A new approach to organisational challenge

See what your
organisation
actually does.

Most interventions fail not because they are poorly executed, but because they begin with an incomplete picture of the problem. The Eagle Suite and VES Canvas Toolkit change that — mapping the real flows of value across your organisation before any action is designed.

Phase A — SCAN › Phase B — SWOOP › GDPM — START › Phase C — LEARN
The Challenge

Three failures that recur across programmes of every size.

01 / WRONG PROBLEM

Solving the symptom

Stakeholders agree quickly on what needs to change, implement it, and find the situation unchanged — or worse. The presenting problem was a symptom. The causal structure was never examined.

02 / WRONG DESIGN

Activity without deliverables

The causal structure is understood, but the intervention is designed around activities rather than deliverables. Progress is reported but no one can say what has actually changed.

03 / NO LEARNING

The cycle repeats

The intervention produces measurable change, but the organisation cannot explain why it worked or how to sustain it. The next crisis repeats the same pattern.

The Eagle Suite

A unified methodology for organisational intervention.

The Eagle Suite integrates Soft Systems Methodology, the Value Exchange System, and Goal Directed Project Management into a single, traceable cycle. Every phase produces artefacts that feed directly into the next. Nothing is discarded.

Every activity is traceable to a causal claim. Every deliverable is traceable to a Key Factor. Every Key Factor is traceable to the Reconciled Transformation Statement — and to the worldviews of the people who live with the problem.

Start a Conversation
SCAN

Phase A — What is really going on, and why?

Multi-perspective problem exploration through Soft Systems Methodology. No intervention begins until a Reconciled Transformation Statement has been agreed across all significant stakeholder worldviews.

SWOOP

Phase B — What must we produce?

Causal Loop Diagram, Deliverables Register, and VES Design translate problem understanding into a causally-justified intervention. Every claim is made explicit enough to be tested.

START

GDPM — How do we adapt our way to the goal?

Goal Directed Project Management organises planning around verifiable milestones — Foundation, Enabling, and Outcome — with rolling-wave activity planning and adaptive management protocols.

LEARN

Phase C — Did we understand correctly?

SSM Stages 5–7 close the loop — asking not whether the programme was well-managed, but whether the organisation's causal understanding of itself was correct. Each cycle deepens organisational self-knowledge.

Visualise the value flows that actually sustain your enterprise.

Conventional organisational charts capture formal authority — but systematically fail to capture the intangible value that sustains organisational life: trust, knowledge, motivation, informal support. The VES Canvas Toolkit maps both, in a single browser-based analytical environment. It can be used standalone or as the analytical engine within the Eagle Suite.

VES Canvas

Primary diagramming workspace. Map Participants, Deliverables, formal and informal transactions, and absent exchanges.

WST Analyzer

We Space Theory assessment — identifying where genuine collaboration exists and where it is structurally prevented.

Transaction Analyzer

Risk assessment, bottleneck identification, and critical path analysis based on causation type and confidence levels. Links to AI and innovation risk assessment.

VSM Connections

Viable System Model integration — verifying that all required management functions are present and connected.

Dashboard

Network density, formal/informal balance, group analysis, and comprehensive reporting across all canvas dimensions.

Developed in practice, over four decades.

David Meggitt is a Chartered Civil Engineer and management services specialist, formerly of PA International Management Consultants and Planning Research Corporation. He founded the Value Exchange System on methodologies he used in 1982 to map the flow of 5,500 information elements in the preparation of the Fourth Five-Year Plan for the Ministry of Planning, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and to determine where information technology could be applied.

Christie Sarri — also a Chartered Civil Engineer, with an MBA — joined as co-developer in 2011. She and David are the custodians of VES and published the first Handbook of the Value Exchange System in 2019. Christie presented VES to the inaugural Open Innovation course of Professor Henry Chesbrough at Berkeley in 2013.

The value network lineage of this work traces to Verna Allee, originator of Value Network Analysis, with whom David co-authored “Will the real project please stand up?” in the 2006/07 Yearbook of the Association for Project Management. Specialist knowledge partners are drawn in as each engagement requires.

Published Record

Peer-reviewed paper on using value networks to boost performance

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers — Civil Engineering, Special Issue, May 2012, with Christie Sarri and Dr Lilly Evans. Commended by Paul Morrell, Chief Construction Adviser to the UK Government. ICE Virtual Library →

Handbook of the Value Exchange System

Meggitt & Sarri, 2019 — the first full statement of VES method and notation. Available in print →

Will the real project please stand up?

Meggitt & Allee, Yearbook of the Association for Project Management, 2006/07.

Continuing publication

Applied analysis and the VES Handbook Series at ves.ghost.io.

Start Here

Tell us about your corporate challenge.

Whether you are facing a persistent organisational problem, designing a new intervention, or seeking to understand value flows you cannot currently see — we would like to hear from you.

Your enquiry comes directly to David Meggitt. We aim to respond within two working days.