GHOSTS & GAPS

Our flagship research methodology - Ghosts & Gaps - digs deep beneath the surface to reveal the hidden assumptions, legacy systems, and unseen dynamics that shape how systems and organisations really work - or don’t.

Ghosts & Gaps starts with an immersive deep dive - client data, desk research, lived experience, interviews with key stakeholders, even service walk-throughs - to understand how your system actually works, not just how it’s presumed to function.

Our discovery especially focus on overlooked spaces where intentions and outcomes diverge: where X + Y should = Z, but real-world complexities such as budget pressures, IT limitations, legacy issues, culture, behaviours and communication gaps mean things often don’t square up.

A key aspect of Ghosts & Gaps is our carefully curated discovery workshops that bring together the right people - not just the usual suspects - in a skilfully facilitated forum. By exploring the ‘gaps’ in process, service or delivery alongside the ‘ghosts’ - attitudes, beliefs, and hidden dynamics - we’re able to uncover meaningful insights that allow organisations to shift from surface solutions to real systems change.

In short, Ghosts & Gaps gets underneath the problem to uncover what those close to the issue often don’t know or can’t see - helping you identify the real levers for change.

These rich insights then pave the way for intelligent strategies that target attention in those places which will have the utmost leverage and the most enduring impact - whether that’s policy advisory, service improvement, organisational alignment, community engagement, or brokering knowledge exchange.  

GHOSTS & GAPS in ACTION

GETTING LAMBETH ‘RETROFIT READY’

A pre-emptive Ghosts & Gaps workshop to align Lambeth Borough Council’s internal departments and help teams become ‘retrofit ready’ in readiness for SHDF Wave 2.2 funding

A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO RETROFIT SKILLS

Mapping and analysing the retrofit skills system to identify the policy and funding issues, skills & training, market movements and other barriers inhibiting domestic retrofit skills development in the UK

DRIVING uptake of ECO grants in London

A place-based demonstrator in Merton to evaluate barriers to uptake of ECO4 in Greater London, in collaboration with the Greater London Authority, the London Borough of Merton and London South Bank University

Ghosts & Gaps gets underneath the problem to uncover what those close to the issue often don’t know or can’t see