Better collaboration,
even when it’s hard.
Most teams can see what's possible but can't get there. We help them practice new ways of working together, so the whole group leads, not just the leader.
Everyone can see it, but no one can move it.
Picture this: a leadership team sits in a three-day strategy retreat. Smart people, real commitment, and a decision that matters in front of them... but for three days, nothing moves.
They circle and defer, or the usual suspects drive the collaborative effort (or block it). By the end, everyone's tired, a little embarrassed, and roughly where they started. Three days not unlike all the other days at work: just a more acute demonstration of the unnamed dynamics.
The more days, weeks, and months go by like this, the more the team tells itself an unhelpful story: bringing your contribution doesn't change anything about the shared dynamic, so why bring it? People stop bringing their energy and the group settles into operating at the level of its loudest voices, and calls that normal. The capability is still in the room. It just has nowhere to go.
That's just how we do things around here.
Capability was never the problem. The structure was.
We watched that same team, with a little individual and team coaching and the right practices and structures, make a bigger decision in twenty minutes than they made in three days. The people were the same. What changed was how they worked together.
"We've just had a long and painful retreat, and I can't believe we just reached a decision of this magnitude together in 20 minutes."
Say the hard thing
Groups get better at the conversations they've been avoiding, and get stronger for having had them.
Move at the level that matters
Everyone can see what matters most, and agree on what to cut, before it becomes a fight.
Share the load
Teams that know their own capacity and distribute work without resentment.
You've probably already tried something.
Most leaders we work with don't need convincing their team could work better. They're stuck one step earlier. They can feel it's possible, and what they've tried hasn't gotten them there.
That's not a failure of will. Most organizations run on the idea that the real work happens heads-down, and everything else is overhead and needless complexity. Under that logic, the tensions and the participation get treated as a detour from the work, when they are the fastest avenue to the work.
20+ cohorts delivered.
"Susan and Stefan felt more like sherpas guiding us through our walk and inviting us to walk alongside than teachers imparting their earned wisdom."
— Jennifer McDowell, Founder and Lead Coach
"There are very few people who I trust to work with my clients. Stefan is one of them."
— Brent Lowe
Two ways in.
For your organisation, team or community
We work with your group, in your context.
- A free consultation call. We map what's stuck and what's possible.
- We do the work with you, not at you.
- You keep the capacity. The goal is a group that can carry on without us.
You probably already see what's possible. What's less clear is why you can't get there yet, and that's usually where outside support helps most.
Book a callFor you as a practitioner
Learn the practices in a live cohort, with peers.
- Join an upcoming cohort from the workshop.
- Experience the structures and practices live, on real work, with other participants in global cohorts.
- Carry the repertoire back to your own context.
See upcoming cohorts"There's no prep: I can just show up, participate, and learn by doing. As a leader with a lot on my plate, that's huge."
— Tessa Flaws, Co-founder, Hoffcon
Why we work this way.
Most organisations inherited a model that assumes one person can hold and control it all. That model was built for conditions that were more predictable than the ones you're working in now. Under real complexity, no one person can actually hold it all, but the model never says anyone else can act instead. So people wait for a decision that isn't coming, instead of making it together.
We don't fix that by adding more: a new strategy, a values exercise, a better org chart, etc. We do it by changing how a group actually works together: how it makes decisions, how it surfaces tension, how it decides what to stop doing before more is added. Those are structures, practices and mindsets, and these can be learned and developed.
That's the whole idea. Work with what is - the good, bad, ugly, lovely - and practice new ways of working together, until the group can do it without us in the room.
Some of this is fast. A group that has been stuck for months can make a real decision in twenty minutes. Some of it is slow: that same breakthrough turns into a one-off retreat high if nothing after it changes. Changing how an organisation works takes ongoing practice, not a single weekend.
"This course actually freed me up, helped me realize I can be my own kind of a leader. I learned I was internalizing certain things that I was chasing externally... It's clear to me that many of my challenges will be solved by developing my team."
— Prashant Tripathi, Associate Director, EY