ROLLER STRATEGIES

ROLLER STRATEGIES is a professional services firm focused on next-gen solutions to the world’s most complex challenges. We believe that people want to solve their own problems. We help them figure out how.

We don’t sell time. Our primary outputs are not reports. Instead, we sell outcomes.

Each client engagement will be delivered by a team of practitioners with 50,000+ hours of experience in complex challenges.

We have spent 15 years testing, developing and selling a practice for addressing complex challenges.

Our Model

One of the key reasons we set up Roller Strategies was a belief that consulting as a business model is bankrupt. 

The business model of consulting is to sell time to clients. Typically consultants estimate the days of input required and then apply a day-rate. Our experience has been that a day-rate model for work that is complex and emergent falls short in two ways:

1) The number of days estimated is always too low. A higher estimate usually results in a "No" response, so in order to make the sale consultants are forced to underestimate days. This leads to the practice of “upselling,” where consultants are constantly looking to expand the scope of their work.

2) The amount of days invested is an input and not an output or outcome.. 

At Roller Strategies, we take a different approach. We have created a business model much better suited to situations of emergence and complexity. 

We are different in the following key ways.

We bring experienced, dedicated teams. 

In a traditional consulting model, the bulk of the work is done by junior and inexperienced consultants, with senior consultants putting in the least amount of time. We invert this model. The 10,000-hour rule suggests that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become world-class. We typically deploy teams with 50,000+ hours of experience at addressing complex challenges. This means our teams bring world-class talent to challenges that are seriously unpredictable and complex.

We offer fixed-cost contracts which are based on the deliverables a client requires. 

We do not do "day-rate" consulting. The context and requirements on the ground determine the size of our teams. Should there be an emergent requirement for more people on the ground, then we will provide those people without asking for more money. If we are ineffective we will need more people and our margins decrease. If we are effective and need less people then our margins are larger.

This means we are co-sharing risk and have skin-in- the-game with every engagement, unlike a traditional consulting approach. We do not offer "payment-by-results," as we believe this model is also deeply flawed. 

We come in with a clear exit strategy, a clear capability-building model, and a commitment to understanding local context.

Our primary job is to ensure the formation of indigenous, local teams that can design and implement effective responses to complex social challenges. We are designing interventions for an exit. We would like to work with clients to come up with a fixed cost, multi-year contract that includes a significant capability-building model.

Typically, consultants are "in-and- out” and do not have the scope or timeframe to build a real understanding of the context. We believe this approach is deeply flawed and largely dysfunctional. Context matters.