Theory of Change facilitation

When a team can see what it’s trying to change, it stops arguing about tasks and starts working on the same thing.

A Theory of Change is a picture that answers one question: how do the things we do actually lead to the change we want to see? It sounds simple. It isn't. Most organisations can list their activities and name their vision, but drawing the connection in between — with enough honesty that everyone in the room agrees on it — is where the real work lives.

I facilitate that day. You leave with a picture your team can point at.

    • Funders keep asking the same question about your impact, and you keep answering it differently.

    • Your team is doing more things than any one person can hold coherent, and no one can explain how they connect.

    • You're heading into a strategy cycle, a funding proposal, or a board presentation, and the argument about impact keeps stalling.

    • Something's changed — a new leader, a merger, a shift in the landscape — and the old logic doesn't hold anymore.

    • You're launching a new programme or product and want to make sure it's the right thing to do before you build it.

  • The core of the work fits in one focused day with the right people in the room. Preparation and follow-up sit around it.

    • A first conversation to check whether a Theory of Change is what you actually need, or whether the underlying issue is something else.

    • Preparation — I help you decide who should be in the room (usually 6–8 people), send a short pre-read question, and make sure the space is set up to actually work (real wall, real sticky notes, no laptops open).

    • The workshop day — a facilitated session run in four moves: long-term change, outcomes, activities, assumptions. Done in that order, on purpose.

    • A clean draft picture within a week — one page, one image, sent back to the room for edits.

    • A final version and a short guide on how to use it after the workshop, so it becomes a working tool, not a filed PDF.

    • A single-page Theory of Change your team owns and can defend.

    • Clarity on which of your activities connect strongly to your outcomes — and which don't.

    • A named list of the assumptions your strategy quietly rests on.

    • A shared reference document you can bring to funders, boards, and new hires.

    • The internal alignment that comes from having built the picture together, not been handed it.

Talk to me.

If your team is struggling to explain how what it does leads to what it's trying to change, let's talk. If you'd rather run one yourself, I've written a longer piece on what a Theory of Change actually is and how to run one.