Approach

My approach has developed out of years of experience working within and on behalf of businesses. Building upon my own training in social sciences and ethnographic research, I also have adapted and incorporated methods from business, innovation, and behavior change thought leaders. There is no one way to go about solving problems, so I maintain a diverse tool kit and a knowledge of which tools to use when, based around asking the right questions.  A subset of what I offer includes:

Opportunity Identification |  Interviews & Observational Research
Framework Creation | Analysis & Sensemaking | Facilitation | Coaching

Who am I working with?

I start by getting to know my stakeholders. This may include business sponsors, people assigned to my team, anyone with an interest in the outcome of the project.  Why are those their goals?  What are their challenges and constraints? How do they frame the problem?  I ask questions and listen.

What is the problem space?  

I’ve worked on projects large and small. The key questions have ranged from very focused “can you help us refine this concept” to very broad “what are roadmaps to success in our current strategic framework?” and everything in between.  The key to framing that is to help stakeholder articulate the end goal.  What decisions or actions to they need to take?  What information do they need in order to make these decisions? 

What is the path to a solution?

Framing a pathway to the solution is about understanding what is missing and identifying where to find it.  It is in itself a process of asking questions, beginning with an inventory of what is already known, through past experience, company databases, outside sources, or prior research.  From there, more in depth questions can be articulated and the right approaches—qualitative, quantitative, and secondary be proposed.  

How do we make sense of the data?

Most of my projects rely on more than one source of data.  There may be quantitative analysis for numbers, and qualitative work to understand the “why’s” driving those numbers as well as values and behaviors likely to influence future actions.  Trend analysis may speak to what is not there. These multiples sources of knowledge work together to inform recommendations.  Sometimes data sets disagree—meaning we dig deeper into what is going on.  Throughout, I keep the defined problem space in mind, in relation to the decisions or actions that are needed, even though sometimes the end result is a redefinition of that problem space.