We are handpicked by sharp forward-thinkers at the core of their organisations
We support the client’s leadership and their trusted team’s unique synergy without stripping away resource and capability.
We are Devil’s Advocates
The Devil’s Advocate originated from a process of ensuring quality control when making decisions during the beatification and canonisation of saints. During the counter-reformation the Roman Church sought to recognise only those saints who would be able to intercede with God in Heaven.
In 1587, Pope Sixtus the Fifth formally established the position of advocatus diaboli as the officer charged with ensuring that the case in favour of a saint was sound. It was an imposition of structure on an intuitive process.
The Devil’s Advocate prevents inappropriate decisions, by imposing intellectually sound structure on process, overcoming biases, and demanding that any difficulties or doubts must be satisfactorily answered.
Their duty was seen as difficult but necessary. This term has since moved into the secular world, where sometimes the mantle of the Devil’s Advocate is assumed by those who express contentious opinions.
Devil’s Advocacy is a disciplined form of scrutinising that refines debate and tests the strength of opposing arguments. In the 21st Century the heads of alternative analysis at the US Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency; and at the British Joint Intelligence Organisation; were christened The Devil’s Advocate.
With a steady mind-set and a creative cocktail of methodologies, we are catalysts in building teams’ capabilities, empowering them to align and operate strategically without letting go of their own authenticity.
Lynette Nusbacher
Lynette Nusbacher MA DPhil (Oxon) is an expert on horizon scanning and strategy. She has a background in structured strategy and national security. She was part of the team that created two of the UK’s National Security Strategies as part of Britain’s National Security Secretariat. She has been Senior Lecturer in War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst; Head of the Strategic Horizons Unit in the UK Cabinet Office; and the Devil’s Advocate to Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee.
Lynette coaches, mentors and speaks publicly in person and through television.
David Key
David has 30 years of leadership experience in corporate, consultancy and military contexts; with 20 years of deep subject matter experience in crisis management, business resilience and risk management. He has lived and worked in over 20 countries, often in dynamic risk environments, across a range of industries including extractives, finance, manufacturing,energy and transport.
He has recently been engaged by clients managing supply chain risk in the context of Brexit and pandemic threats. Previously he has facilitated the corporate response to political instability, cyber-attack, kidnap, environmental incident, and reputation attack by pressure groups. He is comfortable working with executives under pressure.
Before joining Nusbacher & Associates Ltd, David led on resilience at BG Group PLC and headed the crisis management practice at Control Risks Ltd. He holds a master’s in corporate risk, is a professionally trained facilitator and executive coach and served as an army officer.
Rina Atienza
Rina flexes her strength as a polymath with eclectic interests, which makes for a highly resourceful problem solver. She is a social engineer who pushes for more radical and imaginative visions to tackle ‘wicked’ problems. She enjoys cultivating connections, and values the application of playfulness.
Her professional experience covers working with various communications industries, tech clients, arts organizations, charities, startup companies, and corporate training. She served in the Philippines government Climate Change Commission, directing disaster response & community resilience campaigns.
She studied History of Art at Warwick University, and completed her MA in Social & Cultural History at Birkbeck College. She is also currently a lecturer on History & Context for the Creative & Cultural Industries BA at Kingston School of Art, Kingston University.
Case studies
1. The Chief Executive — Education Sector
G was newly appointed chief executive of a global group of academy schools and further education colleges. He was coming in from outside without sufficient situational awareness, and the group’s professional staff was used to being ignored by management. It was immediately clear to G that he needed to listen to his staff at every level. N&A conducted futures workshops across the business which oriented group strategy to the business’s reality. This brought staff together in a way that transparently took their ideas to the chief exec, and which informed the chief exec about live issues across the business.
2(a): The Global Firm Owners — In the Fishing Industry
Contingency planning to allow for business continuity affecting fleet of vessels regardless of Brexit outcomes.
A global firm which owns British fishing vessels sells its catch across Europe, including in the British isles. It developed a contingency plan for a no-deal Brexit which would enable business continuity regardless of Brexit outcomes. N&A joined with an international law firm and a customs brokerage to offer scenarios to guide their contingency planning, and then to act as a ‘red team’ to test the fishers’ plans against plausible scenarios. The firm used their contingency planning to achieve radical transparency on their Brexit readiness, and to position themselves as market leaders in post-Brexit food and beverage marketing.
2(b): The Global Firm Owners — In the Arms Industry
Two years before the end of the Obama presidency, the US Department of Defence unveiled a new global defence strategy which shattered long standing assumptions about US defence priorities. The sales and marketing people at a major European defence firm needed to understand how they would need to sell into the US market under this new Third Offset Strategy for the forthcoming two years. N&A conducted a structured analysis of the strategy, and delivered a workshop to create a way to inform their own management board, to take coherent and appropriate sales and marketing messages to their customers, and to inform their own business units about future requirements.
3: The Senior Managers — Financial Services
Disengaging from the templates of identification process which represented reputational risk, to identify the need for developing a more considered and legitimate diversity programme.
The world’s largest building society had challenged the rest of its sector to walk the diversity walk. They invited a group of senior managers to come together at corporate headquarters for a Diversity Week, and they needed to guide their managers towards practical application of diversity to their consumer brand, their employer brand and their customer relations. N&A conducted a full-day strategy workshop with the senior managers. The managers identified that they used apparent sex, apparent gender and apparent ethnicity to identify customers as a matter of routine, and over the course of one day developed a strategy to disengage their identification processes from templates which represented diversity-related reputational risk.
4: The Trade Leaders — Retail Industry
Calibrating a planned conference for legal and public affairs officers, to include a collaborative agenda that will equip them with proactive business clarity, regardless of decisions from government.
In 2018 British retailers were waiting for the UK government to give them a picture of operating conditions in the post-Brexit world. Their trade body had already postponed a conference on the subject by six months, hoping that the government would give them clarity. N&A helped the Head of Retail Sector of an international law firm to create meaningful, plausible post-Brexit scenarios. With these in hand, the legal and public affairs officers of ten large retailers were brought together to collaboratively workshop the implications of post-Brexit scenarios for their businesses.