Skip to content
Case Study

Readiness moved. Transformation moved with it.

Case-Study-OSU-Logo-Claim

Challenge

What was sitting underneath.

Approach

What we measured. What we built.

Results

What moved. By how much.

Conclusion

Why it held. What stays after.

Challenge

Set-up

The Oregon State University Foundation generates private funding for OSU's mission. Founded in 1947. Eleven senior directors lead its Technology & Innovation team. Mark Koenig runs the team as Chief Innovation Officer and Vice President, Technology. He brought TPRC in to do something specific. His team was structured for the foundation that existed. Not for the one taking shape.

The team had to operate differently. Departmental silos held. Cross-functional work required people to coordinate across structures they had inherited. Restructuring alone would not move that. The blocker was not the org chart. It was how the directors worked together: who raised what, who waited, who acted without checking in, who checked in without acting. That is the layer TPRC measures. People readiness. Not whether the team can describe a new way of working. Whether they are in a position to deliver it.

  • 1. Readiness QX
  • 2. Readiness Q
  • 3. Facilitation
  • 4. Leadership coaching
  • 5. Reassessment
Mark Koenig
Chief Innovation Officer and Vice President, Technology
Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig Mark Koenig
oregon02
Scott Emery
Senior Director, Automation & Change Management | AI, Automation & Enterprise Change at Scale
Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery Scott Emery
oregon03
Andrew Phillips
Director II, Pipeline Development
Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips Andrew Phillips
oregon01

*Since 2025, MUA is The People Readiness Company.

“ Partnering with The People Readiness Company has been a game-changer for our technology and innovation team. Their structured approach, from people readiness assessments to daily skill development, has transformed the way we collaborate and innovate as team. ”

Mark Koenig · Chief Innovation Officer and Vice President, Technology Oregon State University Foundation

Approach

What we measured. What we built.

Phase 1: Build awareness

Directors saw their own patterns first. Which behaviors they defaulted to under pressure. Where they ran the same play even when the situation called for a different one. The diagnostic surfaced it. The conversation made it discussable.

Phase 2: Build capacity

Awareness without capacity stalls. Phase 2 converted what each director had noticed into skills they could use mid-meeting. Recognizing a pattern in flight. Adapting before the moment passed.

Phase 3: Apply under pressure

Facilitated group sessions worked through real situations the team was facing. Theory left the room. What stayed was a set of moves the directors could replay on Monday morning.

Phase 4: Self-organize

By the fourth phase, facilitation stepped back. The directors ran the conversations they used to need someone to host. Sparring sessions stayed on the calendar. The team owned them.

oregon-filter

Results

What moved

Across the full cohort, after the engagement:

0%
higher scores across all four readiness dimensions
0%
improvement in Communication & connecting
0%
growth on the Growth mindset dimension*
What moved

Directors who used the Readiness App daily moved further than their peers:

0%
higher growth rate across all dimensions
0%
stronger results across all dimensions
0%
stronger growth on the Growth mindset dimension
Daily practice moved the numbers

8,285 responses in the Readiness App. 11 group facilitation sessions. Six one-on-one coaching engagements. Tailored onboarding for new team members.

Conclusion

Why it worked

The engagement closed. The conversations did not. Directors who could not reliably surface what was holding them back at the start now run sessions where surfacing is the default. The leadership development plan completed on schedule. The behaviors kept showing up after.

That is what people readiness does. It does not promise transformation. It moves the variable that decides whether transformation lands.

Readiness moved. The team moved with it.

Keep reading.

Original papers from our team. The full library of current research and articles.

Practical application.

The principles of people readiness are clear. The work of moving the numbers inside an organization is specific. This is how it actually gets done, step by step.

Start the conversation.

Thirty minutes. We listen to what is happening in your organization, place it against the readiness framework, and tell you what a diagnostic would surface.