Crisis and uncertainty
Familiar scenarios stop working and the decision cannot wait for full information.
Leadership development · executive learning program
PICK
Better decisions when
the room doesn’t think alike
Plurilingual Intercultural Creative Keys
PICK develops how leadership teams decide under pressure — when information is incomplete, functions read the same problem differently, and culture and language change what actually gets heard.
30 minutes with a team of yours, on a decision they’re facing right now.
What changes in the room — and what you leave with
Team alignment · toward a decision
Problem framed
Decision made
Progress stalls at 35%. Alignment velocity: fragmented.
Teams we have worked with
Finance, retail, culture, education and professional services. Project details are covered by NDA.
Pressure narrows the field
Crisis and transformation expose how a team thinks, communicates and decides.
What the situation does
- culture and language distort what is heard
- functions and stakeholders read the same problem differently
- established solutions no longer fit
What teams do in response
- move into implementation without alignment
- treat assumptions as facts
- produce fewer viable alternatives
Options in play
Considered
12 / 12
Wide field of alternatives — all in play
Speed on its own is manageable. Holding decision quality steady while uncertainty and tension rise is the harder task.
49%
of executives say communication misunderstandings have blocked a major cross-border transaction, with financial losses
Economist Intelligence Unit, survey of 572 executives
63%
say unclear cross-border communication costs them productivity outright
Economist Intelligence Unit
61%
of executives say at least half the time they spend making decisions is used ineffectively
McKinsey Global Survey, 1,200+ business leaders
12%
of business transformations achieve their original ambition
Bain & Company, 400+ executives
It starts with your challenge, not our curriculum
Session log
01 / 06
Sponsor intake
When teams bring us in
Transformation and restructuring
Roles, processes and ways of working change while alignment has to hold.
New markets
Decisions and communication meet an unfamiliar cultural environment.
International and distributed teams
Language and working norms shape participation, trust and coordination.
Innovation and AI-enabled change
Unfamiliar solutions have to be generated, judged and implemented.
Mergers and cross-functional integration
Different professional and organisational assumptions have to work as one.
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Three capabilities. One system.
Try it live
Three different readings, depending on which capability the team leads with.
Switch the lens on the right — the same problem gets reframed in real time. This is what happens in a PICK session, seven times an hour.
Plurilingual · Intercultural · Creative — the three keys the name is built from. Together they add up to one thing — a team that adapts without losing precision.
Decision on the table
Should we enter Market X within Q3?
Through Plurilingual
What sounds like consensus in English hides real disagreement in the native register. The team hasn’t actually agreed — they’ve agreed on the translation.
Through Intercultural
Local partners are reading “yes, but not now” as a polite delay. The signal is renegotiation of terms — not rejection of the deal.
Through Creative
Reframe: not “enter” but “seed”. A joint venture unlocks three more options and reduces exposure by 60%.
Complex decisions rarely fail for one reason
- 01
More ways to see the problem
- 02
More accurate reading of people and context
- 03
Clearer communication across differences
- 04
Better-informed decisions, and the alignment to implement them
The material is your live decisions, practised where the team already works.
Three gaps. Each with a price tag.
The thinking gap
20%of leaders say their organisation is good at making decisions
McKinsey Global Survey on decision making
The interpretation gap
51%name differences in cultural tradition as the biggest source of misunderstanding across borders
Economist Intelligence Unit
The language gap
64%say differences in language and culture make it difficult to win share in unfamiliar markets
Economist Intelligence Unit
The bill lands elsewhere too. A typical Fortune 500 company loses around 530,000 manager-days a year to ineffective decision-making — roughly $250m in wages. And willingness to support the next change has fallen from 74% of employees in 2016 to 38%.
Built to survive contact with your existing framework
01
Maps onto what you already measure
Adaptability, decision quality, collaboration, inclusion. We work from your competency model rather than introducing a competing one.
02
Costs your executives less time than it looks
One day, or a few sessions spread across weeks. Work between sessions happens inside their real tasks, not as homework.
