How we work
Every engagement starts with your situation. We take measure first and then decide which approach it calls for. Our way of working is systematic, the solution is always your own: we do not run standardized programs.
Every discipline sees the problem its own tools can solve: the coach a leader who needs to grow, the strategist a flawed analysis, the organization designer the wrong structure. Each is often partly right. We look at the situation through strategy, leadership and negotiation together before we decide what it calls for.
One task, three disciplines
Every negotiation serves a purpose beyond itself. A ten percent price increase is a target. The purpose is the margin that keeps the business competitive and pays for what comes next. We start with the purpose, because it decides what a good result is and what can be traded for it.
Strategy decides where value is created: in which markets, with which products, with which resources.
Leadership aligns what a leader wants to achieve with the mandate and resources available, and with what the team and partners are able and willing to contribute.
Negotiation shapes and secures the agreements this depends on: upward for mandate and resources, across and downward for commitment, outward for terms with customers, suppliers and partners.
Strategy without agreement stays on paper. Agreement without strategy can take the business in the wrong direction.
A strategy can be right and still deliver only part of what it promised. The losses occur on the way to execution, and they follow a familiar pattern:
- Mandate and resources do not match the ambition.
- The strategy is announced but never translated into what each function has to do differently.
- Accountabilities stay vague. Everyone agrees, no one owns.
- Silos and incentives pull in different directions.
- Leadership approves the plan but steps back when it becomes uncomfortable.
- No one tracks whether what was agreed actually happens.
- Customers, suppliers or partners were expected to go along, and they do not.
Each of these is an agreement that was never reached or did not hold: about mandate, priorities, resources or terms. We work where strategy, leadership and negotiation meet, and where each depends on the others.
How an engagement runs
The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
George Bernard Shaw
1. A clear picture, fast. Together with you, we work out what is at stake, what you want to achieve, who needs to decide and act, and where positions in your own organization diverge.
2. A shared approach, owned by everyone. Scenarios, stakeholders and risks, and the critical moments thought through in advance: who speaks when, what can be committed to, and where to hold firm. Everyone involved knows their role and can act with conviction.
3. Results, then handover. We stay involved throughout execution, adjust course as the situation unfolds, and see it through to the result. Afterwards we review what worked and what should become part of how your organization operates.
Wherever possible, we agree fees on the scope and value of the work, not on the time it takes. Time-based fees reward more time: one more analysis, one more workshop, one more round of alignment. Our interest is the same as yours: achieving the result by the most direct route.
What we ask of you
A different result requires different decisions, and some of them will be uncomfortable. We ask our clients to make them: to put internal disagreements on the table, to give us access to the people who decide, and to act on what the diagnosis shows. If what you are looking for is confirmation of the current course, we are the wrong partner.
When our work is done
We measure an engagement by what it returns to you. It is done when it has paid for itself many times over and your team owns the result and carries it forward without us.
At your side or on board
Depending on the situation, we work alongside those responsible as advisers or step in as embedded partners with responsibility for delivery. That can mean a project, sparring for an individual decision-maker, a workshop or offsite with the leadership team on a specific question, an interim role such as heading a new market, or ongoing support. Some companies without an advisory board of their own ask us to take on that role. An engagement can be as focused as preparing a single critical negotiation or decision.
Judgment does not scale
Knowledge is widely available today. Judgment comes from years of dealing with problems that have no standard solution. That is why only senior partners work directly with clients. It costs us scale, and we accept that.
Tell us what’s at stake
Thirty minutes, no pitch. You describe the situation. We tell you honestly whether we can help, and how.