I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the difference between consultants who promise certainty and the ones who know how to hold space for uncertainty.

Here’s what I’ve learned from years of birth work that applies directly to strategy: we can’t control outcomes. We can only companion the process and trust that something is emerging, even when we can’t see it yet.

At a birth, I can’t see where the baby is as they move down. I take clues from the sounds the laboring person is making, their movements, what I’ve learned from everything we’ve done to during the labor. And I trust. I trust because contractions are happening, a heartbeat is steady, all these things are happening. Something big and beautiful is coming, but it’s going to take a process where we can’t see everything clearly.

Strategy work is no different.

So often, strategic planning fails because we try to impose certainty on an inherently uncertain terrain. Communities shift. Needs shift. Political landscapes, funding landscapes—if 2025 taught us anything, it’s that massive changes happen that we have to respond to. We can’t make static strategies and static decisions stripped of context. We have to make them in the context of what’s actually happening in order for what wants to be born to be born.

Finding Clarity in the Void

There’s this liminal space between contractions, between labor patterns, between one organizational identity and the next. That’s where the real work happens. Not in the polished deliverable, but in the waiting. In the listening.

What might the community say? What do they want us to know? What do they need from us? What are they asking of us?

Sitting with that. Deeply listening. Saying, whose else’s voices do we need to hear?

That’s where impactful, transformative strategy comes from.

When we deeply listen to the communities we’re responsible for serving—and to our staff, our programming teams, the people doing the work—we create a strategy that already has buy-in. We’re already headed toward goals where people have said: yes, that’s where we want to go. That’s what we need.

And when we do that implementation becomes so much more impactful. Increased impact leads to increased interest from funders. Organizations want to partner with us. It becomes this really beautiful circle.

But it starts with accepting the void.

We Don’t Have Time NOT to Listen

I know some of this sounds like a nice-to-have. But here’s the thing: none of us have the time or resources right now to spend on things that aren’t working. Programs people aren’t coming to. Health initiatives nobody’s accessing.

We have to get to: What do people need and want from us? How can we meet that need?

And that takes sitting in uncertainty and finding the clarity out of it.

I think about one client I’ve been working with. They’d had the same programs for almost decades. Then something really big happened that changed their funding structure and how they could operate. They had the wisdom, after years of feeling like they were just pulling a cart up a hill, to stop and say: We need a community needs assessment. We need to know what people want, what they’re saying, what their stories are.

They used that time of great uncertainty and tumult to go deeper into the unknown. To see what they could learn so they could move forward with integrity and knowledge rather than trying to carry on with business as usual.

It would have been so tempting to just hold on to anything that felt certain. But they took the pause. And I think about all they would have missed if they hadn’t.

Trusting the Organizational Body

Stick with me on this metaphor: organizations have bodies too. Their people, their communities, their history. We need to trust that wisdom.

Any strategy work that ignores that organizational body produces really beautiful reports that sit on shelves. Because there’s no embodiment to them. They don’t belong to anybody.

But when we create strategy from that wisdom—from what people in the community know, from the history—we’re creating something that has meaning. Something that can be enacted. When it’s enacted, people recognize themselves in it. They come along with us.

That’s the difference between a strategy document and a living, breathing strategy that actually gets us somewhere.

What Becomes Possible When We Stop Clinging

We’ve been conditioned to see change as scary. To hold on to what we know, what’s worked in the past.

I think about the COVID years, that huge rhetoric about “getting back to the way things were.” Getting the world back.

But here’s what I kept working on with clients during that time: We’re not going back. And that’s okay. Because if we look at what might be possible going forward we don’t crave the backwards. We open ourselves up to the uncertainty of birthing something new.

Crossing from one state to another.

It takes deep learning in that middle space. Spending time between where we were and where we’re going to ask: What wants to emerge here? What’s possible? What can we do? Who can we be? How can we serve?

That only happens if you have the right support to feel held. To ask those big questions without fear. Without that desire to cling to certainty when uncertainty has the answers in it.

We just have to be able to feel held and supported to go through the process.

The Deep Reverence

There’s a patience to this work. A witnessing. I really see it as sacred and important.

We never rush the birth of a child as long as they’re healthy and the person giving birth to them is healthy. Same with strategy. It can be quick. It can be effective and potent. But that doesn’t mean it’s pushed through and rushed and boxes checked.

There’s a difference between depth in timing and just moving along step by step.

And so much of what I bring to this work comes from my identity as an Indigenous woman. So many of our ways of knowing have relationship and reciprocity and accountability to community built in. It’s at the core of birth work. It’s at the core of really good, really transformational strategy work.

It causes me to ask: Who are we accountable to? Whose voices are centered? What will remain when the strategy is in place and being enacted? And how do we do that responsibly—seeing it as a process worth stewarding, not a box to check?

The Reality

Strategy work that tries to silo everything out, that demands certainty at every step, that strips community wisdom from the process fails. It sits on shelves. It doesn’t belong to anybody.

But when we let things unfold as they’re meant to? When we deeply listen and gather stories and let community lead alongside us? We get to the same outcomes we’re looking for. Increased access to services. Increased health outcomes. Increased equity.

We meet the organizational goals that are so important to all of us, that we all came into these fields for.

We just get there through surrender. Through patience. Through asking what wants to be born rather than deciding on an answer before we’ve gone through the process.

And honestly? It’s liberating. It’s where I do my best work. It’s where I belong.

M

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Okay, let’s get serious about bringing story & strategy into your organization. Below are a few ways we can partner, and, of course, you can reach out if you want to collaborate in a remixed sort of way:

+ Story Lab Sessions: Tailored strategy mapping to chart your organization’s storytelling journey, followed by a comprehensive brief with guidance to implement the findings from our session. These sessions are perfect for organizations ready to take their first steps or needing focused guidance on specific initiatives.

+ Story Hour: Real-time support, guidance, and peer learning through a suite of trainings and regular calls. These group sessions provide ongoing support and practical insights for implementing storytelling initiatives in your organization

+ Customized Collaboration: Long-term, tailored support for comprehensive organizational transformation. We’ll work closely together to integrate storytelling deeply into your existing processes. This is designed for organizations looking for in-depth support designing, implementing, and learning from storytelling initiatives.

+ Intensives & Retreats: Individually designed intensives for your staff retreats and training blocks to engage your staff in a process that centers their experiences and connections to their work through story. Great for organizations looking for a unique, connective experience for their team.

Entangled Health can be in your ears, too! Listen to the show wherever you tune into podcasts.

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