How Most Business Problems Can Be Solved In Three Days (Or Less)
Our methodology for solving complex business problems in 58 hours, explained.
Consulting loves its smoke and mirrors. A problem arrives. Consultants disappear. Weeks pass. A deck materialises. Magic, apparently.
There’s actually a new tool that generates firm grade strategy in seconds and, without meaning to, shows how formulaic, jargon-heavy and deck-obsessed the industry has become. (It is actually really good.)
We never liked that story.
We do not believe the distance between the people who live the problem and the people who are paid to solve it is where the magic happens. In fact, most of the interesting things we have seen in our work came from doing the opposite: opening the doors, sharing the tools, and letting everyone see the wires.
That’s why we’re sharing our proprietary methodology, which we call 58:hours. The premise is simple: put the right people in a room for 58 focused hours, without distractions, and most complex business problems crack open. In practice, this plays out as a 58h Sprint: a three-day sprint that runs from 9 a.m. on Day One to 7 p.m. on Day Three.
Transparency runs in our DNA, and we aim to be one of the most open consultancies out there. We’re making our methodology public because using it, adapting it, and even challenging it will only make it stronger. If this piece nudges you to experiment with it, we are happy to have given a little too much away.
Through trial, error, and iteration across dozens of client engagements, we’ve distilled our methodology into three core components that differentiate it from other workshops and that we now implement systematically in every sprint:
1. Sprint-Based Collaboration
There is a moment in every sprint when you can see the old habits trying to take control. Someone looks around and asks, half-joking, half-hoping, “So when do you go away and do the real work?”
Our answer is always the same: this is the real work.
The sprint format creates that pressure. You cannot hide behind follow-up emails. You cannot delay disagreement until the next steering committee. You cannot outsource the uncomfortable part. You talk, you map, you argue, you prototype, and you decide.
It sounds intense, and it is. But it is also surprisingly human, because when the room understands that the clock is real and the outcome depends on them, people stop playing roles and start solving problems.
2. A Hybrid of Consultants and Makers (With Access to a Network of Experts)
Our primary sprint team is a hybrid of consultants, who provide deep industry knowledge, and makers (designers, developers, copywriters), who rapidly execute. This combination is one of our critical competitive advantages and one of REBORRN’s founding pillars.
However, the 58 methodology requires a critical second layer.
Over time, we learnt that some questions are too specific to fake. Regulatory nuance in pharma. The unspoken rules of retail media. The culture of a particular market. You cannot “generalist” your way into those topics in three days, no matter how smart the core team is.
This led us to build a model around a global, agile network of deep domain experts. They might attend the whole sprint or drop in at the precise moment their knowledge turns a good idea into a viable product. This network is one of the reasons we are comfortable giving away the methodology: the structure can be copied, but the craft inside it is earned.
3. AI-Powered Delivery As A Second Brain In The Room
There is a lot of noise around AI in our industry. Tools, prompts, automations, and opinion pieces about the future of work. We use AI to do the kind of work humans are terrible at under time pressure:
synthesising large volumes of qualitative input
pressure-testing messages in multiple markets and tones
simulating customer reactions through synthetic personas that mirror real behavioural patterns
generating variations that humans would not think of, simply because they are tired
In practice, this looks like parallel cognitive layers. While the team is debating a positioning, models are running in the background comparing how different audiences might respond; while a concept is being shaped, we simulate customer feedback on the fly; while scenarios are being mapped, data is pulled, clustered, and visualised in minutes.
The 7Ds
As we start to unpack the methodology in the coming weeks, it’s important to ground it in the structure the 58-hour sprint follows: the 7Ds Discover, Download, Define, Dream, Decide, Deliver, and Deploy.
The first piece will unpack Discover: the phase where we surface reality, understand the landscape, and ensure the sprint has solid ground to stand on.
The second will explore the operational heart of the methodology – Download, Define, Dream, Decide, Deploy – where we map what the organisation already knows, clarify the problem without wishful thinking, generate routes, choose with confidence, and turn ideas into tangible outputs.
The third will focus on Deploy: how we set solutions up to live beyond the sprint and create lasting impact.
Stay tuned as we break down how teams move through the 7Ds, what the room feels like, what breaks, what clicks, and how the pace reshapes the way decisions get made.
The interesting question won’t be how we solve things in 58 hours, but what your organisation could achieve if solving problems at that pace became the norm.