Discovery
Finding your hidden story
Our Discovery Process has been developed over a number of years, and, as its name suggests, allows us to discover the key issues about, and fundamental character of, an organisation.
It is often most useful when an organisation has been grappling with an issue for a long time, or has become unsure of its purpose. What we often find is that the answer has been there all the time. It just has to be unearthed.
At one level, it is very simple: we talk to people and ask them what they think. But what happens, if you spend enough time with enough people, is that a very comprehensive, nuanced picture emerges.
We dig deep into the organisation’s DNA, by talking to people within the organisation, people who are in its orbit, and people who have little or no knowledge of it. We find that interviews provide the best format to achieve the deepest investigation and stakeholder engagement. These are supplemented with group workshops where appropriate.
Those conversation inform our understanding, but they aren’t the limits of our insights. We look around at what other organisations – peers and those in completely different sectors – can teach us. We also review the existing communications across all the channels. Typically, the Discovery Process will also reveal additional strategic insights that can help the client to achieve their goals.
All the findings and recommendations are then provided in a written report and summarised in a screen presentation. Importantly, the report also includes an outline creative brief on how all the findings should be implemented across the range of communication channels used by the client.
This latter part is a vital stepping-stone to the practical implementation of telling your story. We are always intent on avoiding the bane of all reports – that they stay just that, gathering metaphorical dust. We avoid that through the thoroughness of the process, which means the recommendations are correctly founded, and by always operating within the context of real-world practicalities.
The result is that, in every case, the recommendations have been implemented very successfully.