What We Do
Our work spans strategy, design, and storytelling, but we don’t treat them as separate disciplines.
A strategic plan changes when the people who will carry it forward help shape it. A story gets stronger when it reflects what people actually know and experience. A design process becomes more useful when it pays attention not only to the idea being built, but to the relationships, decisions, and conditions that will determine whether it takes hold.
That’s where our work lives: helping higher education organizations understand what’s happening, bring the right people and perspectives into the work, and build something together that can hold up in practice.
Participatory Research & Design
We learn from the people closest to the work, paying attention not only to what they tell us, but to what becomes visible when different experiences, roles, and forms of knowledge are brought together. Research becomes a starting point for shared understanding and design, not simply a way to collect input.
This might include:
Interviews, listening sessions, and focus groups
Participatory research with students, staff, and partners
Collaborative inquiry and design sessions
Shared synthesis and testing of emerging ideas
Strategy & Planning
Strategy is ultimately a set of choices, and those choices are rarely made in a vacuum. We help organizations widen the frame, understand the different forces and perspectives shaping the work, and create the conditions for people to work through what matters, where they differ, and what they are prepared to move toward together.
This might include:
Pre-strategy exploration and framing
Strategic sensemaking and direction-setting
Participatory strategy development
Moving strategy into practice
Storytelling & Strategic Communications
Stories shape how people understand a system, their place within it, and what they believe is possible. We help organizations find language that connects different perspectives, makes complexity easier to hold, and gives people a shared way to understand and talk about the work.
This might include:
Narrative and messaging development
Strategic communications planning
Thought leadership, briefs, and public-facing stories
Narrative tools that connect strategy, evidence, and human experience
Research isn’t only about hearing people.
Strategy isn’t only about deciding.
Storytelling isn’t only about communicating.
Each is a way of helping people see more of the whole, work through what they see differently, and build something together that no one perspective could have produced alone.
That’s what we offer: a relational way to research, plan, and communicate change.
Want to see how we picture the systems we work in?
Explore the River map in Field Notes