Young Life, a global ministry introducing adolescents to Jesus Christ and helping them grow in their faith, was navigating a season of leadership transition within its Strategic Services Organization (SSO), including new leadership in the Project Management Office (PMO). At the same time, there was no active intake or governance process guiding how new ideas and initiatives entered the system.

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As a result, teams experienced stalled momentum, unclear priorities, and uncertainty about who owned decisions or how work would move forward. Leaders needed a way to bring structure and consistency to cross-functional initiatives without disrupting teams during an already sensitive transition.

Young Life partnered with Way Forth Collective to support leadership transition while designing and testing Mission Governance as a lived operating system—focusing on clarity, stewardship, and adoption, not just documentation.
 

• Transition listening with outgoing leaders, incoming leadership, and cross-functional partners to capture institutional knowledge, surface risks, and understand informal operating rhythms
   

• Development of a Senior Director of Project Management Transition Playbook to provide historical grounding and practical onboarding support
   

• Co-design of four Mission Governance pathways (Enterprise, Innovation, Communications & Change Management, and Everyday Mission Support) to guide how different types of work should be stewarded
   

• Design and testing of a simplified intake experience with clear follow-up and stewardship expectations
   

• Creation of a Mission Governance Timeline (Idea to Launch) and a Communications Strategy and Implementation Plan to support rollout and adoption

Young Life moved from fragmented and informal decision pathways to a shared, testable Mission Governance system shaped through real scenarios, leadership partnership, and iterative design.
 

As a result, the organization gained:
 

• Clear entry points and routing for new ideas and project requests
   

• Shared language and expectations around priorities, timing, and stewardship
   

• Stronger continuity and confidence for incoming leadership during transition
   

• Increased transparency and predictability in how decisions are communicated and followed up
   

• A foundation for sustainable, cross-functional collaboration aligned to mission priorities

Together, these changes gave Young Life a clearer operating rhythm for stewarding ideas and initiatives, reducing friction and improving confidence in how work moves forward. Rather than introducing change through policy alone, the organization established practical systems and shared expectations that support both leadership effectiveness and long-term mission impact.

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