About Us
At ACN, we are dedicated to creating lasting, meaningful transformation.
We are more than a training and consultancy provider – we are passionate about changing mindsets, behaviours, and organisational cultures to unlock the potential of people and teams. Our mission is to create safer, stronger, and more connected workplaces by empowering individuals to lead, protect, and grow with confidence and purpose.
Collaboration is at the core of what we do. We partner closely with our clients to understand their unique challenges, goals, and visions, delivering tailored solutions that create meaningful impact. Every programme is designed with care and a human touch, enabling practical and sustainable change that aligns with our clients’ most critical outcomes.
How We Work?
“We know amazing results can be achieved and believe every team has the potential for success”
At ACN, we believe that everyone matters!
Culture is complex and challenging to change.
The subjective element, people, are the important factor in accomplishing business success. Our dialogical process focusses on building strong insights into the perceptions that drive behaviour and culture. These insights can provide the necessary data points that allow leadership to shift culture.
Individual perceptions drive culture, culture drives performance.
We partner with leaders to unleash the potential in their people.
Stuart and Steve, Directors ACN.
The Principles of Our Work
Perceptions Drive Culture – Culture Drives Performance
Perception shapes organisational culture. It affects how people see, engage with, and contribute to their environment. When organisations actively shape perception through open communication, shared values, and a common purpose, they create trust and alignment. This culture drives performance, helping teams work together and reach shared goals.
Organisations can use both data and feedback to strengthen their culture. Quantitative data, like performance metrics, and qualitative insights, like employee feedback, both play a role. Together, they build a high-performing culture.
We support Leaders to commit to learning and reflection. When managers listen actively and look at challenges from different perspectives, new actions become posible.. This helps them see how perceptions, behaviours, and outcomes connect. Solutions should evolve through dialogue, testing, and adjustment.
When organisations combine clear analysis with human empathy, they discover valuable insights. These insights help them adapt to change, solve complex challenges, and perform at a higher level.
Humble Inquiry
At ACN, we believe in Humble Inquiry. This means asking open-ended questions without assuming the answers. It builds trust, curiosity, and collaboration. It also strengthens partnerships with clients.
Our approach has three key pillars:
- Building real relationships.
- Understanding each client’s unique needs.
- Working together to find the best solutions.
We focus on genuine curiosity and respect. Instead of offering ready-made solutions, we take time to understand challenges. This ensures our advice is specific and effective.
Holistic, Not Linear
A holistic approach recognises that complex challenges cannot be solved with simple, step-by-step methods. Instead, it requires a broader view that considers systems, relationships, and the details that influence outcomes. This approach avoids tackling issues in isolation. Instead, it looks at how they connect and affect each other.
By shifting between perspectives and exploring these connections, organisations can gain a deeper understanding of the big picture. A holistic approach uses both data and insights to uncover patterns and root causes. This flexibility helps teams adapt and make better decisions in complex situations.
In the end, this way of thinking changes perceptions. It helps organisations understand their challenges more deeply and create sustainable, long-term solutions.
Unlocking the Status Quo
Unlocking the status quo means challenging existing norms. It requires leaders to engage in tough conversations that drive change. These conversations rely on clear communication and a shared language. This ensures everyone understands each other and stays aligned, even when discussing sensitive topics.
Leaders must feel confident to speak up and address issues directly. They need to do so without fear of backlash or misunderstanding. This creates a culture where open communication is encouraged, and difficult questions can be asked.
By promoting candid discussions, organisations can break free from old ways of thinking. This allows for growth, innovation, and lasting success.
ACN Methodologies
Adaptive Leadership
Adaptive leadership, developed by Ronald Heifetz, helps leaders navigate complex and fast-changing environments. It focuses on addressing both technical and adaptive challenges. Unlike traditional leadership, it encourages leaders to recognise when old strategies no longer work and to embrace innovation and learning.
This approach highlights the difference between technical problems, which have clear solutions, and adaptive challenges, which need fresh thinking and ongoing learning. Leaders practising adaptive leadership create flexible, experimental cultures. They guide teams through uncertainty, helping them take ownership of change and embrace the discomfort of transformation.
Ultimately, adaptive leadership helps organisations grow, adapt, and solve problems collaboratively. This ensures they succeed in dynamic environments.
Integral Theory
Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory offers a framework for tackling complex challenges by combining different perspectives. It brings together ideas from science, philosophy, spirituality, and psychology to show how individual and collective, internal and external factors are connected.
The framework has four quadrants:
- Individual Interior: Thoughts and feelings.
- Individual Exterior: Actions and behaviours.
- Collective Interior: Cultural values and shared beliefs.
- Collective Exterior: Social systems and structures.
Wilber’s framework encourages problem-solving by integrating all these perspectives, rather than focusing on just one. This holistic view helps organisations and individuals understand challenges fully and find transformative solutions.
Organisational Culture
Edgar Schein defines organisational culture as shared assumptions, beliefs, and values that shape how people think, act, and interact. Culture works on three levels:
- Visible Artefacts: Things you can see, like logos or office layout.
- Espoused Values: What the organisation says it believes, like mission statements.
- Underlying Assumptions: Deep, unconscious beliefs that guide behaviour.
The deepest layer—underlying assumptions—has the strongest influence. Leaders play a key role in recognising and reshaping these assumptions. By aligning culture with organisational goals, they can create environments that support innovation, collaboration, and success.