Skilful Change
Learn how to get to where you want to be easier, faster with less confusion and dead ends.
Skilful Change is a bespoke program offering specialised creative problem solving support for startup and small business leaders, helping you move out of your comfort zone so that you skilfully navigate the path towards growth and success.
Do you want to ...
- Stop missing opportunities because you keep hesitating?
- Stop delaying things because you are afraid to fail?
- Start creating change in your business, with more confidence and clarity behind your vision and decisions?
Why Skilful Change?
Change is scary for businesses, because of what's at stake, because of the conflicting demands, the frustrating ambiguity, the threat of failure… The pressure to deliver with a small team and tight budget can make you choose the safer option, be less challenging and focus on the near future rather than the long-term goals. When it comes to the critical decisions you may feel stuck between knowing how to move forward and the risk to invest more money to make it work.
Can you relate? Maybe you are...
- Feeling afraid of change but deep down know it's what you need to do in order to grow and succeed?
- Resisting change because of what's at stake?
- Frustrated, because you have a great idea but articulating it and bringing all the pieces together is harder than expected?
- Feeling conflicted, under pressure from competitors but wanting to do things differently...authentically to you and your audience?
- Worried you'll start losing customers, if you don't change something?
- Doubting you got to the heart of what really needs to be solved?
- Under pressure to deliver but are overwhelmed by the ambiguity or the detail ... not sure why what you are doing isn't working?
- Disappointed by not getting the engagement and alignment you hoped for to drive the results?
Imagine instead...
- You are able to skilfully navigate a turning point as business to build growth and competitive advantage.
- You can confidently take exciting ideas into action thanks to clear vision giving you focus and momentum.
- You expertly discover your audience's real needs, crafting an offer that truly resonates and and makes you stand out.
- You identify hidden barriers within your business and feel much more clear on how to overcome these over time and build on your distinctive strengths.
How I can help
Skilful Change is a tailored consulting and coaching package helping leaders learn skills and overcome resistance related to moving out of your comfort zone. The work focuses on helping you learn how to systematically hone in on opportunities, and identify hidden barriers so that you can build the capabilities you need to skilfully navigate the path towards growth and success.
Together we can critique what you are doing and why to hone in, structure and highlight the real value in you offer,
and create a complling, clear and confident narrative to communicate it to your audience.
What I can help you with
- Brand consultation – crystallise the vision for your brand, and represent and communicate its value with more intention, authentically to what you believe in and what your customers want.
- In-depth customer engagement – understand the needs, lifestyle and values of your customers, and learn how to incorporate them into your offer to craft a clear personal benefit. Prototype and validate to test your assumptions and refine your concept and ensure it truly connects.
- Value proposition – exploring what makes your business unique and valuable to you, your customers and within the context you operate in. Refine how you position your product or service and how you communicate its value along the whole experience, to elevate quality of your offer.
- Innovation strategy – articulating and making your strategy and vision tangible to gain alignment and clarity.
- Problem solving and the creative process of making change happen – Take on a new or long-term challenge to understood the bigger picture and the nature of what was happening and why, and explore ways for overcoming it.
- Short-term: Structure and guidance on achieving your tactical and project goals in a way that's collaborative, iterative and focused on action as incremental smallest next step.
- Long-term: Clarity and guidance on how to grow the creative capability in your business in a way aligned with your unique characteristics and business objectives.
Interested? Book your free consultation
I'm offering free 1 hour consultation sessions, because I genuinely believe you have the answers within you, and that sometimes even a small prompt can really help. By the end of our consultation, you'll:
- Gain more clarity on what the real challenge is here for you.
- Identify an action you can take now, starting where you are.
- Get one tool to support you in overcoming your challenge.
Please click below and complete the short contact form, and I will reach out to you to schedule.
Consultation packages
I offer 3 levels of consulation packages, tailored to your individual needs with scaffolding and examples to help you learn. Designed to encompass the full creative process, sections can be adapted to bring most value to the challenges you are experiencing. Workshops are structured as a step by step proces where I introduce tools and techniques, and we discuss how these relate to your business. You deepen the exercises in your own time with support and time to review and refine together. All my sessions include Set up for Success module, helping you to become more aware of your resistance and how to manage it, to feel more confident and creative in taking action.
Full consultation: Uncover and refine value
Immerse in a challenge and uncover new insights. Extract, re-frame and build on what you already know. Get more clarity and structure and direction.
- 6-8 x 1hr workshops
- Weekly 'office hours'
- Exercises for individual study
How I help you:
- Scaffolding and examples to help you learn.
- Best pracice in uncovering, analysing and incorporating the needs of your customers in your offer.
- Iteratively validate and refine your offer with hands on support from me to ensure what you created truly resonates.
- Feedback and assistance incorporating insights for maximum value.
Outcomes:
- Clear understanding of the problem space within which your offer exists.
- Clarity and structure around what you are doing and why, and the impact you offer and how you can communicate it in a way that feels authentic to you and meaningful to your customers.
- Ensure true relevance of your offer and take it a level up by deepening the knowledge yourself, your audience and the context you operate within.
Mid-level consultation: Shaping and communicating value
Extract, re-frame and build on what you already know, giving you more clarity and structure and direction to deliver value.
- 4 x 1hr workshops
- Exercises for individual study
How I help you:
- Feedback and assistance incorporating the insights for maximum value.
- Sessions tailored to your and your business's needs.
Outcomes:
- Clear understanding of the problem space within which your offer exists to build on.
- Clarity and structure around what you are doing and why, and the impact you offer and how you can communicate it in a way that feels authentic to you and meaningful to your customers.
