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Design for Strategy and Understanding

Thought Partnership

My clients often say to me, “Thank you for helping me to think about this.” Sometimes I’m referred to as a thought partner because I help people think about situations that are ambiguous or loosely defined. My goal is to help you to leave no stone unturned, to consider multiple outcomes, to think about future ramifications, and to settle on what seems like the best path forward. I bring design, management, and strategic planning experience to each assignment, and my customers know they can engage me for a wide variety of communication and organizational challenges.

I approach consulting a variety of ways. Here are just a few examples:

  • A simple phone call or two to talk through a sticky communication challenge, and what methods might be deployed to get the message across.
  • A client is thinking about taking their organization in a new direction. I conduct some internal research, and write proposed ideas for how to approach an organizational change.
  • It is time to launch a new program or develop some ideas for how to market a new product offering. I facilitate a meeting of stakeholders where we brainstorm, organize our ideas, and develop a plan of action based on the consensus of the group.
  • I create a set of quick prototypes for user-testing a new product or program idea. I share the prototypes with a select set of users, synthesize their feedback and make a recommendation about how to move forward.

The output of these types of consulting projects can be anything: a proposed strategy, a project plan or presentation, a series of sketches that reflect potential outcomes, or an actual set of designed communication pieces—whatever the situation calls for.