About Alvestris Group
A strategic planning practice on North 37th Lane in McAllen, working with organizations across the Rio Grande Valley and South Texas.
Why we require a stop list
Alvestris Group was founded to produce strategic plans that organizations could actually carry out.
Our consultants had all written plans that were well researched, properly facilitated and never executed. The pattern was identical every time: a long list of new commitments, no corresponding reduction, and a leadership team expected to absorb the difference on top of running the organization.
The omission is structural rather than careless. Every existing activity has a sponsor and a history. Naming one for termination costs political capital, and a consultant hoping for a renewal has every reason not to spend it.
What follows is rationing by accident. The organization cannot do everything, so individual managers decide informally what gets attention. The resulting selection has no relationship to the strategy and nobody ever made it consciously.
So we do not issue a plan without a stop list. Specific activities that will end, with dates and named owners, agreed by the people whose work appears on it. It is the least comfortable meeting in the process and the one that determines whether anything happens.
How we are engaged
Fees are fixed against scope and agreed before work begins. We do not charge against projected benefits, which would give us an interest in the size of the forecast rather than its accuracy.
We do not bid for implementation of our own plans. A strategy that happens to recommend a large delivery contract for its own author is worth very little, and removing that possibility keeps the recommendations honest.
Findings go to the whole board, not to the executive who commissioned the work. Where the board and the executive hold different assumptions, both appear in the document rather than being reconciled privately.
We work in English and Spanish. Planning sessions across the Valley routinely run in both, and a facilitation conducted only in English collects a narrower set of views than it appears to.
What every client can expect
Stop list required
No plan is issued without specific activities named for termination, with dates and owners.
Capacity in real hours
Change capacity measured against existing management commitments rather than assumed.
Named owners
Every initiative carries an individual owner agreed in the room, not a department.
Fixed fees
Agreed against scope in advance. Never contingent on projected benefits.
No implementation bid
We do not tender for delivery of work we recommended.
Whole-board reporting
Findings go to the full board, including where they concern the executive.
Who you will work with
Lydia Emerson
Strategic Planning Consultant
Leads planning engagements and facilitates the stop list session that every plan depends on. Lydia also runs the capacity assessment that sets the ceiling on what a plan can contain.
Managing Director
Leadership
Founded the practice and holds the rule that no plan leaves the building without a stop list, including when a client would prefer otherwise.
Head of Practice
Consulting
Nineteen years in organizational strategy across South Texas and northern Mexico, with particular depth in nonprofit and public sector planning.