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Are the assumptions behind your strategy still true?
Test the thinking behind a strategic direction or transformation programme against independent stakeholder and market evidence, before commitment hardens into momentum.
What this looks like
Examples of who brings us in
- A strategy team preparing a multi-year plan, wanting to pressure-test its core assumptions before it goes to the board.
- A transformation programme months into delivery, needing an independent check that the original thinking still holds.
- A leadership team wanting to know whether internal confidence in a direction is shared by the stakeholders it depends on.
Relevant guides
When to Use External Stakeholder Intelligence: Trigger Points
This guide sets out the specific moments when external stakeholder intelligence pays for itself and when internal knowledge is enough. After reading, you will be able to decide quickly whether to commission external work, scope it well, and avoid the two common failure modes: commissioning too late, or commissioning for comfort rather than challenge.
How to Manage Assumption Risk in Strategic Planning
This guide explains how senior leaders in financial services should identify, test, and govern the assumptions underpinning their strategic plans. After reading, you will know how to surface fragile assumptions early, build challenge into the planning cycle, and prevent avoidable strategic failure.
How to Run Go-to-Market Research in Financial Services
A practical guide to designing go-to-market research for financial services products and propositions, covering buyer evidence, regulatory realities, and competitive signal. After reading, you will be able to scope, sequence, and pressure-test a GTM research programme that holds up with your board, your distribution partners, and the first line.
How to Build Stakeholder Intelligence Before a Board Decision
A practical guide to gathering, structuring, and presenting stakeholder intelligence before a material board decision in a regulated firm. After reading, you will know what to collect, how to test it, and how to deliver it in a form that sharpens board judgement rather than crowding it.
How to Structure a Recovery Plan Regulators Will Accept as Executable
A practical guide to building a Recovery Plan that supervisors treat as a credible operational document rather than a compliance artefact. Readers will learn how to sequence stress calibration, option design, governance triggers, and management actions so the plan holds up under both desktop review and live stress.
How to Structure a Risk Appetite Statement That Drives Real Board Challenge
This guide explains how to design a Risk Appetite Statement that forces genuine board debate about strategic trade-offs rather than annual rubber-stamping. After reading, you will know what to change in your RAS structure, metrics, and board papers to surface the decisions that actually matter.