02 · How we work
Hold the question well enough that the organization can find its own.
Most strategic challenges aren’t problems with known answers; they’re questions that require the organization to change in response to them. The firm’s job is to hold the question well enough that the answer can emerge.
01 · A practice of inquiry
The work begins with the question. Often the stated question isn’t the operative one — the one whose answer would actually move the organization. Part of the early work is finding the right question, and then holding it open long enough that the organization can think clearly about it.
That’s not the same as withholding judgment. The practice has a point of view and brings it to bear. But the point of view serves the question, not the other way around.
02 · The wider field
Every organization sits in a field of related organizations, public agencies, funders, audiences, and constituencies. Strategy that doesn’t read the field is internal navel-gazing. The practice always reads the field as well as the organization — and often the field is what changes most over the course of an engagement.
03 · The writing is the work
Every engagement produces something written — a memo, a framework, a positioning paper. Writing forces clarity. If the strategy can’t be written down clearly, it isn’t yet strategy. The deliverable is the artifact the organization carries forward, refers back to, and uses to align the people who weren’t in the room.
04 · Senior-led
The principal is the practitioner. No associates farmed out the actual thinking. No “team.” Every meeting, every interview, every memo, every recommendation comes from the same person. That’s a constraint on scale — and a feature of the work.
05 · Pricing and access
Pricing slides as needed, so a labor council and a foundation can both commission this work. The same care goes into both. Write with what the engagement is and what the constraint is, and we’ll find the shape that works.
If the strategy can’t be written down clearly, it isn’t yet strategy.On the writing
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