Bringing their expert knowledge of scenario planning, together with polished facilitation skills, the SJS team supported the Authority as it considered a range of known, emergent and potential issues it may need to manage for the Great Barrier Reef. Supported by SJS’s experience across numerous sectors, the Authority’s management team lifted its gaze beyond short-term challenges to better consider and plan for future possibilities.
Josh Thomas
Cheif Executive Officer
We were looking for a different approach to our regular five year planning process. SJS Strategy was able to bring our diverse team together stretch our frames of reference and pressure test the assumptions that underpinned our strategy. This was exactly what we were looking for and certainly not business as usual!
Prof Calum Drummond AO
Deputy Vice
Chancellor Research & Innovation and Vice
President
Sander and Synth have become trusted partners of the Rio Tinto 4.0 Pioneer Lab. As genuine and smart advisors and facilitators they were able to align our distinctly different perspectives on the world to unlock new ways of thinking from within us. They are not your average consultants; they have greatly helped us by creating structure in uncertainty.
Rio Tinto | 4.0 Pioneer Lab
We needed our Strategy Town Hall to be a shared conversation about the future of our sector. Synth and Sander expertly curated and facilitated our Town Hall and were able to create a safe space for an inclusive, insightful and challenging dialogue that proved to be of great value.
Rebecca Casson
Chief Executive Officer
Our work with SJS Strategy proved insightful and engaging. We gained new insights into many plausible futures, this was achieved through an approach that deeply engaged a cross-section of our staff and leaders as well as external subject matter experts.
Ian Burgwin
General Manager, Electrical Safety and Technical Regulation
The Department of Regional New South Wales (DRNSW) is the central agency for regional affairs; ensuring that government investment into regional NSW is fair and delivers positive outcomes for local communities and businesses. In order to identify future work priorities for the Department, SJS Strategy was engaged to work together with their colleagues from a broad range of agencies and departments to explore a changing future of regional liveability in NSW – and how to prepare for it. Asked to utilise the existing state scenarios developed by the Shaping Futures team at the NSW Department of Premier and Cabinet, we designed and facilitated workshops to (1) collectively identify the future challenges and opportunities that the various scenarios represent for regional liveability, (2) develop strategic options to address the challenges and capture the opportunities, and (3) to establish and articulate a robust strategy logic for the prioritisation and selection of these strategic options. The outcomes of this inclusive process underpin the Department’s future work priorities to help the regional communities to continue to thrive in a changing tomorrow.
Energy Safe Victoria (ESV) is Victoria’s energy safety regulator, responsible for electricity, gas and pipelines safety. Following the Grimes Review, the regulator was tasked with developing a roadmap of emerging issues and proposed actions to manage the safety risks arising from new technologies and network structures. To tackle this head on, ESV has embarked on a Responsive Organisation Program developed and facilitated by SJS strategy. In collaboration, the organisations developed scenarios of the Victorian energy safety landscape in 2035 to build an Adaptive Strategic Roadmap combined with an Early Warning System. This gives the organisation the tools and capabilities to monitor the future in order to recognise and adapt to relevant signals of change.
As the country’s pre-eminent agricultural research & development corporation, AgriFutures Australiaworks with the agricultural industry on meeting the needs of rural Australia. Operating through its Industry Advisory Panels, each panel focusses on the collective research and development agenda specific to their levied industry. SJS Strategy has been brought on board by AgriFutures Australia to help ensure that their industry panels’ strategic plans are fit for the future. Through the Scenario Planning Sprint, SJS is assisting the panels – with input from their fellow industry stakeholders – through the co-development of scenarios to inform the build and/or pressure-test their forward-looking five-year industry plans.
The ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ will change entire systems of production, management andgovernance. To prepare the ASX-listed miner for this changing world, the company’s ExecutiveCommittee established the 4.0 Pioneer Lab to help Rio Tinto move firmly into the 21st century.Armed with this mandate, a team of six hand-picked emerging leaders from across the globe interviewed numerous experts ranging from technology to geopolitics and from manufacturing to sustainability. To turn the vast trove of information into actionable insights, the Pioneer Lab team engaged SJS Strategy to co-develop comprehensive scenarios of the organisation’s global future operating environment. The patterns that emerged, and the new and credible insights gained, underpinned the development of their adaptive strategy.
Building on a 140+ year heritage, the new CEO of this leading peak industry body wanted to make sure that its staff, members and stakeholders continue to embody and represent a forward-looking building and construction industry. Using the ‘Annual Engagement Day’ as its first major opportunity, MBAV held a Taster Masterclass organised by SJS Strategy. The masterclass collectively explored the future of the sector, created a shared understanding of the ensuing challenges and opportunities, and kick-started a structured dialogue about the future with its staff, members and stakeholders in a safe and inclusive manner.
One of Australia’s largest universities, RMIT aims to help shape the world through research, innovation and teaching, while creating transformative experiences for its students. As a central part of the university, the Research & Innovation (R&I) portfolio helps bridge the gap between research and impact. To meaningfully avoid ‘business-as-usual’ planning and optimise its five-year strategy for real-world impact, the R&I portfolio engaged SJS Strategy to facilitate its Scenario Planning Sprint, which brought together its key staff and stakeholders to develop scenarios for the future of research and innovation in order to inform the build of its strategy.
The Alpha Group – a collective of 20 self-licenced financial planning firms – comes together annually to share insights and learn. Recognising that the industry is changing and that the future will require different products, services, expertise and partnerships, their annual conference was aimed at igniting this conversation. Conducting the Taster Masterclass at their conference, SJS Strategy helped the participants collectively consider a range of extreme, yet plausible and relevant futures for the Australian financial planning industry, while simultaneously helping the participants apply the scenario planning principles on how to successfully navigate a changing and uncertain future.
As an accomplished leadership coach, Michelle Sales coaches and trains leaders in industries ranging from financial services to sports management to help them lift performance and maximise their impact. With Covid-19 changing the way that teams work and programs are delivered, Michelle and her team wanted to incorporate these impactful yet uncertain changes in their strategic planning. To do this, SJS Strategy assisted the team to conduct a business model analysis to create a shared understanding of how the organisation creates, delivers and captures value. The insights from this analysis were used to identify how Michelle Sales’ business model might be impacted by a range of relevant and plausible futures. The outcomes allowed Michelle and the team to create structure in uncertainty about the future and to make sense of it, thereby empowering confident decision-making in their strategic planning.
As the government authority responsible for managing and the longer-term protection of this Australian icon, the Authority’s Board wants the organisation to prepare for a changing future. Working with the Authority’s senior leadership team to include the wide range of perspectives ranging from strategy to field management, legal, science, and finance, SJS Strategy assisted the team to develop a range of relevant and plausible future scenarios and to identify the implications (opportunities and challenges) that these scenarios present the Authority with. The leadership team presented its work to the Board as part its strategy day, with the Board and leadership team collectively generating strategic options for the Authority so it can continue to protect and manage the environment, biodiversity and heritage values of the Great Barrier Reef.
