Behind our new byline – the sense makers

We are now ‘the sense makers’, picking up on a way of working that has been the hallmark of our approach. 

As Dovetail celebrates our 10th birthday, we looked to refresh our branding and key messages. Working with an ethical marketing company and fellow B Corporation, Good Sense, we looked at Dovetail through a new lens. While we still create insight for action and change, we revisited our tagline to better represent our core purpose, collective talents, and unique offering.  

Often our work is complex and ambiguous, and no two projects are ever the same. We help our clients make sense of complex and challenging programmes and data, weaving numbers and narratives together to tell stories, develop future recommendations, and make robust evaluative judgements. The sense makers speaks to both the logic and reasoning we follow, the clarity we bring to our client's mahi and future steps, as well as a nod to a unique collaborative process that we follow in our work.  

Dovetail has long been using a sense making collaborative process that includes clients in the development of our mahi as it unfolds.  

Before we begin writing a report, our team will have an internal sense-making session to discuss key findings emerging and triangulate across all the data we have collected. We use tools like Mural and Xmind to brainstorm against key research or evaluation questions. We then meet with our client and wider stakeholder network to present our key findings, opening the floor to their thoughts, questions and considerations.  

We believe sense making sessions are an essential step in our process because: 

• They allow our clients who are the experts in their programmes to offer valuable context that shapes our work as we go. 

• They keep us on track, as early and honest feedback ensures no difficult surprises on either end.  

• They allow our clients, and their wider team to ask questions, correct our assumptions and have important conversations long before the final report is published.   

At the heart of our work at Dovetail is making sense of the complex. We have an ever-expanding kete (basket) of robust methodologies, talented minds and sound expertise to help our clients capture their tangible or intangible impact.

We turn problems into opportunities, reframe difficulties and empower our clients to move forward with clarity of their future steps.  

That’s what makes us the sense makers.