Thornton Consulting: a different approach

This page introduces our guiding principles, and illustrates how we are different from many other organisational consultancies.

Our approach has been honed over twenty years' working with organisational leaders on issues of strategy, culture and role effectiveness. It centres on careful listening, an independent, questioning stance which allows us to understand the business at a deeper level, and a psychological perspective which values individual's diverse contributions.

We combine:

• Respect for complexity
• Respect and understanding for people
• Respect for the realities of the situation, including business imperatives.

Working with us is stimulating and thought-provoking. We help you to view your business from many angles and consider the full implications of decisions.  We will not offer you a 'quick fix'.

We do not push any particular business tool or framework, but recognise the value of many tools for businesses and challenges that differ.  For us the point is to deepen your understanding, and enable the conversations you and colleagues need to have.  We choose the most appropriate models based on what you have told us, and do not offer 'one-size-fits-all' solutions.

Time for reflection together

The pace of work today is frenetic, and seems to be accelerating all the time. We believe that working slower sometimes can be working smarter. Taking time to reflect together before acting, your work is more productive, and less time is wasted chasing hares which turn out to be racing in the wrong direction.

We believe that the ability to play is crucial to the business of work. As well as allowing work to be fun, playing allows us to consider ideas that are 'out of the box', 'as if' we could seriously apply them in our business. We believe that learning is essential to business success, and enjoyable.

Sticking around for the tough part

We believe consultants should be around to take responsibility for their input, so we tend to work with clients over the medium to long term. We will not come in and out quickly to write a report on what‘s wrong, leaving you high and dry and without a road map of how to put changes into action. Instead we will work with you to consider the short and long term impact of strategies in the context of the best information about the environment, and we will stick around for the difficult part – implementation.

We take a holistic view of organisations.  If we help you devise a business strategy, we will also help you think through how to maximise buy-in from everyone, and how to reduce obstacles to implementation. We believe that every member of staff can contribute to improving performance if given the right opportunities, so we will work with you to maximise organisational learning for the immediate challenge and for the longer term.

Don't work with us if:

• You don't like to have your ideas challenged
• You are looking for a 'quick fix'
• You are unwilling to consider the deeper and longer term implications of your plans
• You don't want to consider how to involve your staff.

Now that you know more about how we work and what results you can expect, click to learn more about when to call us.