Problem-Side Consultancy

Most teams do not have a solution problem.
They have a problem problem.

I frame the problem properly before you commit serious resource, then stay accountable to that frame while your team builds.

Rational Chaos works with leadership teams in government, industry and universities, usually in the moment between sensing something is off and signing a budget. You do not get a deck. You get a problem your team can defend to anyone who asks, and a custodian who keeps scope, trade-offs and the decisions nobody wrote down pointing at the thing that matters.

How to work with me

Three ways in, at increasing depth. Most engagements start at the first and stop wherever the problem is properly held.

01-

Problem Framing Workshop

For managers, designers and founders who have a real problem and no confidence in how it is currently stated. Bring the problem you are stuck on. You will leave with it framed.

A single session, working on your own problem rather than a case study. You leave with a completed framing artefact on paper: the problem stated, the disagreements surfaced, the unknowns of fact separated from the unknowns of value. Next dates on the booking page.

Dates to be Announced

02-

Frame Intensive

For a leadership team about to commit budget to something that has not been properly stated. One day, in your building, before the money moves.

I interview your key people individually beforehand, so the day starts from what your organisation actually disagrees about rather than from a blank wall. The morning opens the problem up. The afternoon closes it down. You leave with a Strategy Kernel: a seven-part document your team can take to a board, stating the problem, the evidence, the trade-offs, and what would have to be true for the chosen direction to hold.

Enquire Via Email

03-

Problem Custodian-ship

For a leadership team about to commit budget to something that has not been properly stated. One day, in your building, before the money moves.

I interview your key people individually beforehand, so the day starts from what your organisation actually disagrees about rather than from a blank wall. The morning opens the problem up. The afternoon closes it down. You leave with a Strategy Kernel: a seven-part document your team can take to a board, stating the problem, the evidence, the trade-offs, and what would have to be true for the chosen direction to hold.

Book a 30-minute call

The public series

Living Design is the free public workshop series behind the book. Visual thinking, framing, and living with uncertainty, run in Sydney with Think Visual. It is the cheapest way to see how I work before committing anything.

Living Design Workshops

What the Method Rests On

The practice is not improvised. It comes out of twenty years of empirical research on how designers frame problems, and of building the instruments that make a tangle of relationships legible.