03
Gives you something to report
Decision behaviour observed, not just satisfaction scores. Pre/post measures and applied tasks where the format allows.
04
Doesn’t need a new internal audience
Runs with the team that already has the problem — a leadership team, a function, a transformation office.
05
Leaves capability inside the company
A shared vocabulary and a repeatable way of framing decisions that stays after we go.
Test us in 30 minutes
Test us on a live decision
Have a team in mind? Give us their real decision.
We’ll show you what the session would look like — and whether we’re the right people for it.
Three modules.
Practised, not presented.
Module I
Creative Decision-Making
Developing alternatives when the familiar solution is no longer enough.
Developing alternatives when the familiar solution is no longer enough.
Participants practise how to:
- reframe a vague or badly defined problem
- separate real constraints from assumptions
- generate multiple alternatives, including from unrelated industries
- compare options against explicit criteria
- turn an idea into a testable hypothesis
- name what has to be verified before implementation
Outcome: The team sees more options — and can tell which ones are worth testing.
Module II
Intercultural Effectiveness
Deciding across different assumptions, norms and perspectives.
Deciding across different assumptions, norms and perspectives.
Participants practise how to:
- separate observation from interpretation
- surface hidden cultural and professional assumptions
- see how one message lands differently, and adapt without falling back on stereotypes
- move between perspectives without giving up their own position
- check meaning before reacting
- use disagreement as information for the decision
Outcome: Differences get read accurately, and collaboration holds under tension.
Module III
Language Flexibility
Keeping the meaning intact when a team works in a language that isn’t everyone’s first. Not a language course — no grammar, no levels, no testing.
Keeping the meaning intact when a team works in a language that isn’t everyone’s first. Not a language course — no grammar, no levels, no testing.
Participants practise how to:
- say the same thing another way when the precise word isn’t there
- spot ambiguity and check what was actually understood
- pitch the message to the room in front of them
- mediate when two colleagues are talking past each other
- keep contributing while thinking in a second language
- make sure the quietest expert in the room still gets heard
Outcome: No one’s expertise drops out of the room because of language.
Research-informed by social design.
75%
of untrained peers are outperformed by the average participant after structured creativity training
Scott, Leritz & Mumford · meta-analysis of 70 studies
4,210
participants across the studies in that meta-analysis
Scott, Leritz & Mumford
25+
years of research and teaching behind the program’s scientific foundation
Prof. Anatoly Kharkhurin · peer-reviewed publications
11
organisations across finance, retail, culture and education have run the program with us
Client list above
Team capability shift
Linguistic flexibility
0%
Cultural literacy
0%
Creative agility
0%
Alignment velocity
0%
Illustrative composite · measured per implementation with client-agreed instruments
Research and operating
pressure, in one program
Maria Markova-Gumbatova
Product Lead and Lead Facilitator
Management consultant, transformation practitioner and lecturer in organisational behaviour and change management. Work across strategy, organisational redesign, crisis stabilisation, creative industries and executive education.
$1m+
in debt — company stabilised
~9 months
from stabilisation to break-even
Prof. Anatoly Kharkhurin
Co-founder and Scientific Director
Researcher in creativity, multilingualism and intercultural communication. More than 25 years of international research and teaching, and author of the scientific foundation underlying PICK.
Prof. Kharkhurin’s involvement in individual corporate projects is agreed separately.
How it runs
Group size
Up to 20 participants as standard. 21–25 with a second facilitator. Above 25 — lecture, workshop or several cohorts.
Evaluation
Light feedback: participant reflection and immediate learning feedback. Extended: pre/post measures, applied tasks, structured follow-up. Research pilot: a separately designed study with agreed constructs and reporting boundaries.
Modules
Delivered separately or in combination, depending on the context.
Bring us the challenge first. We’ll shape the format around it.
Tell us which team you have in mind and what they’re deciding. We’ll come back with what the session would look like — and whether we’re the right people for it.