Perceptist is not in the dictionary. What does it mean? Where did the word come from?

My co-founder Jen Timm and I spent a long time searching for a firm name. When we could not find an existing word that fit the vision of our firm, we created our own — Perceptist. Here’s what it means: A Perceptist is someone with the unique ability to cut through complexity and bring coherence for strategic decision-making. We’ve found that this particular skill is essential when doing strategy work. This superpower is essential to designing strategies with better outcomes and greater impact.

Social impact organizations and leaders are often overwhelmed by vast amounts of information, opportunities, and stakeholders. At Perceptist, we harness our superpower of cutting through complexity to bring clarity — using proven frameworks and tools and expert facilitation — so leaders can navigate with confidence the myriad decisions across organizational, operational, and programmatic strategies.

A recent client came to us with a complex “haystack” of strategic frameworks. They lacked the tools, time, and capacity to synthesize these powerful frameworks into their impact and growth strategy. It really felt like a needle lost in that haystack of frameworks. The theory of change and strategies were obscured. It took a trusted process and a lot of work to unearth a clear strategy that everyone could strive toward. Perceptist sorted through the data and organizational priorities, and tested dozens of assumptions until the needle and thread emerged — a clear theory and strategy for impact. Through our work and support, trust was created between Perceptist and the staff, resulting in strong buy-in into the process and desired outcome and greater cohesion across the team. The best feedback was when the CEO shared that Perceptist had become part of their family. And oh, they have a great strategy now!

Starting Perceptist was about a new chapter of impact for you professionally. You could have founded a firm that focused on any number of different things, given your professional background. Why social impact strategy?

Starting Perceptist was about creating a new chapter of impact that aligns with both my professional experience and my core values. I chose to focus on social impact strategy because throughout my career in public policy, philanthropy, and consultancy, I saw firsthand the critical need for deeper capacity-building in the sector. Leading organizations focused on education and workforce solutions, I consistently sought consultants who could do more than just deliver strategies. We needed them to strengthen our teams and help us implement those strategies to drive sustainable growth. Perceptist was born from those experiences. We focus on not just designing strategies, but providing the hands-on support that empowers social impact organizations to adapt, grow, and increase their effectiveness. Personally, this is where I believed I could do the most meaningful work. No doubt, it was the right decision.

You say that this work is often about, “Helping folks get out of their own way.” What do you mean by this?

When I say the work is about “helping folks get out of their own way,” I’m highlighting how social impact leaders, like anyone, can become their own biggest obstacles. Fixed mindsets, ingrained routines, or ego often block progress and prevent effective change. It’s usually not external challenges but our own habits and assumptions that hold us back. At Perceptist, we guide leaders to recognize and overcome these barriers, helping them lead with more clarity, creativity, and impact. I’ve seen that when leaders make these shifts during strategy development, their teams respond. This fosters an environment more open to change, making the transition to implementation smoother and more successful.

One book I often recommend is the Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. It sets out four powerful mindsets to ground oneself into the introspective required to lead and advance strategy and create change.

What part of the strategy process proves most difficult for people? How does Perceptist help people get unstuck?

As the landscape of strategy evolves, the core stages of strategy development remain consistent. However, organizations often struggle with these critical pain points:

1. Realignment and operational effectiveness: Ensuring that operational systems align with strategic goals is often a significant hurdle.
2. Managing transitions amid change: Navigating shifts in talent, technology, and resource allocation during strategic transitions can be particularly challenging.
3. Sustaining and adapting strategy: Keeping strategy relevant and adaptable over time is an ongoing struggle for many
4. Managing mission creep: Using the ongoing strategic planning process to resist the temptation of taking on activities, programs, or initiatives that stray from the core mission.

At Perceptist, we help organizations move past these pain points during both strategy development and implementation. Through productive design sessions and tailored tools, we bring clarity to complex data, frameworks, and perspectives. We work closely with clients to establish routines and systems that keep their strategies dynamic and effective. In today’s fast-paced environment, staying ‘unstuck’ means treating strategy as a continuous journey, not a one-time event. For example, we often help clients integrate their strategy into annual processes, enabling them to adapt to opportunities and shifts and assess where the strategy stands. It is incredibly rewarding to see it all come together and make a tangible difference.

