Sarah Birken - The Xfactor Collective | Social Impact Specialist Community

Sarah Birken

Sarah Birken, Strategic Sensemaker Consultant

Communications, Leadership, People and Wellbeing, Strategy

LOCATION

Balmain, NSW, Australia
Works with clients nationally, internationally

Philosophy

My vision is of a world where bringing purpose and strategy to life through people, making them part of the every day, empowers and motivates organisations, leaders and teams to act with clarity, meaning and measurable impact to improve lives.

Specialisation and Services

Sarah Birken works with

INDIVIDUALS
Consultants, Directors, Executives, Researchers, Team Leaders

TEAMS
Boards, Committees, Communications, Corporate Social Responsibility, Executive, Management, Operations/Production

ORGANISATIONS
Community Foundations, Educational Organisations, Industry Associations, Membership Associations, Not For Profit, Professional Associations/hide}

BUSINESS
Accountants, B Corps, Contracted Agencies, Corporations, Family Owned, Professional Services, Purpose

GOVERNMENT
Agencies/Authorities

using these methods

offering these services

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with particular expertise in

Client Testimonials

"Thank you, thank you thank you! Your support, professionalism and quality of output is just extraordinary. I have worked with many consultants in my life but I can honestly say that I have never been as impressed as I am right now. The whole team this morning were quite literally in awe of what you have been able to help us achieve is such a short period of time…I am super impressed!"
Tim Mitchell-Adams, CEO ASG (Australian Scholarship Group)

"Firstly, can I say that as a result of Thursday’s session I’ve already received phone calls, emails or been approached by ALL participants letting me know how enthused they are by the work we have undertaken. They are genuinely excited and I think you could probably gauge from the discussions in the room, that that this is a real passion project for the Board and Management."
Head of Consumer Business, Sydney Swans Foundation

"I’d recommend Sarah to any organisation that wants to unpack exactly why they do what they do and what is really important to their business while sweeping everyone along on the journey." “2 years on from working with Sarah, we have an even better culture, there's a great vibe and team engagement, plus market perception is good. People are wanting to work at GWH over our competitors."
Jonathan Craig, Director - GWH

About Sarah Birken

Our Story

For the past 15 years, Sarah has guided and supported CEOs, Directors, HR Managers and Changemakers to bring their organisations' strategies to life through clarity, understanding, buy-in, adoption and action.

Sarah's early career—working for, or managing, global agencies and consultancies—gave her exposure to hundreds of strategies across broad categories.

Bringing Strategy to Life

Sarah founded her Strategic Sensemaking Consultancy in 2010 after recognising the need to empower organisations to live their strategy meaningfully every day. By translating strategies into the everyday and connecting people and teams to them, she gains buy-in at every level, resulting in peak team and business performance.

Sarah's core strength lies in bringing clarity to often complex or disparate strategies and creating one unifying construct everyone gets behind. She excels at tapping into the intrinsic passion and motivation of the people behind organisations, ensuring strategic storytelling is born out of relatable truth.

Certified Leadership Coach and CCE Tutor

An experienced, certified Leadership Coach, persuasive presenter and influential communicator, Sarah has written and facilitated over a hundred workshops for organisations across the retail, finance, technology, not-for-profit, medical, industry associations and professional services sectors.

She tutors Business Strategy and Leadership Course: How to Become a Purpose-Led Organisation at The University of Sydney Continuing Education, enabling her to take an active role in connecting people with their organisational Purpose.

Leaders from AMP, Transport of NSW, ANZ, Price Waterhouse Coopers and many organisations across technology, finance and service-based businesses have attended her course with success.

Knowledge Sharing and Mentoring

Ever curious and passionate about her subject, Sarah never stops learning and shares her knowledge through thought leadership articles and as a highly engaging event speaker. She is also an effective one-on-one mentor, coaching individuals in organisations on how to bring their strategies to life for continued growth and success.

Example clients and projects

GWH Property Development: Uncovered corporate DNA, Purpose, set Strategic Direction, united teams. Two years on, GWH is preferred employer in a highly competitive industry, are able to pivot through change.

Charterhouse Recruitment: Large-scale, 2-day, interactive workshop. Designed Strategic Framework adopted globally. Achieved Employer of Choice Awards in 2018 & 2019.

GPT Rouse Hill Town Centre: Achieved sought-after ‘buy-in’ from diverse teams for Strategic Project Direction and Framework. Approved first time, teams are moving forward with confidence.

Sydney Swans Foundation: Uncovered Purpose and Set Strategic Direction at Board Level.

