# Ben Rouse — Strategy Facilitator

> Strategy facilitation practice run by Ben Rouse. Helps founders, CEOs and leadership teams (typically 20–500 people) close the gap between strategy and execution through facilitated offsites, design sprints and alignment programmes. Based in the United Kingdom, serving clients across the UK and Europe. Previously published as Evolving Design (evolvingdesign.co, now redirecting here). Operated by Evolving Edtech Ltd, trading as Ben Rouse - Strategy Facilitator.

## What we do

Ben diagnoses and resolves **strategic dissonance**: the gap between the decisions your strategy would produce and the decisions your organisation is actually making. Research led by Donald Sull at MIT Sloan found that only 28% of the executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could name three of their company's top priorities.

## The methodology (three phases)

1. **Diagnose the gap** — Before the session Ben talks to the team individually. Short calls, sometimes a short diagnostic, and always a conversation about what the client actually needs rather than what they first asked for. A brief that arrives as team building often turns out to be strategic dissonance underneath.
2. **Build the decision rules** — One or two days with the leadership team. People write before they speak, so the loudest voice doesn't set the agenda. Options are evaluated anonymously before they are debated. The team leaves having decided things, including the things it has been avoiding deciding.
3. **Put them into the daily work** — A strategy has to be taught, not sent. Planning how leaders will teach it, what stops as a result, and the rhythm that checks whether daily decisions reflect it. The team is set up to run its own follow-up session, with a return visit to see whether it held.

## Inside the room

- People write before they speak: every session starts with individual silent writing.
- Options get evaluated before they get debated: scored anonymously against agreed criteria.
- Sessions usually begin by describing failure, which surfaces unstated expectations faster than describing success.
- Objectives are set by the people who will own them; teams write their own measures and present them for challenge.

## Services

- **Agree the strategy your team will actually use** — Strategy session, one or two days. The core of the work. Includes the pre-calls, the individual conversations, the design, the delivery and the follow-up. Runs as an executive offsite, a strategy away day, or a residential retreat.
- **Get the layer below the exec team making the same calls** — Cascade sessions, added when you need them. Translate what the leadership team agreed into language and priorities middle managers can act on.
- **Test a big bet before you commit to it** — Design sprint, four days (Mon–Thu). For when alignment already exists but one question remains unanswered. Framing on Monday, tested prototype by Thursday.

## What it costs

A one-day session is £2,500 plus VAT. Two days is £4,000 plus VAT. Both include the pre-calls, the individual conversations with the team, session design, delivery, materials and the follow-up. Cascade sessions and larger programmes are scoped and quoted separately. Most work starts about four weeks out.

## Common questions

**What should a strategy offsite actually produce?** Decisions people can use. Not a document, not a refreshed vision statement, and not just a good day. The test is whether someone in your organisation could face a real choice next week and know which way the strategy points. If the offsite ends with agreement in the room but nobody can tell you what stops as a result, it produced energy rather than strategy.

**Should we use an external facilitator or run the strategy offsite ourselves?** Run it yourself if the decisions are already made and you need a good discussion. Bring someone in when the leadership team disagrees and has not said so, or when you need to be a participant rather than the chair. A CEO facilitating their own strategy session is the most common reason the real disagreement never surfaces, because people read the room and agree with the person running it.

**What is the difference between a strategy offsite and a team away day?** An away day changes how a team feels about each other. A strategy offsite changes what the organisation does on Monday. Both are legitimate, they just need different designs, and the trouble starts when one is booked and the other is expected. Briefs that arrive asking for team building often turn out, once you talk to people individually, to be about strategic disagreement nobody has named.

**How many people should be in a strategy offsite?** Small enough that everyone speaks. Usually the CEO plus five to nine people who genuinely influence the direction. Beyond about ten the session tips into presentation and the quieter people stop contributing, which is expensive, because the quieter people often hold the information you need. If more people need to be involved, cascade sessions afterwards work better than a bigger room.

**How do we stop the strategy dying after the offsite?** Teach it rather than send it. A deck circulated after the event gives people the conclusion without the reasoning, so the first situation nobody anticipated defeats it. Plan who teaches what, name what stops as a result, and set a rhythm that checks whether real decisions reflect the strategy. The ninety days after the offsite is where most strategies quietly fail.

**How far in advance do we need to book a strategy facilitator?** About four weeks is comfortable, because the individual conversations before the session are where the real brief emerges. Shorter is possible. If you already have an offsite in the diary next week and a growing feeling it will not get you what you need, it is still worth a conversation.

## Flagship engagement

**The Alignment Offsite** (3 days, residential) — Three days to close the gap between where the leadership team thinks the business is going and where it actually is. Designed for CEOs and Founders of growth-stage scaleups (50–500 headcount) plus 5–9 expert influencers. Day 1: Identity & Invisible Systems (Hedgehog, Ecocycle). Day 2: Edge & Strategic Direction (Foundation Sprint, Cover Story, Note-and-Vote). Day 3: Momentum & Cascade (Flywheel, Leaders as Teachers, Senior Signing Day). Includes pre-work diagnostic and 30-day follow-up. Investment shared on a discovery call. Full details: https://benrousefacilitator.com/alignment-offsite

## Who it's for

Founders, CEOs and leadership teams of scale-ups and mid-sized organisations (typically 20–500 people) who feel the gap between their stated strategy and how decisions actually get made day-to-day.

## How it differs from traditional consultancies

Traditional consultancies write the strategy for you. Ben facilitates your team to build and own the strategy themselves, which is what makes execution stick. The output is a set of decision rules the team can actually use, not a slide deck.

## Pages

- [Home](/): Strategic facilitation that closes the gap between strategy and execution.
- [The Alignment Offsite](/alignment-offsite): Three-day residential flagship engagement for CEOs and leadership teams of growth-stage scaleups.
- [Case study: System1](/case-studies/system1): One-day executive intensive aligning the C-suite on a unified AI roadmap across advertising and innovation.
- [Case study: proSapient](/case-studies/prosapient): Multi-phase ELT engagement producing a stakeholder-endorsed five-year strategy, OKR backlog and PE-ready roadmap.
- [Case study: Thymia](/case-studies/thymia): Two-day cross-functional offsite translating company values into departmental commitments for a scaling health-tech team.
- [Privacy Policy](/privacy-policy): How Ben Rouse - Strategy Facilitator handles personal data.
- [Cookie Policy](/cookie-policy): Cookies used on benrousefacilitator.com.
- [Terms & Conditions](/terms): Terms governing engagements and site use.

## Contact

- Website: https://benrousefacilitator.com
- Email: info@benrousefacilitator.com
- Book a call: https://calendar.app.google/GWRmb8SVVo9KPn9m9
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrouse80/
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf1UncPmII4d8t_KYFQ5_tA