What advice would you give to a social impact leader looking for strategy support?

I’ll pick up with the previous question and ask the social impact leader to consider where their current strategy stands. Think of your strategy as just one chapter in your organization’s story, as it moves forward with its mission. Ask yourself if it needs a refresh, refinement, or complete redesign? Can it achieve the goals and move towards the vision? I would advise to answer these questions with a deep understanding of what’s happening in the bigger ecosystem of your issue-area and market.

As Ann Mei Chang wrote in the valuable book, Lean Impact, “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution.” Stay curious and thorough and go beyond the usual activities like SWOT analysis to accurately understand your beneficiaries and stakeholders, and the ecosystem in which you are working. That way you can really understand the impact and sustainability of your strategy, its strengths and limitations, and find the way to greater impact.

What’s your macro view of the challenges or trends currently facing social impact leaders and organizations? What do you feel poses the best opportunity for transformative impact across the social impact sector?

Globally, we’re witnessing profound geopolitical, environmental, and economic shifts, which I see as natural opportunities for transformation. These dynamics push us to rethink how we shape strategies to achieve better outcomes for people around the world.

I’m seeing social impact organizations experiencing increasing demands for and on their solutions, which requires rethinking their organizational, programmatic, and operational strategies. As organizations respond, they need flexible capital and new ways of working. Philanthropies and social impact investors are recognizing this, moving beyond traditional grantmaking to embrace new types of capital and different ways of structuring philanthropic grants. There is also an increasing priority around capacity-building support. I’m seeing this trend both locally and in my global travels.

If we can strengthen the capacity of the social impact sector particularly in communities throughout the world where divestment has been most acute, it can be truly transformational. We would have successfully improved critical social institutions and infrastructures and that’s a pretty big deal. That’s something that truly excites me.

Finally, you talk a lot about joy and have called yourself a joy-pusher? How does this show up in your work?

I believe we must approach this work with joy to counter the stress and toll it can take on us as individuals. We all got into this field because we’re passionate and find meaning in the social impact sector. When I started losing that joy, mindfulness became a tool that helped sustain me — and I now bring that into my client work.

When engaging with clients, my goal is to create an energy that makes the work joyful. Mindfulness has taught me that joy is rooted in being present, so I focus on creating a space where everyone can fully show up. Gratitude also plays a key role. In meetings, I’ll sometimes invite participants to share one thing they’re grateful for or where they need grace that day. These small moments reset the energy and help us connect with the shared joy of tackling complex challenges together.

I highly recommend Leading with Joy, a book written by my dear friend and colleague Rajavini Bhansali alongside Akaya Windwood. It beautifully emphasizes the importance of infusing joy into the meaningful and consequential work we do. Let’s make this work joyful!

Q&A: Cassius Johnson on strategic superpowers, getting out of our own way, and of course, joy! was originally published in Perceptist Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At Perceptist, we have an insatiable appetite for learning about anything related to strategy, especially when it holds insights relevant to social impact organizations.

At Perceptist, we have an insatiable appetite for learning about anything related to strategy, especially when it holds insights relevant to social impact organizations.

Earlier this summer, we published our first Perceptist Insights article, What is Strategy? In it, we reference fellow strategy expert Roger Martin, who is renowned as a strategic thinker and co-author of Playing to Win. Martin’s beliefs about how strategy is about winning and that planning, while complementary to strategy, is inherently very different, have shaped our own thinking about strategy.

In What is Strategy, we took Martin’s insights a critical step further by explicitly addressing the unique focus of social impact organizations: people. We agree sustainability is core to any organizational strategy. However, in our sector, winning isn’t just about market share or profitability; it’s about improving lives, protecting the environment, and fostering a just world. The distinction between a hypothesis on why your strategy will succeed and a plan to marshal resources effectively is crucial for social impact leaders.

Martin has written extensively on strategy. We like this video called “A Plan is Not a Strategy, where Martin differentiates these two concepts. Although his language and examples are rooted outside the social sector, the principles are highly relevant and instructive for social impact. As you watch, consider this: does your organization have a strategy, a plan, or both?

-Cassius and Jen

Please don’t confuse strategy with a plan. was originally published in Perceptist Insights on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.