a large financial institution

How do you get a historically conservative multilateral institution to reimagine its own future — from the inside out? 

Organizational transformation is easy to announce and hard to actually do. The gap between a new strategy and a transformed institution is not filled by directives or decks — it is filled by people. And for people to genuinely commit to a new direction, they need to feel that the direction was shaped by them, not handed down to them. 

A large established financial institution, with a portfolio of twenty-one billion dollars in assets under management and over three hundred ninety-four clients across twenty-five countries — was at a pivotal moment. 

The institution was undertaking one of the most significant strategic evolutions in its history, rethinking how it delivers impact and scale across Latin America and the Caribbean. The question was not just what the new strategy would say. It was how to bring the people behind the institution — across countries, departments, seniority levels, and areas of expertise — genuinely along for the journey. 

CHALLENGE 

Multilateral development banks are, by nature and design, centralized and hierarchical. Decisions flow from the top. Strategies are ratified by boards. Employees are expert professionals —economists, financiers, lawyers, development specialists— with strong opinions, deep institutional knowledge, and a sophisticated sense of when a consultation process is genuine and when it is theater. 

For the strategy process to generate real commitment rather than compliance, IDB Invest needed something different from a traditional top-down rollout. It needed a structured approach to genuine participation — one that could hold honest, sometimes critical feedback alongside new ideas, span a multilingual and multinational workforce, and shift the narrative from "here is the new strategy" to "together, we are building it." This is not easy to do. But it was exactly the right thing to do. 

APPROACH 

We designed and facilitated a structured co-creation process built around the principle that the people closest to the work are the ones best equipped to shape its future — if given the right conditions to do so. Our role was to create those conditions: psychologically safe, inclusive, solution-focused, and genuinely open to what employees brought to the table. Twenty-Six Co-Creation Sessions Across Languages, Countries, and Levels 

We designed and facilitated twenty-six co-creation sessions conducted in both English and Spanish — ensuring that language was never a barrier to participation or candor. Sessions brought together employees from different countries, departments, seniority levels, and areas of expertise, deliberately mixing perspectives that would not typically share the same table. 

The design was intentional: the most generative ideas rarely come from within a single silo, and the most honest feedback rarely comes when hierarchy is visible in the room. Structured Activities and Open Floor — In the Right Balance Each session was designed with a mix of structured activities and open-floor discussion. 

The structure ensured that conversations stayed solution-focused rather than drifting into complaint — channeling energy toward what could be improved and how, rather than simply what was wrong. 

The open floor created the space for candor: for employees to surface concerns, challenge assumptions, and volunteer ideas that no structured exercise would have prompted. Both were essential. 

Neither alone would have been enough. Safety as a Design Principle The most significant design challenge was psychological safety. In a hierarchical institution, employees need to trust — concretely, not just in principle — that their honest opinions will be welcomed rather than noted and held against them. 

We designed the facilitation environment, the session structure, and our own facilitation approach to make that safety tangible. The result was something genuinely rare: a space where employees felt comfortable enough to share critical perspectives on the institution's proposed strategies, alongside the ideas and solutions they wanted to contribute. 

RESULTS 

• More than two hundred fifty employees across countries, departments, and seniority levels were mobilized and inspired toward reimagining their future with the institution 

• In a competitive job market where talent retention is itself a strategic challenge Conversations remained solution-focused throughout 

• Employees came not only with concerns but with ideas, positioning themselves as co-authors of the institution's future rather than recipients of a strategy handed down from above 

• Human connections were strengthened across the bank — cross-departmental and cross-country relationships formed through the sessions that did not exist before 

• Teams developed a clearer, more concrete understanding of their role in the institution's strategic direction — moving from abstract mission statements to a felt sense of personal stake in the outcome 

• Individuals reported feeling seen, heard, and genuinely engaged — the foundational condition for any real organizational transformation 

• The sessions helped shift the institutional narrative — from a strategy being implemented to a future being built together — laying the human groundwork for the historic strategic changes the IDB Group went on to formalize Inclusion is not a value to hang on a wall. It is a methodology — a way of designing processes, facilitating conversations, and structuring participation so that the people inside an institution become the engine of its transformation rather than its audience. 

This is what we do. And it works, even in the most traditionally conservative organizations.