All of our work is based on the research of W.E. Deming on management that empowers staff; Peter Checkland on soft systems and complex negotiations; Jim Collins on creating high performing cultures; and Peter Senge on learning organisations. At the heart of our work is an engagement model based on the following principles:
Accountability: we recognise that any engagement represents an important investment of time and money on the part of our clients. We will not take an assignment unless we are confident that our work will produce tangible results. We measure those results by their impact on our client’s key performance measures and on their organisational capabilities – in short we accept your targets as ours.
Hands-on: we become part of our clients’ teams. By working together, our engagements develop solutions that fit each client’s circumstances and are owned by their people. We believe that this collaborative and flexible approach is the only way to make constructive change happen in large organisations and, more importantly, the only way to make it stick.
Catalysing Performance: we believe the most valuable contribution we can bring is an ability to open up the discovery process inside our clients’ organisations. We bring pace, rigor and creativity to help our clients lever their own knowledge and skills to deliver great outcomes. In our experience, it is rare that outside organisations can bring genuinely new knowledge or insight and when they do, you rarely have exclusivity.
Execution: without the right energy and focus on execution, even the best strategy gathers dust. For us, impact means “delivery and results,” not “studies and recommendations.” We help our clients see their ideas into reality by engaging front-line staff, articulating and managing the path of change, and supporting the process of realising the benefits of the preceding hard work.
Empathy: we believe that we would be failing our clients if we told them only what they thought they wanted to hear or if we presumed to know better than they do about their own organisation. So, we bring challenge whilst simultaneously seeking to understand the unique obstacles to change - never forgetting that our business is to serve.
One Health & Social Service: even though policy and organisational structures drive division we recognise that ultimately we all work for a single institution serving the same patients, service users and clients and that we all have a sense of public service or we would be doing something else. With this much in common, a way forward is always possible.

