Business case
Chief Transformation Officer
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS
SCENARIO
Our Client is a large private industrial group, with over 50+ years’ history, HQ in Italy, business in Italy and abroad.
With a global turnover in excess of 800M€ and some manufacturing plants in Italy, they have international / global presence in 60+ countries, with about 2000+ FTE. They were facing a new cycle, supported by a Top tier PE Fund, that was launching the next phase with organic and acquisitive growth strategy.
In this context, value creation started with the recruitment of a Chief Transformation Officer (CTO): a CEO-1 role, designed to be a key contributor in the orchestration and timely delivery of all transformation streams.
CHALLENGE
As key point of reference for both the CEO and stakeholders, the CTO had the goal to build partnership with business owners and support the development of the strategic blueprint and the five-year plan, while influencing and involving the organisation cross-functionally to the next stage of global development.
The activity was that of a high level and strategic PMO, that included multiple streams and multifunctional projects among which: Operational Excellence, Supply Chain, Reshoring, Business Continuity, Procurement Excellence and Derisking Strategy, Revenue Excellence / Delivery Excellence, across blue-chip customers.
The CTO main trait had to be a high level of thought leadership to bring people on board around objectives, address criticalities, provide executive presentations, manage briefings and qualified follow-ups, ultimately shape a dynamic, high-performance working environment.
STRATEGY
After a calibration meeting with the Client, we started a very confidential search – at local and international level – focusing on three main pillars: 1) all relevant transformation / sector practices in the Tier1 Strategy consulting space, and 2) transformation teams and consistent roles within sector multinational champions, and 3) candidates with dual track in both Consulting and Corporates, with value creation mission.
The process highlighted a particular focus on diversity, despite market evidence suggesting a lack of cases.
Given the search started between the signing and the closing of the deal, we had to manage the additional complexities deriving from the combination of confidentiality and ambiguity (timing, future organisation design, leadership).
RESULTS
The short list was very solid. Both final candidates resulted a very good fit also from an independent Executive Assessment perspective, as well as from wide referencing in the market.
Given the complexity of the transformation and the complementarity of the two final candidates in terms of their track record, the client decided to offer both and designed a second equally relevant role, to accelerate the process.
The first and more senior candidate was invited to join for the original CTO role, and the second one was invited in with a new position that was specifically designed.
The successful outcome of this project has led us to take on a number of other mandates for the Client, with different leadership and functional perspectives.
