By Joydeep Mutsuddi & Megan Blouin
Value creation is tough business.
The success rate of business transformation has not exceeded 30 percent for years. Even under the leadership of a strong CEO and Top Team, companies often fall into the trap of ‘think big; start big’, which can easily lead to slow-arriving results, complicated transformation management, and employee burnout.
We’ve learned that successful business transformations follow a common process:
We recently worked with three distinct leaders who wanted to drive faster, better, sharper value realization in their companies. Despite their differences in leadership style, tenure, industry, and goals, they were all able to effectively leverage Talent to Value™ to drive business transformation. Read on to find out how they did it.
Download and read the detailed case study here.
Two of our business leaders had only 1.5 years in their roles, and one was a tenured CEO. Their industries spanned energy, global industrials, and consumer products. Although their specific goals for growth varied widely, they shared four common needs:
We facilitated the process where the three leaders and their teams learned what they needed to do to achieve or exceed their value ambition. One CEO exceeded 100% of a three-year ambition in just 18 months post-engagement. Another is on a strong trajectory to improve their value measure by multiples of $Bn. The third leader addressed more than $50M of risk in two months post-engagement and is on the way to double EBITDA in three years.
Through the lens of thinking big, starting small, and moving fast, we have outlined these 5 guideposts as central to driving transformation success:
1. Drive alignment; it multiplies impact. Intentionally driving alignment on specific value-creation opportunities within leadership teams is critical.
2. Rapidly advance the readiness of Leadership. All three leaders realized that they had to get the role-talent fit in their leadership teams right as quickly and pragmatically possible. Changing the talent is only required in severely mismatched cases.
3. Look for value beyond the hierarchy. Significant value creation is often embedded in roles deeper in the hierarchy. On average, greater than 80% of the value creation accountability was embedded in roles two to three levels below the CEO.
4. Develop a clear understanding of risk to drive fewer interventions for a higher impact. Based on a detailed and specific analysis of organizational risk, each leader prioritized just 4-5 systemic interventions, which enabled focus and speed to value.
5. Understand that value creation is a dynamic activity system. Processes, systems, and talent require continuous retooling and governance to drive new sources of value creation as strategic priorities evolve.
For a deeper look at these leaders and their stories, download the detailed case study here.