Supporting
clients in their
own initiatives 

Targeted,
collaborative
engagement 

​Holistic
​perspective

Harmattan’s approach to client engagements varies with the requirement, but our general modus operandi can be characterised by the following. 
​

• Our experience has shown that results of a given initiative are more sustainable and contextualised if they are fully owned by a client team, even if they do need to draw on external insight. Thus, aside from training, our role is limited to guiding and advising clients in their own endeavours, rather than handling whole questions or exercises in an outsourcing mode. 

 

• We do not regard political risk management as just “risk management”. It is as much about achieving a sustainable relationship with legitimate socio-political interests as it is about managing specific potential threats or hazards. Applied ethics and empathy therefore have a strong role to play. Additionally, while some specific risks can be managed piecemeal, managing the wider relationship requires coherent approaches coordinated across the organisation or operation. This might be a somewhat philosophical point, but this interpretation influences our own approach to political risk questions. 

 

• With respect to our support for specific overseas operations, being on the ground with the client team for at least a part of the engagement is often essential. Unless we directly understand the day-to-day reality and concerns of the operation’s personnel, share the experience of being there, and have a chance to directly speak with representative local stakeholders, our understanding will remain somewhat abstract, and this would ultimately affect the actionability of our guidance.  ​

Discretion, business ethics and impartiality guide our professional ethos, and we are sensitive to a client's own ethical concerns when operating in volatile terrain.