What clients say about the work, in their own words.
These accounts come from senior leaders and organisations we have worked with across Thailand and Southeast Asia. We share them with permission.
Back to HomeAccounts from leaders we have worked with.
We engaged Marrowbone Counsel for an Extended Strategic Review at a point when the board was divided on the organisation's direction. The document they produced was not comfortable reading in places — but that was exactly what we needed. It gave the board something substantial to engage with and the disagreements became productive rather than circular. I was particularly grateful that they did not try to soften the analysis to please everyone.
The Leadership Writing Support engagement was useful in ways I did not entirely anticipate. I came to it wanting help with the mechanics of my annual letter. What I got was a process that helped me think more clearly about what I actually wanted to say before writing a word of it. The cadence suited me — we met when the writing required it, not on a fixed schedule that created artificial pressure.
We used the Single Publication Preparation service for a letter I was writing to family shareholders regarding a significant change in our ownership structure. The piece needed to be honest without being alarming, and to represent my actual position rather than a corporate position. Working through the drafts with Marrowbone took longer than I expected — they pushed back on formulations I was comfortable with — but the final version was considerably better for it.
What I found most useful about the Strategic Review was the section that dealt with what the organisation had been avoiding. Other advisers had touched on similar themes but never written them down clearly. Having it in a document — with actual reasoning behind each observation — made it possible to have a conversation with the executive team that had previously been difficult to initiate.
The process was more thorough than I anticipated for a two-week engagement. They asked questions in the initial sessions that were sharper than I expected and clearly read carefully everything we shared with them. The article that resulted was one I was genuinely comfortable publishing — which is not always the experience with external editorial support.
I have used the Leadership Writing Support for two consecutive six-month periods. The value for me is primarily in the thinking discipline it enforces — having a scheduled conversation about what I want to communicate and with whom forces a clarity I would not generate on my own under the pressures of day-to-day management. The writing itself is better; but that is almost secondary.
Three engagements described in some detail.
A mid-sized Thai manufacturing group had grown significantly over seven years but the ownership family and the professional management team had reached an impasse about the next phase of the organisation's development. Both parties had a view of the situation; neither could hear the other's view clearly. The board needed an external account of the position that did not owe its conclusions to either camp.
We conducted structured interviews with the ownership family, the executive team, and three independent board members. We reviewed three years of board papers and financial reporting. Over eight weeks we produced a written review of approximately 35 pages that addressed the strategic position, the specific points of disagreement, and the considerations relevant to the path forward — without recommending a specific choice.
The document was used as the basis for a two-day board and family meeting. Both parties reported that having the analysis in written form — with reasoning they could agree or disagree with specifically — made the conversation more productive than previous attempts. A clear direction was settled on within six weeks of the document's delivery.
"It gave us something to argue with rather than each other."
The managing director of a regional financial services organisation was producing an annual letter to stakeholders each year that she felt did not represent her actual thinking about the business. The letters were technically competent but read as corporate rather than personal, and she believed her stakeholders — many of whom she knew well — deserved something more direct.
Over six months we met eight times: at the beginning to understand the communications she expected to produce across the period, and then before each significant writing project to think through the intent and approach. We worked through drafts together, with our role being to question and clarify rather than substitute our voice for hers. Two annual letters, three significant internal memos, and one published opinion piece were produced during the engagement.
Several key stakeholders commented on the change in the annual letter without knowing anything had changed in how it was produced. The managing director has subsequently continued the engagement for a second period, with a broader scope that now includes preparation for public-facing speaking engagements.
"I sound like myself now. I did not realise that was what was missing."
A country director at an international NGO in Bangkok needed to publish an article in a regional development journal about a programme evaluation process his organisation had undertaken. He had a strong view about what the evaluation had actually shown — views that were at some distance from the standard narrative in the sector — and wanted to express them without damaging the organisation's relationships with funders.
Over two and a half weeks we worked with him to clarify the argument, identify which of his views required careful framing and which could be stated plainly, and develop a structure for the article that took the reader from the conventional understanding to his revised position without the piece feeling combative. Three drafts were developed before reaching a version he felt was both honest and appropriately considered.
The article was accepted by the journal and received a positive response from several sector colleagues who the director had expected to be critical. One funder wrote separately to say the article had raised questions they were glad to be thinking about.
"It said what needed saying in a way that people could actually hear."
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