Hesse Partners
Hesse Partners is a facilitation and organisational development firm, not a published framework - a curated team of world-class facilitators who design and run retreats, forum programmes and leadership sessions to a client's brief, so the value sits in the outcome you name and the facilitator assigned to it, not a single fixed method.
Reach for this when…
- A board or leadership retreat needs to produce real decisions, not just a change of scenery.
- A forum or peer group (YPO, EO and similar) needs an outside facilitator who can hold a genuinely courageous conversation.
- You want a session designed around your specific tension, not run off a generic template agenda.
How to run it
- Name the real outcome or tension the session needs to produce, not just the topic.
- Brief the facilitation team on that tension directly, including what's been avoided before.
- Let the assigned facilitator design and run the room to that brief.
- Debrief against the original outcome, not how the day felt.
A worked example
Situation. Sarah MacDonald runs a microfinance NGO in Halifax, Canada, and needed her board's annual retreat to produce a real decision, not just a change of scenery.
Applied. Sarah briefed the facilitation team on the tension the board kept dodging - loan default risk against growth targets - rather than asking for a generic strategy day.
Result. The retreat produced a written decision on risk appetite the board had avoided for two years, because the session was designed around that outcome, not a template agenda.
The catch
Facilitators are individually assigned, so quality and fit vary by who you get, and the firm's specific methodology isn't published for outside scrutiny - you're buying judgement and design skill, not a replicable public method. It also only works as well as the brief given; a vague brief still produces a well-run day that never touches the real issue.
A well-facilitated day that avoids the real tension is still avoidance - the facilitator can only design for the outcome you're honest enough to name.
Origin: Susan Hesse / Hesse Partners