Key drivers great leaders harness to drive transformational change and realize extraordinary results.

Leaders must deftly navigate a landscape of continuous change, but most feel unsure of the best path forward. The implications of this are profound for both the leader and the organization. Through our work, we have identified key drivers that great leaders harness to drive transformational change and realize extraordinary results.

In a recent study by Harvard Business Review, nearly all (93 percent) of surveyed executives say they are grappling with significant levels of volatility in their markets, yet only 19 percent say they understand the best way forward to achieve agility and innovation.

That so many executives are mystified about how to create a more agile business culture designed to promote continuous innovation and organizational flexibility is both sobering and unsurprising. Research shows that most efforts to drive transformational change fail — and that the number one reason cited for initiating CEO rotation is mismanaging change.

Leading Change

We have partnered with some of the world’s most respected leaders to bring a disciplined approach to transforming their businesses. We work side by side with our clients, moving from strategy to execution and uncovering the pivot points for true business growth and transformation. Our straightforward methodology simultaneously aligns the organization and develops leaders while accelerating growth, performance, and profitability.

We use perspective and process to help our clients think through their challenges in new ways. Our goal is to teach organizations the skills that will help them answer the big questions for themselves. Our work addresses the most pressing business needs through a process that develops our clients’ capabilities along the way.

Methodology for Success

We challenge thinking to help our clients develop insights, reflect on issues, and own the decision-making process. We work with the organization to learn how to ask and answer their strategic questions while providing structure, process, and best-practice approaches for addressing tough challenges. We combine our expertise at managing large-scale change with our client’s unique leadership attributes and contextual realities to create a powerful team capable of driving transformation and accelerating growth.

We understand that transformation takes time, tenacity, and focused effort at multiple levels. Leaders need to embody the change they want to see in the organization, and the organization must understand, experiment with, and then integrate new ways of working. We work with clients to identify the levers they can pull, and the inflection points they can leverage to facilitate these shifts and drive transformation.

Our approach is grounded in experience and in the belief that to transform an organization, leaders must harness four key drivers simultaneously:

• Develop leadership
• Align your organization
• Change the way you work
• Energize your people

Extraordinary Results

Harnessing these four key drivers simultaneously can seem overwhelming or challenging; however, leaders who are willing to embrace this approach, and work with us at their side, achieve extraordinary results.

The president of the Asia region of a $15 billion+ global electronics distributor contacted Brimstone when faced with a slide in regional revenues and widespread disengagement among employees in its 14 countries across Asia. Over 60 days, Brimstone worked closely with the leader to define what a successful turnaround in engagement would look like, and how it could move the business. We then collaborated with her to design a Shared Leadership program that blended important strategic work for the region with country-level communication of key corporate messages around vision, mission, and values.

By giving frontline leaders new skills, tools, and a consistent process, we helped the company turn around employee engagement scores and increase revenue by over 125 percent in the months following the initiative.

Another client, a $2 billion+ pharmaceutical company, completed the last and largest in a string of acquisitions meant to redefine the firm for the future. They came to Brimstone faced with the challenge of integrating this newly acquired business to capitalize on cross-business growth opportunities.

A key requirement for executing on their strategy was to ensure that key executives from the acquired company were fully engaged in leading the integration and shaping the vision for the combined entity.

Brimstone helped the client launch a Performance Leadership initiative to address six of the merger’s top growth and efficiency opportunities, which were chosen by a steering committee of senior executives from both organizations. Cross-company project teams used the Performance Leadership framework to drive collaboration, discipline, shared leadership, and speed.

After only 100 days, the six project teams delivered recommendations that would achieve revenue enhancements of over $60 million in three years and delivered cost savings of over $40 million. Additionally, steering committee members and project participants quickly established a sense of trust and shared ownership that drove rapid implementation.

Interested in learning more about our approach and how we can help you drive transformational change?