STRATEGY
Helping leaders and teams move from uncertainty to action.
Strategy for Complex Problem Solving
In our strategy practice, we partner with organizations navigating complex, high-stakes challenges. Whether you’re scaling a new initiative, navigating shifts in funding or market conditions, or aligning stakeholders across organizational silos, we bring clarity, structure, and momentum.
Using tools like scenario planning, systems thinking, and collaborative strategy sprints, we help organizations move beyond quick fixes to develop resilient, adaptive approaches that drive real-time progress - and prepare for what’s next.
OUR APPROACH
We approach strategy as a core leadership act. That means we don’t simply deliver 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
CORE OFFERINGS
Leadership Strategy Sprints – Rapidly generate actionable insights and achieve alignment on complex leadership challenges through structured, facilitated sessions.
Scenario Planning – Explore future possibilities, identify risks and opportunities, and align your team around a clear strategic direction.
Budget Strategy & Alignment – Effectively navigate budget cuts, prioritize strategic investments, and transparently manage tough trade-offs through engaged leadership.
Cross-Functional Strategy Retreats – Clarify your strategic direction, deepen trust, and improve cross-team coordination through expertly designed and facilitated retreats.
Strategic Ideation & Prioritization – Build consensus around your organization's key goals, priorities, and resource allocations through structured ideation sessions.
Systems Mapping – Gain clarity on complex interdependencies, power dynamics, and leverage points to strengthen your strategic decision-making.
WHEN TO ENGAGE US
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
OUR STRATEGY PROCESS
We guide you through a flexible, four-step process:
1. Diagnose the landscape – Understand the technical and adaptive aspects of your challenge
2. Clarify the core issues – Identify what’s at stake, for whom, and why it matters
3. Design smart, context-aware interventions – From retreats to sprints to scenario exercises
4. Build capacity – Leave your team stronger and more aligned than before
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.
STRATEGY PRACTICE IN ACTION
Strategic Retreats for Cross-Functional Teams
Our custom-designed retreats help cross-functional teams achieve strategic alignment, strengthen decision-making, and enhance collaborative problem-solving. These facilitated sessions intentionally build trust, surface critical insights, and translate ideas into actionable plans.
Every retreat is tailored to your team's unique context, addressing the specific challenges and opportunities most relevant to your organization.
We combine cutting-edge facilitation methods, academic rigor, and decades of practical experience to deliver retreats that meaningfully shift how your team collaborates, thinks, and leads.
Budget Alignment as a Strategic Tool
We’ve helped governments and organizations design transparent, values-aligned budgeting processes - even during periods of significant cuts. Our facilitated approach helps leaders engage productively and make hard tradeoffs wisely.
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, strategic planning, and executive coaching. We partner closely with your financial team and senior leaders to build budgeting processes tailored to your organization's specific culture, context, and goals.
Leadership Strategy Sprints
We facilitate high-intensity strategy sprints to help teams quickly diagnose complex challenges, build alignment around strategic priorities, and rapidly translate insights into actionable plans. Our approach is grounded in frameworks developed at Harvard Kennedy School, complemented by tools including systems thinking, design thinking, scenario planning, structured decision trees, and start/stop/continue reflection methods.
These strategy sprints are particularly valuable at moments of inflection—when the path forward feels unclear, the stakes are high, or competing perspectives need resolution. We create a structured environment for strategic thinking, real-time decision-making, and collaborative problem-solving, enabling leadership teams to move forward with greater clarity, cohesion, and confidence.
Featured Tools & Approaches
Today’s toughest challenges rarely have easy answers. Leaders must move beyond quick fixes and rethink how they understand and approach their work. We use the Adaptive Leadership framework, developed at Harvard Kennedy School and grounded in decades of research, to help clients clearly diagnose complex challenges, engage stakeholders effectively, and build strategies that enable lasting success.
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.
Seeing the bigger picture is essential. Through customized mapping exercises, we help organizations visualize how structures, relationships, decisions, and mental models shape their systems. Our systems maps reveal hidden patterns, clarify interdependencies, identify leverage points for change, and help align strategies with how your systems actually operate.
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.
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. By promoting rapid prototyping and iteration, design thinking enables teams to test ideas early, accelerate learning, and refine strategies based on real feedback. This approach is particularly effective in cross-disciplinary settings, where collaborative and user-centered approaches drive meaningful and innovative results.
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.
A Note on 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.”
At KS Insight, we help organizations - and their leaders - see their toughest challenges and greatest opportunities with new eyes, enabling wiser decisions, stronger alignment, and greater impact.