Services

Everything we do has one end goal:
Increase you and your team’s systemic intelligence (SysQ)

During — and after — any engagement with us, you will find you and your organization has become better at finding the insight needed to solve your most important challenges. Put simply, all our work involves training. To learn more about our services, view below.

Consulting

Consulting

Our consulting differs significantly from traditional approaches. We work alongside you to solve problems — you won’t endure a generic, cookie-cutter process ending with a report nobody reads, a PowerPoint no one understands, or a solution you can’t implement. We build your ability to develop better ways to understand and address your most difficult challenges. Working together, we uncover the underlying forces causing your problems — and find the most effective places to make lasting, transformative change. We bring expertise in analysis and problem-solving; you bring deep knowledge of your organization, community, or collaborative partnerships. The skills you develop along the way will improve your ability to handle future challenges. In short: our consulting creates sustainable impact.

Strategic Forum

Strategic Forums™

Our unique process helps leadership teams develop a shared understanding of complex issues. Together, we map out how different parts of your organization affect each other, challenge outdated thinking, and find better ways to approach your most important strategic questions.

Deep Learning Workshops

Deep Learning Workshops

Structured sessions that help your organization question basic assumptions that prevent achieving higher performance. These workshops help you move beyond quick fixes to address the true causes of persistent problems.

Strategy Mapping

Strategy Mapping

Creating clear visual maps that show how different parts of your organization, partnerships, or community work together. These maps help everyone see the big picture, make better decisions, and focus their efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact.

Risk Analysis

Risk Analysis

Looking beyond obvious risks to understand how decisions might play out over time. Our approach helps you spot potential problems before they happen and understand how today’s decisions might affect tomorrow’s outcomes.

Scenario Planning

Scenario Planning

Using interactive tools to test your strategies under different possible futures. This helps you prepare for uncertainty, avoid costly mistakes, and build more flexible plans that can adapt to changing conditions.

Strategic Communication

Strategic Communication

Turning complex insights into clear messages that resonate with different audiences. We help you communicate your strategy in ways that build understanding and support for implementation.

Consulting

Training

We’ve developed our training programs through decades of working with diverse organizations — from large companies and foundations to government agencies and business schools. Our training helps your team tackle complex, interconnected challenges more effectively.

Rather than teaching abstract concepts, we focus on practical skills you can apply to real issues your organization faces. All training is customized to your specific needs and challenges.

Strategic Forum

Systems Thinking Foundations

Learning practical ways to see and understand complex problems. Participants gain skills to identify patterns, understand how different parts of a system affect each other, and find better solutions to persistent problems.

Strategy Mapping

Practical Modeling for Strategy

Learning to build and test models that show how decisions might play out over time. Teams develop skills to examine their assumptions, understand potential consequences of different choices, and find unexpected solutions.

Scenario Planning

Leadership for Adaptive Challenges

Developing leadership skills specifically for situations where there are no easy answers. Leaders learn to tell the difference between straightforward problems and complex challenges, consider multiple perspectives, and guide their teams through uncertainty.

Deep Learning Workshops

Visual Mapping for Better Decisions

Building skills to create clear visual maps of complex issues. Participants learn to show how different factors connect, identify the best places to make changes, and communicate complex ideas effectively.

Risk Analysis

Effective Conversations Across Boundaries

Developing skills for productive discussions about difficult topics, especially when working across departments or organizations. We partner with The Weber Consulting Group — recognized experts in the Conversational CapacityTM framework. This program combines communication skills with systems thinking to improve collaborative problem-solving — helping everyone point fingers at the problem, not each other.

Strategic Communication

Find the Wolf — Leverage Points and Multisolving

Reintroducing wolves in Yellowstone reduced the deer overpopulation, strengthened forest vegetation, brought back eagles and hawks, and eventually changed the course of the rivers. This workshop helps you “find the wolf” — to design solutions that fundamentally improve ecosystem performance or solve multiple problems at once. Participants learn a powerful framework for identifying high leverage, developing the skills to apply and implement powerful solutions that work.

