The Kickstart.
A Fixed-Scope Reset.
The decision keeps getting made, then unmade. Not because the team can't do it, but because nobody really agreed in the first place. People nodded in the room, then went back to doing what they were doing.
Delivery diagnostic · Programme reset · Decision clarity
When delivery
has stalled.
The stuck decision
A call that's been on the agenda for months. It gets discussed, parked, reopened. The team has stopped believing it'll ever be made.
Busy, but not moving
Activity everywhere. Sprints running, updates flowing. Nothing measurable is shifting. Everyone's working hard on the wrong things.
The strategy that didn't land
The direction changed. The reorg happened. Three months on, the team is still delivering the old plan because the new one was never really agreed.
The 'done' gap
Leadership and the delivery team mean different things by 'finished'. Nobody says it. Every meeting is polite. Nothing changes.
The inherited programme
A new leader joined and inherited a programme they didn't scope. The team can't tell whether to follow the old plan or wait for the new one. Delivery has stopped.
The transformation nobody owns
A new system, a data platform, an operating model change. It got announced. Nobody got clear ownership, scope or a definition of success. It moves, but it's not going anywhere.
Board flag
The board has noticed the drift. You've got a short window to show things are back on track. You need alignment fast, not another strategy deck.
The cost-of-delay clock
Every week of slippage costs money: licences running, contractors billing, value pushed out. You know what needs to happen. You just can't get everyone moving the same way.
What I do
Five to ten days, in the room with you. I start by talking to the people doing the actual work, not just the steering group, because that's where the real blockers usually sit. I find what's causing the drift: missing trust, unspoken requirements, dodgy data, two halves of the room quietly aiming at different things. Then I run a session where the difficult things get said out loud, in front of the people who need to hear them. We close with a written plan that every person in the room has actually signed up to.
What it produces
Not a report. Not a slide deck. A single picture of the work, written down so the decisions hold.
What it isn't
I don't drop in a set of recommendations and leave. I stay until the agreement is real, not just polite.
Runs 5 to 10 days · Fixed scope · Decisions, not documents
A decision wearing
a delivery jacket.
Over a decade running data, systems and operations programmes across sectors has taught me one thing about stalled work: the problem is almost never the technology. It's almost always a decision nobody has made, dressed up as a delivery issue. The Kickstart exists to find it and get it made.
I run Stratford Ellis as Lead Data Consultant, and the same way of thinking goes into a five-day reset as into a six-month programme: where does this break, who actually needs to decide, and what does it cost to keep waiting.
If this is
your situation.
Tell me what's stuck. I'll tell you whether the Kickstart is the right way to fix it.
What people
ask first.
- What is a delivery alignment sprint?
- A short, fixed-scope intervention that gets the leadership and delivery team to the same answer on the basics: what are we actually building, who is it for, and what has to be true in 90 days for this to count as working. When those answers don't match, even a little, delivery slows and decisions stack up.
- How do you fix a stalled programme?
- Not with another planning workshop. A stalled programme is usually a sign of unsettled decisions about scope, data or priorities. The Kickstart surfaces those, gets them resolved, and leaves the team with one version of the work to deliver from.
- When should you reset a programme?
- When meetings go in circles, the plan keeps moving, the team is busy but nothing decisive ships, or a board review made it obvious the story isn't tight. The Kickstart is built for exactly that moment.
- What happens during one?
- Over five to ten days: structured sessions with the people who own and run the work, a stress-test of the current plan, and one output: a clear, agreed direction the team can deliver from. No long report. A decision.
- How is this different from a strategy offsite?
- An offsite produces alignment in the room that fades within a week. The Kickstart produces decisions, not just discussion, names the specific things slowing the team, and leaves a working document, not a highlight reel.
- How long does it take?
- Five to ten days. The right length depends on the size of the team and how deep the disagreement runs. I scope it on the first call.
Words from the room.
A handful of notes from leaders, founders and chairs I've worked alongside.
Barbs walked into a programme that had been stuck for nine months and had us all reading off the same page inside a fortnight. The plan we left with was the one we actually ran.
She tells you what she thinks. No fluff, no vendor agenda. Our board got a read on our data we could finally act on, and a short list of fixes we could start on Monday.
Having Barbs in the room changed how we made the call. She knew the context from month two and saved us from at least one expensive mistake on the systems side.