Discover
Define the problem
Rebuilt the problem statement from evidence: who was affected, where, how many, and what it cost them. The exercise revealed that the original population and the current one had different barriers entirely.
Program Design
Redesigning a Program That Had Drifted From Its Purpose.
A workforce program serving everyone who walked in, with a completion rate nobody could explain. The redesign started by asking what problem it was built to solve.
Representative Engagement
This is a representative engagement — an illustrative profile showing how this CAMPBELL engagement works, what it produces, and the kind of change it creates. It is composed to demonstrate our methodology and does not describe a specific client or report a specific organization’s results.
The Situation
What Was Actually Happening.
The program had launched six years earlier with a clear target population: adults re-entering the workforce after incarceration. Over time, eligibility had loosened. Referral partners sent anyone who needed employment help, and staff, reasonably, served whoever arrived.
The completion rate had fallen below half, and nobody could say why. Reporting captured enrollments and sessions delivered but nothing about what happened to participants afterward. A funder had begun asking outcome questions the organization could not answer.
Staff described the program differently from one another. Two sites had quietly developed different versions of it.
The CAMPBELL Organizational Performance Diagnostic™Dimensions where this engagement found the problem
Strategy & DirectionGovernance & DecisionsPeople & CapacityPrograms / ServicesOperations & ProcessPerformance & DataSustainability & Scale
Our Approach
How We Worked It.
Every CAMPBELL engagement is delivered through the CAMPBELL 6D Method™ — Discover, Define, Design, Deliver, Demonstrate, Drive. Each step below is tagged with the phase it belongs to.
Discover
Understand the community
Held listening sessions with current and former participants, including people who had left the program early. Their reasons for leaving — transportation and a schedule that conflicted with shift work — had never surfaced in staff discussions.
Define
Name the outcome
Set one primary outcome, sustained employment at twelve months, with three supporting outcomes. Each described change in people, not services delivered.
Define
Build the theory of change
Documented the logic from inputs through activities to outputs and short, medium, and long-term outcomes, with the assumptions behind each link written down and tested.
Design
Design the model
Specified dosage, sequence, staffing, setting, eligibility, referral, and intake. Distinguished the essential elements from those sites could adapt locally — which resolved the two-version problem.
Design
Design the measurement
Built the indicator set, named an owner, instrument, and interval for each, and established a baseline before relaunch.
Deliver
Resource and pilot
Produced a fully loaded budget and ran a single-site pilot with a written question, an end date, and a named decision-maker.
The CAMPBELL Model™Where this engagement sat in our problem-solving framework
ClarifyAssessMapPrioritizeBuildExecuteLinkLearn
Program design is where the CAMPBELL Model™ insistence on separating symptoms from root causes does the most work. The presenting problem was a completion rate; the root cause was a population and a model that had drifted apart.
Deliverables
What the Organization Received.
- Evidence-based problem statement and needs assessment
- Community and participant engagement findings
- Outcome statement with supporting outcomes
- Theory of change with written assumptions
- Logic model
- Program model specification — dosage, sequence, staffing, setting
- Eligibility, referral, and intake pathway
- Measurement plan with owners, instruments, and intervals
- Fully loaded program budget and staffing model
- Pilot design with decision criteria
The Outcome
What Changed.
Illustrative of the change this engagement is designed to produce.
A defined population, and a defined model
Eligibility was narrowed back to the population the program was designed for, and both sites ran the same specified model with documented local adaptations.
The drop-off point became visible
Measurement designed before relaunch showed exactly where in the sequence participants were leaving, which turned an unexplained completion rate into a fixable design problem.
A baseline that made outcomes reportable
For the first time the organization could describe change in participants rather than only activity delivered, which changed the conversation with its funder.
A pilot with a real decision
The pilot ended on its scheduled date with a documented recommendation, rather than continuing indefinitely by default.
Free Consultation
Does this sound like your organization?
If you recognised your own situation here, let’s talk about it. A consultation is free, carries no obligation, and starts where every CAMPBELL engagement starts — with finding out what is actually wrong.