The Business We Were Trying to Define

Amy Malmstrom, 39Forward Co-founder, discusses the evolution of the business, but not in the work, in the language.

Several months ago, we published an article called Defining a Business That Doesn’t Exist Yet. At the time, that felt like the most honest way to describe where we were. The work we were doing with organizations was real, and the impact was clear, but the language around the business itself still felt unfinished.

We can explain the roles we played in our complex projects and the situations that brought companies to us, but we haven't been able to define the company in a way that fully captures the final result. Looking back, the problem wasn’t that the business didn’t exist. The problem was that we were trying to describe a small piece of our work.

For a long time, we explained our work through the roles we played: strategic advisor, owner’s representative, and project leadership. Those descriptions were not inaccurate, but they never captured the full picture. The more we refined them, the more we realized we were describing positions within the work rather than the work itself.

That distinction seems small at first, but once we noticed it, it changed how we thought about everything. A service is the problem being solved. A role is simply the part someone plays in that solution.

That insight helped explain something we had been seeing for years in conversations with clients. When organizations reach out to us, they rarely begin by describing the problem they are trying to solve. More often, they begin by describing the role they think someone needs to fill.

They may think they need someone to represent ownership on a project, someone to manage the moving parts of a complex initiative, or someone to bring structure and accountability to decision-making. Those roles are important and often part of the work. But as conversations deepen, a different set of questions tends to surface:

What does success look like for this project?

What does success look like for our business?

How do we support the organization's future through this project?

These are the questions that shift the conversation to reveal something many organizations quietly experience:

It is entirely possible to run a very good project that is bad for your business.

A project can be executed exactly as planned. It can stay on schedule, stay within budget, and follow every intended process. Yet even when those things go well, the result can still fall short of the opportunity the organization hoped to create. When that happens, the issue is rarely how the project was managed. More often, it is how the problem was framed in the first place.

Over the past year, as we worked alongside more organizations navigating large initiatives, a pattern began to emerge. Companies were not simply trying to complete projects. They were trying to solve different types of problems at different moments throughout the life of an initiative.

Sometimes the challenge arose at the beginning, when leadership was still defining what success looked like and why a particular investment mattered to the company's future. Other times it emerged during planning, when teams needed stronger alignment and strategy before moving forward. In some cases, critical questions surfaced during design as decisions about space, experience, and operations began to shape the future environment. And of course, there were moments during execution, when turning ideas into reality required strong leadership and coordination across many teams.

Occasionally, the most important work did not emerge until the project was nearly finished, when the organization needed to implement the change and ensure the investment actually delivered the outcomes it was meant to achieve.

Are we simply solving the problem in front of us, or are we maximizing everything that problem touches?

Once we stepped back and viewed our work through that lens, something became clear. The roles we had been using to describe ourselves were never the service itself. They were simply the way we participated in solving the problem that existed at a particular moment in the journey. That realization gave us a clearer way to describe our work. Not because the work had changed, but because we were finally describing it through the problems organizations are actually trying to solve, rather than through the titles people often use to solve them.

Another realization followed close behind. Solving the problem in front of you is only part of the opportunity. The real potential often lies in understanding what else that solution might unlock for the business.

Large investments, especially those involving real estate, facilities, and the environments where people work, rarely affect only one outcome. They influence how people collaborate, how teams experience their daily work, how culture evolves, and how the organization positions itself for the future.

Handled narrowly, a project solves a problem. Handled thoughtfully, it can strengthen an entire business.

That perspective has increasingly shaped how we approach our work. Rather than focusing only on the mechanics of executing a project well, we try to keep asking a broader question:

If this were our business, how would we approach this decision?

Not simply to complete the project, but to maximize the opportunity the project represents. One way to think about this is through something simpler than business strategy: a trip.

Photo of post-it notes during a strategy session.

Most projects are approached like a drive to a destination. The route is defined, the vehicle starts moving, and the objective is to arrive as efficiently as possible. In many ways, that makes sense. There is a place the organization wants to go, and the project is the vehicle intended to get them there.

But the journeys that stay with us rarely unfold that neatly. The vehicle matters. The people inside it matter. The conversations along the way matter. Sometimes the unexpected moments—the stops you did not plan, or the perspectives you gain along the way—become the most valuable parts of the experience. Occasionally, the journey itself even changes how you see the destination you thought you were heading toward.

Business initiatives work much the same way. The destination matters, but the way the journey unfolds often determines whether the outcome simply solves a problem or meaningfully moves the organization forward.

Today, the work we do at 39Forward is clearer than it was when we wrote that first article. Not because the work itself has changed, but because we have learned how to describe it more honestly.

At its core, our work is about helping organizations ensure that the investments they make, especially large ones, are aligned with the future they are trying to build, not just the project they are trying to complete.

Sometimes, the most important work within a project is not managing the process; it is asking better questions.