How Open collaborates with organisations

One thing we’ve learned after working with organisations for more than 20 years is this: change rarely belongs to just one team. 

A new platform might come from IT, a culture shift might start in HR, and a strategy is usually defined by leadership. But once change begins, it quickly spreads across the organisation. Leaders need to explain the direction in a way that makes sense. Teams are expected to work differently. New tools must be adopted. And across it all, people are trying to understand how everything connects. 

That’s why at Open, we don’t sit within a single function. We work across the organisation, embedding where change is actually happening. 

Even though we are a small team, we bring together experienced consultants with deep expertise across the key disciplines involved in transformation. This allows us to step into different parts of the organisation as needed, not as generalists, but as specialists who understand the realities and pressures of each area. 

From strategy to everyday practice 

We often work closely with leadership teams during key moments of change. When a new strategy is introduced, we help shape the narrative and prepare leaders for how to communicate it. This might be in town halls, leadership offsites or smaller team settings. 

We translate high-level strategy into clear, tangible messaging and develop practical tools that help leaders communicate with confidence and consistency. 

At the same time, we collaborate with HR to ensure the employee experience supports the change. This can include designing leader guides for difficult conversations, running workshops that help teams navigate new ways of working, or aligning engagement initiatives with the broader transformation. 

The focus is always the same: making change feel understandable and manageable in people’s day-to-day work. 

Our work with IT is equally hands-on. When new platforms or tools are rolled out, adoption is often the hardest part. We support this through communication and activation efforts that go beyond training. This ranges from explaining why the tool exists to developing use cases that feel relevant to different roles. 

In many cases, we also help identify and activate internal champions who can drive adoption from within their teams. 

Connecting the dots across functions 

Across both on-site and off-site work, our role is to connect the dots. Leadership sets direction. HR shapes culture. IT enables technology. Communications helps people understand what it all means. 

Because we bring expertise across these areas, we can work fluidly between functions and help create alignment where it often breaks down. When strategy, culture, technology and communication move together, transformation becomes far easier to navigate. 

That’s how we embed. Not as an external voice, but as a partner working alongside teams - flexing our expertise where it’s needed - to move transformation forward, together.