Strategic Research &
Organizational Assessment Consulting
We provide evidence-driven research that clarifies complex questions and reduces uncertainty around high-stakes decisions. Our Strategic Research & Organizational Assessment Consulting gives leaders reliable insights they can act on with confidence.
Overview
Some questions cannot be answered with quick analysis or generic advice. You need actual research and systematic investigation that gives you real evidence to inform major decisions. Our Strategic Research & Organizational Assessment Consulting designs and conducts custom research projects that reduce uncertainty around high-stakes choices where getting the answer wrong would be costly. When the findings point to needed changes in systems or workflows, we often partner with our Business Process Consulting & Optimization service to support implementation.
MARKET ANALYSIS AND OPPORTUNITY ASSESSMENT
Organizations considering major strategic moves need real data, not theories or assumptions. We conduct comprehensive market research to understand demand, competition, and regulatory environments. This includes analyzing industry data to identify trends and opportunities. We interview potential customers, partners, and other stakeholders to understand their actual needs and concerns. We study competitors to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and strategic positioning. And we assess regulatory requirements that might enable or constrain your strategic options.
This research reveals both unexpected opportunities leadership might have missed and significant barriers they hadn’t considered. The evidence shows exactly where you could succeed and where you’d likely struggle, giving leadership the foundation for confident strategic decisions.
ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATIONS
When organizations need objective assessment of how they’re actually performing, we evaluate effectiveness through systematic research. We analyze existing data about performance, efficiency, and outcomes. We interview stakeholders at different levels to understand how processes actually work versus how they’re supposed to work. We study comparable organizations to identify best practices and understand where you stand relative to others facing similar challenges.
These evaluations provide objective analysis not influenced by internal politics or preconceived notions about what’s working. You gain clear understanding of organizational strengths to build on and weaknesses that need attention. The research gives you evidence to build internal consensus on difficult decisions about changing how things work. For organizations facing major systems changes, we may recommend our Leadership & Team Effectiveness Consulting to ensure people adopt new processes successfully.
STAKEHOLDER RESEARCH AND FEASIBILITY STUDIES
Before launching new initiatives, organizations need to understand whether they’ll actually work and who they’ll affect. We conduct stakeholder research to understand the needs, concerns, and expectations of the people who matter to your success. We assess the feasibility of proposed initiatives by examining resource requirements, potential obstacles, and realistic timelines.
This research prevents costly mistakes by identifying problems before you’ve invested heavily in approaches that won’t work. You gain realistic understanding of what implementation will actually require rather than optimistic projections that ignore practical constraints. When feasibility studies reveal operational hurdles, our Strategic Research & Organizational Assessment Consulting team can partner with our Business Process Consulting & Optimization service to help resolve system-level challenges.
WHO NEEDS STRATEGIC RESEARCH
You might need strategic research if you’re considering a major strategic move but don’t have good data to inform the decision. You need objective assessment of options, not just the opinions of whoever speaks loudest in internal debates. The question facing you is too complex or context-specific for generic consulting advice to address properly. You need evidence to build internal consensus on a difficult decision where people currently disagree. Or you’re exploring new territory and need to understand what’s actually there rather than proceeding based on assumptions.
This work proves valuable for any organization facing significant strategic uncertainty where getting the answer wrong would waste substantial resources or miss important opportunities. For organizations already navigating technology decisions, we often integrate this service with our AI Integration Consulting for Organizations service to ensure that research directly guides system adoption and workflow design.
HOW WE APPROACH RESEARCH
We start by defining the question precisely. What exactly do you need to know and why? Often the initial question isn’t quite right, and refining it makes everything else more useful. Based on what you need to learn, we select appropriate research approaches – quantitative analysis, qualitative interviews, document analysis, comparative studies, or whatever methodology fits the question.
We conduct the actual research, whether that’s analyzing existing data, interviewing stakeholders, studying comparable situations, or other investigation the methodology requires. Then we analyze and synthesize what we found — identifying patterns, testing hypotheses, and distinguishing signal from noise. This is where research training really matters. We deliver clear findings about what the evidence shows, what it means for your situation, and what we recommend you do based on what we learned. When research findings require changes to systems or workflows, we may partner with our Business Process Consulting & Optimization service to support implementation.
WHAT YOU GAIN
Ready to redesign your systems?
Get evidence-based Strategic Research & Organizational Assessment Consulting so your high-stakes decisions are grounded in real data, not assumptions, and your leadership team can move forward with confidence.
REAL EXAMPLES
Case Study: Market Expansion Research
A large industry association hired us to improve member engagement through surveys. Their members were highly accomplished professionals with significant political and economic influence. But when we started, we discovered they couldn’t answer basic questions about their own membership.
They might have someone’s resume in one place, participation records somewhere else, and location data in yet another system. They couldn’t analyze their membership in aggregate or even look at individual members comprehensively.
Why was this a problem? If we conducted a member survey, that data would just become another disconnected file. Why pay a consultant to collect and analyze data the organization could never use again because it was completely isolated from everything else? More importantly, without basic demographic, network, and engagement data already organized, we’d waste the survey asking questions they should already know instead of focusing on what members actually needed and valued.
The culprit: an expensive enterprise software system that didn’t match how the organization actually worked. Staff found it too complex, so everyone maintained separate Excel files instead. The association was paying substantial licensing fees plus hundreds of thousands annually for consultants to continually tweak a system nobody used.
We redesigned the entire process based on how staff actually worked and what they genuinely needed to track. This meant moving to a simpler system that matched their workflow and could consolidate member data into a usable format.
The result: Member data became centralized and analyzable. The association saved hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by ending unnecessary software licensing and consulting contracts. And with comprehensive, organized data, we could design a survey that focused on member needs and interests rather than basic information they should have already known.