Strategic Advisory
Evidence and systems thinking for complex questions about how work is designed and changing.
I work with leaders, boards and organisations facing challenges where people, technology, ways of working and organisational systems interact.
You don’t need to know what the intervention or solution should be. We can start with the problem.
Problems I help withSocio-technical approachHow I workResearch advisoryEngagements
Start with the problem
Complex organisational problems rarely fit neatly into a single category.
A question about hybrid working might also be about management practices, technology, office design, job design or culture. Introducing AI can change tasks, roles, relationships and skills as well as the technology people use. A new workplace can create opportunities for different ways of working, but only if the wider organisational system supports them.
My approach combines organisational psychology, socio-technical systems thinking and evidence from research and practice to understand these interactions.
The aim is not to apply a standard solution. It is to understand the problem more fully, question assumptions and help design practical ways forward.
Problems I can help with
Hybrid and future ways of working
“Our hybrid arrangements have evolved rather than been designed. How do we make them fit for the future?”
Hybrid working is more than deciding how many days people should spend in an office. Effective arrangements depend on how tasks, management practices, technology, workplaces, policies and individual needs fit together.
I can help organisations identify where friction or opportunity exists, review current arrangements and intentionally design a hybrid model that supports both people and organisational outcomes.
Workplace and work design
“We’re changing our workplace. How do we make sure its design reflects how people actually need to work?”
Physical workplaces shape interaction, behaviour and experience, but their design cannot be separated from the work, technology and organisational practices they support.
I can help organisations understand user requirements, design meaningful employee participation and examine the organisational implications of proposed workplace designs.
My role is not to replace architects or workplace designers. It is to bring an organisational psychology and socio-technical perspective that connects decisions about space with decisions about work.
AI, technology and work
“We’re introducing AI or new technology. How should the work around it be designed?”
Technology implementation is also a work-design problem. Introducing AI, automation or other technologies can change tasks, roles, skills, relationships, decision-making and the experience of work.
A socio-technical approach considers the whole system: what already works well, what technology could enable, what people need to do and how work might be designed differently.
I can help organisations involve the people who understand the work, explore the wider changes needed and design effective and responsible ways for people and technology to work together.
Culture, values and change
“We’ve articulated our values. How do we make them meaningful in everyday organisational life?”
Values become meaningful through behaviour and the systems, processes and decisions that shape everyday work.
Drawing on organisational psychology and my practical experience of values development and organisational change, I can help organisations involve their people, define what values mean in practice and translate them into meaningful behavioural expectations.
This can include values and behaviour frameworks, participation and engagement, and examining whether organisational practices reinforce—or undermine—the behaviours an organisation is seeking to encourage.
Looking at the whole system
The way we organise work is a matter of design, not inevitability.
Socio-technical systems thinking provides a way of understanding work as an interconnected system rather than treating people, technology or organisational structures separately.
Goals
What the organisation and its people are trying to achieve, including priorities, intended outcomes and how success is understood.
People
Capabilities, needs, roles, relationships, behaviour and experience.
Culture
Values, assumptions, expectations and norms that shape how people behave and how work happens.
Processes
Tasks, workflows, procedures, coordination and the ways work gets done.
Technology
The tools and systems that enable, constrain or reshape work.
Infrastructure
The physical and digital environments, spaces and resources within which work happens.
The important questions often concern the relationships between them.
Changing one part of the system can create consequences elsewhere. Understanding those interactions helps identify risks, opportunities and unintended consequences before jumping to a solution.
This six-part view of organisations draws on an established socio-technical systems framework that I have used and developed with colleagues through research and applied work.
Read more about the framework and its application in Davis et al. (2014).
How I work
There isn’t a standard consulting package. The approach depends on the problem.
System mapping and diagnosis
Making the different elements of a problem and their relationships visible, identifying areas of friction and questioning assumptions about how things currently work.
Socio-technical scenarios
Using structured scenario methods to help stakeholders explore alternative ways of working and examine their potential benefits, risks, dependencies and unintended consequences.
Participative design
Bringing the experience and knowledge of the people who do the work into the design process rather than treating engagement as something that happens after decisions have been made.
Evidence and research
Bringing relevant research evidence, organisational data and appropriate research methods to the problem to test assumptions and inform decisions.
Facilitation
Convening different perspectives and creating structured conversations that help groups understand problems, explore alternatives and develop shared ways forward.
Research and evidence advisory
Some questions need a more focused research contribution.
I can provide independent academic and methodological input where organisations, consultancies or leadership teams need evidence to inform a decision or strengthen their own research and evaluation.
This might include:
- a focused review of evidence on a particular question;
- an expert briefing or advisory note;
- review of an internal research or evaluation plan;
- advice on research design, methods or measurement;
- interpretation of evidence and its implications for practice.
These can be relatively small commissions where an independent expert perspective is more useful than a larger consulting engagement.
What an engagement might look like
Strategic Advisory is deliberately flexible.
A focused conversation or advisory session
An independent perspective on an important question or decision.
A workshop
A facilitated session using evidence, system mapping or scenario approaches to explore a problem with a leadership team or wider group.
A short review
A focused examination of evidence, existing arrangements or a proposed design, resulting in practical observations and recommendations.
A design process
A series of facilitated activities involving different stakeholders to understand requirements, explore alternatives and develop a way forward.
Ongoing expert input
Selective advisory support alongside an organisation’s own change, design or research process.
The objective is not to create a large consulting programme where one isn’t needed. It is to provide the right level of expert input for the problem.
Professor Matthew Davis is a Chartered Psychologist and Professor of Organisational Psychology with nearly twenty years’ experience researching work and working with organisations. His work brings together organisational psychology, socio-technical systems thinking, research and practical experience.
Working through a design challenge?
You don’t need to have defined the solution—or even be certain exactly where the problem sits.
If you’re reconsidering how your organisation works, introducing new technology, changing your workplace or trying to make an existing way of working work better, we can start by exploring the problem.