Consulting

Coaching

Our coaching services provide ongoing support as leaders and teams put new approaches into practice. We offer guidance tailored to your specific challenges, helping you apply systems thinking skills to real situations you face.

Through regular reflection, guided practice, and timely feedback, our coaching helps make new ways of thinking and working a natural part of how your organization operates.

Strategic Forum

Leadership Coaching

One-on-one coaching for leaders facing complex challenges. This personalized approach helps leaders see problems from multiple perspectives, question limiting assumptions, and develop more effective approaches to persistent problems.

Strategy Mapping

Cross-Boundary Collaboration

Specialized coaching for leaders and teams working with other departments, organizations, or sectors. This coaching focuses on operationalizing trust —moving beyond simple exhortations to “trust each other”— aligning different interests, and creating effective ways to work together on shared challenges.

Scenario Planning

Team Facilitation

Ongoing guidance for teams working through difficult challenges. Our coaches help teams clearly define issues, develop shared understanding, test their thinking, and focus on actions that will make the biggest difference.

Deep Learning Workshops

Implementation Support

Coaching for teams putting new strategies into practice. We teach a practical agile, “yes to the mess” framework that will build your team’s ability to flexibly adapt to changing conditions, track early signs of progress or problems, course-correct as needed, and stay focused on the most important actions.

Risk Analysis

Internal Capacity

Building Advanced coaching for people who want to become in-house experts in systems approaches. This intensive coaching develops skills in using systems tools and guiding others through collaborative problem-solving processes. Coaching includes building the ability to apply a range of tools: systems archetypes, causal loop diagramming, stock and flow mapping, and system dynamics modeling. Coaching is always “just in time, just what’s needed”.

Strategic Communication

Organizational Integration

Strategic coaching for organizations wanting to make systems thinking part of their culture and processes. This coaching helps organizations move beyond individual projects to build lasting capacity for addressing complex challenges effectively.

Finding High Leverage

Your organization doesn’t suffer from a lack of talent, technology, or resources. It suffers from mental models that prevent you from seeing the dynamics actually driving performance.

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Testimonials

  • “Chris’ approach to systems thinking is different from other practitioners. He’s one of a handful of professionals largely responsible for ensuring the continued demand for systems thinking and systems modeling.”

    ★★★★★

    Tom Chapel

    Former board member American Evaluation Association

  • “Chris’ approach to systems thinking is different from other practitioners. He’s one of a handful of professionals largely responsible for ensuring the continued demand for systems thinking and systems modeling.”

    ★★★★★

    Tom Chapel

    Former board member American Evaluation Association

  • “While predictive analytics provides correlations, it does not help identify leverage points for management to devise policies that would address today’s adaptive challenges. This is where systemic intelligence-using formal modeling based on the system dynamics approach—becomes more than useful. It’s essential. Without this capacity we cannot solve the wicked problems arising from today’s complex world.”

    ★★★★★

    PRAKASH SHRIVASTAVA

    Clinical Professor, Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas

  • “While predictive analytics provides correlations, it does not help identify leverage points for management to devise policies that would address today’s adaptive challenges. This is where systemic intelligence-using formal modeling based on the system dynamics approach—becomes more than useful. It’s essential. Without this capacity we cannot solve the wicked problems arising from today’s complex world.”

    ★★★★★

    PRAKASH SHRIVASTAVA

    Clinical Professor, Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas

  • “Chris’ approach to systems thinking is different from other practitioners. He’s one of a handful of professionals largely responsible for ensuring the continued demand for systems thinking and systems modeling.”

    ★★★★★

    DR. KIM ARMSTRONG

    Program Leader | Sr Instructional Systems Designer, Leadership Development Expert

  • “Chris’ approach to systems thinking is different from other practitioners. He’s one of a handful of professionals largely responsible for ensuring the continued demand for systems thinking and systems modeling.”

    ★★★★★

    DR. KIM ARMSTRONG

    Program Leader | Sr Instructional Systems Designer, Leadership Development Expert

Clients

Pepsi
Nissan
HP
Johnson & Johnson
United Way
Fannie Mae
CDC