Consultancy 2
What is really going on here?
draw on more language to meet readers at the intersection of their challenges and our approach
Tavistock Institute consultants will help you and your team to work with visible and beneath-the-surface difficulties and challenges that might affect your organisation’s performance, growth or change and the patterns of behaviour, authority and feeling that shape whether a system works or fails.
Our consultants draw on a repertoire of approaches, combined and sequenced in response to what the work itself demands. We do not arrive with a fixed methodology. We arrive with a set of disciplines that we bring to bear as the situation unfolds.
about our consultants
[We study how people relate in organisations] and focus on what you tell us and what you might not see: formal structures and informal ones, conscious decisions and the unconscious forces that drive them.
Systems psychodynamic analysis
We attend to the anxiety moving through a system, the unspoken rules about authority and power, the history that shapes what can and cannot be said. This is the analytical lens through which we make sense of what we observe.
Diagnostic inquiry
Through structured interviews, ethnographic observation, document analysis, and focus groups, we build a picture of what is actually happening — another layer of understanding, often distinctly different to what the organisation believes about itself. We will be looking for what is latent as much as what is visible.
Experiential learning
Simulations, intergroup events and structured group processes make the dynamics of the organisation visible and workable in real time, as they occur. Participants do not learn about group dynamics; they encounter them directly and develop the capacity to work with what they find.
Social dreaming
Through the sharing and association of dreams in a matrix setting, material that lies below the level of conscious organisational life becomes available for thinking and sense-making.
Action learning
We work alongside your team as co-investigators, not distant observers. Action learning at TIHR is a blend of inquiry and intervention, grounded in organisational learning and practical application. Through iterative cycles of planning, acting, observing and reflecting, we surface and address the hidden dynamics that often hinder change: the unspoken tensions, defensive routines and anxieties about uncertainty.
We explore the relationship between the individual, the group, and the wider organisational system. Combining systems thinking with depth psychology, we’ve supported change in mining industries, the EU’s clothing sector, health leadership teams and global IT companies. Our teams understand the unconscious processes influencing behaviour and decision-making and build your capacity to think clearly under pressure and create lasting transformation.
What is Action Research?
Menzies, I. E. P. (1960). A Case-Study in the Functioning of Social Systems as a Defence against Anxiety
Role and authority consultation
What are the expectations placed on the people in this system? What authority are they carrying and what gets in the way of using it? What does the system need from them that they may not yet be providing? Particularly valuable for leaders navigating significant change or transition.
Arts and organisations
Part of TIHR’s transdisciplinary character and its long engagement with the arts as a way of knowing organisations from the inside.
Our arts practices offer ways of knowing that support complex change processes and deepen understanding.
We work with performance, visual and literature expression to help us with difficult emotions, uncertainty, power and the unspoken dynamics that shape organisations and systems.
Much of our work deals with ambiguity and relational complexity.
Developmental evaluation
We evaluate in real-time as interventions unfold, because complex initiatives don't wait for neat endpoints to adapt and learn. We facilitate learning and reflection to support adaptive decision-making through iterative inquiry. Rigorous evidence-gathering takes place, enabling innovations to evolve intelligently as contexts shift and insights surface.
The evaluation is part of the innovation process, not a judgement delivered afterwards. Our developmental evaluation with international social change organisations facilitated learning spaces as each adapted wellbeing interventions to their unique cultural contexts.
Who we work with and what we work on
We work with senior leaders, leadership teams, whole organisations and complex multi-agency systems across the private, public and third sectors, in the UK and internationally.
Whatever the challenge you bring to us, we begin with a process of discovery to see what is actually happening.
Graphic spiral HERE
Culture and cultural change, including the hidden dynamics that go beyond the surface that staff surveys only scratch
Leadership development and ways that leaders can engage with the unconscious expectations placed on leaders
Organisational design, including the emotional and relational dimensions of restructuring
Cross-boundary collaboration between teams, organisations or whole systems
Human dynamics in the context of AI and digital transformation
Board dynamics and governance
Change where previous change efforts are stalling or have created new problems
NEW FORM
Tell us what you’re grappling with
If you are navigating something difficult and want to explore whether the Tavistock Institute’s consultancy might help, we would like to hear from you.
[EOI FORM] Your name Organisation Your role Sector [dropdown: private / public / third sector / other] Tell us briefly what you are working with [free text] [Submit — feeds directly to Fatima Kamate, Consulting and Research Manager]