Our Approach

We are a group of people with our own life and professional experiences, and together we form a team with a shared view of the world, philosophy and approach. On this page you will find a brief summary of some key elements of the shared way of working.

Appreciative Approach

The foundation of our worldview is an Appreciative Approach. This means that we believe in people and their capacity to contribute to solutions. On the smallest issues or the largest, most complex dilemmas, often the people best able to contribute to the creation of solutions are those impacted by the dilemma.

We believe in and use Appreciative Inquiry in our work. We explore what works, what gives life to systems, what leads to success and what is being done well.

Our work builds resilience and confidence within groups, organisations and communities of interest, while harnessing the creativity of everyone to generate new and enduring solutions together.

Capacity Building

Our focus is on building the capacity of individuals, organisations and communities of interest to work collaboratively to find solutions. Our work is done with organisations, not to organisations. We uncover and build on existing strengths and provide support rather than answers. We learn with and from our clients and their stakeholders, helping new capabilities grow from existing knowledge, skills and expertise.

A Collaborative Mindset

We also focus on organisational mindsets created, and continually influenced, by attitudes and experiences of leaders. We help to shine a light on existing mindsets, to explore how they reinforce behaviours and lead to certain outcomes, and to support change where necessary through appreciative processes. We know that working collaboratively requires a belief in people and we support organisations and individuals to fan and strengthen this belief.

We model an appreciative approach and work collaboratively to build collaborative skills.

Working with Complexity

We provide best value to clients when they face their most complex dilemmas in which:

The full scope is difficult to grasp
No single person or organisation has the complete picture
Many strongly held and conflicting perspectives exist
Emotions, values and feelings are involved
There are many possible solutions, each of which may involve significant trade-offs
Technical expertise is just one important input
There is no clear pathway to a solution
We assist our client in these situations to believe in their ability to work collaboratively with all stakeholders and find enduring solutions.

Shared Learning

Our approach is to create opportunities for shared learning. We believe that immense potential for creating innovative solutions is unleashed when we share experiences, assumptions and information to generate new understanding. We value objective and comprehensive information. We believe that the best solutions come from groups that have chosen to learn together.

Deliberative Processes

Wisdom emerges when people have had the opportunity to learn, to consider new information and generate new knowledge together. Deliberation is a key element of our work because we know that thoughtful investigation, questioning, exploration and weighing-up is critical to the generation of creative solutions.

Collaborative Governance

Every new dilemma requires leaders and decision-makers to assess whether their existing Governance mindsets, commitments, structures and practices are appropriate to solve the issue at hand. The Twyfords' Collaborative Governance Model asks this question at each stage of the decision-making process and actively applies the Twyfords' Approach: