Urgent, accelerating change requires new ways of seeing and working together. I collaborate with leaders and organizations to imagine those new horizons and navigate accordingly.

My work focuses on interconnected questions about how to respond to and shape complex systems affecting people and our planet.

  • Whether responding to change around us or seeking to increase our impact, how do we make good decisions - set strategy - when things seem less and less predictable? How do we become more resilient and adaptable while focused on our purpose?

  • How do we orient to complex, interconnected issues like climate crisis or economic inequality and envision a different path forward -- to makes sense of our organization's purpose, role and success? How do we take action despite complexity and learn as we work?

  • How do we work beyond the boundaries of our organization to achieve more? How can we rethink the form and function of our organizations and institutions to better align with our (shared) purpose?

Brendan Lehan is a strategist and advisor helping leaders and organizations to achieve greater impact through growth, adaptation, and more effective collaboration. For the last decade he has helped organizations to develop robust strategies to tackle complex social issues like education inequality, climate change, financial inclusion, and many others. Brendan collaborates with senior leaders and their teams to design and undertake actionable, adaptive strategy development and integrate those strategies within their organization. He helps leaders make sense of complexity and uncertainty by developing a more systemic understanding of the issues, considering the networks of organizations at play and their organization's role in context, and learning to adapt over time.

As a collaborator, Brendan serves as a facilitator, guide and sense-maker. He has experience working with a spectrum of organizations from small start-ups to mature institutions and multi-stakeholder collaboratives, and working in modes ranging from organizational learning and design to scenario-planning, strategy making and network weaving. ​

Work

New Capitalism Project

Currently co-lead the New Capitalism Project (NCP), a multi-year collaborative experiment in catalyzing transformative economic change. NCP brings together diverse leaders on the frontlines of economic system change to develop a shared articulation of how the current system is failing; what a “better” economic system would look like; identify the key barriers to that aspired vision; and then surface a set of the most important and integrated actions to drive systemic change. The NCP Lab supports nascent, transformative, collaborative ideas to put that shared vision into action.

Monitor Institute by Deloitte

For nearly 10 years, drove end-to-end client engagements working directly with senior leaders across a spectrum from philanthropic foundations to for-profit businesses as part of Monitor Institute, Deloitte Consulting’s dedicated social impact strategy practice. Focused client work on strategic monitoring and evaluation, adaptive strategy-making, ecosystems for driving impact and the pursuit of purpose-led business strategy. 

Yale Evidence in Practice

Co-authored a two-year research project into how and why evidence of what works is - and isn’t - incorporated into international development efforts. Through in-depth cases studies and analysis developed insight into what a more integrated and impactful ecosystem of evidence, learning and practice entails.

Omidyar Network

As a member of Omidyar Network’s Intellectual Capital team, worked hands-on to analyze and adapt impact investing initiatives based on blended financial and impact performance; guide strategy development for an investment team in new industry areas; and managed exploratory grant portfolio focused on understanding the potential negative effects of new technology and encouraging ethical approaches to new technology development and commercialization. 

Let’s work together.

I operate as an independent consultant, looking for new ways to support leaders and their organizations in project-based work or ongoing advisory, and to participate in broader field-building, experimentation and learning.

If you’re grappling with similar questions about how to work differently on complex issues I would love to learn more and explore if there are ways we can work together.