Creating a Winning Strategy for Business Transformation

Often the trigger for a business transformation is the arrival of a new CEO who comes with his individual vision and strategy. Such a person comes with the mandate of bringing in new ideas, better processes, policies, and practices to improve the quality and reduce the cost of operations – effectively agree a strategy for the business. Our Client appointed a new CEO at the group level as the constituent business units were significantly underperforming, despite conditions being favourable. The idea behind the new hire was to bring in energy into the business units and deliver a business transformation that brought the units onto the winning track again.

Our mandate was clear, we were to partner the Group CEO and the senior leadership team in delivering a strategy for business transformation that would put the house in order (restructuring) and deliver 5X growth in 5 years. As a first step, the management team was brought together at a 2 day offsite meeting to build the Group strategy. The offsite started with a half-day training session on the approach and process of the strategy formulation. This included a structured approach, templates & techniques to be used in the process that flowed through idea generation, evaluation, selection of ideas and implementation planning and management. The next stage was a full day of meetings, and a half day of team building activities. Over the meetings, the Vision, Mission & Values were articulated for the business, along with a comprehensive set of actions to be initiated to restructure the business units and deliver 5X growth, thus effectively transforming the business. Each BU & Function Head compiled a detailed BU or Function Strategy to support the business strategy including details of who, what, when, where, and how. The plan included the resource requirements to allow review and approval of investment based on ROI or business benefit. A significant HR initiative to ensure that all HR processes and policies actively drove the achievement of strategic objectives was put into play.

Within the first year of our engagement, we were able to successfully facilitate the restructuring of the business units. Additionally, by the end of the second year, the business units were well on their way to achieving medium-term strategic objectives and delivering significant growth and business transformation. This initiative set a solid foundation for the Group and set the tone for delivering growth in the local market, but have the confidence to expand and cover the strategic GCC markets.