Stakeholder Intelligence for Consequential Decisions
Know Where Your Stakeholders Stand
Get an independent read on the people who can influence whether an important decision succeeds - for one consequential decision, or continuously as your external environment changes.
In practice: we speak directly and independently with the people who matter to your decision, then tell you exactly where they stand.
Five questions. Around 60 seconds. No contact details required.
Trusted by: JPMorgan, HSBC, Moody's, IFS, HM Government, WTW, IATA, SSE
Track record
- 10+
- Years in financial services and regulated sectors
- 150+
- Senior-level engagements completed
- Independent
- Third-party engagement without an operational stake in the decision
A selection of the work
See all engagements →More than 150 engagements, filterable by where you are in the decision, so the evidence relevant to your situation is easy to find.
Aviation & Transport
An international aviation standards body was developing a revised framework for financial settlement across the sector. Before advancing the proposal, they needed to know where member airlines and settlement intermediaries privately stood. We engaged senior representatives across multiple markets and gave them a clear picture before the consultation timeline was set.
Energy & Utilities
A specialist infrastructure services business had just been acquired by a private equity-backed group. Before committing to a growth strategy under new ownership, leadership needed to understand how key customers had actually received the change: views unlikely to surface in direct commercial conversations. We surfaced them.
Financial Services
A European payments infrastructure provider was preparing to enter the US market. Before finalising its go-to-market proposition, it needed to know how enterprise merchants in the target verticals actually thought about payment acceptance. We identified and engaged the right decision-makers and gave them a grounded picture before they committed.
Three engagements from more than 150 completed across financial services and regulated markets.
The core problem
Senior teams rarely lack a view of the outside world. They lack one that has kept up.
Every leadership team makes consequential decisions using an internal picture of the external world: customers, regulators, employees, investors, partners, competitors, markets and public opinion. That picture is what makes decisions possible.
But it is built from research done at a point in time, relationships that age, and assumptions that travelled forward unexamined because no one had reason to revisit them. Over time it can become incomplete, stale, or more a reflection of internal consensus than of what is actually true outside the building.
The risk is not simply a bad decision. A decision can be entirely reasonable on the internal evidence and still behave differently once it meets customers, regulators, employees or the market. That is usually where confidence and reality first diverge, and it is rarely visible from inside the room.
The gap between what leadership believes and what is actually true rarely announces itself. By the time it is visible, the decision has usually already been made.
Why an independent read
Not your internal team. Not a market research firm. Not a generalist consultancy.
vs your internal team
Internal teams hear what stakeholders are willing to say when the relationship is visible. We hear what they actually think.
vs market research
Market research often describes a market or measures stated preferences. We are organised around your decision: who is likely to act, what causes them to, and what you should do differently.
vs a generalist consultancy
A consultancy analyses your business from the inside and recommends what to do. We go outside it, and bring back what the people who actually decide your outcome are telling us.
How organisations work with us
Two ways to close the gap.
Some clients bring us one consequential decision. Others need to know their picture of the outside world will never be allowed to go stale. Both start the same way: independent, direct proximity to the people who matter.
One consequential decision
Proximity Sprint
Get an independent read on the stakeholders who matter before you commit.
The Proximity Sprint is the primary structured engagement, with Expert Network, Decision Rooms and targeted research used where appropriate.
Explore a Proximity SprintAn ongoing need
Stakeholder Proximity Partnership
Maintain an independent read on the stakeholders, assumptions and external changes your leadership team cannot afford to lose sight of.
6 or 12 months. Continuous intelligence. Rapid escalation when something changes.
Explore ongoing stakeholder intelligenceNot sure where to start?
Find the right starting point for your situation
Tell us where you are in the decision and what you may be missing. We'll show you the Polar Insight engagement most relevant to your situation, what it includes and what you would receive.
01 · RISK, COMPLIANCE OR REGULATION
Do you know what regulators actually expect, or only what the text says?
02 · STRATEGY OR TRANSFORMATION
Are the assumptions behind your strategy still true?
03 · PRODUCT, INNOVATION OR GROWTH
Will the market actually respond the way the business case assumes?
04 · MARKETING, CUSTOMER OR COMMERCIAL PERFORMANCE
Do you know what customers actually think, or what internal teams believe they think?
05 · OPERATIONS OR TECHNOLOGY
Will this hold up once it meets the operating environment, and the people running it?
06 · PEOPLE OR ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
What are employees actually saying, once the internal narrative is set aside?
07 · EXECUTIVE OR GENERAL MANAGEMENT
Will this decision hold up when someone asks you to defend it?
How we work
The intelligence system behind every engagement.
Whether you commission a single Proximity Sprint or an ongoing Partnership, we draw on the same set of capabilities. Which combination we use depends on the question, not the other way round.
Direct stakeholder intelligence
Stakeholder Proximity™
Direct access to the people whose attitudes, behaviours and decisions matter.
