The Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) was founded in 2002 to help dramatically scale up access of antiretroviral drugs for the millions of people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world. Now working in more than 30 countries, CHAI has taken a leading role with governments and partners in lowering the costs of treatment, scaling up pediatric AIDS treatment, and accelerating the rollout of new vaccines.

CHAI’s senior leadership team sought SEEK’s support during a time of rapid growth in its geographic and programmatic scope. Such a steep growth path typically presents challenges, notably to ensure that management structures, systems, and processes keep pace. CHAI sought to strengthen these; a particular challenge was to do so in a way that allowed the organization to retain its agile and entrepreneurial culture, and to ensure that the right systems were there to enable CHAI to sustain success.

CHAI’s project team, supported by SEEK, included staff from across the organization, across continents, and from all levels. SEEK took a three-phased approach. First, a diagnostic phase including a global staff survey to understand organization-wide perceptions of management, leadership, culture, and systems; in-country visits including focus groups and interviews with staff to understand their priorities for improvement; and a desk review of relevant data on CHAI’s systems and processes.

After prioritizing areas for strengthening, SEEK then supported CHAI in a ‘design’ phase, using workshops with the project team to develop concrete workstreams and initiatives, for processes and systems as well as for people and leadership development. The third, final phase involved joint implementation planning and culminated in an all-staff retreat to launch the implementation process owned and led by CHAI. The organization continues to thrive today.