Creative Problem Solving at Pocketknife Group
At Pocketknife Group, we’re often asked what makes our approach to health and safety innovation different. Why are we able to help clients cut through complexity, design better systems, and deliver practical solutions that work?
One of the powerful inspirations behind our approach is a problem-solving framework that our CEO and Lead Consultant, Cam Stevens, first learned long before Pocketknife Group existed — back in his early career as a physiotherapist.
That framework is called SOAPIER:
- Subjective — gathering diverse stakeholder experiences, perspectives, and insights about the issue.
- Objective — collecting measurable evidence, observations, and data to ground understanding.
- Assessment — analysing the information to diagnose patterns, gaps, and opportunities.
- Plan — co-designing a clear and practical approach to address the challenge.
- Intervention — putting the plan into action through pilots, trials, or full implementation.
- Evaluation — rapid iteration; measuring outcomes, gathering feedback, and assessing impact.
- Revision — refining and evolving the solution based on what we learn.
Originally designed for clinical health settings, we’ve adapted SOAPIER into a creative, human-centered, systems-thinking model that now underpins how we tackle health, safety, and risk challenges for our clients.
How SOAPIER Shapes Our Work
At Pocketknife Group, a lot of the success we’ve had comes from using this structured yet flexible approach to problem solving. Here's how SOAPIER shapes what we do:
We spend more time truly understanding the problem.
We listen carefully (subjective assessment) and gather data (objective assessment) before we even start to think about solutions. Without this dual lens, problem-solving is based on assumptions and won't support your context. Context is everything.
We use systems thinking to connect the dots.
The assessment stage isn’t just about diagnosing a single issue — it’s about understanding how different risks, systems, people, and technologies interact across the broader work environment; in your context.
We co-design solutions, nothing repurposed from another client.
Our planning and intervention stages are highly collaborative. Whether it’s designing critical risk control frameworks, developing innovative safety management systems, or improving learning and development programs, we work with the people who live and breathe the work every day.
We embrace experimentation and iteration.
Nothing we design is treated as a ‘set-and-forget’ solution. We pilot, test, measure (evaluation), and refine (revision), ensuring what we build is truly fit for purpose, scalable, and sustainable.
How SOAPIER Translates to Value
By adapting the SOAPIER framework into the Pocketknife Group approach, we help our clients:
- Design better, more resilient safety systems through contextual, evidence-based thinking.
- Unlock creative, human-centered innovation rather than relying on generic templates or box-ticking compliance.
- Drive continuous improvement with flexible, iterative pathways, instead of rigid one-size-fits-all solutions.
- Strengthen engagement and trust by making safety initiatives more relevant, practical and meaningful for workers and leaders alike.
In a world where workplaces are more complex than ever — with new technologies, new risks, and new ways of working — we believe that frameworks like SOAPIER, when adapted thoughtfully, give us an edge.
Our approach:
- Grounds creativity in discipline.
- Connect human experience with system-level thinking.
- Ensures that innovation remains responsible, effective and real.
Want to learn more about how Pocketknife Group can help you rethink and reimagine safety?
Contact us to start the conversation.
