Case 01 · Governance · Board paperCONFIDENTIAL
- Organisation
- Date
- Present
- Item
- Senior team review ·
Brought in to confirm a leader had lost their team. The evidence said otherwise.
The Strategist Co was asked by to confirm that a senior leader had lost control of their team. The diagnostic looked at the whole team instead. Two leaders were solving problems in incompatible ways, one through transactions and one through relationships. The team had been built from too many similar people to bridge them.
The advice, given on the record, was not to remove the leader. Their relational approach was exactly what the coming change needed. The advice was not taken. The instability it warned about followed.
The brief is a hypothesis, not a finding. The Strategist Co is accountable for the accuracy of what it names, not for whether a client acts on it.
Case 02 · Collective action · Programme recordCONFIDENTIAL
- Programme
- National HIV prevention ·
- Partners
- 25 to 30 organisations
- Role
- Creative Director for the series · £200k+ budget per cycle
- Item
- Faith leaders ·
Faith leaders agreed to back an HIV strategy. Then they took the test in public.
A national HIV prevention programme needed the leaders of the UK's major Black churches behind it. Endorsement was available. Endorsing a strategy costs a leader little. What an audience sees its leader do carries further.
As the Creative Director for the series, Paul Boldeau brought faith leaders from every major Black church in the UK together behind the strategy. Then he led those same leaders to turn agreement into behaviour: they took HIV tests in public.
The coalition held for years. Alongside it, the programme's community engagement grew from 150 people to 3,000 over eight editions.
Agreement is what a network says. Shared, visible action is what it does. The work is to design the second, not to collect the first.
Case 03 · Leadership · Transition recordCONFIDENTIAL
- Organisation
- Young people's charity ·
- Income
- £1.7m
- Role
- Acting chief executive
- Item
- Leadership transition ·
A charity between chief executives, and a programme with one winner. Paul held one and redesigned the other.
Paul Boldeau stepped in as acting chief executive through a leadership transition, with full statutory and board accountability: Charity Commission reporting, annual report and audit, risk register and reserves. He held delivery and funder confidence, and led the multi-year funding renewal the charity depended on.
One of the charity's programmes had a single winner. A competition with a single winner tells every other young person taking part that they lost. The structure was producing the opposite of what the charity said it stood for.
The delivery model was redesigned to recognise 37 winners instead of one. The redesign began while Paul was acting chief executive and continued when he returned. Participation doubled. The board and its principal funder asked Paul back for a second period.
Change the structure and the behaviour follows. One winner taught young people to stay away. Thirty-seven taught them to take part.
Case 04 · Decision-making · Whole institutionCONFIDENTIAL
- Organisation
- Federated institution ·
- Income
- £22m
- Governance
- Charitable · commercial · membership
- Item
- New chief executive ·
40,000+members
440+staff
300+properties
10+companies and charities
A £22m institution appointed a chief executive. The first finding: it couldn't say what head office was for.
A federated institution running charitable, commercial and membership governance at once moved its most senior person into a newly appointed chief-executive role. The board called The Strategist Co in to support the transition and to give strategic counsel to the chief executive and the board.
The diagnostic found that the organisation could not say what it was, or what head office was responsible for. The new role was being asked to lead something nobody had defined.
The finding went to the chief executive first. He took it to the board himself. The board voted in four changes:
- A restructure of the board around its key strategic areas
- A value proposition that reflected the organisation
- A stakeholder analysis that exposed the governance gaps
- A timeline for organisational change, measured against KPIs
A new top job cannot fix a centre that hasn't decided what it is for. And a finding lands hardest when the person it implicates carries it to the board.
