STRATEGY & COMPLEX
PROBLEM-SOLVING
Helping leaders move from uncertainty to action.
We partner with organizations navigating complex, high-stakes challenges – scaling a new initiative, navigating shifts in funding or market conditions, aligning stakeholders across organizational silos – to bring clarity, structure, and momentum.
We approach strategy as a core leadership act: not just analysis and plans, but shared sensemaking, courageous choices, and the momentum to move.
That means we don’t simply apply frameworks. Instead, we co-create strategies through facilitated learning and structured problem-solving that actively engages your team and reflects your unique context.
Our approach blends:
Strategic insight grounded in experience across public, private, and mission-driven sectors
Facilitation expertise that engages diverse stakeholders and surfaces new ideas
Adaptive thinking to enable flexibility, reflection, and smart iteration
What makes it work
Our facilitators have guided organizations through turnarounds, critical transitions, and complex transformations. We’ve crafted national strategies with governments, scaled nonprofits, supported global institutions, and partnered with corporate leadership teams to align vision and execution.
We don’t just consult, we partner. We don’t merely recommend, we co-create. And we don’t provide generic solutions—we build genuine ownership, deep insight, and lasting alignment within your team.
Inside a Strategy Engagement
Our Strategy Process
We guide you through a flexible, four-step process:
1. Diagnose the landscape
See the full picture – the pressures, players, and systems shaping the challenge.2. Clarify the core issues
Surface what’s really at stake, and where alignment breaks down.3. Design smart, context-aware interventions
Structure the right approach to shift behavior, unlock insight, and move forward.4. Build sustainable capacity
Strengthen your team’s ability to lead adaptively—long after the program.
We’re often brought in during pivotal moments – when your usual tools or approaches aren’t enough:
Planning amidst uncertainty, rapid growth, or market shifts
Navigating significant changes in policy, funding, or strategic direction
Aligning cross-functional teams or diverse stakeholder groups
Scaling critical initiatives, innovations, or business lines
Addressing complex political, cultural, or organizational dynamics
Example Programs
Strategic Retreats for Teams
Custom-designed sessions that align cross-functional teams, strengthen decision-making, and enhance collaborative problem-solving.
Retreats are designed to:
Surface critical insights and turn them into action
Build trust and shared language across teams
Address your organization’s most pressing challenges
We combine facilitation expertise, academic rigor, and practical experience to create retreats that shift how your team thinks, collaborates, and leads.
Budget Alignment as a Strategic Tool
We help organizations design transparent, values-aligned budgeting processes – even in periods of constraint or rapid change.
Our approach helps leaders:
Engage productively around tough trade-offs
Align financial strategy with organizational goals
Use budgeting to drive clarity, strategy, and trust
Drawing on deep experience managing multi-billion-dollar budgets during periods of both significant cuts and abundant resources, we integrate financial strategy into broader leadership development.
We partner closely with your finance and leadership teams to design a budget process that reflects your context, priorities, and culture.
Leadership Strategy Sprints
High-intensity working sessions that help teams rapidly diagnose challenges, align priorities, and translate insight into action.
Sprints are ideal when:
The path forward is unclear or contested
Stakes are high and time is short
Strategy needs to move from stuck to aligned
We draw on design thinking, systems tools, and scenario planning to help teams think, decide, and act – fast, collaboratively, and with confidence.
The Thinking That Guides Us
Methods We Use to Unlock Insight and Action
Start Stop Continue
Start/Stop/Continue brainstorming provides a clear, practical structure for gathering actionable feedback, aligning priorities, and fostering open dialogue. This approach is particularly valuable when stakeholder perspectives are diverse or time is limited yet meaningful reflection is essential. We often deploy this tool during transitions, strategic retreats, or iterative cycles where rapid learning and real-time course correction matter most.
Adaptive Value Chain Mapping
Adaptive Value Chain Mapping blends Adaptive Leadership, Lean process thinking, and action learning to drive meaningful change in complex systems. Through collaborative mapping and stakeholder dialogue, it surfaces real pain points—not just technical inefficiencies, but cultural and relational barriers to effectiveness. The process involves visualizing workflows, identifying friction points, and engaging those closest to the work. Leaders test and refine solutions in real time, building adaptive capacity through cycles of reflection, experimentation, and shared insight
Design Thinking
Design Thinking is especially valuable when facing complex or ambiguous challenges that require deep insight into human needs. It clarifies problems that aren’t yet fully understood, surfaces insights through empathy, and supports creative exploration when multiple solutions are possible. This approach is particularly effective in cross-disciplinary settings, where collaborative and user-centered approaches drive meaningful and innovative results
Systems Mapping
Seeing the bigger picture is essential. Through customized Systems Mapping exercises, we help organizations visualize how structures, relationships, decisions and mental models shape their systems. The maps reveal hidden patterns, clarify interdependencies, identify leverage points for change, and help align strategies with how your systems actually operate.
Decision Trees
Decision Trees help clarify options when structured, transparent decision-making is essential – especially in situations with multiple pathways, uncertain outcomes, or complex trade-offs. They simplify complex choices into clear, sequential steps, making it easier to compare alternatives, anticipate consequences, and engage stakeholders effectively in the decision-making process.
Scenario Planning
Scenario Planning enables organizations to think proactively – not to predict the future, but to be prepared for it. We facilitate creative yet rigorous processes that help teams identify critical uncertainties, align stakeholders around potential future scenarios, and build strategic agility.
Reframe Your Perspective
“Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux. The true voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
We help organizations reframe their hardest challenges - unlocking clarity, alignment, and new possibilities for action
“The Leadership Dialogues created a turning point. What had felt like a top-down strategy no one could speak into became something we could engage, question, and ultimately help shape. It didn’t erase the tension, but it opened a channel between faculty and leadership that hadn’t existed. For the first time, we moved from quiet resistance to real conversation.”
