View across rolling green farmland and scattered trees towards a distant range of blue-tinged mountains under a dramatic sky of thick, layered clou

Close-up of bright yellow gorse flowers in the foreground with sunlit green hills, scattered trees, and distant mountains beneath a blue sky filled with puffy white clouds.

From today’s 7 Mike walk from Llanfair Talhaiarn with views of Eryri. #northwales

Four Months, One Living Strategy Reflections from Facilitating GI-ESCR’s Next Chapter In mid-2025, FabRiders had the privilege of guiding the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR) through an ambitious, whirlwind strategy process. The project brief was a bit daunting: create a truly participatory, deeply thoughtful organisational strategy in under four months in a context shaped by uncertainty, stretched resources, and a rapidly changing world.

Many strategies die between meetings. GI‑ESCR’s 2026–2030 “living strategy” is doing the opposite. In under four months, FabRiders worked with their team to build a staff‑owned, participatory process that turned strategic planning into shared power in practice.

Learn more about how we did it

I’ll be there! Looking forward to running a session for Global Partners Digital on a next generation Human Rights Impact Assessment Toolkit, along with my own session on Facilitative Leadership. Are you going? Wanna meet up?

FabUpdate, April 2026: Strategy, Big Tech, RightsCon and Welsh A lot of what we do at FabRiders sits at an intersection that doesn't always have a tidy name: helping organisations think well together, make better decisions about power, and build the capacity to act on both. This issue covers strategy design, collective tech migration, facilitation at RightsCon, the Collective Power Playbook — and, in the background, our ongoing attempts to learn Welsh.

Get caught up on all things FabRider: What we've been working on, what we're reading, and where you can find us.

Make Orwell Fiction Again

Consider all the other things that are part of our collective imagination that we could change if we decide collectively that they don’t really work for us:


- Laws
- Borders
- Money
- Gender

So many things we’ve imagined into being that we can change if we agree that they no longer serve us.

Is time a figment of our imaginations? Cosmologists and physicists come up empty handed when they attempt to pin down time. So what, exactly, is it?

PSA: Since Europe changed its clocks last night. Let’s just consider that Time might just be a figment of our collective imagination, and we just agreed to change the clocks so it better suits us.

www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Six years ago, I ran the first Session Design Lab. It was meant to be in‑person in London, then the pandemic hit, and we flipped it online. No one asked for a refund. Since then, it’s become a global online lab for participant‑centred facilitation. More:
www.fabriders.net/session-desi...

Let us not forget: it’s not the connection, it’s the profit-driven algorithms that are doing the damage.

If you watch Melania with a lens of “sequel to Zone of Interest”, it totally works.

The Session Design Lab - FabRiders Improve your offline and online training and facilitation skills at The Session Design Lab.

Holding space in uncertain times matters. We’re running our 27th Session Design Lab on March 24–25 (online, pay‑what‑you‑can) for civil society/NGO conveners who want participant‑centred, solidarity‑building sessions. Join us:
www.fabriders.net/session-desi...

Strategy Is Hard – and Even Harder in Isolation - FabRiders Strategy is hard – and even harder in isolation. This post explores how competitive culture pushes organisations to do strategy alone, and why sharing strategy with peers and stakeholders builds stron...

Too many organisations are pushed to do strategy in isolation, competing for profile and funding. This new piece looks at how to resist that and design a strategy with peers and stakeholders instead: www.fabriders.net/strategy-is-...

Strategy Is Hard – and Even Harder in Isolation Final Takeaways from the Strategy Design Festival Across the Strategy Design Festival, one message kept surfacing in quiet conversations over breaks and in the closing circle: the hardest strategy work isn’t the frameworks – it’s doing it without feeling alone. On paper, most organisations have access to plenty of tools: theories of change, canvases, logframes, OKRs, and strategic plans. In practice, people kept saying some version of: “We kind of know…

Strategy Is Hard – and Even Harder in Isolation

Final Takeaways from the Strategy Design Festival Across the Strategy Design Festival, one message kept surfacing in quiet conversations over breaks and in the closing circle: the hardest strategy work isn’t the frameworks – it’s doing it without…

Strategy Design: A Cohort for Civil Society Leaders - FabRiders Co-develop dynamic, responsive strategic plans alongside civil society peers. FabRiders’ Strategy Design cohorts are designed for civil society leaders and practitioners who need to develop or update ...

We’ve had such strong global interest in our Strategy Design Cohort for civil society leaders that we’re now running two parallel online groups on Thursdays at 10am and 4pm UK time.

Learn more and apply here: www.fabriders.net/strategy-des...

