Strategic session facilitation

Our company Jinn is a product-led HRtech startup that helps automate people management processes. At the same time, we have a strong business culture — from the very beginning we have been systematizing internal processes, setting long-term goals, breaking them down by department, and are very unlike the chaos that is typical of many startups.

We came to Alexander with the task of running a strategic session — to plan the year, develop real and ambitious goals, but most importantly — to do this not «top down,» but together with the team, so that everyone would take ownership of those goals.

Honestly, before this I changed my consultant every year: they were usually facilitators whose work ended exactly at the moment the session was over. This time it was different. Alexander is not just a facilitator — he is a genuine strategy consultant. He is someone with deep business experience, broad exposure, and an approach that combines both facilitation and management depth. You feel it from the very first steps.

What was especially valuable for us was the thorough preparation before the session. The team was worked through, a retrospective was conducted, bottlenecks were identified. This wasn’t just «we showed up and talked» — this was real strategizing.

What we got at the end was not just a plan for the year. We synchronized the strategic vision between the founders, put it into a clear document, defined the principles and approaches to the product, clarified the target audience profile and phasing. What had previously existed only «in our heads» took shape, became clear to the team, and real shifts began: initiatives from employees started appearing that had never emerged before, departments began interacting in a new way, and hiring for strategic roles kicked off immediately.

Alexander knows how to intervene gently but precisely when needed — he is not afraid to break the conventional «neutrality of a facilitator» in order to guide the group toward where the real result lies. His management instinct and reliance on proven practices played a decisive role.

The impression from the work is strong. The team feels the same. For the first time, there was a genuine desire to continue the collaboration after the session — to hold regular tracking meetings, to work through implementation. And that, perhaps, is the main confirmation of value: this is a project you want not to finish, but to continue. I think that for all companies for whom a strategic session is needed not as a formality, but for real business results — A.maze.S is an excellent partner.

 

Valery Meshkov,
Co-founder and CEO