The business challenge

IDH had a clear strategic direction for its agri-commodity work, alignment was needed across teams to improve efficiency:

• coffee, cocoa, and other commodity teams were working in parallel, with overlap and duplication

• programme teams, fundraising, and strategy functions were not consistently aligned

• country teams were expected to take on more ownership, without shared narratives yet in place

• donor narratives varied widely, and IDH’s language often lacked the clarity and sharpness needed for private-sector and blended-finance audiences

The risk was clear: slower fundraising, reduced credibility, and a Multi-Year Plan that would be difficult to fully resource in an increasingly competitive funding environment.

The approach

Worked as part of the organisation, partnering closely with agri-commodities leadership, programme teams, fundraising, and strategy colleagues.

The focus was not on producing more materials, but on creating coherence, focus, and speed. Key elements included:

• Clarifying the strategic story
  Translating the Multi-Year Plan into a small number of clear, fundable propositions at sector (coffee, cocoa) and outcome level, anchored in a single narrative about global markets, supply security, and system-level impact.

• Aligning teams and leadership around priorities
  Working across sectors to identify shared learnings and overlap, while helping leadership make deliberate choices about what to emphasise, and what not to avoid dilution.

• Bridging strategy and fundraising
  Developing modular, reusable propositions and standard language that allowed teams to respond faster to funding opportunities without compromising strategic integrity.

• Reducing internal friction by diverging narratives
  Supporting commodity leadership (e.g. cocoa) to design practical ways of working across teams, enabling clearer ownership, collaboration, and consistent cross-learning.

Throughout, I deliberately avoided working in isolation or simply rewriting decks. The work focused on synthesis, alignment, and enabling teams to operate independently once the foundations were in place.

The outcome

The work led to clear business-relevant shifts:

• Fundraising proposals were developed more quickly, with less duplication

• Teams had a shared, coherent narrative for how their work contributed to system-level outcomes

• Fundraising conversations became more confident and strategic, particularly with private-sector partners

• Propositions were reused and adapted across opportunities, rather than rebuilt each time

• Leadership gained more confidence in the value proposition IDH for private sector

• Other commodity teams expressed interest in adopting the same approach

Overall, the work helped IDH move from fragmented, project-led narratives to clear, fundable system propositions, better suited to a constrained and competitive funding landscape.