Our process
Assess. Develop. Implement.
A three-step sequence that has not changed since 2007, because the order is what makes it work. Most failed interventions skip the first step and pay for it in the third.
Overview
Alignment before action
Our process exists to get an organization into alignment: between what it has committed to, what it is structured to deliver, and what the environment will actually permit. Where those three things disagree, projects stall — and no amount of additional effort at the execution end will fix a misalignment that originated at the commitment end.
01 — Assessment
We begin by assessing what is actually in the way, which is frequently not what the brief says is in the way.
That means establishing the real decision structure on both sides: who signs, who can veto quietly, whose approval is procedural and whose is substantive. It means mapping the political and regulatory calendar, because a proposal that is impossible in March may be routine in September. And it means an honest look at the client's own capacity — whether the organization can support what it is proposing to take on.
Assessment is diagnostic, not diplomatic. The findings are often uncomfortable, and a version that is not would be worthless.
02 — Development
With the diagnosis in hand, we build the path.
That is a specific thing: the sequence of conversations in the order they need to happen, the terms that can survive on both sides, the concessions worth making early to establish credibility, and the ones that have to be held. Where a party will need to defend the agreement publicly, we develop the version of it that they can defend.
Where the constraint is structural rather than positional — the organization cannot currently do what it is agreeing to do — development includes what has to be built alongside the agreement for it to hold.
03 — Implementation
We stay in the room.
Agreements fail in execution far more often than in principle. The usual cause is that the party responsible for delivering was not properly consulted during development, and discovers at implementation that it has inherited an obligation it cannot meet. The second most common cause is simple attrition: the people who negotiated the agreement move on, and nobody holds the thing together.
We hold the process together until it is actually operating. What "operating" means is agreed at the outset, so that the end of the engagement is a defined point rather than a fading out.
What this looks like in time
Assessment is typically the shortest phase and the one clients most want to compress. Compressing it is the most reliable way to lose time overall, because every hour not spent understanding the obstacle is spent later negotiating against the wrong one.
Load 35% of design Within capacity
The structure holds what it was built to hold. Nothing to see, and nothing to report.
The diagnosis
Most failures are capacity failures that nobody logged.
An organization is built to hold a certain load. Then the market moves, the mandate widens, a new jurisdiction is added, and the same structure is asked to carry something heavier than it was designed for.
It usually works — for a while. The strain shows up first as small fractures: a slower approval, a renegotiated term, a country manager who stops escalating. Because the erosion is gradual, it gets absorbed rather than reported. Revenue and headcount are poured in to compensate, which masks the fracture instead of closing it.
Then one condition changes and the loss becomes visible all at once. By that point people call it a crisis. It was a capacity problem, and it was measurable years earlier.
Next step
Tell us what has stopped.
A first conversation is confidential and costs nothing. If the problem is not one we are right for, we will say so and point you somewhere better.