SHM is an
advisory
firm based in London.
SHM was founded in 1996 and has been at the vanguard of major business and social change since our inception. We bring academic insights to bear on organisations to drive growth and positive change, drawing from many different disciplines, including literature, social and applied sciences, philosophy and the arts. London is our home base but we have decades of successful experience working across the world.
We excel at solving
challenges
where there are
human complexities
that mean a problem is likely to evade a straightforward solution.
We helped trailblazing organisations launch the first online business models during the dotcom boom. We partnered with some of the world’s largest companies to establish global operating practices during the rise of outsourcing. And we are now working with organisations large and small to figure out how they can thrive sustainably in the era of Artifical Intelligence and digital transformation.
Our heritage
SHM started as an idea between three friends: filmmaker Sophie Manham, anthropologist Henrietta L. Moore and literature scholar Maurice Biriotti.
Sophie, Henrietta and Maurice were passionate about how the arts, social sciences and humanities had taught them to understand people and human relationships with deep nuance.
When they left university for the ‘real world’, they saw how people were all too often misunderstood in organisational contexts – either reduced to numbers or treated as rational actors only.
They knew there were missing dimensions of humanity and interpersonal relationships that, if considered, could unlock opportunities for organisations and solve seemingly intractable issues.
SHM was founded on this belief, and we have kept this idea at our core ever since. Its enduring truth has allowed us to make meaningful and quantifiable impacts on organisations of all types and sizes around the world.
Our academic roots inform the approaches and methodologies we use in our work. We continue to have a strong and reciprocal connection to academia, bringing insights from our applied work in the field and benefiting from new ideas in scholarship. Our people collaborate closely with leading academics and university departments to bring the very best research to our work. We match this up with deep business and organisational expertise to bring unique ideas and solutions to clients, grounded in reality.
We are currently working on human relationships and conflict with neuroscientists at Yale University, on Artificial Intelligence, sustainability, equity and justice with humanities, arts and science scholars at University College London, and on civic engagement with humanities scholars at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico).
Social Impact
Being a positive citizen has been a core value of SHM’s from the start. We actively seek out work that involves social impact, and we encourage our clients and partners to do the same, sometimes in partnership with us.
Some examples of how we live our values include:
- Hiring people from non-traditional educational or employment backgrounds to work in all parts of our business
- Creating our own foundation dedicated to driving positive social change in the areas of mental health and wellbeing, education and livelihoods, and access to the arts: shmfoundation.org
- Giving regularly of our time to pro bono projects beyond our foundation, primarily in the areas of education, health and the arts