Our Story

We really care about our planet, people, and the challenges we face - and invest much of our time on initiatives, ideas and assistance in areas that either need our help, or cannot afford big consultancy firms. We love working with people who share our love of ideas, learning, humanising work, giving-back and making a difference.

Our entire team shares a passion for working with organisations that have positive environmental and/or social-outcomes; and we have all worked in these types of organisations ourselves, including: health, justice, environment, conservation, social-work and others. We understand these organisational and social systems, and want to apply our skills to assist them “achieve more”. One of us (Hamish) is doing a PhD focusing on how we engage with the world’s “wicked problems” - the aim is to develop a toolkit, theory and approach on how to engage with wicked-problems and then “give it away”.

We are specialists in teams and organisation development with deep understanding and experience of what makes teams work. We focus on building psychological safety in teams, helping teams “see their system” and make better choices, as well as teaching and running developmental workshops on systems-thinking, innovation, design-thinking, team systems and behaviour change.

Our programmes have been designed after decades of being team-members, team managers and leaders working in and around team-development, high-stakes situations, behavioural psychology, systems thinking, psychophysiology and facilitation practices. In July of 2019, Hamish co-delivered the only Kantor Institute programme ‘Making Change Happen’ programme run globally in 2019.

We have been where you are, we have led teams, been new managers, struggled with how to make things work and been frustrated by broken systems. We feel that much of organisation and team-development has lost its way. The process has been captured by tools, gimmicks and the promise of quick-fixes - it was (and is) mostly broken.

We looked long and hard to find something that would work, was humanistic, addressed 'behavioural systems’, had a strong psychology grounding and was developed by people who had “been there and done it” and knew the theory and practice. We “stravaiged” around and found nothing: this was the catalyst to develop an approach. Our commitment was to re-imagine what organisation and team-development could be when constructed on humanistic principles, focused on the individual, designed to address the human dynamics of teams and team communication. Over years, we created a set of discrete yet complementary programmes, based on robust and proven theory and practice.

• Woven: an integrated and proven approach that guides a team through a 9-month process of connection, communication, strengths and work-priorities. The entire Woven programme is described in our book, available on Amazon. The intent behind Woven was to give as much ownership to the team and the leader as possible, with as much "on the job" activity as possible.

  • Woven was recognised and recommended by VIA as one of their 4 practitioner tools.

• Innate: specifically designed for executive and senior teams. Executive teams have different needs to most teams, they run the organisation and must work exceptionally well together. Facilitators of exec teams needs to know what work is like for them, and be able to guide strong-willed individuals through a process that both challenges and stretches them.

• Innate for HR: team-development for senior HR teams is challenging, both for the facilitator and for the team-members. As subject-matter experts, the HR teams need to trust that the approach is robust, evidence-based, founded on solid theory and delivered by someone who knows their world. Innate for HR is designed and delivered by a former HR executive.

We understand both private and public sectors, from executive-level to frontline staff, engineers, scientists, technologists, customer-service staff. We have worked in: health, finance, central government, corrections, telecommunications, ICT, education, local government, emergency services, energy, safety regulators, injury prevention, border security, and justice.

Assessment tools include 

• Professor Amy Edmondson’s “Fearless Organisation Scan” - Stravaig are the NZ founding partner for this.

• Kantor Institute Structural Dynamics MCH & MBiHS.

• Values in Action (VIA) Character Strengths assessments.

• Hogan Leadership Forecast: “Inside, Outside & Darkside” (HPI, HPS and MVPI).

• MBTI I & II.

• Team Management Systems suite of products incl. TMI/S.

• StrengthScope - Individual, 360 and Team.

• CCL KEYS Creativity Assessment.

• BarOn EQi - Emotional Intelligence assessment.

Memberships Include

• British Psychological Association.

• American Psychological Association.

• International Association of Facilitators.

• International Positive Psychology Association.

• NZ Human Resource Institute.

• Society for Organisational Learning.

Certifications include

• Kantor Institute Structural Dynamics MCH & MBiHS. (Hamish has co-delivered the formal Kantor Institute MCH programme with 12-months of follow-up particpant coaching to enable certification. He continues to teach and apply Structural Dynamics with individuals & groups; and aligned with his PhD he is engaged in the ongoing development of both the theory and practice of Structural Dynamics.

• Cynefin practitioner (advanced & masterclass).

• International Association of Facilitators - Certified Professional Facilitator (CPF).

• StrengthScope - Individual, 360 and Team.

• Hogan Leadership Forecast suite: HPI, HPS and MVPI.

• MBTI I & II.

• KEYS Creativity Assessment.

• Team Management Systems suite.

• BarOn EQi.

• Erikson Timeline Therapy.

• MIT 'Beer Game' simulation facilitator, certified by Mike Goodman (MIT).

• Shell Scenario Development Method taught by Peter Schwarz & Jay Ogilvy at GBN, San Francisco.

Other methods and tools we use

• Cynefin complexity thinking.

• Systems thinking & systems psychology.

• Positive psychology.

• Behavioural psychology (nudge theory).

• Visual recording & graphic facilitation.

• Group process facilitation, dialogue & inquiry.

Formal QUALIFICATIONS

Between us, we have the following formal qualifications.

• Masters in Psychology.

• Diploma in Organisational Psychology.

• PhD in Psychology (underway).

• CQSW in Social Work.

• Diploma in Social Work.

• BSc in Computer Science (Honours). 

• BA Business Mgt. NZIM Mentoring.

• BSc (EE), PhD (EE), PG Dip Antarctic Studies.

• Org Comms & BA Market Economics.

• BA Psychology & Criminology; MA Clinical Psychology (commencing 2021).

Past Speaking Gigs

• Victim Support 25 Year Celebration Conference - "Self-care using Strengths & Resilience”, (2011). (Fiona)

• NZ Health and Wellbeing, (2015). (Fiona)

• IPANZ New professionals conference, 2016 - Realising potential: Leading with your strengths. (Fiona)

• ANZSOG - Stories and why they matter - future thinking and scenarios, 2017. (Hamish)