Fresh solutions for complex issues.

Adults often get stuck in the hassle of entrenched patterns, hierarchy and organizational politics. Kids don't. They just say what they see and think. That's why 300+ organizations in 6 countries have already called in us. And that resulted in more than 2,200 fresh solutions.

A selection of our clients

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Certainly no a childish issues

We translate complex challenges into a world children can relate to. They explore these topics with a fresh, open mind and we turn their ideas into professional, surprising advice, no matter how complex the issue.

Here’s a glimpse of recent themes. Definitely not child’s play, yet resulting in clear, actionable insights translated back for the professional context.

Dementia
Social domain vision
Governance
(International) cooperation
Innovating with residents
Integrated area-based work
Health care system
Organizational development
Poverty policy
Q fever
A vision for the future of living
Innovating with residents
Water protection reinforcement
(International) cooperation
Health care system
Dementia
Integrated area-based work
Q fever
Translation of strategy into operation
Social domain vision
Customer contact
Organizational development
A vision for the future of living
Water protection reinforcement
Translation of strategy into operation
Positive Health
Innovating with residents
Q fever
Social domain vision
(International) cooperation
(International) cooperation
Learning organization
Environmental Management
Governance
Health care system
Dementia
Customer contact
Social domain vision
Q fever
Translation of strategy into operation
Translation of strategy into operation
Organizational development
Health care system
Q fever
Social domain vision
Innovating with residents
Water protection reinforcement
(International) cooperation
Positive Health
Poverty policy

Free inspiration:
3 recommendations from 300+ projects

Watch the free video and discover 3 of our favorite solutions from 300+ completed projects.

What is covered:

  • How a 9-year-old's comment led to crowd thinking on the train.
  • why playful penalties are more effective than traditional rewards or punishments.
  • How children inspired a technological solution to reduce the pressure on dementia care

Duration: 10 minutes.

why ConsultingKids works

Our approach doesn’t just lead to surprising solutions. it also brings energy, engagement, and a sense of fun. These are the benefits our clients are most enthusiastic about:

Break through resistance

Children’s ideas come from a neutral, unbiased place — there’s simply nothing to disagree with.
That openness creates space for real change.

Refreshing and concrete

Children think with an open, creative mindset that adults often lose along the way.
Their fresh perspective inspires new solutions — translated into professional advice you can act on right away.

More energy in your team

Collaboration becomes fun again.
Employees rediscover joy and inspiration — instead of getting stuck in terminal seriousness.

Unique participation

An innovative and professional way to truly engage employees and citizens in tackling the most important challenges — no matter how complex.
This approach goes far beyond topics that directly involve children.

Impact for kids

Children develop problem-solving skills they’ll carry with them for life.
They feel proud, taken seriously, and combine learning with a truly unique experience — often also the children of your own colleagues.

Minimal effort, complete support

The effort required from your organization is minimal.
Our ConsultingKids team takes care of almost everything from start to finish — and our process brings nothing but energy along the way.

Experiences from customers

An awesome concept!

I think it’s a really great instrument — it makes you look at problems and possible solutions in a completely different way.Above all, it’s just really fun!

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Esther Lamboo
Afdelingshoofd Nederlandse Voedsel- en Warenautoriteit (NVWA)

I love it!

Your sessions completely, lifts the room, and it also opens the floodgates to communicate with each other. There's a whole different culture spreading amongst the audience. A complete flow of energy and everyone loves it.

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Conrad Schiphorst
Client Partner at IBM

A good kind of short-circuit

I wish everyone in our organization (and beyond) could experience this at least once!The ideas and reactions from children to the questions we, as professionals, work on create a good kind of short-circuit — truly powerful!I’m so glad I got to be part of this.

Read more
Bastiaan du Pré
Program Initiator, Limburg Water Authority

Win-win for organizations and children

ConsultingKids not only provides fresh and surprising solutions for your organization, but also gives back to the children who think along. While your team gets new insights, they become acquainted with strategies and methodologies that are normally only covered in business.

It's a unique learning experience for kids: they develop problem-solving skills, learn to work together, and discover how to tackle big challenges. Skills that many professionals don't come into contact with until much later in their careers — and that we all secretly wanted to discover at an early age.

Here's how we go to work

We make complex issues childishly simple with a process that provides energy, breaks resistance and provides surprising solutions. In doing so, we go through the steps below.

As a bonus, we provide sessions'Thinking Like a Child for Professionals'for colleagues and stakeholders and thus make the approach unique and tangible throughout the organization.

The essentials

Together, we map out the essence of your issue: the ambition, dilemmas, context and stakeholders.

Translation into children's language

We'll make it a story that kids understand, complete with our Gompies that bring your issue to life.

Children's turn

Children come up with uninhibited ideas and surprising solutions. Colleagues who watch experience how quickly energy comes back.

From idea to advice

We translate the ideas into 15—20 concrete solution directions. In a workshop, we enrich these together into professional advice.

This is how we can help you helping

ConsultingKids Trajectory

A complete consulting process in which children contribute to your complex issue with an open mind. You get 15—20 fresh solutions in return, translated into professional advice that you can use immediately.

