Good article. We are a strategy design firm, but we’ve developed the discipline a bit differently.

Rather than being human-centered, our practice is culture-centered. This evolved from having a foundation in sociocultural anthropology. A cultural-centered approach may place more weight on a systemic understanding of context.

We also call this practice bottom-up. We find corporate or institutional leadership approaches strategy in top down fashion, often being blind to the context on the ground. Instead, we recommend to clients that strategy design start within the context that strategy is meant to impact.

Clients express varying degrees of discomfort with bottom up approaches because organizations are naturally oriented top down.