The world puts so much work before us! And, to this work, We come with open hearts, minds, and hands!
S4F.Solutions™ offers a tested framework that defines the education, experience, research, thinking, and advocacy needed to realize impacts. This framework is the mechanism of action connecting and integrating processes to achieve value for money for donors and beneficiaries.
Why now?
Continuing Conflicts, Wars by Proxy, Natural Disasters, Collapsing Ecosystems — these Existential Threats multiply the collateral damage affecting millions.
Other millions offer to help, but their efforts too often fall flat or fail to reach their goal. Donated resources — in cash, materials, or kind — are diminished by delivery systems that are dysfunctional, obsolete, and constructed in silos.
The disenfranchised and marginalized peoples need and deserve much better. Having been in those trenches, having trained to improve things, and having been honored for our work, we seek to ease, relieve, and reduce suffering by targeting human-centered solutions.
What’s new?
Unlike traditional consultancy firms, S4F is a results-based solutions provider rather than deliverables client handover model. We are solely focused on ensuring that client investments achieve their desired results, not just activities or outputs.
S4F.Solutions™ bridges the gap between client “whys” and “whats” with our “know-how” expertise. The S4F.Solutions™ framework begins with innovative thinking, introduces innovative tools and methodologies, and produces innovative impacts.
Our approach rejects the legacy of supply chain plans. Instead, we embrace holistic strategies drawn from co-collaborative work in Design and Systems Thinking disciplines. We replace the ineffective linearity of traditional planning with the dynamic continuity born of Design, Systems, and Agile Thinking to bridge the gaps between intent and achievement. It uses the Theory of Change under MER2L scrutiny to generate capabilities that produce benefits with significant impacts.
What’s different?
Our solutions enable and empower the synergy between intent and actualization, making it Fit for Purpose, Fit to Use, Fit to Context, and Fit in Time. Convinced there is no silver bullet, super snake oil, or universal wrench, we also know systems thinking, human-centered design, agile methodology, and more cannot address today’s complex issues alone.
Our S4F approach is a Penta-component framework that acts as:
A Systems Thinking delivery framework
A Strategic-Execution Framework translating strategy into sustainable benefit realization and results;
A Problem-Solving Methodology that links intended changes, benefits, and strategic objectives;
A Sustainable Systems-Strengthening Framework that balances business-as-usual and investments in transformational change; and
The oversight of MER2L (Monitoring, Evaluating, Research, Reporting, and Learning) scrutiny.
The framework has 5 phases (as shown below) – systems review, planning & alignment, delivery & change management, innovative solutions, and sustainment, along with 20 associated steps across the phases.
What can it do?
S4F.Solutions™ is not only about “doing things right” but, more importantly, about “doing the right things.” In this role, we act as an integrator, enabler, facilitator, and mentor for organizations seeking to reduce waste, create highly reliable systems, promote resilience, and continuously improve. The S4F.Solutions™ framework has several characteristic virtues:
Adapted to the social impact sector,
Interactive process of discovery,
Collective intelligence consolidation,
Lean prototyping, and
Real-time validation and learning.
An Integrated Framework, it combines systems thinking with agile design thinking, lean human experience, human-centered design, implementation & change management, and growth hacking.
The integrated gears shown above suggest the continuous improvement and sustainability in a system that links “social investments” and “envisioned impact” more effectively and efficiently. The right gear includes the originators: financial resources, goodwill and commitment, technology and innovation, organizational best practices, calendar concerns, and formal systems.
This portfolio meshes with two gears. The one at the top includes the strengths represented by agility, enabling bureaucracy, resilience, integrated system of systems, and high-potential organizations. The gear at the bottom consists of the core processes that embrace and reduce the six originators to five actions: System Review, Planning & Alignment, Delivery & Change Management, Innovative Solutions, and Sustainment surrounded by MER2L stewardship.
As these systems turn, they deliver multiplied Results. Specifically, they create Capabilities that shape Benefits that actualize desired Impacts.
As pictured here, the S4F.Solutions™ framework reflects the thought and work involved in a fluid dynamic, a framework creating a resilient and sustainable flow, ensuring satisfaction along its course. Success does depend on the meshing of gears.
Who benefits?
Our S4F framework is an enabler for all social actors including bilateral donors, multilateral actors, ministry-level decision-makers, for-profit, INGOs, NGOs, CSO, Institutes, regulators, large health and social service systems, and networks. With our framework, our clients can build internal capacity to leverage interdependencies, reduce redundancies, promote efficiencies, and create sustainable improvements. Clients who benefit most from the S4F.Solutions™ approach have:
Strong mandates and drivers for transformational change and measurable outcomes;
Clear strategies and objectives to achieve their desired goals; and
Accountability to deliver value for money with sustainable results.
S4F components can be parsed within existing programs to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and economy.
What to do?
As part of the framework toolbox, we offer strategies, tools, benchmark metrics, and assessment toolkits to strengthen the pursuit of The Journey to Self-Reliance and the UN’s Sustainable Developmental Goals.
S4F’s framework is not a single tool. It integrates the holistic disciplines of Design Thinking, Systems of Systems Thinking, and Agile tribes. The framework is an enabling ecosystem itself where diverse interests are weighted and served. It creates a self-improving dynamic to contain and resolve dynamic problems.
Finally, we understand each crisis is unique and stand ready to customize our response. Please describe your problem and let us answer your questions.