We help teams solve their toughest strategic challenges while they build collaboration muscle mass
Tradecraft Central is a boutique consultancy based in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on creating high-impact workshops and other experiences that help teams solve their toughest challenges while they build collaboration muscle mass.
Too many workshops are dull, repetitive, and unproductive. Ours are creative, energetic, and meaningful. At our live, in-person sessions, people get real—they laugh and argue (respectfully) and come to solutions together that they would never arrive at on Zoom, Slack, or email.
Drawing on methods in the best-selling book on how to design and facilitate great strategic conversations (Moments of Impact), we spent the past three decades honing our skills in leadership and management roles at market-leading consulting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and entrepreneurial start-ups.
The word “tradecraft” dates to the early 19th century and refers to the tools and tricks (or craft) of one’s trade, learned from deep experience. On this site, we share our favorite conversational frameworks for productive workshops on strategy, innovation, and team effectiveness—with helpful tips on how to use them.
Your team deserves a great—and productive—experience the next time they get together to solve problems
How we help
With a combined six decades worth of experience working in leading consulting firms, Fortune 500 companies, and well-funded startups, we bring to our clients the most advanced approaches to creative, collaborative problem solving—but with far greater agility and efficiency.
Our services include four core offerings, a set of standard, highly interactive talks, and several other additional options, all of which relate to our practice disciplines of strategy, innovation, and team effectiveness. (For perspective on these three disciplines, see the section on High-Impact Conversations.)
We bring six decades worth of experience in strategy, innovation, and team building
Who we are
After twenty years of marriage, living together but working apart, we’re giving our relationship the ultimate test by co-founding Tradecraft Central!
Between us, we’ve worked with leadership and management teams at more than 50 of the current Fortune 500 companies in dozens of industries, as well as organizations across the nonprofit and government sectors.
“Having a strategic conversation without a strong frame or two is like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box. It’s possible—but damn hard.”
From: Moments of Impact
How we think
A critical part of the tradecraft of designing great strategic conversations is identifying—or creating—a few strong frameworks to orient ourselves and focus our attention.
Why are conversational frameworks so critical? Because complex problems involve so many different, interconnected issues that they push our cognitive load beyond the limit. Put ten people in a room with twelve different opinions on a complex issue and no strong frameworks, and you’ve got a recipe for spinning your wheels without getting far.