Consulting
Rivi
Training and workshops
I ran teams and P&Ls for 25 years before I ever stood at the front of a training room. Most of what's in these programmes started there, in something I watched happen and then watched happen again somewhere else a few years later.
The reading came afterwards. I went looking for it, honestly, to work out whether what I'd noticed was a real pattern or just my own experience talking. Some of it held up and some of it didn't. Porter on strategy, Goleman on emotional intelligence, Haas and Mortensen on what actually makes a team work. That research gave the material a structure it didn't have while it was only mine, and every programme names what it draws on so anybody in the room can go further with it on their own.
So the examples come from someone who has been in the room. And the structure underneath them holds up when somebody in the third row decides to test it, which somebody usually does.
Who this is for
L&D managers and L&D heads. Capability leads. Organisation development managers. Founders running their first leadership offsite. CHROs planning the next track. Mostly it's whoever has a group, a date, and something they genuinely want to be different afterwards.
The group itself can sit anywhere. A cohort of individual contributors learning to write goals worth the name. First-time managers finding out that the job has changed. Middle-level managers and managers of managers working out what they now own and what they need to let go of. A leadership team taking two days on something they have never put words around. The programme moves to meet them.
How the programmes are built
Each one runs at any level, from individual contributors up to leadership. The foundation stays the same for everybody. The module underneath it changes, because the same idea becomes a different job depending on where you sit. Strategy at the top means writing the document. Four levels down it means turning down a request that doesn't fit.
Each theme below says where it currently runs. If your cohort sits outside that, the module gets built for them.
Three things hold across all of it.
The cases are composites. Every story came out of real work and had the identifying details taken out. The slides say so. Where a real company appears, it's from the public record.
The slides carry the message, the notes carry the depth. Nothing a participant sees is written for the facilitator. Behind each programme sits a facilitation guide running past 20 pages, with the moderation scripts, the answer keys, and the questions better left open than resolved.
Every programme ends with people writing something down. A specific conversation, a date, and the name of somebody who's agreed to ask them about it. Summaries are easy to write and easy to forget by Monday.
The themes
Strategic orientation
A day on what a strategy actually is, and how to say it in a sentence somebody can act on. The difference between doing the same things better and choosing to do different things. And trade-offs, which is the part almost everybody skips, because a position is only defensible if something real was given up for it. Groups build a proper strategy document for their own organisation. Then they take apart one that sounds entirely reasonable and decides nothing at all.
Scaffolded by Michael Porter, and by David Collis and Michael Rukstad.
Currently runs at every level, individual contributor to leadership.
Building high performance teams
Two teams with the same talent on paper, very different results. The comfortable explanation is chemistry. The research says otherwise, and I find that's the part rooms actually enjoy hearing, because conditions are something a leader can go and build on Monday whereas chemistry is something you have to be lucky enough to find. Four conditions, with psychological safety as the ground they all stand on. Everybody leaves with a diagnostic they can run on their own team that week.
Scaffolded by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen, by Laura Delizonna, and by Richard Hackman's foundational work through the first of those.
Currently runs for first-time managers, managers of managers and leadership.
Leading and managing with EQ
Two days, and the first one is mostly inward. Self-awareness through the Johari window, self-regulation as something you can practise rather than something you either have or don't, and the fairly uncomfortable recognition that a leader's mood becomes the room's weather whether or not they intended it to. Day two turns outward, to coaching other people and to what a team's culture is actually made of. It closes on a 360 simulation, which is the hardest part of the programme and the part people tell me afterwards was worth the two days.
Scaffolded by Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence and primal leadership, and by Google's Project Aristotle research.
Currently runs for first-time and middle-level managers.
Executive presence
Two days for leaders who already have presence and have simply never had a reason to take it apart and look at it. Four dimensions: how you hold a room, how you attend to the people in it, the culture you're quietly setting, and what you're leaving behind. There's a session on presence in a crisis, one on presence with a board, and one on presence through a screen, which almost nobody has thought about properly. Everyone writes a manifesto at the end, in their own words rather than mine.
Scaffolded by John Beeson on executive presence, and by Goleman.
Currently runs for middle-level managers, managers of managers and leadership.
Conflict management
The best teams aren't the ones where everybody agrees. They're the ones where people disagree well, and that turns out to be a buildable skill rather than a personality type. Reading where a disagreement is actually sitting. Seeing what's underneath the thing being argued about, which is rarely the thing being argued about. Then a five-step sequence for handling one without either avoiding it or going in hot. Tested against two real cases before anyone leaves.
It works conflict at three scopes: between two individuals, inside a group, and across departments and functions.
Scaffolded by Holly Weeks and by Amy Gallo.
Currently runs for people managers.
Setting and achieving SMART goals
Everybody in the room will have written a SMART goal at some point. Most of them weren't, and not because anyone was careless, but because the framework is a lot harder to apply properly than it looks. This is a day on what each letter actually asks of you. Where SMART goals, OKRs and continuous feedback each belong, since they aren't competing. And the line of sight that connects one person's goal all the way up to where the organisation is going. People audit and rewrite their own goals in the room, not a worked example.
Scaffolded by Marcus Buckingham, and by Locke and Latham's goal-setting research.
Currently runs at every level, individual contributor to leadership.
New themes get added as the work calls for them, and programmes are built from scratch for in-house needs.
Format
Half day. One idea built properly, and something people can use on Monday.
Full day. Room for the exercises, which is usually where the thinking happens.
Two days. Long enough for a cohort to practise on each other and sleep on something before coming back to it.
Every theme here runs across all three. Multi-day cohorts and follow-on coaching available.
Common questions
Can you design something that isn't on this list?
Yes, and most engagements involve some of it. It starts with a discovery session, where we work out what is actually going on with the cohort and what needs to be different. From there we agree the objectives and the goals you want to hold the programme to, and then build the structure and the format around those. The themes above are usually the starting material rather than the finished thing.
Where does the material come from?
The operating years, first. I ran teams, functions and P&Ls for 25 years, and most of what's in these programmes is something I watched happen rather than something I read about. The research came after that and gave it structure and evidence. Every programme names the work it draws on, so anyone who wants to read further can.
Can my organisation engage you for a cohort?
Yes. Start with a discovery call. Tell me the cohort, what level they're at, what you're actually trying to shift and how much time you have. I'll tell you what I'd run, at what depth, and what it's realistic to expect it to change. The engagement gets built around that rather than the other way round.
If a cohort of yours would recognise itself in any of this, the discovery call is the way to start.
Book a discovery call
Rivi
Consulting
Coaching leaders in transition