Services & Work — ctr inc. shape your future

CTR clients seek
to lead not
play catch-up.

They anticipate and creatively adapt to change, rather than blindly react to it and transform themselves in ways that make them stronger, fitter, and better positioned for success.

Strategic Consulting & Innovation

We partner with you to craft innovative strategies to unlock the unique value, transition and next wave of growth and sustainability for your organization and stakeholder communities.

Our curated multi-disciplinary team of industry-leading consultants, practitioners and subject-matter experts works closely with you to develop progressive strategies and tangible action plans to unlock and drive sustainable prosperity for your business and community.

Whether you are looking to improve, transform, exit, or create something new, we employ an entrepreneurial-minded approach that combines forward-thinking vision with pragmatic planning and foresight to help you think both big and small. Our strategic process is hands-on, results-oriented and highly collaborative. We assemble small, interdisciplinary teams that are hand-picked to be the perfect fit to work with you and deliver exceptional value on each engagement. We conduct a rigorous strategic planning process that enables you to identify where the best opportunities lie for your business, understand the trade-offs between different scenarios, and develop practical action plans to execute your strategy and achieve your envisioned future.

PORTABLE ELECTRIC is one of Canada’s first mobile power, ‘cleantech’ companies has repeatedly retained CTR, since launching in 2016, to develop and implement forward-thinking business and innovation strategies resulting in triple-digit growth and market expansion throughout North America. This included organizational design, business, foresight and marketing strategies, future opportunity mapping and action plans; investor pitches, executive and team coaching-mentoring and CXO advisory services.
The Founder-CEO of LENDIFIED, this first mover in B2B lending, engaged CTR to collaborate on the design, development and launch of the company and contribute to a strategic readiness plan for its fast growth future. This included: branding, marketing, future opportunity mapping, capacity-building partnerships and a delivery team of senior data scientists finance and tech specialists, and customer acquisitions. Within six years of startup, the company was acquired by one of Canada’s leading financial technology organizations.

Leadership & Sustainability

Stepping Up Global and Local Leadership Sustainability Challenges

Everything and everyone is affected by our fast-changing climate, economy and other mega socio-tech, environmental and geopolitical challenges that are radically redefining our lives and business as life as usual.

The call to leaders to step up and participate in meeting those global and local challenges is loud and clear.

CTR helps leaders achieve that in sundry ways – starting with an assessment of existing and planned business leadership, sustainability and resiliency plans, programs and delivery priorities. Whether that’s developing a net zero transition plan for its building assets, community district energy solutions, food and work security, or creating an agile, hybrid work environment. Regardless of the focus, we curate the right-fit professionals to partner with you from discovery to execution – including mentoring support.

Reporting to the Chief Legal Officer- Chief Sustainability Officer, in 2020 we were engaged to evaluate and contribute strategic foresight and innovation insights to AECON’s Inaugural Sustainability Report, published in 2021. Our mandate: review, evaluate, edit and add new evidenced content. Identify gaps, opportunities, articulate alignment with Canada’s Expert Panel on Sustainable Finance and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Previously, to showcase AECON’s commitment to continuing and expanding its contribution to environmental sustainability, ctr was asked to provide counsel to its Sustainability Leadership Committee, develop the foundational sustainability strategy, and produce stories that featured their corporate responsibility successes around the world in Israel, Ecuador, South Africa and Canada.
Engaged by the 2018 ICT host, as a Foresight-sustainability advisor and speaker for the 4th International Conference. This in-person, experiential learning and thought leadership workshop, at the University of Toronto, was attended by a global group of senior ICT leaders and experts from businesses, institutions and governments in the Americas and Europe. Topic focus: “Thriving in an Age of Exponential Change - Roadmaps & Visions for Creating a Sustainable Society.”

Communications & Stakeholder Engagement

Effective communication is a critical aspect of business success.

It's how people share stories and ideas. Stay informed of market changes. Attract and retain customers and employees. Engage stakeholders and community influencers. Promote new projects, products and investment opportunities. Build brand awareness and loyalty. Facilitate results-focused executive meetings and public forums. Make critical decisions. These are all dependent on effective communications, custom-designed and executed to support your goals.

Whether the scope of engagement is strategic and ongoing, or a tactical communication and stakeholder project, we deliver.

The North Atlantic General Manager of Vale Base Metals at VALE MINING engaged CTR to cultivate a culture of innovation. To speed up the realization of envisioned results, we focused our initial innovation challenge not on the mining operations – but on the company’s worldwide energy use. Energy is more than an input in mining: it’s one of the industry’s biggest fixed costs, and it affects mine efficiency and safety. Increasingly, it’s also a reputational issue (and a major concern for the board of directors).
By focusing on this one seemingly side issue, our teams got straight to work on tangible, meaningful challenges. Before long, we had developed an internal energy innovation training and resource hub, a portfolio of replicable energy conservation and transformation pilot projects, and an Energy Innovation Fund to finance and accelerate innovative solutions.
Using an integrated collaborative approach, all deliverables were iteratively completed on time resulting in several recurring benefits: $15 million of annualized energy cost savings in one site alone, engagement of over 30,000 internal and community stakeholders and delivery partnerships in key communities where Vale operated in the Americas and Europe.

