What's on your mind?
Something you can't quite put your finger on? People who need to get around the same table?
We bring senior peers together to work through difficult questions and find something they're ready to act on.
TELL US WHAT'S HAPPENINGYou know how it goes…
There's a plan. People care about it. Yet somewhere between the meeting and the everyday, something gets lost.
Perhaps the same decision keeps coming back. Perhaps everyone agrees in the room, but very little changes outside it. Or there's something nobody quite wants to say.
That interests us.
We help you look at the gap between what you want to happen and what actually happens. We'll want to understand what's getting in the way, including the things that have become so familiar you barely notice them. Then we work with you on what needs to change.
Paul founded The Strategist Co. A generalist practice, quite deliberately.
He has run a national charity, taught research methods and directed voices on stage. We're as comfortable with a board paper as with a creative brief. Often, the interesting work needs something of both.
So if what you're dealing with doesn't fit neatly into one category, that's fine by us.
Our work takes us across charities and foundations, faith organisations, corporate responsibility, public health, the arts and social impact. Social justice and racial equity run through it. We're interested in whose experience gets heard, and how that shapes the decisions being made.
Receipts?
A few numbers, since you asked.
Numbers never tell the whole story. But they do tell you we've been in the room when it mattered.
£1.7m
The national charity Paul ran as acting chief executive. The board and its principal funder asked him back.
£22m
The federated institution where we led executive succession at the very top.
c.100
Countries covered by the inclusion capability we designed for a €2.1bn engineering group. Its EMEA regions voted to run it themselves.
£200k+
Budget Paul owned per cycle as creative director of Countdown to Zero, a national HIV programme with 25 to 30 partners.
1 → 37
Winners, once Paul had redesigned a national young people's programme. Participation doubled.
76%
Of the women in a community mental-health programme we designed left better able to manage their mental health.
3,000
Where the nOSCARS got to over eight editions, from 150 at the start. A platform Paul built on Blackness and HIV.
200
Voices directed on one stage, at the Royal & Derngate.
How?
It goes like this…
You tell us what's happening. We listen, ask questions and look beyond the first account. We'll want to hear from the people involved and see what the evidence adds to the picture.
Then we bring what we're finding back into the conversation. You might recognise it straight away. You might disagree. There's room for that. We want to understand what's going on well enough to help you do something useful about it.
From there, we work with you on the changes themselves. That might mean rethinking who makes a decision, how a team works or what a group is prepared to take responsibility for together. As things shift, the work shifts too.
Shall we talk about it?
You don't have to untangle it before you get in touch.
LET'S HAVE A CHATWhat?
What have you got in mind?
Maybe you need to bring people together around something that matters. Or you're wondering whether the way your organisation works still makes sense for what you want to do next.
You don't need to know what to call it. These are the areas we tend to get involved in.
— Bringing people together
Who needs to be part of the conversation? We bring senior peers together to explore a shared challenge, work through differences and decide what they're ready to do together. We give the room some shape, while leaving space for what nobody could have planned.
— Governance
Sometimes a decision looks straightforward on paper and feels anything but in practice. We work with boards and senior leaders to untangle responsibilities, talk openly about power and build a better working relationship.
— Organisational design
Your organisation has changed. Has the way it works caught up? We help you rethink how teams, responsibilities and decisions fit together, so people can get on with the work without spending quite so much energy working around the structure.
— Leadership behaviour
How you lead affects what other people feel able to do. We give you space to look at your own approach, notice what happens under pressure and work through what you might need to do differently.
Why?
And what would it be like to work with us?
We'll be curious about your take on things. We'll ask how you got there. And if we see something differently, we'll say so.
You can do the same with us.
We take the work seriously, but we like a conversation you can relax into. There needs to be room to think aloud, change your mind and admit that you haven't worked something out yet.
We'll ask you to stay open to what comes up, especially when it's uncomfortable. You can expect the same from us.
If it's complex, we're up for the challenge.
Like what?
Sometimes the question changes.
We were once asked to confirm that a leader had lost control of their senior team.
Looking at the whole team, we found something different. Two leaders were approaching problems in incompatible ways: one through tasks and transactions, the other through relationships. The team had been built with too many similar approaches to bridge that difference.
We advised against removing the leader. Their relational approach was exactly what the coming change would need. We put that advice on the record.
It wasn't taken. The instability we'd warned about followed.
We'd have preferred a different ending. But it tells you something about working with us: we'll take your question seriously, and we'll tell you if what we find leads somewhere else.
A word on confidentiality.
We treat what you share with care and discretion, and agree confidentiality with you from the start.
I'm really interested.
If you've made it this far, there's probably something on your mind.
Maybe you've been turning it over for a while. Maybe something here has helped you put a few words around it.
We'd like to hear.
Send us a note. Tell us what's happening, or start with the question you haven't quite found an answer to. You don't need to make it sound like a consultancy brief.
It's a great day to get in touch.
Where the work has taken us
We've worked alongside people in organisations with very different purposes, pressures and ways of seeing things.
We've brought our experience to each. Each has added something to ours.
Here are some of the places that work has taken us.