Keeping Strategy Alive and Real More takeaways from The Strategy Design Festival In the first post from the Strategy Design Festival, we argued that strategy is a verb, not a document. In the second, we suggested that most “theories of change” are really untested stories, and offered ways to turn them into living hypotheses. In the third, we made the case that strategy is ALWAYS about power…

Many strategies die between meetings. Learn practical ways to make strategy a staff‑owned, everyday practice instead of a static document.

Strategy Design: A Cohort for Civil Society Leaders - FabRiders Co-develop dynamic, responsive strategic plans alongside civil society peers. FabRiders’ Strategy Design cohorts are designed for civil society leaders and practitioners who need to develop or update ...

If you’re wrestling with strategy questions in your organisation, you might be interested in this Strategy Design cohort we're running – main group at 10am UK, and a potential 4pm UK second cohort www.fabriders.net/strategy-des...

I’d like to think that the only difference between Americans and Europeans is that Americans change their clocks on the first weekend of March and Europeans change their clocks on the last weekend of March….

but I’m beginning to suspect it's much more than that.

Strategy Is Always About Power – Whether You Name It or Not More takeaways from The Strategy Design Festival In the first post from the Strategy Design Festival, we argued that strategy needs to be treated as a verb, not a document. In the second, we suggested that most “theories of change” are really untested stories, and offered ways to turn them into living hypotheses. This third piece zooms in on a thread that ran underneath both: strategy is always about power, whether we name it or not.

Your strategy probably talks about shifting power externally – but what about inside your organisation? This post unpacks hidden power in strategy and how to address it.

Your Theory of Change Isn’t a Theory More Takeaways from The Strategy Design Festival Most of us talk about our “theory of change” as if it were a fixed truth. In practice, it’s often a polished narrative on a slide deck, respectable enough to show a funder, but not quite sharp enough to shape what happens on a Tuesday afternoon. At the Strategy Design Festival, this gap was one of the main frustrations people named: “We have a theory of change, but it doesn’t actually help us make strategic decisions.” In our…

Your Theory of Change Isn’t a Theory

More Takeaways from The Strategy Design Festival Most of us talk about our “theory of change” as if it were a fixed truth. In practice, it’s often a polished narrative on a slide deck, respectable enough to show a funder, but not quite sharp enough to shape…

Strategy Design: A Cohort for Civil Society Leaders

Co-develop dynamic, responsive strategic plans alongside civil society peers. FabRiders’ Strategy Design cohorts are designed for civil society leaders and practitioners who need to develop or update their organisational or program strategies.…

Strategy is a verb, not a document In January, we gathered a room of civil society leaders, organisers and strategists for the very first Strategy Design Festival in London. It was a day to step away from the day‑to‑day and ask a simple but unsettling question: What if we treated strategy less like a document and more like a living practice?

Strategy is a verb, not a document

In January, we gathered a room of civil society leaders, organisers and strategists for the very first Strategy Design Festival in London. It was a day to step away from the day‑to‑day and ask a simple but unsettling question: What if we treated strategy less…

What do we want? To stop using Google Docs! When do we want it? TBH It’s complicated. This edition of the FabBlog is built around an Internet Exchange piece we wrote with the Rise Against Big Tech Coalition: “What Do We Want? To Stop Using Google Docs!” It’s about why our movements need to talk honestly about the tools we rely on, and what it really takes to move beyond them. When do we want it?

What do we want? To stop using Google Docs! When do we want it? TBH It’s complicated.

This edition of the FabBlog is built around an Internet Exchange piece we wrote with the Rise Against Big Tech Coalition: “What Do We Want? To Stop Using Google Docs!” It’s about why our movements need to talk…

A board‑and‑CEO‑only strategy process produces a glossy PDF that’s dead on arrival.

Org after org at the Festival said they want strategy to be a live, ongoing practice of collective power – something you negotiate in public, not announce from the top.

No one was arguing against leadership.

What people wanted was shared strategic authorship: communities, members, young people and staff pulled into the centre of how priorities are set, not just consulted after the fact

Two weeks ago, at The Strategy Design Festival, we covered the walls and floors with theories of change and stakeholder maps.

A pattern jumped out: strategy power lives with boards, CEOs and funders – while staff, communities and movements mostly orbit the edges.

R.I.P Sly Dunbar. Your percussion was at the heart of all the tracks I adored in my 20s and beyond. song.link/i/1442364205

Huge thanks to everyone who came, shared generously and stretched their assumptions about what strategy can be. If you’d like to join a future Strategy Design Festival or hear about follow‑up sessions, reply here or DM me.

We also heard a clear call for “more”: time to dive deeper into implementation, organisational culture and sector‑specific challenges, plus follow‑up resources and clinics to keep the momentum going.

A big theme was doing strategy with communities, not to them: honest conversations about collaboration, shifting power and designing processes that centre the people most affected by strategic decisions