Kolling Institute of Medical Research: Repositioned for relevance within the Royal North Shore Hospital and groups charged with Patient Care & Community Wellbeing.

Stillbirth Foundation: Strategic Direction and Repositioning impacted business model design that facilitated greater connect with caregivers and corporate fundraising.

Awards and achievements

Packaged Services

Strategy Review

AUD $ 2040.50

Your clients, customers, the economy or a pandemic, isn’t going to wait for your annual strategy meeting.

And it’s hard, in the constant change and busyness of the day to day, to stop working in your business to working on your business.

It requires an entirely different set of mental skills such as curiosity, ideation and sensemaking.

The trouble with most declarations of strategic direction is that they have the right ingredients, in the wrong order. The statements are nice sounding, but too long, too detailed; they’re simply not ‘pithy’ enough for people to remember.

Conversely, some statements are so loft they lose meaning, so they may be easier to remember but aren’t easy to action. That’s because the statements are too abstract and therefore obscure.

Ultimately, it all sounds great on paper for marketing, but isn’t great for steering, guiding or motivating the organisations or its people.

And the biggest problem, when thinking about ‘who you are’ and ‘where you’re going’, is that it is intangible and hard to define let alone articulate – which leads to a lot of ‘what’ we do and not ‘why we do’.

Which is why I have created a Strategy Review Package to help you kick-start the process of:

• defining your strategic direction with meaning and purpose
• coaching you and your leadership team to think outside the square,
• begin unboxing your organizations’ unique strengths – that are likely hidden from you!
• develop fresh ideas for opportunities
• to inform the tangible tactics that will keep your organization on track.

Over the last decade, I’ve reviewed the strategic direction and plans of hundreds of organizations.
I’ve seen a lot of sameness; where one organizations strategy could just as likely belong to their competitor, or even in a totally different industry business!

The goal must be a direction that drives a plan that’s unique to your organisation, meets consumer need and market opportunity, while leveraging your unique strengths and core capabilities.

Most often, leaders come to me because their organization is operating in an increasingly complex and ever-changing environment. As a result, a bland strategic direction simply won’t work hard enough to guide and differentiate their business; to flex, adapt, pivot and change without losing “who they are”, their organizations’ core DNA.

They’re struggling to rationalize complexity:
• bringing the different parts, services or divisions of their business under one single value proposition,
• unite diverse personalities with a common cause
• articulate technical complexities so that people “get it” and want it or want to be part of it
• unify teams across multiple sites or disciplines.

There’s enough complexity outside your business that requires your attention; it’s time to take a fresh look at strategy, to make sense of the inside so that you can continually respond, grow and succeed on the outside.

Inclusions:

If you haven’t outlined your strategic direction yet that’s okay; I can review your current marketing, pitches, proposals or presentations to support you to start designing your direction with confidence.

Say goodbye to long-winded emails, arduous strategy sessions and nit-picking over words.

Strategy Review Package What’s included:

• Free no-obligation 1-hour initial consultation.
• Strategy review of your current purpose, vision, mission, values and associated initiatives and tactics; supplied as a written report and video overview of opportunities and improvements.
• Provide you with critical questions for creative strategizing with your leadership team that will help you unpack the purpose and meaning for your organization.
• 2-hour virtual leadership summit to introduce findings, critical questions and an in-session exercise to help your team uncover unique strengths. OR
• Alternatively; I’ll custom design a strategy session exercise and provide you with 1 hour of consultative coaching to run the session yourself – includes objectives, instructions and timing plan.

Bonus material:
How to design a powerful purpose, vision, mission statement, where organizations commonly go wrong with values and how you can avoid the same mistakes.

If you choose to continue your journey with me, this fee is redeemable off future proposals for Strategic or Culture Sensemaking.

Evaluation,Strategy

Available Online,Teleconferencing,Video Conferencing
Suitable for Individuals,Teams,Organisations,Business
All prices include GST

Please fill in our SPECIALIST contact form below to enquire about this package

Translating strategy into meaningful everyday actions

AUD $ POA

Translate complex, big-picture business strategies into the every day throughout your organisation in meaningful ways. Align teams with your organisation's purpose and the critical roles they play in how your organisation improves lives.

Inclusions:

Deliverables
- Unique customised plan.
- Discovery assessment, using online, face-to-face interviews and research.
- Inclusive workshops for your teams.
- Action plan aligning people to purpose.
- Post-consultancy review.

Leadership,People and Wellbeing,Strategy

Available Face to Face
Suitable for Teams,Organisations,Government
All prices include GST

Please fill in our SPECIALIST contact form below to enquire about this package

Contact Sarah Birken

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