The Challenge:
A 30-person startup began 2025 with broken trust. A perceived lack of transparency + an inconsistently applied return-to-office mandate hurt morale, with 65% of the team reporting a negative outlook for the year ahead.

The Process:
We designed a full-day session that shifted blame to ownership —everyone could step up to own something. Leadership made public commitments with timelines while the team co-created solutions.

Real-time sentiment tracking measured how perspectives shifted throughout the day.

The Results:

• Team outlook flipped from 65% negative to 79% positive for 2026.

• The workshop produced 10 leadership commitments with specific owners & dates

• 2 CEO-sponsored cross-functional projects (each with team members, not just leaders, owning project manager & deputy roles)

• 20 individual team solutions.

One concentrated day saved months of meetings & inaction. The engagement led to exploring both ongoing consulting and embedded partnership work in 2026.

The Impact:

• Leaders made public commitments.

• Team members stepped up to own projects, not just observe them.

• Everyone submitted ideas, voted on solutions, and contributed in small groups where all voices came through (human).

• We paired teams strategically and designed materials with their branding tied to their 5 core values (strategic + on-brand).

Most people walked in skeptical. By the end, they left feeling heard, valued, and genuinely optimistic about 2026.

The Challenge:
A global sports authority wanted to launch a collaboration platform for hundreds of professionals worldwide.

The project owner and software owner had predetermined the technical solution before the workshop. The risk: building something the membership wouldn't use.

The Process:
I facilitated a two-day sprint with senior international experts, key stakeholders, and community members.

When Day 1 interviews revealed gaps between the predetermined solution and member needs, the project team began to lose faith. I held the container while we redirected the design to match community input, then shifted strategy from "build and launch" to "validate first, then justify a pilot."

The Results:

• Both community participants independently described the same three member types the team had sketched, confirming real patterns.

• The sessions validated six core prototype choices, community principles, a complete engagement system, and a pilot plan for 15-20 members over 3-6 months.

• Two days compressed months of potential meetings and back-and-forth.

• The shift to "validate first" saved thousands of euros in wasted spend on a long-term contract, but also the harder cost: credibility and trust lost with target customers when you have to bring everyone back to redesign what missed the mark.

• By involving community members and experts from the start, they built credibility while creating something people would want to use.

The Impact:

• International experts and community members worked across different comfort levels - some presented boldly, others quietly, everyone shaped the final design (human).

• When the predetermined solution started to fracture trust, we redirected to community input and shifted to "validate first" (strategic).

• This organization wants to model inclusive expertise, not alpha-male sport culture. We built that into the process: diverse voices, collaborative exercises, community members co-creating with experts (on-brand).

• The project team left with deeper camaraderie and collective pride. Several said they never would have imagined we'd get here - from initial intros to tested prototypes in less than 36 hours.

The organization is moving forward with a pilot launch in early 2026, and I’ll be supporting their rollout.

The Challenge:
A European e-commerce platform's people data surfaced critical risks headed into peak season. Teams were struggling under pressure, and wellbeing metrics flagged concerns about psychological safety.

Leadership's initial instinct? Goal-setting & prioritization skill-building + energy management workshops for managers.

The Process:
I designed a full-day "Balancing What Matters" workshop grounded in building team psychological safety via four skill modules. Leaders practiced co-creating and rolling out team strategies, built prioritization frameworks, and practiced navigating trade-offs for when plans go awry.

Sessions included workbooks, AI-powered simulations, and three micro follow-ups over six weeks with optional one-on-one mentorship.

The Results:

• Leaders rated the workshop 4.7/5 with perfect NPS of 100.

• Skill confidence surged +0.76 points (on a 5-point scale) immediately post-session across all eight competencies.

• Leaders predicted a net gain of +0.63 six months out, even after accounting for a natural -0.13 dip they expected during application.

That predicted dip revealed the bigger problem: they expected organizational culture wouldn't support new behaviors.

This wasn't a capability gap. Leaders lacked transparency on decision-making authority, unclear escalation thresholds, and no shared understanding of "who decides what" across levels.

• I recommended two interventions: train-the-trainer to cascade prioritization & communication skills to teams + a layered decision-making program for senior leadership to build transparency around decision frameworks and authority from the top down.

• I declined ongoing skill training. The data showed leaders needed systemic clarity, not more workshops.

The Impact:

• Pre-development, we partnered with leaders + major project managers to define what a win would look like for them and their teams. Leaders practiced real scenarios with workbooks, AI simulations, and optional mentorship (human).

• The workshop revealed systemic clarity gaps, not just skill gaps. We diagnosed what training could and couldn't solve (strategic).

• We tied every behavior and skill back to this department's specific values + psychological safety. Beyond skills acquired, they were learning to lead in a way that honored the team culture they wanted to build (on-brand).

Leaders left upskilled & relieved. They stopped asking "what's wrong with us" and started asking "what needs to change above + below us — and how can we support those changes."