Helping teams
untangle the tricky stuff
together.
Some business challenges are just knottier than others.
They don’t need another quick fix. They need different thinking.
Tangle Works creates the space to step back, work out what’s really tangled and move things forward.
Workshops and strategy days
for the knotty business challenges that resist normal meetings.
Typical Tangles we see
The Recurring Tangle
The same issues keep resurfacing.
The team is constantly firefighting and dealing with the latest version of the problem, but never seems to have the time or space to step back and tackle what’s underneath it.
The Everything Tangle
Everything feels important and urgent. There are too many priorities, too many competing demands. The challenge is knowing where to focus first.
The Many Angles Tangle
“We’re all looking at the same thing, but we’re not seeing the same thing.”
Different teams often have different perspectives on the same issue. The challenge is to build a shared understanding so you’re not all pulling in different directions.
The Foggy Tangle
It’s hard to figure out what’s actually going on.
There's too much in the way: different data sources, competing opinions, past history, or just general noise. It makes it tough to see clearly where to start.
The Shift Tangle
Markets shift, customer behaviour changes, regulations evolve and businesses merge. Sometimes you can see a shift coming and need to prepare for it. Sometimes you drift into it without noticing, when the things that used to work don’t work any more.
The challenge is knowing what needs to change, what should be protected, and what you’ve stopped questioning.
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Don't pull harder,
Untangle it.
When something's tangled, pulling harder rarely helps. The trick is to work out which knot to tackle first.
We help you identify the knot that is going to be the most valuable to crack first: the one that could make the biggest difference to the business and might even loosen a few others along the way.
Then we create the space to really work on it: we challenge your thinking, pull on different threads, explore different possibilities and solutions that could genuinely change the situation.
And we don't just leave the thinking on the wall when the workshop finishes. The aim is to leave with decisions made and actions underway.
Got a strategy day or offsite on the horizon?
That’s often the perfect time to bring me in.
You've decided it's time to step away from the day-to-day, and you've probably got a good idea of who needs to be there.
Leave the rest to me.
I’ll design and run it, so you don't have to choose between leading the conversation and being part of it.
We can use the time to get stuck into something that really matters.
About Alice
I'm Alice, founder of Tangle Works and Chief Untangler.
For most of my career, I've been the person people call when something has got complicated.
A client relationship has gone wrong, different teams aren't working together, a brief isn't quite getting to the heart of the problem or an important project is under pressure with everyone having a different view of what needs to happen next.
I've spent more than 20 years working as a strategist and planner in the media and advertising industries, tackling complex challenges for some of the world’s biggest brands, including L'Oréal, British Airways, Aviva and Nestlé. I've worked with more than 100 brands across 14 diverse categories, from cheese to finance, mascara to software, and led large, multi-functional teams to create award-winning work.
I've taken on accounts where relationships between agencies had fallen apart and turned them back into strong, collaborative client partnerships. I've built teams around huge accounts that had been won with barely enough people to service them. I've had entire briefs change halfway through presentations and campaigns ripped up overnight when something completely outside our control has gone wrong.
Having been there myself, I know how hard it can be to step back from the day-to-day when you're right in the middle of it.
What I've always enjoyed most is working out what's really going on.
Looking at a situation from different perspectives, joining up the dots that other people can't quite see and asking the questions that haven't been asked.
The best part isn't just cracking the problem. It's what happens afterwards, when the tension goes out of the room, people feel listened to and everyone understands what they're doing and why. Something that had been sitting at the top of everyone's problem pile suddenly isn't a problem any more (it might even be an opportunity!).
And it's why I set up Tangle Works: to help teams step out of the day-to-day, work out what's really tangled, and figure out what is worth untangling.
Find Alice on LinkedIn
Some of the brands Alice has helped...
Some challenges need a workshop to get things moving, others need someone in the room for longer.
Sometimes a tangle needs more than a day
It might be a project that doesn't sit neatly within one department, where different teams, priorities or pieces of work need joining up. Or it might simply be something that needs an experienced person to take on because you don't have the time, headspace or expertise to tackle it yourself.
I also work with founders and leadership teams on longer-term projects, often on a fractional basis. Bringing senior strategic experience, an outside perspective and the ability to get stuck into both the thinking and the doing.
If you've got something that needs more than a workshop, let's talk.
