Practice
The problem determines
the form.
I research organisations and systems, find the gap that matters, make it concrete and visible, and then research, design, draft, build, facilitate or strategise what needs to happen next.
The method
Four steps, in this order.
The order is the method. Reversing any two of these produces a deliverable in search of a problem.
- 01
Study the system
Read the organisation, the field, or the process as it actually operates rather than as its documentation describes it. This is where most of the time goes, and it is the part that cannot be skipped without producing confident work about the wrong problem.
- 02
Find the consequential break
Not every gap matters. The one that matters is the one that keeps producing the symptom people are complaining about, and it is frequently not where the complaint points. Naming it precisely is most of the value; everything after is execution.
- 03
Make it concrete and visible
A break that can only be described in a meeting will be re-argued in the next meeting. Making it visible — as a map, a ledger, a scored assessment, a worked example — is what converts a recurring disagreement into a decision someone can actually take.
- 04
Build what can be tested
The output is chosen last, from the problem. Sometimes a decision brief. Sometimes an evidence system, a strategy, a curriculum, a prototype, a working tool, a facilitated inquiry, or an implementation plan. Whatever it is, it should be possible to find out whether it worked.
Why the form varies
I do not force every problem into the same consulting package.
A practice that only sells one shape of engagement will find that every client turns out to need that shape. The alternative is to determine first what is happening, who it affects, what is missing, and what would make the next decision easier — and only then decide what to make.
In practice that has meant a scored assessment for one problem and a plain two-page guide for another; a monitoring system where the constraint was that nobody could see a field changing, and a browser-local worksheet where the constraint was that nobody would put the information into anything that transmitted it. The variation is not eclecticism. It is the consequence of letting the constraint pick the form.
See the range in the build index →What you leave with
A problem you can finally see, and something concrete you can use.
Scope and deliverables are defined before paid work begins. The form changes; the obligation to make the work clear, useful and evidence-conscious does not.
That obligation has a specific meaning here. It means the work states what it does not establish alongside what it does — because a finding presented without its boundary will be used past that boundary, and usually by someone who was not in the room when it was made. Several of the builds in this estate exist chiefly to make that boundary survive the handoff.