Harvard University, Google, Leidos, the Department of Justice, and Liberty Mutual Insurance. Ms. Manswell is also a sought-after speaker who has worked internationally in the US, Canada, the Caribbean, and Brazil.