Situation
Our client, the founder of a strategy consulting firm, was facing a common but deeply limiting challenge: while highly visionary, they had become the bottleneck to innovation. Every project, deliverable, and decision required their personal involvement and approval. The team was being held to a rigid, founder-defined creative process that left little room for independent thinking or evolution. Team members struggled to exercise their own expertise, felt creatively stifled, and developed an overreliance on collaborative validation for even minor decisions. This not only slowed project timelines but also eroded confidence and led to growing emotional burnout across the team.
What began as an effort to maintain quality had, over time, unintentionally suppressed the very creative problem-solving culture the firm needed to thrive.
Solution
With guidance from Proxxy, the leadership team took deliberate steps to reorient both accountability and creative ownership across the organization, starting from the top. The founder acknowledged the dysfunction candidly, creating space for an honest reset.
Rather than defining every step of execution, leadership re-centered the firm’s operating model around its core values, using these as the shared framework for defining “good work.” Success metrics were co-defined at the outset of each client engagement, giving project leads clear guardrails and full ownership over delivering outcomes.
One of the most pivotal shifts came from redefining how deliverables were evaluated. Leadership removed the narrow constraints of what a deliverable should look like, and instead aligned teams around what a deliverable should accomplish. This reframing unlocked a wave of creativity. Instead of defaulting to traditional written reports, project teams began experimenting with a wider range of packaging formats, including illustrative booklets, video documentaries, interactive dashboards, and narrative-rich visual presentations. Clients quickly took notice of the more distinctive, engaging, and tailored nature of these outputs.
Accountability for project execution was fully shifted to the assigned project leads. A tiered approval matrix using 30/60/90 milestone reviews ensured projects remained on track while eliminating unnecessary micro-approvals. Bi-weekly sprint cadences and peer reviews drove steady momentum, built confidence across the team, and allowed issues to surface early while still maintaining creative flexibility.
To enable this independence, leadership invested in building a centralized internal knowledge hub stocked with templates, frameworks, reference guides, and proven work samples. This resource center empowered teams to move forward independently while maintaining high standards and consistency.
Culturally, leadership reinforced that innovation wasn’t about perfection. The focus was on solving client problems in new, valuable ways. Teams were encouraged to take smart risks, articulate their rationale, and own both the process and the outcomes of their work.
Outcome
The firm experienced a revitalization of its creative culture. Teams delivered more strategically robust and visually distinctive work, with richer narratives and more innovative formats that elevated client engagement. Presentations became not only more creative but also more impactful, while project timelines remained on track.
Project leads confidently owned their work, defended their decisions, and led client engagements with greater authority, without relying on founder approvals at every turn. The founder’s role evolved from approver to strategic mentor, freeing leadership capacity while preserving alignment to core quality standards.
Most importantly, clients noticed the difference. The diverse, elevated packaging of deliverables became a differentiator, with several clients explicitly recognizing the firm’s unique approach to strategy communication.
By releasing control from the top, leadership created the space for innovation to thrive. The firm maintained its commitment to quality while gaining agility, resilience, and a stronger foundation for scalable, differentiated growth.
