Vocation
Creativity propels us to design orders and models for the coexistence and confluence of people and ideas – and it bestows us with the courage to surmount and transform them. The permanent dialogue between Creativity and Order characterizes evolution in all walks of life and human activity. Therefore, the professions of an attorney-at-aw, artist, advisor and thinker – as dissimilar as they might appear – draw their chief strength from one and the same root: associate one’s own quest with those of others, and helping others in times of transitions and turbulence.
Jointly with my wife Carmen Olaechea, writer and expert for social development, I advise private persons, entrepreneurs, civil society leaders and decision-makers in private and public institutions in times of transitions and crisis. Our key contribution consists in encouraging and assisting them in creatively and critically reflecting on their most demanding challenges. By consequence, the relationship between the client and us constitutes the pivot of our work.
Focus
Our primordial focus lies on the accompaniment of transition processes – crisis, conflicts, and growth – when, defied by reality, known answers and habitual views fail to produce adequate responses. Such situations are characterized by complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity and doubt. We help to strengthen the intellectual, emotional and operational response capacities. Hand in hand with our clients we develop a broader and deeper view of the test at hand, and help them to reconcile critical thinking and pragmatic doing.
Areas
Crisis and conflicts
We help preparing and traversing crisis and conflict situations. Their pressure, urgency and weight generate the challenge to safeguard the coherence of decision-making and actions and uphold the response capacity while maintaining daily business.
Risks
We assist in identifying risks and evaluating their substance in relation to the client’s core values. We tutor the development of scenarios and contingency plans at strategic and operational levels, and accompany ongoing efforts of resolving actual external and internal risks.
Knowledge
We design learning architectures tailored to the specific values and goals of the company, organization or network. This entails developing frameworks for knowledge-management apt to provide access to the client’s tacit intelligence and interpretations, and to interweave knowledge and learning with the particular in-house culture.
Decisions
We review existing and design new decision-making frameworks for both daily business and extraordinary conditions. We help evaluating decisions and their consequences in light of the institutional and personal responsibility.
Management and Leadership
We promote a challenging view of the significance and role of responsibility so as to jointly reveal its essence in the particular context and to design a specific framework for leadership development.
Communication
We help developing a sound understanding of the interdependent relations between outside and inside in order to create a dynamic and solid web of multiple and diverse relationships.
Navigation Maps
Over the past years we have developed Navigation Maps: a methodology permitting to grasp the specific issues and challenges of each individual person or group. The maps capture the complexities and help deepening the comprehension of the actual situation and its inherent hidden potentials. They depict and correlate contradictions, opposites and also dilemmas in a conclusive way.
The maps entangle the diverse and often diverging dimensions of a concrete problem at hand. We call them “navigation maps” because, reaching beyond a binary logic, they allow becoming cognizant of the confluence and interdependency of facts, emotions, mindsets and values.
The Navigation maps evolve from the hands-on work with each client. Thus they mirror the specific matters and questions. They amalgamate what otherwise often is perceived as an antagonism – critical reflection and decisive action.
Interventions
In the case of urgent and critical developments we deploy rapidly on the basis of a clear task definition and an agreement that also includes a precise time line.
In situations of crisis and conflicts we help the decision-makers to uphold a long-term perspective, and act as sparring partners for the evaluation and definition of decisions of immediate and urgent nature.
Pressing conflicts, risks and crisis may call for rapid, decisive actions. Maintaining our position as independent consultants, we do submit concrete recommendations and develop practical tools tailored to the specific requirements of the situation and the problem in order to strengthen our clients’ navigation capacity within the framework of their particular responsibility.
Initiatives, projects and networks
We accompany the conception, design, development and implementation of mid and long term initiatives and projects of individuals, business owners, companies and their executives, civil society leaders and their teams, and of public and private institutions. We help networks to structure their own initiatives and programs.
Monitoring and Evaluation
During the implementation phases we develop procedures to monitor and evaluate not only the results but also the impacts. We relate monitoring and evaluation to the strategic goals and the learning architecture of the client.
Integration
The importance and complexity of a question often require the assistance of various internal and external subject matter experts from different disciplines (e.g. auditors, legal counsels, consultants, technical specialists). We help our clients to incorporate the numerous views and approaches into an integral body of knowledge and comprehension relevant for the specific challenge at hand.