Project Nomad

How We Can Support Your Organization

Organizational Culture Mapping

Our design thinking workshops assess an organization’s shared artifacts, lived values, and underlying beliefs across operations, administration, quality of life, and other areas for each subculture within the organization, identifying challenges that hinder operational effectiveness. Certified military members will be eligible for the Culture Mapping Facilitator special experience identifier SEI (9IB /SB – October 2024).

Organizational Network Analysis (ONA)

Initially leveraged by the special operations community within the armed forces to target terrorist networks, our custom-built algorithms identify informal leaders and members within mathematically unstable workplace social structures. We engage these informal leaders in organizational change initiatives and provide preemptive resilience support to isolated or disconnected members. Additionally, Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) enables leaders to better understand how information flows within their organization through both formal and informal networks.

Strategy Through Culture Workshops

Our 2-day workshop enables organizations to develop and shape their operational and cultural objectives together, using our six cultural leverage points with representation from across the entire organization and each rank tier. Certified military members are eligible for the Organizational Strategy and Culture Advisor special experience identifier (9IC / SC – October 2023).

“Strategy and Culture should eat breakfast together” – Melissa Daimler

Executive Culture Coaching

Team up with a Nomad coach to guide your organizational culture change initiative using our six levers of organizational culture model. Furthermore, we assist organizations in incorporating measures of success and minimal viable solutions into their operational and cultural objectives. This approach deliberately sets waypoints where the human-centered strategy can pivot in response to the real-world environment.

Professional Development Workshops

We offer advanced training on organizational culture, including our 3-hour Foundations of Organizational Culture workshop and customized training sessions. Additionally, we offer virtual and in-person training for organizations preparing for culture or organizational change initiatives for our Culture Mapping Facilitator course (6 hours) and our Organizational Strategy through Advisor course (8 hours).

What is Project Nomad

Organizational Performance Development

Project Nomad is a grassroots effort by service members for service members designed to help organizations improve their operational effectiveness through human-centered systems thinking. Our services are free unless in-person support is requested.

Our Purpose

We cultivate organizational cultures through systems thinking so people can thrive. Unlike the DEOCS, our work captures the context behind cultural attributes, getting into the why.

Team of Organizational Leadership Heretics

Project Nomad is a team of professionals who volunteer their time outside their primary duties. We are active-duty airmen, government civilians, and army veterans, all passionate about improving operational effectiveness by aligning organizational cultures and subcultures.

ISR Airmen Origins

Project Nomad launched in November 2021 and, in December 2023, became officially sponsored by the Headquarters Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and Cyber Effects Operations (CEO) Human Capital and Organizational Culture Division (HAF A2/6FT), forming a formal Project Nomad Fellowship program. We support all DoD organizations, working with our first USMC unit in January 2025.

What we Believe

Organizational Culture Defined

A pattern of basic human assumptions invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, taught to new members as the appropriate way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (Schein, E. H., 1990).

Organizational Strategy and Culture

Organizational culture is a complex system of systems that interweaves humans in an organization with a shared purpose, habitude, attitudes, behaviors, ideations, tendencies, and situations, and shares an inextricable linkage to organizational strategy and alignment.

Organizational Alignment

One of our primary focuses is organizational alignment. Alignment does not mean that everyone is doing the same thing; rather, it means that the organization’s efforts are deliberate and further the shared mission or purpose.

Organizational Subcultures

Workplace cultures begin to form when 20 or more individuals work together, with the culture unable to maintain a singular identity around the 150-member threshold (Logan D. et al., 2008). However, many organizations will form subcultures well before reaching the 150-member mark, with subcultures generally forming within individual workplace silos.

Project Nomad video submission for the USAF 2023 Spark Tank Competition

USAF/USSF Special Experience Identifiers (SEI)

Culture Mapping Facilitator (published October 2024)
Enlisted – 9IB | Officer – SB

Member has the ability to facilitate a multi-hour Culture Mapping workshop. Requires successful participation/completion of Project Nomad’s Culture Mapping Facilitation training and has facilitated/co-facilitated at least one Culture Mapping session verified by Project Nomad. To maintain the SEI, the member must facilitate/co-facilitate at least two (2) Culture Mapping sessions annually and actively participate in an organizational culture development community of practice group. NOTE: Award and removal of the SEI must be coordinated through HAF/CVK (SSG or SI2C).

Organizational Strategy and Culture Advisor (published October 2023)
Enlisted – 9IC | Officer – SC

Member has the ability to design, plan, and facilitate a multi-hour to multi-day Organizational Strategy & Culture Workshop. Requires successful participation/completion of ProjectNomad’s Foundations of OrganizationalCulture course, successful participation /completion of the OrganizationalStrategy & Culture Workshop Facilitator course, and facilitated/co-facilitated at least one (1) Organizational Strategy &Culture Workshop verified by ProjectNomad. To maintain the SEI, members must facilitate/co-facilitate at least one(1) Organizational Strategy & Culture Workshop annually and actively participate in an organizational culture development community of practice group. NOTE: Award and removal of the SEI must be coordinated through HAF/CVK (SSG or SI2C).