- Strategic Therapy

The Answer is in the Building

Simon Myers and Nicole MacLeod
December 2024

Avoid the outsourcing of strategy with timed and targeted support (and make your team love you for it)

Turning to inside talent

For a long time, consulting firms have been the go-to option for organisations that need help with their trickiest questions.

Large sums of money are exchanged for spending a protracted amount of time deep-diving and “solutionizing”, culminating in copious amounts of slides and reports thrust upon teams. In return, a nagging feeling that the organisation could have come up with that (NYC dustbins, anyone?).

But times are changing.

Budgets are tighter, digital tools (read: AI) have made information more accessible, and orgs realise they have a ton of brainpower already inside their walls that needs to be put to better use.

With this shift is there a new, more modern role for outside strategic counsel?

The DIY strategy squeeze

As organisations look to internal resources before external consultants, busy senior managers and teams find “Resolve this big strategic challenge”
is simply another addition to the neverending to-do list.

It’s not easy because of:

Decision paralysis // Unproductive meetings cost organisations billions globally. Often, no decisions get made, leaving teams stuck in a doom loop of talking about problems rather than moving forward.

Leadership pressure cooker // Leaders feel the relentless pressure to appear all-knowing, which stifles team innovation, makes it harder for others to speak up and leads to bottlenecks in decision making. Generational divides and outdated working styles add further friction.

Urgent trumps important // Teams under the overwhelming pressure of daily delivery prioritise immediate tasks at the expense of taking time on decisions that affect the long term.

Enter On-Demand Strategy

On-demand strategy sessions offer a fresh approach: timed and targeted interventions, when they’re needed most, led by external facilitators who help teams tackle specific challenges with focus and clarity.

Here’s why it works.

Making time count

Just showing up to meetings won’t solve problems. Making decisions will.

On-demand sessions are built to be effective, structuring the conversation
and treating time as precious.

They’re focused on driving alignment and/or commitment faster, cutting through the endless cycle of meetings where things are ‘discussed’ but progress
is elusive.

Embracing the not knowing

Leaders feel the weight of pressure to have all the answers, but they don’t.
No one does.

Tackling a strategic challenge is about stepping into an uncertain future and making decisions in pursuit of an agreed goal.

The best results come from creating an environment where solutions can emerge, and there is enough confidence to make a decision and move on.

Teams that own it

A great leader, as the saying goes, is someone whose team says, “We did it ourselves.”

These sessions aren’t about outsourcing the difficult tasks.They’re about taking
the ‘precious’ strategy off the shelf, and empowering teams to find their own solutions, so they can agree (or ‘disagree and commit’) and have the impetus to action.

Building decision making muscles

In a world evolving as rapidly as ours, strategy isn’t a one-and-done exercise. It’s a daily dance between curveballs and decisions.

On-demand sessions help teams get better at aligning actions with goals, choosing priorities, navigating ambiguity, weighing trade-offs and staying on course, as reality unfolds.

Having the tough conversations

Getting to a level of honesty amongst peers in any organisation is tough.
It doesn’t emerge by itself. It needs well facilitated conversations. Ones that challenge assumptions and ultimately ask people to let go of something to move forward with something else. This is where the progress is made.

This requires empathy but critically a distance that an outside facilitator should bring.