Learn more →
Specialist knowledge
Expert Network
Targeted access to experienced people who can provide specialist perspective.
Learn more →
Structured challenge
Decision Rooms
A way to pressure-test thinking, assumptions and decisions with relevant external perspectives.
Learn more →
Sector-level intelligence
Signal Briefings
Ongoing intelligence drawn from what Polar is hearing across relevant markets and stakeholder communities.
Learn more →
Evidence at scale
Research & Synthesis
Research that provides evidence where a question requires greater breadth or depth.
Stakeholder Proximity™
The same discipline, whether the need is one decision or ongoing.
Independent, direct engagement with the people whose view matters. The question changes. The mechanism does not. The detail lives on each page below; here is the shape of it.
One consequential decision
Start with one decision
A fixed-scope Proximity Sprint: identify who matters, engage them independently, deliver board-ready judgement before you commit.
Explore a Proximity SprintAn ongoing need
Maintain the capability
A continuous rhythm: track how stakeholder attitudes are shifting, interpret what has changed, escalate rapidly when something material moves.
Explore ongoing stakeholder intelligenceMost relationships start with one decision. Where the need continues, it becomes a Partnership. See what this looks like in practice →
Who does this work
We identify who matters to your decision, speak with them directly, and come back with a clear view of where they stand.
Every engagement begins by mapping the people whose view is most relevant: regulators, customers, investors, counterparties, intermediaries, senior sector voices, or whoever the decision puts in front of you.
We speak with them as peers: experienced practitioners having the kind of conversation that surfaces where someone actually is, rather than where it is natural to present themselves as being.
What we bring back: where the people who matter stand, what is informing their position, and what it means for the decision.
James Tattersfield
CEO
James began his career advising governments and international bodies on complex audiences, and has spent the last decade advising clients in financial services and regulated markets on building proximity with their most important stakeholders. He speaks regularly at sector conferences on decision confidence.
Robyn Summers
Director of Client Operations
Robyn has spent her career at global data and information businesses, most recently Thomson Reuters, working with major law firms and regulated organisations on understanding the stakeholders that matter most to their work. She brings that practitioner's understanding to every Polar Insight engagement.
Signal Briefings · External intelligence between decisions
What key stakeholders are saying across the sector that most internal teams are not hearing.
We publish Signal Briefings: a structured read on what we are hearing from senior leaders across financial services, where key stakeholders are diverging from internal assumptions, and what it means for the decisions currently in motion.
Monthly breakfast for senior leaders in financial services. Informal, off the record, and grounded in what we are hearing from the sector.
Decision confidence compounds. Untested risk does too.
Tell us the decision you are facing, wherever you are in it. We will recommend the right starting point: a Sprint, a Decision Room, or an ongoing Proximity Partnership. Or join us at the next breakfast if you would rather start there.
What is Stakeholder Intelligence?
Stakeholder Intelligence is the practice of independently engaging the people whose views shape the success of a consequential decision, to understand where they actually stand and what that means for the decision.
Stakeholder Proximity™ is how we deliver it: before commitment, before launch, when outcomes begin to diverge from expectation, or continuously where decisions and conditions keep changing. We conduct the engagement as an independent third party, creating the conditions for a candid conversation, and return judgement grounded in external reality rather than internal assumption.
Common questions
What kind of decision is this right for?
Any decision where stakeholder views materially affect the outcome and there is genuine uncertainty about what those views are: major strategic moves, board submissions, regulatory engagements, capital commitments, and situations where internal alignment is high and dissenting voices have gone quiet.
Will stakeholders speak honestly to an outside firm?
More honestly than they will speak to you directly. Our independence removes the relational friction that shapes what people say to internal teams and to advisers with ongoing relationships to protect.
How is this different from internal stakeholder engagement?
The most experienced teams are often the most exposed to this. When you know a stakeholder landscape well, assumptions travel forward unexamined. An independent party with no stake in the outcome hears what is actually there.
What is the investment involved?
A Proximity Sprint is a fixed-scope engagement with an agreed fee and timeline before we begin, so you know what you are getting before we start. Where the need for external proximity continues beyond a single decision, we can structure an ongoing Stakeholder Proximity Partnership instead. Start with a short conversation about the decision you are facing.
Will this fit our timeline?
The engagement is scoped to the decision in front of you and moves at the pace it requires. The timeline is agreed before we begin.
What if the need continues after the Sprint?
Some decisions are genuinely one-off. Where they are not, because the decisions keep coming or the stakeholders are too hard-won to keep re-discovering, clients can retain Polar Insight across subsequent decisions as a Stakeholder Proximity Partnership: a structured, ongoing rhythm of external proximity, not an open-ended arrangement.
What if the Sprint confirms we are already on the right track?
That is a useful answer. Knowing your position is sound before a significant commitment is worth having. Not every Sprint surfaces problems. Some confirm direction.