Programmes

Four things we do

Each with a published indicative fee, a stated shape, and the conditions under which we would tell you not to buy it.

Before you commission

When we say no

We declined four engagements in 2025 out of thirty-one enquiries that reached proposal. The reasons are consistent enough to publish.

The chief executive is the problem and will not participate. Team work with an absent principal is theatre. Two declines, and in one case the sponsor returned a year later with the CEO in the room.

The brief specifies an instrument we will not use. Usually MBTI. We offer an alternative and explain the reliability problem; if the instrument is non-negotiable, we are not the right practice.

The diagnostic says the money belongs somewhere else. Twice we have recommended a client stop a culture programme and spend it on an operating model review. One of those was a £90,000 follow-on we had already scoped.

The timeline does not allow a baseline. If there is no time to measure before, there is no way to say afterwards whether anything changed, and we will not sell a programme whose result cannot be known.

Next step

Start with the diagnostic, not the programme

Six weeks of interviews and a baseline measure, and a written finding — including the finding that the problem is structural and a development programme will not touch it. We have delivered that one twice.