Strategy development facilitators to help you choose where to play, how to win and how to make sure it's delivered
One or more facilitated days. You leave with a strategy ready to communicate, the list of things you have agreed not to do, and an owner for every test that has to come true.
Matt RobertsCo-founder of ZOKRI
Peter KerrExpert adviser and facilitator
Meet Matt before you book
The person you'd be talking to, and how we think.
You're probably here because
Sound familiar?
- Our strategy is a list of everything we were already doing.
- We say yes to every segment, every customer and every product idea.
- Everyone nods in the room, then does their own thing.
- I know what I think. I have no idea what my team thinks.
- We're not getting the basics right.
- We're me-too, but we think we're much better. We need a plan that makes us different.
- Anyone in our market could have our strategy. There's nothing different about it, or us.
What you leave with
What do you want to leave with?
Every team wants something slightly different, and we agree it with you first. These are the things leadership teams most often ask for.
- A strategy ready to communicateWritten so it lands, is remembered, and can be actioned and tracked: where to play, how to win, the capabilities it needs and the systems that carry it.
- A story that landsThe why, the choices and what changes, told so every team can repeat it.
- Choices people rememberFew enough and clear enough that people can say them without notes.
- A plan people can act onEach choice turned into priorities, owners and first steps.
- A way to track itMeasures and review points, so you know whether the strategy is working.
What AI does, and what only your team can do
If every competitor plans with the same AI, they all get the same plan.
The point
What everyone has, and what only your people know
Your competitors are asking AI the same questions you are, so they'll get the same answers. We use what everyone has, then spend the room on what only your people know: the customer insight nobody wrote down, and the idea someone is slightly embarrassed to say out loud.
- What AI gives everyoneTable stakes
- What only your people knowYour edge
Who runs it
The people in your room.
"Your planning day is the most expensive meeting you'll hold all year. The expensive bit isn't the venue. It's everyone working hard, for twelve months, on the plan you agreed. If it's the wrong plan, or simply a weaker one, you've bet the year on it. That's why most of our effort goes in before anyone sits down."
Proof
Run by people who do this every week.
"This is the most fun planning I have ever had. Every SLT needs to do this."
When we're the wrong choice. If you want a 60-slide strategy delivered to you, hire a strategy firm. We will even suggest one.
After the plan
The plan is agreed. Now someone has to find the time.
10 of 15recent discovery interviews
Leadership teams know what needs fixing.
- They can name the broken process and the meeting that goes nowhere.
- What they can't find is the time to fix it.
- Some aren't sure they have the skills.
- In 10 of our last 15 interviews, someone said it almost word for word.
- Output under pressure
- Work harder
- No time to improve
- Capability erodes
- More fires
MIT's John Sterman and Nelson Repenning call it the capability trap.
- Under pressure, the sensible short-term move is to work harder.
- That leaves no time to improve the way work gets done.
- Capability erodes, the fires multiply, and firefighting starts to feel like diligence.
Source: Repenning and Sterman, California Management Review, 2001
It's hard to see from the inside.
- Managers see their own patch, but most plans fail at the handoffs between teams.
- In a study of nearly 8,000 managers, 84% could rely on their boss and their own team. Only 9% could always rely on colleagues in other functions.
- Naming the problem is political, because it usually points at a peer or a past decision.
- Most managers were promoted for doing the work, not for designing how it flows.
Source: Sull, Homkes and Sull, Harvard Business Review, 2015
- With youCoachingReviews
So we stay, then step back.
- At first we run the work alongside your people: mapping the process, testing a fix, measuring it and running the retrospective.
- Then your managers run the next cycle while we coach from the side.
- Then we step back to the quarterly review.
- Your people learn by doing the work with us, which sticks in a way a training day never does.
- We'd rather you stopped needing us by spring.
- People
- Operations
- Sales and marketing
- AI enablement
Fractional, until the role is hired or grown
Sometimes the gap is a missing person, not a missing skill.
- The plan needs someone to lead the people side, run operations, drive sales and marketing, or get AI working in the business.
- Hiring for that takes six months you don't have.
- One of us joins your team part-time, works from inside with your people and systems, and hands the role over when you've hired or grown someone into it.
Weekly check-in
Goal 2Your owner + oursProgressConfidence3 of 5We're your accountability partners.
- People find it harder to let a goal slide when someone outside the business turns up every week expecting to see it moved.
- A quarterly cadence, with a named owner on your side and one on ours for every goal.
- Weekly check-ins on progress and confidence, so a slipping goal shows up in week three rather than week twelve.
- What we learn, including what didn't work, is written down and shared across the team.
- We're measured on one thing, and it's results.
- Planning30 daysCarry on
Every engagement ends with a 30-day review and an option to carry on.
- However we run your planning, from a single in-person day to several weeks of interviews, async work, online sessions and workshops.
- The option is priced before we start, so nobody has to negotiate when energy is low.
- Most teams know by day 30 whether they want it.
Questions people ask first
Are you a strategy consultant or a facilitator?
Both. Like a strategy consultant, we bring the frameworks, the evidence and a view on what's weak. Unlike most consultants, we don't hand you our answer: we facilitate your leadership team to its own strategy, so it's one they believe in and will carry out.
What does a strategy development facilitator do?
A strategy development facilitator designs and chairs the sessions where a leadership team makes its strategic choices: where to play, how to win and what it will stop doing. They keep the room neutral so the whole team can argue, and make sure each choice has an owner and a test.
Why not hire a strategy consultancy?
A consultancy writes the strategy for you. We help your team write it, which is why your team carries it out.
Can't we run this ourselves?
Someone inside can chair or contribute, not both, and the CEO can't be neutral about their own idea.
We don't have two days.
A one-day version works when the discovery interviews and pre-work are done properly.
What does it cost?
A fixed fee, agreed after a 30-minute call once we know the size of the group, how long you have and what has to be decided by the end.
Is it confidential?
Yes. Interviews are confidential, themes are shared without names, and we sign an NDA before seeing any data.
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Make the choices your strategy has been avoiding.
Thirty minutes with Matt. Tell us what has to be decided, and afterwards we'll send you a short summary of the call: what we heard, and how we'd approach it.