Socially Adept was formed to help organisations and partnerships find clarity in the uncertainty and messiness of transitions.
People come here because they know their operating context has changed. They know they need their people to lead the change, and they can’t ‘fly the plane whilst fixing it’.
But who do you trust?
Socially Adept knows how precious any investment in change is: it needs to work with people as they are, investing time and expertise in them to create a model that thrives.
It needs to work with what we know about how change happens in practice – through people’s habits, relationships, and understanding of what’s happening around them – to make it viable.
Socially Adept’s method draws on:
- Futures and Foresight – to understand our relationships with the past, present and future, in navigating change and uncertainty.
- Behavioural Science – to design changes that work with how we behave individually and collectively, in practice.
- Dialogue and Mediation – to work purposefully with intentionally diverse groups through change.
The method supports working anywhere you need it to drive change from – inside the organisation, and with partners, collaborators, funders, citizens; building the networks and capability that supports ongoing evolution.
Please contact me for more information
Esmee Wilcox: Biography
I have worked with small start-ups, large corporations, central government, local government and social impact organisations since founding Socially Adept. I have taught with Henley Business School and Goldsmiths College and I am a business mentor and ‘featured social innovator’ at the Cambridge Judge.
My consultancy practice builds on over 20 years leading social and political change within central, regional and local government; always working with businesses, academia and civil society organisations to build the networks that enable systemic change. I cross the boundaries of research and practice – talking to and working with academics and doing my own research to be able to apply theory in my practice of social research, and behavioural, complexity and foresight science.
I completed my Masters in Business and Management whilst working for the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit and the Department for Environment, undertaking applied work based research on the conditions for collaboration in policy making. A ‘baptism of fire’ in my mid 20s practicing dialogue amongst senior science experts; and mapping the local constraints and enablers for collaborative learning when it was a relatively new field.
I am a co-author of the UK Government’s 2005 Disability Strategy. I led significant transformation programmes in local government healthcare around the Care Act (2014) and Children’s and Families Act (2014).
I am:
- one of 8 global new futurists awarded the 2019 Emerged Fellowship at the Association of Professional Futurists,
- published on social change out to 2050 in ‘Capital Transformed’ (2020) (the APF programme)
- the 2016 Behaviour Change Municipal Journal award winner for work on complex social care outcomes.
- published on innovation and risk in government “The Glory of Failure” (2012).
I work from a base in the Waveney Valley, Norfolk, where the skies are big (and there is a reliable train service).