Change Management & Transformation

You can't manage to change. You have to lead the way through change.

Traditional organizational change is driven by leaders who set the strategic direction of a company or group and direct others to follow. To accelerate trust and value creation, CTR applies an inclusive, futurist approach that engages key decision-makers and implementation leaders charged with and affected by the transformation.

Common reasons why they choose to change vary by organizational size, maturity and key drivers. Restructuring to sell or grow, creating a high hybrid work environment, engaging service lines to deliver the brand promise, building a climate resilient infrastructure, and 'becoming more market relevant and future ready', are a few. Regardless of how big or small the 'ask' is, we use a disciplined approach to assess what has to change and why, who is affected, how to develop and lead the change, and how to know that it's been achieved.

In every case, we stay involved as long as required and transfer knowledge to ensure continuous improvement.

We have been retained by a cross-sector of corporate, SME and government clients: energy, financial services, ICT, manufacturing, infrastructure and professional services - to partner with them on the design, development and implementation of local and global multi-year change management and transformation initiatives. Due to the confidential nature of these assignments, we provide client references but do not publish this work.

Accelerated Solutions Discovery, Education & Mobilization

Powered by our unique and collaborative Sparkplug Acceleron™ process, which includes strategic foresight and future scenarios, we accelerate the discovery and design of innovative strategies, roadmaps, communication and educational plans to socialize optimal futures throughout your organization and key stakeholder communities. We create playbooks that enable you to prioritize opportunities, including the resources, processes, relationships and partnerships that need to be developed. We work with you to develop internal communication plans, create assets and facilitate workshops to socialize business futures throughout your organization.

The Canadian lead for MAINSTREAM RENEWABLE POWER (MRP) hired ctr to develop and advise on implementing an integrated expansion strategy for the national market. MRP is a global pure play energy development company with a portfolio of clean, renewable power assets across Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacific. We delivered collaborative action-driven strategic planning and solution discovery workshops, and consulting services, and produced a how-to playbook to guide the client team on execution.
All work was successfully completed ahead of schedule to help accelerate the company’s readiness to further deliver renewable energy at scale, outside of Europe.

Future Readiness Leadership Coaching/Mentoring

How to lead better in a disruptive world.

To advance innovation and foresight delivery capability we provide leadership coaching and mentoring for senior and emerging leaders and teams – customized to support the development of specific future readiness knowledge and skill-building goals.

Due to the confidential nature of this work, we cannot provide examples.

Foresight & Future Roadmaps

Shaping Your Preferred Future for Thriving Sustainably

We provide long-term strategic perspective and evaluate alternative futures for your organization and stakeholder community

We facilitate envisioned business scenarios and develop a comprehensive understanding of the requirements for each potential outcome. This includes developing sketches, models, prototypes and stories to help you communicate concepts and deliverables to both internal and external stakeholders.

Our curated group of futurists, industry and subject matter experts collaborates with you to develop reimagined futures. Make informed strategic decisions to guide forward the preferred future state. To achieve this, we apply a proven foresight framework and future scenarios to catalyze new thinking beyond conventional boundaries, challenge traditional assumptions and identify emerging opportunities to kick-start the way forward journey. To guide and track execution, we create “how-to” playbooks and future roadmaps, and provide mentoring and other resources.

On behalf of RSI, funded in part by Environment and Climate Change Canada, and in-kind sponsors, Yasmin was retained as the chief strategist and implementation lead of a replicable Climate Change Action Initiative for High-Rise Urban Communities in 2021-22. The project focus: St. James Town Community, Toronto.
In less than 13 months, applying a collaborative foresight and systems thinking framework, we engaged and educated over 500 key stakeholders and associations within and external to St James Town about the current and future impacts of climate change and other disruptions on buildings, energy, the economy and wellbeing of people who live and work in the 25,000, mostly low income and newcomer, high rise community. Stakeholders included MURB owners, investors, property managers, City of Toronto, among others. Outcomes: National Public forums, Climate Ambassador training workshops, mentorships. Media, Government and Community events, over 40 thought leadership articles and blogs. Produced a 249-page best practice roadmap in the form of a Playbook (including future scenarios), to guide the implementation of scalable climate resiliency and capacity-building practices for use by building owners and tenants. The delivery cohort: a mission-focused group of global and Toronto-based climate scientists, ecologists, building scientists, engineers, economists, futurists, technology architects, urban planners, developers, and a dedicated communication and marketing group. We documented and translated key insights into an evolving “How-To” Playbook and user-centric publications. As reported by ECCC: we “cracked the code” for how to create and mobilize a more connected and positive future for communities to thrive. All team members received awards of recognition for their accomplishments. Roadmap link to The Climate Change Action in Urban High-Rise Communities, Playbook.