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Consulting
Our consulting differs significantly from traditional approaches. We work alongside you to solve problems — you won’t endure a generic, cookie-cutter process ending with a report nobody reads, a PowerPoint no one understands, or a solution you can’t implement. We build your ability to develop better ways to understand and address your most difficult challenges. Working together, we uncover the underlying forces causing your problems — and find the most effective places to make lasting, transformative change. We bring expertise in analysis and problem-solving; you bring deep knowledge of your organization, community, or collaborative partnerships. The skills you develop along the way will improve your ability to handle future challenges. In short: our consulting creates sustainable impact.
Strategic Forums™
Our unique process helps leadership teams develop a shared understanding of complex issues. Together, we map out how different parts of your organization affect each other, challenge outdated thinking, and find better ways to approach your most important strategic questions.
Deep Learning Workshops
Structured sessions that help your organization question basic assumptions that prevent achieving higher performance. These workshops help you move beyond quick fixes to address the true causes of persistent problems.
Strategy Mapping
Creating clear visual maps that show how different parts of your organization, partnerships, or community work together. These maps help everyone see the big picture, make better decisions, and focus their efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact.
Risk Analysis
Looking beyond obvious risks to understand how decisions might play out over time. Our approach helps you spot potential problems before they happen and understand how today’s decisions might affect tomorrow’s outcomes.
Scenario Planning
Using interactive tools to test your strategies under different possible futures. This helps you prepare for uncertainty, avoid costly mistakes, and build more flexible plans that can adapt to changing conditions.
Strategic Communication
Turning complex insights into clear messages that resonate with different audiences. We help you communicate your strategy in ways that build understanding and support for implementation.
Training
We’ve developed our training programs through decades of working with
diverse organizations — from large companies and foundations to
government agencies and business schools. Our training helps your team
tackle complex, interconnected challenges more effectively.
Rather than teaching abstract concepts, we focus on practical skills
you can apply to real issues your organization faces. All training is
customized to your specific needs and challenges.
Systems Thinking Foundations
Learning practical ways to see and understand complex problems. Participants gain skills to identify patterns, understand how different parts of a system affect each other, and find better solutions to persistent problems.
Practical Modeling for Strategy
Learning to build and test models that show how decisions might play out over time. Teams develop skills to examine their assumptions, understand potential consequences of different choices, and find unexpected solutions.
Leadership for Adaptive Challenges
Developing leadership skills specifically for situations where there are no easy answers. Leaders learn to tell the difference between straightforward problems and complex challenges, consider multiple perspectives, and guide their teams through uncertainty.
Visual Mapping for Better Decisions
Building skills to create clear visual maps of complex issues. Participants learn to show how different factors connect, identify the best places to make changes, and communicate complex ideas effectively.
Effective Conversations Across Boundaries
Developing skills for productive discussions about difficult topics, especially when working across departments or organizations. We partner with The Weber Consulting Group — recognized experts in the Conversational CapacityTM framework. This program combines communication skills with systems thinking to improve collaborative problem-solving — helping everyone point fingers at the problem, not each other.
Find the Wolf — Leverage Points and Multisolving
Reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone reduced the deer overpopulation, strengthened forest vegetation, brought back eagles and hawks, and eventually changed the course of the rivers. This workshop helps you “find the wolf” — to design solutions that fundamentally improve ecosystem performance or solve multiple problems at once. Participants learn a powerful framework for identifying high leverage, developing the skills to apply and implement powerful solutions that work.
Coaching
Our coaching services provide ongoing support as leaders and teams put
new approaches into practice. We offer guidance tailored to your
specific challenges, helping you apply systems thinking skills to real
situations you face.
Through regular reflection, guided practice, and
timely feedback, our coaching helps make new ways of thinking and
working a natural part of how your organization operates.
Leadership Coaching
One-on-one coaching for leaders facing complex challenges. This personalized approach helps leaders see problems from multiple perspectives, question limiting assumptions, and develop more effective approaches to persistent problems.
Cross-Boundary Collaboration
Specialized coaching for leaders and teams working with other departments, organizations, or sectors. This coaching focuses on operationalizing trust —moving beyond simple exhortations to “trust each other”— aligning different interests, and creating effective ways to work together on shared challenges.
Team Facilitation
Ongoing guidance for teams working through difficult challenges. Our coaches help teams clearly define issues, develop shared understanding, test their thinking, and focus on actions that will make the biggest difference.
Implementation Support
Coaching for teams putting new strategies into practice. We teach a practical agile, “yes to the mess” framework that will build your team’s ability to flexibly adapt to changing conditions, track early signs of progress or problems, course-correct as needed, and stay focused on the most important actions.
Internal Capacity
Building Advanced coaching for people who want to become in-house experts in systems approaches. This intensive coaching develops skills in using systems tools and guiding others through collaborative problem-solving processes. Coaching includes building the ability to apply a range of tools: systems archetypes, causal loop diagramming, stock and flow mapping, and system dynamics modeling. Coaching is always “just in time, just what’s needed”.
Organizational Integration
Strategic coaching for organizations wanting to make systems thinking part of their culture and processes. This coaching helps organizations move beyond individual projects to build lasting capacity for addressing complex challenges effectively.