Find clarity in complexity
About Mary Daly - Throughline Solutions
I am a strategist, problem solver and dedicated clarity seeker. I work with leaders and teams who want to invest in their strategic capabilities so they can do their best work and succeed in the long term.
I have been brought into hundreds of organizations to add an outside perspective when leaders want to reinvent their programs, their organization, or the way forward. I play the role of designer, crafting the structures and systems that form the foundation for future growth. I’m the mobilizer, moving conceptual big rocks and teaching others the process of exploring for new ideas. And, I play the role of ‘imagineer’, unlocking a team’s ability to create alternatives for the future before having all the answers or proof of success.
Clearly seeing and understanding clients’ challenges and then helping them find the throughline – the path of least resistance and concrete change – has been my passion for 30 years as an industry leader in org design and creative strategic thinking.
Visuals create shared understanding
Visual thinking is an essential part of my problem solving toolkit, finding and sharing ways to discover hidden ideas, improving the ability to look at complex information and revealing important patterns. Virtually any problem can be solved with a picture – by drawing it out we see previously unseen aspects and potential solutions emerge. Even if the ultimate solution doesn’t reveal itself right away, the drawing path generates clarity all along the way.
Context Matters
Working with clients for over 30 years has taught me that context always matters. My earliest days in consulting gave me an intense schooling in quickly getting up to speed on each client’s environment, how they were structured and organized, how they made money, and what they valued in their workforce. Finding the through line is always a discovery process involving questions, discussion, and sometimes debate. The talking and the tools are focused on making sense of the challenge, and replacing noise and complexity with a simpler view that allows people to see the full context, and their part in it.
What clients are saying
Mary has a remarkable analytical mind. She can deconstruct complex, multidimensional problems into their component parts and facilitate the definition and implementation of effective solutions. I’ve worked with Mary at several stages of my career and have always appreciated her singular ability to bring structure and clarity to large but sometimes rather vague challenges. She’s been a great thinking partner for me over the years.
Nathalie Parent, Chief HR Officer, Shift Technology
Mary is a strategist in the truest sense of the word, quickly grasping the essence of our organizational challenges, and honing in with laser focus on strategies that were both innovative and accessible, ultimately bringing concrete, sustainable results to our project.
Through collaborative inquiries with senior management teams, she facilitated the generation of tangible solutions. She is masterful at distilling complex challenges into simple and clear solutions. Moreover, Mary’s brilliant use of creativity, expert knowledge and breadth of experience enabled us to identify the possible and design a quick and clear path to success.
Caroline Cyr, Former Director General, Government of Canada
As a volunteer leader for a program with over 400 participants, I was stretched thin and running in a hamster wheel! Our volunteer structure was fragile and unsustainable. Mary and I worked through her mapping process to create effective visualizations that revealed how the work could be divided, with new roles and responsibilities to allow a much larger group of volunteer leaders to contribute in a meaningful way. I could step away from the role knowing that the program was sustainable and future leaders could continue to build on our hard-won improvements.
Luk Arbuckle, Volunteer Leader, Nakkertok
Mary has an uncanny ability to bring simplicity to the complex. Her line-less notebook quickly transforms into clear, clever and viable business solutions, often in the initial conversation.
Jeff Lucier, Aspirant Leadership Coaching and Consulting