Your vision, your opportunity,
your people, plus mjbraide
Do you ever wonder when strategy became the exclusive job of the C-suite – or worse – external consultants? Or when we stopped trusting the knowledge and intuition of employees, customers and stakeholders to read the signs and calibrate direction?
I believe there is enormous potential within the contemporary organization to develop and implement winning corporate, brand and engagement strategy. You just need to create the space, and gradually build back strategic muscle.
That's where I come in. +mjbraide is about creating strategic momentum from the inside out. Working with your teams, I help draw out the people, insights and ideas that lead to healthier, more strategic, more responsive organizations.
Strategic momentum, from the
inside out
Strategy
Brand Positioning
Narrative
Work
Great organizations, plus mjbraide
Canada Life
A brand that brings life insurance into the here and now
Canadian Chamber
Streamlining the Board to lead a new kind of Chamber
Sagard
Signalling very bold intention in alternatives
Aqueduct Foundation
A practical strategy to secure the next 100 years
MiWay
Aligning the transit team around a dream for the future
Foresters Financial
Uniting purpose and product in a single value proposition
CIHI
Stewarding the data that will transform Canadian health systems
Dillon
Engineers and planners making life work better
Centennial College
Strategic commitments built from the ground up
Services
Strategy that actually works...
Real strategy isn’t jargon or trendy frameworks. It’s the knowledge and insight of leaders able to make winning choices as their environments shift.
My work as a strategic facilitator is to ensure board and management have the information and the opportunity to set clear direction and align the organization. I don’t do big strategy decks, but my clients still do great things.
Brand positioning that stays relevant...
Any brand can be lucky (or smart) once, and anyone can buy their way to brand awareness, for a time. The brands I admire most are the ones that stay in-tune with their markets, their competition, the cultural zeitgeist and their own changing capabilities.
I work with people who lead B2B, family enterprise, corporate and relationship brands to develop positionings that adapt, so brands keeps on being brilliant.
Narrative that gets to the heart of the matter...
While strategy is all about action, and brand is all about experience, words still matter, a lot.
I work with comms teams to bring clarity and character to the most important communications: your new strategic agenda; a more relevant website; persuasive pitches or donor cases; employee engagement…
What's the plus in +mjbraide?
This might shock you, but I often find the right answer is, well, kind of obvious, or that most people already know it, at some level. The trick is to believe in it, be courageous, and get the barriers out of the way. That's the plus in +mjbraide:
Getting people and organizations ready to do the right thing – strategic moves, culture shifts, brand repositioning, good governance – no matter how hard it seems.
Taking messy, complex, sludgy situations and focusing teams on the strategic essentials in a way that feels manageable.
Building bridges internally based on understanding personal motivations and finding common ground, respect and shared values.
Envisioning the pure answer but focusing on the art of the possible.
Re-framing everything around what’s most relevant and valued by customers, employees and other stakeholders.
About me
I'm an independent advisor in corporate strategy, brand positioning and strategic narrative. I work at senior levels with category leaders across sectors internationally, including in: financial, business and professional services; associations; social enterprise; public institutions and early stage ventures.
Prior to leading my own firm, I spent a decade as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and its predecessors in Canada, and was a leader in their organizational practice, speaking and publishing internationally on the topic of organizational performance.
I'm active as a volunteer business coach to social ventures and I'm currently a mentor in the first cohort of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto.
MJ Braide
389 Crawford Street
Toronto ON M6J 2W1
Canada
Telephone: +1 647 970 5059
©2024 MJ Braide Corporate Development
Contact
