Our specialisms

Clients come to us, and keep coming back, for our deep subject-matter expertise and broad experience.

Read more about what we do and how we can help you, or have a look at our  resources page.

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Systems Thinking

We deliver a range of systems options: capability building and in-depth systems intervention design. We teach, coach or implement alongside you.

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Strategy

Our 'strategy system' approach is simple and effective, based on decades of experience designing and implementing practial and effective strategies.

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Teams

Our Teams practice is grounded in psychology and systems models of communication. Our approach is described in our book "WOVEN".

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Cynefin

Our work involves complex adaptive systems, emergent behaviour, people, systems and processes. We dip into Cynefin methods and tools as needed.

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Systems

Systems Thinking

There's a lot of hype about Systems Thinking, but often not much in the way of deep understanding. We live in a world of systems, and we can often be much more effective if we design and work with systems, rather than against them.

We have spent decades working with systems, and learning about how people think, act and behave in these systems. Our workshops provide an evidence-based, behaviourally informed way to better understand the systems you work with, ways to improve performance, change system behaviour, and tools and techniques you can use from here on.

Systems Change, Design and Implementation

Our systems practice covers both capability building and in-depth systems intervention design and implementation.

We base our approach on decades of experience. We have an approach that takes you through a series of discovery steps, that we refer to as our “system shift” framework. This has 5 phases that we work together on, starting with overall direction and ending with the actual intervention design and implementation. Too often, we find that there is a rush to the 'solution' without sufficient attention given to the nature of the problem (or system) you are working with.

We design approaches that meet your needs - which can be short-term approaches, as well as longer-term multi-phase approaches that influence and change system performance.

Learning about 'Systems'

We have a range of workshops that support people to apply systems techniques and approaches on specific problems, or learning and teaching oriented workshops that introduce people to systems thinking concepts and how to apply these in their everyday work.

  • Thinking in Systems: An Introduction (2-days)

    This is a 2-day workshop that takes people through the basic concepts, with practical exercises to embed the learning.
    Thinking in Systems: An Introduction is our most popular workshop, with over 2,000 particpants having completed this workshop over the last decade.

  • Thinking in Systems: A Deep Dive (2-days)

    This is a follow-on workshop, which builds on our 'Thinking in Systems' introduction. Participants spend more time understanding the tools, frameworks and underpinning theories so they are better equipped to apply the learnings in their own organisations.

  • Thinking in Systems: Tailored (1-3 days)

    In addtion to our core systems workshops, we are happy to customise and tailor to meet your needs. We can design standalone modules, integrate content into existing leadership programmes, or co-design something with you that is specific to your needs. We can also draw on any of our other service areas for this.

  • Systems Clinics (half or full-day)

    System Clinics take a deep dive into one or two of your specific challenges. The clinics aim to teach, coach and also provide valuable insights and intervention approaches that the participants can test and apply in real-life. Clinics can also offer follow-ups, and be designed around teams, issues or collaborative endeavors (cross-agency).

We are the only NZ provider who has been certified by Mike Goodman of MIT to run their world-famous systems simulation, 'The MIT Beer Game'.

If you would like to know more, or have a specific workshop you'd like designed - get in touch!

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Strategy

Our approach to strategy is simple and effective, and based on decades of working with and designing strategic approaches and strategic plans. As with all of our work, our Strategy practice is based on a systems model that we refer to as a “strategy system”.

Strategies are of little use unless they (a) can be implemented, and (b) are actually implemented. Our approach ensures that implementation is designed in from the outset. However, implementation is more than merely thinking about how a strategy is brought to life, it must consider who will be doing this, where there will be doing this, and when they will be doing this.

We have never encountered an organisation that was interested in merely producing a strategy document, yet often the way in which strategy is developed is quite siloed from the way the organisation operates.

We reconnect strategy to implementation, and ensure there is a practice of ongoing checking, testing, and refining of the strategy. When developing strategies, we work with you to ensure that the strategy is not only robust, but that it is developed in a user-centric way. This enables organisations to become truly strategy led.

In essence, a strategy is a statement, or claim, about a direction that the organisation wants to go in. This is directional. We draw on methods and techniques which support this directional aspiration, and together, we build a suite of activity to achieve it. When people have a map of where they are going, a reason for going there, and support to do this - strategy can be brought to life and its implementation tracked.

If you would like to know more get in touch

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Teams

Every team is a system with connections, relationships and patterns of both performance and communication. Often, the performance of team systems is impacted by a series of unhelpful system patterns - whether this is a lack of performance, relationship stresses, or communication issues.

Our work with teams is grounded in decades of in-depth research and is informed by the psychology of family-systems models of communication and interaction, as well as strengths-based approaches to skills and capability development. We have used many models and frameworks for teams over the years, and through experience and practice, have refined these approaches down to those which really work, are simple, effective, and can be used by any team in any situation.

We are Asia-Pacific partners of Assessing In Action, trained and certified in the use of their superb assessment 'Team Dynamics Profile' tools which we highly recommend. These tools from AinA are based on David Kantor's "systems" model, theory and framework, which we fully support and use, and aligns beautifully with our broader systems and strategy philosophy and approach.

Woven represents the core approach and service we offer for teams at all levels who want to improve performance, team connection, wellbeing, and weave a positive team culture with your organisation's values and behavioural expectations. We have written about the Woven programme, and the second version of the book is available via Amazon, and Unity Books for those in New Zealand.

Woven was reviewed by Dr Ryan Neimeic, Chief Science Officer of the VIA Institute, who had some lovely things to say.

If you want a strengths-based teaming book that will inspire you, catalyze the people-to-people work on your team, and help you make a positive difference in the world, then look no further than Woven.

Strengths-based teaming has arrived! Woven is for all the people-to-people leaders, managers, and teammates out there!

The approach outlined in Woven offers numerous relatable and palpable examples for how to bring strengths to your team in a way that is human, inclusive, positive, and powerful.

New leaders and those wanting to enhance human connections at work will greatly benefit from reading and immediately applying the wisdom and approaches shared in this book.

Woven v2

Our “Team Systems For Leaders” and our "Changing The Conversation" programmes offer more in-depth systems-based approaches for people leaders, thought leaders or leaders of leaders (e.g. multiple teams).

If you would like to know more get in touch

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Cynefin / Complexity

As practitioners in the systems domain, we work with complex human systems. The field of complexity science has made considerable advances over the last two decades, and the emergence of Professor Dave Snowden's work has been an integral part of our research during this period.

Our relationship with Dave and Cynefin has strengthened over the years, and we have developed a deep understanding of the Cynefin 'ecosystem' suite of methods and frameworks (including SenseMaker), and how to explain, simplify, design and use these in practice. We have designed our own SenseMaker collector as part of a global PhD research project, and understand how to extract, analyse, display, and use the data gathered by this ground-breaking narratve-based infomation gathering method.

If you would like to know more get in touch