Our client aspired to play a significant role in transforming agriculture to feed a growing global population, fight climate change and regenerate the environment. With a clear strategy centered on empowering farmers and driving innovation, this Fortune Global 500 Agtech company faced a challenge: how to embed sustainability into its business in a way that delivered measurable impact.

The corporate sustainability function, which had grown organically, lacked a clear mandate and alignment across the organization. Its role in translating ambitious sustainability goals into financially viable business models was not defined.

We guided this client through a collaborative process to identify critical organizational capabilities, understand capability gaps, and align stakeholders on function’s role. With a redesigned sustainability function and shared understanding of how business units and functions would work together, the company successfully launched its sustainability strategy. Today, it remains focused on driving both short-term results and long-term impact.

Our client, a major provider of academic and vocational qualifications, was under pressure to turn around several years of underperformance and the fallout from a failed restructuring that had introduced unnecessarily complicated ways of working. Increased competition, government funding cuts, and a misaligned product portfolio left the organization struggling to regain stability.

The client engaged us to design a simpler, more effective operating model that would reduce people costs by 20% while setting the organization up for long-term growth. Over a structured 9-month program, we partnered with leadership and engaged over 200 stakeholders to deliver a streamlined, scalable organization. The resulting design enabled growth and sustained operational excellence.

Today’s corporate organizations are powerful entities, a collective of individuals with a shared purpose capable of remarkable achievements, from developing advanced AI technologies to launching next-generation space explorations or pioneering renewable energy solutions. But with great power comes great responsibility. The corporate world plays a pivotal role in tackling some of the world's most pressing challenges, as outlined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The path to sustainability is not just an option but a necessity for businesses aiming to make a significant, positive impact on our planet and society.

Part 1 People and Work

In my consulting work, I’m a witness to the incredible potential within organizations. They are filled with smart, talented individuals fuelled by a shared motivation to make a positive impact on the world. Frustratingly, this talent and enthusiasm sometimes collides with organizational barriers such as unnecessary bureaucracy, multiple reporting requirements, and internal politics. Companies might address these issues through investment in training, leadership development, and culture change initiatives, but often the transformation they are looking for remains elusive. How can organizations bridge the gap between aspiration and real results?

I’m not the first (and won’t be the last) person to point out that we’ve just been through a dramatic if not seismic period of disruption across pretty much every sector of society and the economy.

We are undergoing regular and repeated ‘shocks’ caused by global pandemic, climate emergency, extreme weather events, protest and political fracture. This has been particularly acute over the last 12 months and it seems any notion of ‘normal’ will be a pipe dream for some time to come.

Every merger starts with strategic intent.

If you are involved in supporting a merger or acquisition, how well do you understand the strategic intent of the transaction? Any well-planned press release will mention the strategic benefits of the merger.

Recently at the Mannheim Drucker Forum I listened to a talk from Jos de Blok, Founder of neighbourhood nursing group Buurtzorg. Maybe you’ve heard of Buurtzorg, a Dutch company that is leading the way in transforming healthcare with an organization model based on purpose and self-management principles?

I’m always on the lookout for ways to embed changes into organization processes so that behaviour changes by design, rather than trying to influence individuals to change.

Here are some valuable resources for you about creating diverse organizations with practical tips and solutions that you can really implement.

My work focuses on building trust into the system to create a trust-based way of working. I will help you to apply design criteria to elements of the organization such as structure, processes and policies. If the criteria include trust, for example, then a trust-based culture is likely to be one outcome of the organization design process.