Tandem’s New Era

Hello! It’s Tania and Renée here, with the next chapter in our story of transition (which we began in our last newsletter). 

TL;DR: Tandem is transitioning to an in-house service delivery model that is more intimate, holistic, and effective, expanding into Operations and People & Culture. Read on to understand why. And watch the video!

Before looking forward, let’s reflect on our roots. In 2017, Tandem’s two founders, Tania Lo and Sean Hodgins, each had thriving consulting practices supporting entrepreneurs in their finance journeys, but they were frustrated. They envisioned a new way of collaborating – one that addressed their own capacity constraints while also creating a peer-mentor learning space for new consultants seeking to uplevel their praxis and value. 

Inherently community-oriented, Tania and Sean found others who shared their vision and built a curated network of like-minded practitioners who could offer wraparound support to emerging business leaders.

It was a beautiful place for Tandem’s journey to begin.

Practicing this ecology of giving, receiving, and co-creation, we’ve had the experience of working alongside hundreds of businesses, consultants, and partners over these first years in operation. Through collaborations, events, workshops, and professional development opportunities, we’ve enabled an ecosystem to grow.

This is where Renée’s journey with Tandem began. 

In Renée’s first year and a half at Tandem, we were expanding the network to try to solve the persistent challenge of consistent capacity. As the bulk of our work was outsourced, and the capacity of consultants was highly variable, we had to keep solving for capacity by adding more people to the network.

This was exciting and energizing, but it also created a dance of exchange between Tandem and our network members. We’d hear, “When will I get more work?” when member practices were quiet; we’d ask, “Do you have time to pick up this work?” when we were trying to match a lead; members would reach out, “I’d like to discuss increasing my compensation” when members felt the rate-split wasn’t sufficient.

In this exchange, we found that:

• We often didn’t have the right capacity at the right time;
• How we work together matters quite a lot;
• Training anyone who isn’t deeply embedded in the day-to-day of our organization in how we work together is hard;
• Managing a double-sided marketplace often meant we weren’t investing in the long-term journey of our internal team – all amazing humans growing in their skills and earning potential whom we want to retain; and
• We spent increasingly more time (and overhead) on nurturing relationships with our network members, leaving us unable to deepen our relationships with clients.

We knew we had the seeds of a beautiful practice. We also knew that we had yet to reach profitability, and as a result, it was time to shift our model from a tech-enabled marketplace towards a firm that offers consulting services in a unique way.

To create regenerative impact for our clients, employees, and communities, it was also time to refine our team and let go of collaborations that were not aligning with our vision for the future.

So we began a period of deep inquiry filled with rich conversations and analysis to envision a Tandem the world needs – one that could deliver transformative outcomes for purpose-driven businesses while contributing to systems-level impact. 

This time wasn’t just blue-sky visioning through rose-coloured glasses. We were doing difficult, uncomfortable work, and beginning to nurture a culture of tough conversations – including how our organizational culture and business model might be upholding colonial systems, directly and indirectly. 

What became clear was that our current business model, dependent on cultivating a network of hundreds of subcontractors and matching them with clients, was no longer sustainable. We simply weren’t able to generate the profits we needed to operate in alignment with our values or vision for the kind of impact we’re here to make in the world. 

Tandem’s New Era, as we’re calling it, is more intimate. 

Over the summer, we transitioned to an in-house model of service. Our team now comprises of 33 employees, and a handful of contract specialists, servicing clients in our expanded core service areas: 

• Leadership & Co-Creation
• People & Culture
• Strategy & Operations
• Finance & Accounting 

The new model enables us to go deeper with clients, giving us more bandwidth to nurture those relationships. It also enables us to pay our staff better, offer benefits, and provide them with the focused professional development and training they’ve been asking for to support their individual and collective journeys to decolonize and unlearn.

Our new era also sees a deeper focus on People & Culture, which we weave into the fabric of our work with clients. 

Work culture matters. How we see, treat, and value each other matters. In our Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) work, we believe every business must prioritize equity in their approach to diversity and inclusion – not as a check-box activity, but as an ever-evolving, living, breathing commitment; grounded in policies and practices that nurture our collective wellbeing.

The invitation is to examine how each of us may be upholding and perpetuating the ideologies and practices of white supremacist, patriarchal, and colonial systems. Together, we are showing up for our collective liberation, nurturing a future rooted in equity and care, and living forward into an ecological economy. We envision a future where our world can flourish. In this future, businesses act as vibrant communities, leaders serve as compassionate stewards, and each of us feels uplifted by a deep sense of belonging and purpose.

We’re here to nurture businesses that nourish people and planet. And we’re privileged to do this work with a re-energized team that together has embarked on a new era of collaboration with each other and with our clients. 

Get to know these kind, passionate folks on our newly refreshed website, and reach out if you’d like to explore how Tandem’s holistic approach can open up new possibilities for profitability, impact and wellbeing in this “New Era”.When will I get more work?