Baseline consultation: Reframe your challenge
We focus on extracting and re-framing what you already know, giving you more clarity and structure and direction.
- 2 x 1hr workshops
- Exercises for individual study
How I help you:
- Scaffolding and examples to help you learn.
- Feedback and assistance incorporating the insights for maximum value.
Outcomes:
- Clearer understanding of your audience's needs and the context within which you operate.
- Reframe your challenge into an opportunity and get direction for moving forward.
Programme modules
Further detail on what's included in the consultatios.
Set up for success
Included in all 3 consultation tiers.
Explore the sub conscious thoughts holding you back from the full potential of your creative idea. You also learn tools to help you manage them. I provide inital tools for shaping your idea and focusing your action to springboard the core sessions.
- Explore your resistance – worksheet.
- Begin creating focus and clarity – exercise.
- Set up for the workshops.
Module 1: Explore, break down and reframe the problem or challenge
Included in all 3 consultation tiers.
-
We analyse the current offer from different perspectives and explore in depth your distinctive strengths and how to make it more meaningful to your customers and within the context in which your business exists.
- You – Map out the current state of how you communicate your idea or business and explore the unique qualities that make it valuable.
- Your audience – Understand the granularity of what your brand is like and how to make your offer more meaningful to your audience..
- The market – Understand how the market is shared to inform how you can strategically position your idea.
Module 2: Shaping and communicating value
Included in Mid-level and Full Consultation tiers.
We shape and refine your value proposition and apply the learnings to how you structure, position and communicate about your business.
- Define your vision – get clarity and focus for what you are creating and the impact you want to achieve.
- Refine your value proposition – enhance the value of your offer.
- Think through and refine the experience of your offer – add more intention and care to your service.
- Begin to shape how you communicate the value you offer in a concise, relatable and meaningful way.
Module 3: Test, Validate, Refine
Included in Full Consultation.
I provide you with tools and structure to prototype, validate and refine your offer with your customers and learn from others. A hugely valuable step to ensure true relevance of your product or service. Iterative test and learn approach helps you work smarter and faster.
Action Plan
Included in all 3 consultation tiers.
We agree on an action plan to help you continue the great work and how I can support you in realising the great potenitlal of your idea. The action plan is tailored to help you further refine your offer and communicate its value, with tools and templates to learn from.
Free Consultation
We meet to discuss the nature of the challange you are facing, and the motivations and desires behind it to see how I can help you and if we are a good fit. By the end of the session you'll:
- Gain more clarity on what the real challenge is here for you.
- Identify an action you can take now, starting where you are.
- Get one tool to support you in overcoming your challenge.
Interested? Book your free consultation
I'm offering free 1 hour consultation sessions. Please click below and complete the short contact form, and I will reach out to you.
Testimonials
I had a lot of doubt around my creative ability and even more so around whether I could turn this into a ‘real’ business. I felt embarrassed that this was my passion and to market and sell my products to the general public. I was worried nobody would take my idea/product seriously, and then it wouldn’t be marketable. After participating in the workshop, I found confidence and self belief in my business idea and the products that I am making. I definitely felt I had more drive and creative direction particularly for how I wanted my end product to look and also how I wanted to market my brand. I feel I have more creative inspiration which has led to new ideas and products. Dorota really helped to draw out my brand ethos and exactly why wanted to market my product. It was hard, but became easy to recognise the more tasks that she set. The quality of my product has improved – I now feel and see the cohesiveness of my brand running throughout the range. I'd 100% recommend this workshop - at the beginning of this I only had an idea and a few products, following this experience I would now say I have a brand identity and a proper business. Dorota takes you on a journey, from your initial idea she helps you transform this into a real, tangible business. She anticipates your hopes, fears and needs and helps to draw out things about yourself and your business that you won’t even aware that you knew.
Dried Botanical Designs by Holly Jane Dore.
When I saw Dorota's post, I was quite busy with client related tasks. Before realising that thinking forward was important for my growth, I hesitated on the basis of time, which would have been perhaps a little short sighted. I decided to reach out, after processing my current situation and thinking clearly about how I would reach my goals. Also, I realised I had help and expertise in front of me in the form of Dorota’s guidance, and that it would be foolish not to speak.
As an engineer, I appreciate when things are laid out methodically and with a tangible focus. The framework we used allowed me to take my dreams, ideas and ambitions from my mind and place them on ‘paper’ in front of me, which made them a little more real. This gave them structure and a new focus, which was helpful and allowed me to develop ideas a little deeper. After participating in the workshops, I noticed I had some more clarity and organisation on my mission and how I wanted to move in the immediate future. Also, defining my target audience and how to approach them were some of the immediate benefits. It also helped me to focus on my plan from a high level, rather than in a narrower, task by task sense.
The workshops certainly gave me a new energy in the form of inspiration. It gave my ideas more presence, almost making them more tangible in a structured and meaningful way. After the sessions, I also realised that I could use the ideas, clarity and concepts we developed to rebrand my company. I created new branding, name and website which I’m very proud of and I've had positive feedback from potential clients within hours of making it live!
I’d certainly recommend this to people like myself who have an existing business, but are ready to take it up a level. Also, to people with an idea they would like to explore in the sense of creating a meaningful business from.
Jahee Campbell-Brennan, Director
Case Studies
From 'just' an idea to a 'real' business – a series of workshops aimed at crystallising the vision, brand character and value proposition for Seed & Thistles – a dried botanical designs business based in Lewes.
Shaping value through empathy – a series of workshops aimed at crafting a niche and developing a deeper way of identifying with customers to create an engaging and relevant offer for a startup at the forefront of empowering people to live independently, safely and happily in their homes.