We’re a specialist strategy consultancy helping ambitious mid-sized businesses build serious, future-ready strategies. Our expertise covers strategic planning, sustainability, ESG integration, strategic foresight, and the thoughtful embedding of AI into leadership and strategy teams. In short, we help you figure out what really matters, why, and what to do about it.​

It's always tricky answering this kind of question about yourself, but here's our best shot. It boils down to who we are, how we think, and how we partner with our clients. Unlike big consultancies that helicopter in and out, we prefer to embed ourselves deeply into your team and the challenges you're facing. Our founders bring more than 45 years of real-world, real-business experience between them (we've only been consulting for the last four), yet we’re far from stuck in old ways of doing things. We founded Perigon precisely as generative AI started going mainstream, thoughtfully embedding AI into our approach from day one. Unlike most other strategy consultants, we were founded with sustainability at the core of our approach. Unlike most sustainability consultants, we’re genuine strategists. Our minds are constantly busy trying to understand how the world is shifting, which means we spend a lot of time developing new frameworks, diving into important themes, and challenging conventional perspectives. Our clients tell us this fresh, rigorous, partnership approach feels different (in a good way), and our 75% repeat rate seems to back that up.​

Mostly ambitious mid-sized businesses (100–1,000 people), especially in industries that may seem unsexy but are utterly essential (financial services, infrastructure, professional services). Typically, they’re facing a pivotal moment: a new growth phase, ownership change, regulatory pressures, structural opportunities or, sometimes, just the creeping sense that competitors might be moving faster than them. We work either directly with the senior leadership, CEO or Board of these businesses, or with Private Equity General Partners across their portfolio companies. In financial services, particularly, we also work with sustainability and strategy teams of larger (>1,000 people) banks and building societies. ​

When we started Perigon, we wanted a framework for building in the right way. We felt like we had a good grounding in what this is from a strategic, societal and environmental perspective (that is, after all, what we advise on) but wanted to broaden this into things we knew less about, like the HR and people management side and the legal company structure. We also thought – and this has been proven to be true – that it would make us more attractive to the right sort of potential clients. Ultimately, going through the B Corp process ourselves and then helping a few clients do similar, we built a bit of a specialism in supporting businesses through the B Corp accreditation process. ​

First, get in touch through our website or hello@perigonpartners.co.uk. We’ll set up an informal but structured conversation to understand your business and your aims and to see if there’s a genuine fit (on both sides). If there is, we will shape an engagement that’s tailored to your needs, goals, budget and timeline. If not, we’ll be upfront and might even recommend someone else. As a rule, we don’t respond to tenders as we lack the army of people ‘sitting on the bench’ who can devote significant time to writing a tender response. Our best client relationships have come from a mutual desire to work together to build something that matters. ​

Straight answers. Different ways of thinking about the world (thanks to our chief geek and problem solver). Partners who are credible at Board level and collaborative with all team members. Shared challenges, learnings and investment in your success. A bit of fun. ​

Yes…but it’s not usually needed. We have agency-style relationships in place with several of our longer running clients. But equally, we’ve helped build internal capabilities for other clients and they simply don’t need us for a long time (other than staying in touch about how things are going and anything interesting that crops up. So, really, it’s up to you. And us. ​

Ah, one of our favourite questions. In a time of “strategy this”, “strategic that”, we’re in danger of losing sight of *real* strategy. So, we’ve had a go at defining business strategy to give it back the spotlight it deserves: ​

‍business strategy (noun): Your business's long-term future goals, your best current hypothesis for how to achieve them and a set of related decisions. Involves hypotheses and trade-offs - not just a plan, but a way to decide and act on what matters most.

There are typically four main signs we look out for to identify business strategy gaps. Overstretched teams. A business that feels like it’s losing ground to competitors. Over engagement from the Board to the management team. And overwhelmed leaders. If any of these resonate, it may be a sign that your business strategy needs a refresh (or to be brought into existence in the first place).​

Strategic planning (at least when we do it) usually starts with understanding your business and the context in which it operates. We then work on defining your long-term goals and then mapping the most likely path to achieve them, taking account of different plausible future scenarios. Then we add structure around it – targets, metrics and a way of communicating it compellingly. Great strategic planning isn’t about predicting the future perfectly. It’s about deep understanding, honesty, bravery, and not being afraid to experiment. It involves deep thinking, tough trade-offs, brutal prioritization and clear communication. ​

You can’t measure strategy with a single KPI (although, like most strategy consultants, we do see a role for the “Balanced Scorecard”). But you can assess whether it’s helping you make better decisions. Are you clearer on trade-offs? More confident saying no? Seeing progress toward long-term outcomes, not just short-term wins? Strategy is working when your team knows what matters most, your board is focused at the right level, and your operating model is pulling in the same direction. If you’re spinning plates and still feeling lost, it’s probably not going well. If you, as a leader, feel confident, flexible and like you’re having a lasting impact, then your strategy is likely working. ​

Because sometimes what you need most is an outside perspective that helps you see more clearly. At Perigon, we spend our time immersed in how strategy needs to evolve in today’s world. We’ve built tools and frameworks designed for the messy, uncertain, intelligence-age reality most businesses now face. And we cross-pollinate insights from big organisations with lots of structure but low agility, and smaller ones with great agility but no formal strategy muscle. You know your business, and we help to stretch how you think about its future.​

Both. But always in a way that builds your internal strategic confidence rather than creating a dependence. Some clients come to us for a one-off strategy reset. Others value the rhythm of ongoing support: scenario thinking, challenge sessions, forward-sensing inputs, and integrating sustainability. No two projects we do are the same, and we think that’s a good thing. ​

