Strategy facilitation
Need a Board-ready strategy in a month? Call me.
I facilitate strategy development and review for CEOs, Boards and leadership teams. Most clients call when the old strategy has run out, the new one has been discussed for months and everyone is using the same words to mean completely different things.
I read the evidence, work out where the decisions are stuck and design a sequence that gets those decisions made. The finished strategy needs named owners, deadlines and enough money and people behind it to have a chance of happening.
How the work runs
How does the work run?
I read before we meet.
I usually start with the current strategy, annual report, risk register and any staff, customer or stakeholder research. By the time we speak, I want a view on what has failed and the mechanism producing the failure, which gives you something useful to disagree with.
The Board says what good looks like.
Board members set the acceptance criteria and stay involved from the beginning. One or more Board members attend the workshops and I check in with the Chair each week, because leaving the Board until the final presentation is how teams produce strategies trustees won't sign.
We make decisions in the room.
The workshops are designed as decision sequences, where each decision constrains the next one. Everyone's vote weighs the same regardless of title, while decisions reserved for the Board still go to the Board.
I don't assign homework. We leave with named owners and deadlines, and if the group gets stuck, I mediate until the people with the decision right can support a way forward.
Ways to start
What can you hire me to do?
A charity can start with a £600 offsite.
£600
The one-day session maps where the organisation is, where it wants to go and what is getting in the way. It can be remote for up to 16 people. The fee excludes VAT, and an in-person client provides the venue and pays travel at cost.
A focused strategy sprint takes four to six weeks.
4 to 6 weeks
This works for a bounded strategy problem where the evidence already exists and the main job is making decisions. Wider programmes take longer when they include extensive research, customer testing, implementation design or a fixed Board timetable.
A full charity strategy engagement costs £10,000 to £28,000.
£10k to £28k
The current fixed-price options are £10,000, £15,000 and £28,000 excluding VAT, travel and accommodation, with a 20% deposit. The right option depends on the depth of research, testing and implementation design you need.
If you increase the scope or shorten the timetable, we agree what that does to the fee before the work changes.
I normally need one week's notice. A full strategy engagement usually includes eight to twelve sessions. If you want implementation support afterwards, we scope and price that separately.
Strategy work in practice
What has this looked like in practice?
A disability-led arts charity with around ten staff completed a ten-week reset.
The work covered its purpose, values, operating model, decision rights and five-year strategy. The organisation did everything we planned and now presents its four activity pillars and distributed artistic-leadership model publicly. It is too early to claim a measurable result beyond implementation.
An environmental charity with about 50 staff made 35 strategy decisions in four weeks.
The work included a trustee retreat and 11 workshops that produced 35 recorded decisions, a theory of change, five strategic pillars and a consent-based decision process. I know those outputs were completed. I don't know what the organisation implemented later, so I won't invent a result.
A walking and active-travel charity turned two days of discussion into four strategic pillars.
The leadership team had about seven people and a low-millions budget. I designed the workshops as a narrowing sequence from impact to priorities, culture and trading criteria, so the team could make choices rather than produce another long list.
These are strategy-facilitation examples. My wider transformation work includes financial recovery, merger integration, organisation design, digital delivery and AI products, which is why the case studies cover a broader mix of private, civil-society and public-sector work.
Frequently asked questions
What else do people ask before they hire me?
Is implementation support included?
No. If you want support after the strategy work ends, we scope and price that separately.
How quickly can you start?
I normally need one week's notice, and I can often start the reading remotely while diaries catch up.
Who should hire someone else?
If you need business-as-usual delivery and nothing needs to change, hire someone else.
Tell me what your organisation needs to decide.
Use the contact form to describe the decision, the people involved and the timetable you are working to.
Let's talk