Keynotes & Workshops

Interactive sessions where you learn to think like a child. Perfect for team days, events or as a fresh start to a change process. You'll experience how to take the cramp out of complex tasks and get new energy.

I loved that everyone really got involved

It inspired me to start thinking differently again — something I realized I don’t do often enough. I tend to slip back into thinking like an adult too quickly.So I’m really glad I joined this session today.

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Mariska van Wezel
ICT & Ticketing Leidse Schouwburg - Stadsgehoorzaal

Highly recommended!

This approach makes things playful, surprising, and full of fresh ideas. As adults, we tend to approach things the same way over and over again — this method opens up completely new perspectives.It’s wonderful to look at serious challenges with such a fresh, lighthearted view.Truly recommended!

Read more
Dennis de Mik
Launch Excellence Lead Pfizer

A unique experience — and now moving forward with three concrete recommendations.

For the Airspace Renewal Program, our ambition was to communicate goals and facts in an honest and engaging way, so that citizens and politicians could form well-informed opinions and make thoughtful decisions.

ConsultingKids translated this complex challenge in a brilliant and fitting way, making it possible for children to think along. It was impressive how quickly they managed to realize this — within just six weeks before the summer break.

The energy and liveliness in the classroom were a unique experience for many colleagues, and it was fantastic to see the ideas that emerged and how ConsultingKids translated them back into professional advice.

We’re now actively working on three of those recommendations and have shared the results with the children as well. The entire process was a special experience, and the kick-off with the “Thinking Like a Child” workshop laid a strong foundation to involve more colleagues from the very start.

An absolute recommendation!

Read more
Inge Voesten
Directorate of Airspace Renewal, Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management

Frequently asked solicit

Here you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about our approach, working methods and cooperation.

Is your question not listed? Feel free to contact us.

Can you really work with any issue?

Because we translate the issues into a world that children understand, we can use their unique brainpower on every issue — regardless of complexity.

This works well even with sensitive themes. In our process, we place children in the role of 'external advisor'. This creates a conscious distance: they don't have to say what they would do themselves, but can freely share what they see and think is good for the main characters in the translation. This thus protects the space from being called anything they want.

What children, ages and schools do you work with?

We work with primary school upper classes (groups 6, 7 and 8), with children aged 9 to 12.

The schools we work with are located in the client's work area — this can be a neighborhood, municipality, region, the whole of the Netherlands or even international.
We always tailor the precise definition to the wishes of the client.

Recruitment takes place via the ConsultingKids network, by actively approaching schools and making smart use of the client's network. We often also involve classes with the children of colleagues or important stakeholders in the issue, which makes it extra fun!

We take care of the entire recruitment from ConsultingKids, so that you are completely unburdened.

What does it require from us as a client in terms of commitment?

We strive for maximum care.

What we need from you:
- 2 hours from a few experts at the start, to feed us well with knowledge about the issue.
- 2.5 hours at the end of key stakeholders, to discuss the results and refine them together.

In addition, we cordially invite you to join the classes. There, we will show how we have translated the issue and take you into the children's world of thinking.

We also ask for one contact person who can coordinate some things on a project basis, such as planning the sessions and identifying who wants to go to classes.

That's it — we'll do the rest.

Which people in organizations do you work with the most?

We often work with project and program managers, policy advisors, innovation managers, communication managers, strategists, environmental managers, middle management and C-level.

Our clients come from both the business community and the (semi) public sector.

What is the lead time of a ConsultingKids process?

The average duration of a ConsultingKids process is 2 to 3 months — from the kick-off to the delivery workshop. Faster is also possible if the assignment requires it.

Two factors mainly determine the speed:

1) How quickly you, as a client, can gather the right people to feed us content (at the start) and to take the results further during the delivery workshop.
2) The number of school classes you want to involve. The more classes, the more organization and processing time is required.

For sufficient content input, 4 to 5 classes are usually sufficient. However, many clients choose to involve more classes — for example one or more per neighborhood, municipality or province — to give children from different areas a role, to offer as many classes as possible this unique learning experience, and to allow classes with colleagues' children to participate.

Do you also work internationally?

Yes, for sure! Around 80% of our work takes place in the Netherlands, but in addition, with ConsultingKids, we are active in, among others Germany, Austria, United Kingdom, Italy, Scandinavia, Australia, North America, Middle East, and Africa.

By the way, this sounds bigger than it is. Here we are starting, we have a few people working with the concept, or are first explorations taking place. But the ambition is there! :-)

The keynotes and workshops 'Thinking like a child for professionals' from founder Bas Warmerdam becoming worldwide given. From Amsterdam to Sydney, and from Tokyo to New York.

Can I work for you?

We get asked this question a lot — and we're actually quite proud of it. When we look for new people, we always do it through our own network: people we know well or have already worked with. We believe that collaboration works best when there is already a natural click in the way you think, work and see the world.

We have no vacancies at the moment, but we always appreciate it when people are enthusiastic about what we do.

My question is not listed, what now?

Let's get acquainted

Schedule an introduction and let's discover together how our approach fits your issue and how we would approach it.