ESG stands for Environmental, Social, Governance, and originally emerged as a way to assess company risks arising from poor practices in these areas. Despite its flaws (being narrowly focused on risks and trying to bundle together fundamentally different ideas), the term has stuck. We reluctantly use the term ESG ourselves because it’s the most widely recognised. But we don't really think "G" (Governance) belongs in the same bucket as E and S, so you’ll often see us write it as ES(G). We also use "sustainability" to refer to the E and S dimensions – but this isn’t perfect either, as “sustainable” can also just mean "built to last". In short, it’s a jargon minefield, and it isn’t likely to clear up anytime soon. Our advice (unless you’re specifically optimising your website for SEO or AI-driven search, as we’ve had to): just say what you actually mean, in plain language, and leave the acronyms at the door.​

An ESG or sustainability strategy is a business's long-term goals regarding its environmental and social impact, dependencies, risks and opportunities. Usually doomed to fail if not integrated into your core business strategy, but this is a very common mistake (link to common mistakes). Nestled beneath an ESG strategy, there may also be a climate transition strategy or net zero strategy, or a social impact strategy. The more of these separate strategies that exist, the less likely they are to succeed. ​

Many! Here are our top three. 1) Focusing on *far too many* ESG topics. 2) Including G (governance) in the same sentence. 3) Not integrating it into your core business strategy. Too often, ESG strategy is developed by consultants or in-house teams who aren’t business strategists. In consulting, we see a lot of offerings in the ESG and sustainability space from teams with brand and marketing rather than strategy experience, or those with a focus on regulation or on specific frameworks like B Corp, stretching their offering to include strategy.​

Because sustainability is a field that invites ever more initiatives. The latest framework, certification, pledge, pet project. The over-sized hoops you’re being asked to jump through by suppliers or corporate customers. And doing everything is – fundamentally – unsustainable. But really understanding what matters most is not always easy or intuitive, particularly when you’re dealing with a changing policy and regulatory landscape, data that isn’t yet robustly measured and reported, and competing views from leadership. Our strategy processes build this understanding, prioritise fiercely, and integrate into your core business strategy and operating model to make your business genuinely more resilient and competitive. ​

For larger firms – yes. You already need to comply with legislation like SECR, TCFD or Climate-related Financial Disclosures. And the disclosure bar is being raised further with requirements (like the UK SRS, which likely requires significant preparation). The smallest businesses are not legally obliged to report and disclose on ESG; however, integrating environmental and social considerations into your strategy is commercially smart. It helps you see risks earlier, grasp new opportunities clearly, and scenario-plan for different futures. It may also be required (not legally, but it’s commercial suicide not to) by suppliers and customers, particularly if you sell to the public sector, which demands things like Carbon Reduction Plans.

Yes. It’s not our core offering, but is something that we’ve built up a minor specialism in through going through the process ourselves and then supporting a few of our clients with. B Corp is not right for every business, so part of what we do is to assess whether it can bring your business genuine value. If it’s ‘just’ the B Corp process support that you want, there are consultancies out there who pretty much only do B Corp – and that might suit your needs better. However, if it’s the broader strategic thinking that you want with support through B Corp, if that’s where it leads, then we may well be a great fit. ​

Strategic foresight is the art (and science) of preparing your business for multiple plausible futures – not just the one you prefer or think will be true. It’s about understanding the long-term societal forces at play, examining the trends these drive, anticipating risks, and embracing uncertainty. It’s a totally different discipline and way of thinking that unfailingly brings to light hidden risks and opportunities. If your business can get good at it, you’ll be far better equipped to deal with ambiguity and sudden world shifts (whether driven by climate, geopolitics, economics or an alien invasion) that we think will characterise the second quarter of the 21st century. ​

Scenario planning maps out several plausible future situations, exploring how they could impact your business, and what actions you can take to be ready. It’s less about predicting “The Future” (which no one can) and more about building agility, resilience, and optionality into your decision-making and defining common capabilities and no-regrets moves that stretch across multiple scenarios. Scenarios can be very high-level and treated more as a thought experiment, or they can be much more involved, modelling different projections for economic, behavioural or climate data to help quantify any potential impacts. The latter is increasingly expected for larger or more climate-exposed businesses as part of the incoming mandatory UK sustainability disclosures (UK SRS). ​

We have a few resources to help you with this, including our [long-term forces map]. We also recommend reading the annual tech trends report issued by Amy Webb (a leader in strategic foresight), which has useful industry breakdowns of likely impacts of different technologies over different horizons. With these things at your fingertips, we advise creating about three different versions of the future, two of which should be quite extreme. If that’s not coming readily to you, go back to our long-term forces and think about the consequences of these forces combining or opposing. You can also look at different climate scenarios, which are reasonably well documented – either in isolation if you’re specifically doing climate scenario planning, or as part of your broader strategic scenarios. We recommend the NGFS short-term scenarios (ask google or AI). If this is still gobbledygook, maybe give us a call?​

Absolutely. Our foresight and scenario-planning workshops are practical and playful. We guide leaders through structured processes that identify uncertainties, craft multiple future scenarios, and unpick strategic options. We also employ AI in these sessions so they can be a useful introduction to using AI for strategic planning. If this feels like something your leadership team needs but isn’t quite ready for, our ‘strategic muscle strength’ test can help get the right self-awareness and mentality going into the workshop. ​