Strategy

Future-ready strategic advisory driven by insights.

If your existing approach to navigating a rapidly changing tech and business landscape is leaving you overwhelmed or underwhelmed, you’ve come to the right place.
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Let’s elevate your strategic thinking, align your team, and set you up for greater success.

We help companies, organizations, cities, museums, and entities of all kinds solve strategic problems arising from integrating data and emerging technology into their business model, operations, and experience strategy.

We do so by aligning the data model and technology deployment in these areas around human experiences meaningfully, respectfully, and profitably.

We get your team thinking about the needs and motivations of the real people you’re trying to do business with.

We help you craft meaningful messages and experiences to develop deeper customer relationships, and what’s more, help you get better at the process of doing it yourself.

KO Insights Kate O'Neill at IoD London
Kate being interviewed on-stage about transformation at Institute of Directors in London, 2016

Maybe your organization needs to model its data better to provide greater insights and offer more relevant customer experiences.

Maybe you’re struggling with the best way to implement emerging technologies like AR, or chatbots, or something similar.

Or maybe you’re experimenting with automation tools but you don’t yet have a strategy around it, or how it will impact your core business, or your workforce, etc.

The questions organizations face around data and tech are nearly endless, so the possibilities for value to your organization are nearly endless, too.

Kate O'Neill at Google
Kate O’Neill, Talks at Google, October 2018

Some past areas of focus for previous clients include:

“We continually refer back to the work you led us through. It helps shape our approach toward every aspect of the business.”

Former Client

About our approach

An integrative view, a focus on human experience, an emphasis on what we can learn from meaningful questions and insights — these are all hallmarks of our approach. Let’s break it down.

Why Insights?

You already have plenty of partial answers; what you need is more clarity.

Our model gets you there.

Why “Human Experience” rather than Customer or User Experience?

In short: human-centric nuances make a difference at scale. Let us show you how.

How it works

Our strategic insights have been sought out and trusted by top brands you (and we!) admire.

But we know every problem is a little different, so don’t worry: we’ll find just the right approach for you.
Kate O'Neill Speaking

Meaningful Customer Insights

Your marketing efforts are supposed to generate sales. They’re also supposed to generate insights.

You should be getting smarter with every campaign. You ought to know more about your customers than you did a month ago.

Because companies need to understand their customers, and marketing is the knowledge center. It’s where everything the business understands about the customer resides.

That understanding creates meaningful relationships between brand and customer. Which is how value is created. And from value follows stronger sales, deeper loyalty, and greater profit.

If that’s not happening in your organization today, we can help.

We give your team clarity, a shared vocabulary, and, most importantly, a roadmap for insights so that your brand can be on its way to meaningful and sustainable growth.

Kate O'Neill at UX Australia

“She had the skill and wisdom to come up with good, and often novel, approaches, and the diplomacy to navigate a tense working environment.”

Former Client

This is an opportunity to work directly with strategic expert Kate O’Neill

Kate O’Neill has been leading innovative experience optimization and digital transformation initiatives for more than 20 years for companies of all sizes across industries around the world. Think: Netflix, USPS, McDonald’s, Coca Cola, and many more.

She has an uncanny ability to balance the needs of the company with the needs of the customer. She’s brand-savvy, culture-savvy, and data and tech-savvy.

Author of five books on the future of tech-driven experiences and top keynote speaker on digital transformation, Kate thinks deeply and dimensionally about how business can succeed while offering the most meaningful experiences to the humans inside and outside the company.

Kate can offer breakthrough insights about how to make your efforts more effective.

Kate O'Neill at Mind the Product London
Kate O'Neill at Yale
As she describes it:

“We discover the brand’s unique and organic elements of strategy: what really makes the company tick.

We develop frameworks — roadmaps, toolsets, style guides, whatever it takes — at a deeply integrative level, at a philosophical level, that tie together company purpose, brand value, and human motivations.

This process always surfaces opportunities for greater alignment, which means the organization can be more effective, and can accelerate growth and learning.

Once we have this understanding as a foundation, I work with clients to develop future-aware approaches to technology and data that position the company for growth and market advantage while treating customer relationships and data ethically and responsibly.”

“Kate is at once both a formidable expert and a warm, approachable colleague.”

Former Client

Customized experiences to suit your needs

Strategic Facilitation

Facilitation needs are not one size fits all: your team is not the same as the next team, and we know that. We’ll work with you to develop the best format — onsite or offsite, in person or virtual, front-led or richly collaborative, etc — to deliver the outcomes you need the day to yield.

Transformational strategy often needs outside help: the nuanced input of an outside expert, sometimes in a session conducted outside your normal workspace.

During executive and team retreats, it’s key to have a facilitator who brings a wealth of insights from across industries and business models, who ushers the discussion along with nuance and respect.

Strategic Consulting

If your strategy is in chaos or you’re struggling to grow, or both, we offer one-on-one or small group sessions at your office or via virtual meeting to help you unpack the challenge, reframe it, and develop an action plan.

In a select few cases depending on availability and need, we can offer ongoing guidance and consulting through a retained arrangement.

Contact us, give us a little background and let’s discuss how we can help.

Kate providing a facilitated keynote for a Google retreat
Kate providing a hybrid front-led session — a facilitated keynote — for a Google departmental retreat in Lake Tahoe
Kate O'Neill facilitating a team-building session
Kate facilitating a richly collaborative creative UX and design team-building session with a lot of laughter and bonding

Does this sound like something your organization could benefit from? Let’s discuss.

Insights

Kate writes prolifically and contributes to numerous outlets on an eclectic array of topics, but her primary focus is the intersection of data, humanity, and meaningful experiences.

Kate O'Neill at Mind the Product London

Business & Strategy

Kate O'Neill at DevLearn

Culture & Humanity

Kate O'Neill at Google

Digital Transformation

Kate O'Neill at Mind the Product London

Events & Speaking

Kate O'Neill at DevLearn

Future & Trends

Kate O'Neill and her book Tech Humanist

Human Experience

Kate O'Neill at Cisco

Written Insights

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It’s time to create a human-centric strategy for a change-filled future.