For the second year running Stewarts Law, the international litigation practice, invited John Smythe to design and facilitate their business strategy meeting attended by the top 50 or so lawyers.

The meeting had to meet two objectives; provide robust solutions to deliver the near term business strategy and think out to 2025 to frame the options for future growth. In advance, a headline strategy was drafted by partner Stuart Dench comprising six strategic aims designed to build on the 2015 strategy.

Using Engage for Change’s proven Participative Strategy Safari exercise, partners in small groups visited six Safari stations and contributed specific, actionable and measurable actions that would add substance to content and proposals for execution. Station owners synthesised the proposals and by the end of the meeting the building blocks were in place and, significantly, fully owned by partners.

Stuart Dench of Stewarts Law comments: “John’s design for the meeting and deft facilitation meant that all of us could act as equal participants. In short order we produced the basis for a robust near term strategy and exciting longer term options for developing the firm out to 2025.”