We move three things at once. Move one alone and the other two move it back.
The three are the structure, the collective and the individual. Change the rules without the culture and you get a memo. Change the culture without the rules and it fades. Most of our calls come from a leader trying to hold both alone. Our method comes from the school of Matt and Gail Taylor. We start from their idea of Group Genius, use their DesignShop format and follow their sequence: Scan, Focus, Act. We adapt it to each client.
We decide who decides before the first workshop.
- Governance and decision rights, drawn before the first workshop.
- Workstreams with one owner and one date each.
- A sponsor team on your side, or we decline.
- A fresh-eyes report, so the people in charge hear what nobody has told them.
- A strategy book that sets out the practicalities, so nothing is left to memory.
We build the strategy with enough people that they can retell it.
- The DesignShop: two or three days with a fifth of the company, all working on the same problem.
- A BHAG and its vivid description, one sentence and one paragraph everyone can repeat.
- Posters the morning after.
- A two-year activation plan, month by month.
- Kits for managers in three time-budgets.
- Foresight, with our partners, so the group argues about the future rather than the past.
We also work with each person, starting with the leader.
- We look at how much each person is carrying, what drives them, whether they feel safe to speak, and how they see themselves.
- Coaching for the leader, who is usually more alone than the organisation knows.
- Anonymised voices, so the people below the leader say what they think.
- A speech for each time the leader stands up in front of a group that matters.
The six parts, and how they fit together.
We use the same six parts every time and put them together differently for each client.
- Diagnostic
- We read seven things before we move anything: conviction, trust, culture, communication, shared meaning, governance, decision. It ends in a fresh-eyes report in your people's own words.
- Foresight
- With our partners we bring the strong signals, the weak ones, and the themes your sector will fight over in ten years. It gives the room a larger question than the one it came in with.
- DesignShop
- Two days, sometimes three, with a fifth of the company, the whole system on the whole problem. No agenda handed out in advance.
- Activation design
- A BHAG and its vivid description, then the architecture: workstreams with owners and dates, a two-year plan, manager kits, posters, a strategy book.
- Rollout
- We stay for the kick-offs, the unveilings and the first difficult meeting run the new way.
- Sustain
- We look for trust between levels where there was none, managers who run their meetings differently, and people who can explain the strategy without the file. That is the only result we count.
Before we change anything, we look at seven things.
The psychology of conviction. Trust. Culture. Communication. Shared meaning. Governance. Decision.
We call this check RADAR. It shows which parts of your strategy people act on and which exist only on paper, and which of the three to start with.
What we will not do.
- We don't write your strategy for you. You write it. We bring the method and the material.
- We don't tell you what to do and then do it. We stay until your people do it without us.
- We don't send a facilitator to run your workshop. We build a programme with a sponsor team on your side, or we decline.
- We don't run team-building days. We build the team that runs the strategy.
- We don't do advertising, public relations or branding. We do the internal communication that makes a strategy understood.
- We don't take a mandate from the wrong person. The CEO has to be in the room.
- We don't accept restructuring dressed as strategy. If the outcome is decided before we arrive, you don't need us.
- We don't hand out the agenda before a workshop. We prepare more than anyone, then let the room do its work.
- We don't cut 30,000 euros off a 100,000-euro project. The quality is in those hours.
- We don't do rushed work. If it went exactly as planned, it was not collaborative enough.
We set the rules and prepare the room. What your people do in it is theirs, and nobody can script it.