As strategists, we help leadership teams (startup & enterprise) align on a vision, strategy & story that Maximizes Value + Impact.

We take a STORYdriven approach to strategy. That’s unique, but it really shouldn’t be. Convincing talent & investors to help bring your vision to life is an urgent priority and it takes more than just a compelling product… it takes a clear vision, a compelling strategy and a killer story about the impact that you’re going to make and the value you’re going to capture along the way. We’ve helped hundreds of companies supercharge their vision, strategy & their story … perhaps we can help you too.

OUR JOB… is to help you align your leadership team and execution trajectory to maximize value + impact, but while we’re at it, we also help you develop an internal capability for agile strategy to help your organization maximize agility and investor readiness. It’s all about developing a competency for working ON the business, not just IN it.

THE FASTER YOU GROW THE MORE IMPORTANT VALUE STRATEGY AND A COMPELLING STORY BECOME
why?... because, even though market growth is critical, it doesn’t guarantee value growth. That’s a PROBLEM, because it’s nearly impossible to attract top talent & investors if your story doesn’t convince them that you’re strategy is on-path to increasing company value (because that’s how they get rewarded for helping you succeed) and maximizing impact (because purpose matters).

… AND NOW THAT THE FREE-MONEY ERA IS OVER, STRATEGIC STORYTELLING MATTERS MORE
why?… because when it comes to attracting talent, the WHY matters and when if comes to attracting investors, returns are now priority#1. That means that if you’re not on a clear (and defensible) path to growing the value of your company + maximizing impact, you’re going to find it almost impossible to attract the talent and investment that you need to bring your vision to life. Your story needs to show complete alignment on:
a) what success looks like (impact)
b) where value will get created (insight)
c) what you need to execute on to capture your fair share (and defend it)

FASTER EXECUTION… BONUS
Aligning your organization on these 3 things is a major unlock and will immediately accelerate execution, because everyone will be pulling in the same direction.

WHERE WE FIT… Most of our clients are digital innovators growing very quickly. While we work across multiple sectors, the majority of our work is in the digital health & wellness arena. Many of the organizations we work with are private (typically post A-round) but we are also active with enterprise innovation teams. In most cases, attracting talent & capital is an urgent priority, so investor readiness is a common thread across almost all of our strategy & storytelling engagements.

FIVE ARENAS:

When you boil it all down, our work falls into five areas:

1. WHAT DOES SUCCESS LOOK LIKE & WHY (end-state... when you’ve achieved the mission)
proven frameworks combined with facilitated discussions to help you and your leadership team remove ambiguity about what success looks like and why that’s such a compelling mission.

2. VALUE CAPTURE
… when you look forward and envision how things will unfold, where will the value get captured? We use proven frameworks to help you figure out where the value will get created and decide how you will capture (and defend) your fair share. LEARN MORE ABOUT VALUE CAPTURE HERE

3. ‘MISSION STORY’
… if you want to attract talent & investors (and who doesn’t), you’ll need to help them find your vision and strategy so insanely compelling that they want to help you bring your vision to life. Our STORYdriven framework is astonishingly effective, and we know that because we’ve helped over 200 leadership teams hone their ‘mission story’ and they’ve told us over-and-over that this approach is a 10 out of 10. LEARN MORE ABOUT STORYdriven HERE

4. HARNESSING DISRUPTIVE CHANGE
… what disruptive risks and opportunities are emerging and what are the implications for your vision and strategy & execution path? Our FORCEcasting approach is a remarkably effective way for leadership teams to align on how the forces of disruption are unfolding and where to place bets (and why).

5. INVESTOR READINESS… the requirements for investor packaging are well understood (pitch :: documentation :: comparables etc.). We are able to help reduce the time and effort through a combination of templates & samples and decades of experience. LEARN MORE ABOUT INVESTOR READINESS HERE

WE ARE ALL-IN ON ALIGNMENT
As strategists, we are there to help you figure out what opportunities and risks are unfolding and where to place your bets. We’re good at that, but the truth is that the best strategy in the world is worthless if the folks in your organization don’t buy-in. In fact, execution grinds to a halt when one or two folks on the team think they’ve ‘figured it out’ on their own, because that inevitably leads to a ‘do it my way’ attitude (the ultimate culture killer).
That’s why our #1 priority is to help you align your leadership team and your organization on three critical things:
1. how are the forces unfolding and what risks and opportunities does that bring
2. where will value get created and how will your organization will capture and defend it’s fair share
3. what does success look like, and what execution progress is required to prove that you are on-path

WHY? … because we deeply care about entrepreneurs and we think they deserve their fair share of the value they create. The thing is… most startups don’t go up in value and that’s a tragedy. After years of strategy work, we’ve become absolutely convinced that the secret is to align your organizations ‘thinking’ & ‘doing’ with a plan to capture value (there is literally no other way to get there).

… AND WE ARE OBSESSED WITH STORY?
Storytelling is central to everything, but we’re not talking about the fluffy / marketing stuff. We mean a complete story-arc, from insight & vision to impact and value capture, but simplified, so the whole world can see what you see (and want it).

WHY? … because if the world can’t see what you do (ie: they just don’t get it’), you’re doomed. The thing is, it’s not their fault. As innovators, it’s our job to simplify the story and get it into a form that is easy to grasp and so darned compelling that people want to help you bring your vision to life.
We call it STORYdriven… and yeah… we’re all-in. LEARN MORE ABOUT STORYdriven HERE.

STAGE SPECIFIC

We operate across all stages (from ideation through liquidity event) and adjust the the mix of services we provide to match your priorities, budget, culture & cadence.

PROVEN FRAMEWORKS (and formal artefacts) are immensely helpful, both for initial alignment building as well as downstream agility. We bring expertise, frameworks and a deep library of samples to draw from, but every situation is unique, so everything we do is custom-fit to match your stage. Want to learn more about the frameworks we use, LETS TALK

DEVELOP YOUR OWN STRATEGY OFFICE…  eventually, every successful company creates a strategy office to help them rise above the tyranny of the urgent, absorb fresh learnings and adjust strategy & execution to stay ahead of the change-curve (and the competition). An important part of our mandate is to provide the frameworks and coaching needed to help you develop an Agile Strategy capability in your organization. We call it O.H.3 (Office of Horizon-3) and our STORYdriven approach is a remarkably effective way (time & cost) to deeply integrate agile strategy into your organization. LEARN MORE ABOUT OFFICE O.H.3 HERE

LEARNING :: SHARING (repeat)
We believe that synthesizing what we learn and sharing it openly helps innovators, but it also helps us because the feedback and discussions inevitably push our thinking to the next level.  For all of these reasons, we routinely create and share video briefings on topics that feel important for innovators, and why we co-host ‘THINKsummit’ events with our clients (and their customers).

If you’re interested in pushing your thinking (and ours), why not join the conversation. We’ll make it easy for you to access our hot-topic briefs, join (or co-host) a THINKsummit etc.  We promise to keep the value high and the number of interruptions low. Of course, if you’d rather just have a discussion, that’s OK too… lets talk jmcdonald@rampworth.com

FOR MORE INFO
jmcdonald@rampworth.com