Case Study: The 'Next Gen' ComEx Academy
Two months into the role of Head of Commercial Excellence at a global specialty chemicals company (~€7B revenue), he recognized the design flaw in the plan he had inherited. He had watched an identical design produce polished workshops, strong attendance, excellent feedback scores, and negligible impact on behavior and earnings. He did not run it again.
“He made a bold move. He scrapped the plan and redesigned it from the ground up.”
What followed: mid-eight-figure EBITDA impact, validated by the CFO, in one year.
A global specialty chemicals company (~€7B revenue) needed to build commercial capabilities across five continents. The incoming Head of Commercial Excellence inherited a traditional classroom-style training plan from a top consulting firm. He recognized the problem immediately: the plan treated behavior as a downstream consequence that would take care of itself, not the primary challenge to solve for.
He had seen what that design produces. Polished workshops. Strong attendance. Excellent feedback scores. Negligible impact on engagement, real change, and earnings. Transformation Theater: extensive activity with great feedback scores and zero actual behavior change.
Across large enterprises, the failure rate for this approach is not a fringe outcome. McKinsey puts it at 70%. BCG puts it at 75%. Bain puts it at 88%. The design flaw is not about the quality of the consultants or the content of the training. It is about what transformation programs treat as the primary problem to solve.
Failure defined as not meeting the original objectives on time and on budget across large-scale enterprise transformations.
The redesign followed a specific sequence. Not strategy, process, and tools — hoping behavior would follow. Mindset first. Skillset through real work. Toolset on demand.
Instead of opening with strategy and process, the Academy focused first on building engagement, fostering intrinsic motivation, and developing adaptive capacity. Adversity Quotient® (AQ) assessments — behavioral science developed by Dr. Paul Stoltz and grounded in 3,500+ peer-reviewed studies across 110 universities and 137 countries, and used at Harvard, MIT, INSEAD, and by the entire US Olympic team — revealed each participant's hardwired patterns of response to challenge. People stopped interpreting adversity as a threat. They started treating it as an opportunity for growth.
Frontline leaders identified their own obstacles and designed 90-day Growth Projects with clear charters and presentations to senior leadership. They were coached weekly by Operator Coaches who had run businesses in their industry — not consultants. The Academy's rhythm followed a natural human sequence: Inspire (open the mind), Reflect (deepen it through honest self-examination), Apply (strengthen it through disciplined action on real problems with real consequences). Training created awareness. Coaching created behavior.
Tools entered only after mindset and skills were developing — and they were demanded, not mandated. Teams working on real 90-day Growth Projects discovered they needed frameworks, templates, and systems to make progress. They asked for them. Adoption was not a problem because the tools were needed, not imposed.
Passive resistance — surface-level compliance that produces no real change in behavior or results — has three root causes. The Academy addressed all three.
Most programs are designed for an idealized version of work that does not exist. When the proposed better way fails to improve real work, resistance is rational. The Academy closed the empathy gap by meeting people where they are, not where the plan assumed they were.
Self-Determination Theory identifies three conditions for intrinsic motivation: autonomy (genuine ownership over how work gets done), competence (feeling safe to learn and grow under real pressure), and relatedness (connection to peers and purpose). Most transformation programs systematically destroy all three. The Academy restored all three — through Growth Projects, Operator Coaches, and peer cohort structure.
Up to 80% of transformation efforts fail not because people lack skill, but because change threatens their sense of who they are. The Academy built adaptive capacity first — through AQ assessments and coaching — so participants could engage with change from a position of confidence rather than threat.
Within one year. Validated by the CFO. Across the full commercial excellence portfolio of initiatives — always credit the Head of Commercial Excellence's broader leadership for the EBITDA outcome, not the Academy alone.
EBITDA impact, validated by the CFO
Frontline commercial leaders measurably improved
Academy cohorts delivered
Continents spanned
A coach-the-coach model equipped internal leaders to run the Academy independently of outside help — no consulting dependency after handoff.
My happy place.
The best development experience of my career.
— What a participant of the Academy called it. Not bad for a corporate up-skilling program.
This result did not come from a better program. It came from a different architecture. Mindset before skillset. Real work before tools. Operators coaching instead of consultants advising. The leader who built it is now Operator-Coach-in-Residence in the Consortium — working with the next group of ComEx leaders who are ready to build their own proof case.
Lasting change and improved EBITDA results don't come from a better program. They come from a different architecture.
The Operators Lab is where Consortium members build theirs.
The Operators Lab is the 12-month private engagement where Consortium members design and launch their own Academy — with the same architecture that produced this result.
