When Aspiration and Leadership deliver true Transformation

…and you are rewarded with positive client feedback. My personal experience.

It has been just over a decade since I joined Proudfoot, an originally European business, in my home country of Portugal. During these 10 years, I have had the pleasure and excitement of working in over 30 countries, learning and sharing experiences, working cross-culturally, and engaging with great projects alongside great people in great teams.

No two years have been the same. My projects have taken me from the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, working on improving Maintenance Planning and Execution on an Oil and Gas project, to a chocolate manufacturer in Europe, and implementing Sales and Operations Planning (and yes, I did pick up some additional weight on that one!). At some point I also found myself in the Amazon Jungle, improving Operational Excellence at a Rare Metals Mining Company, and in my free time, learning to recognize native insects and crawlers and swimming with a group of ‘Botos’ (Amazonian dolphins). These experiences have been as exceptional as they are rare, for typical deskbound consulting jobs at least.

And then there is our current Mongolian project, nominated as a finalist for Best International Project 2018 by MCA, on the corner of the Gobi Desert.

What I recognize about all my experiences is how we take Transformation into organizations and deliver on our promises, and how much satisfaction that provides. For those who are, or have been, “Proudfooters” and worked with us, you know how much we put in, and how ‘all-in’ we truly are with our efforts on Transformation.

Inevitably, a few years after having finally understood what I did for a living, and endured my constant absences, my friends started to question “How satisfying is it and is it worth it?”. And upon reflection, I never fail to recognize the strength and support of my family, to allow me to continue to have such a career. So, let me answer these questions by way of some more information on what we do.

Those of you who follow us on social media may have seen our recent data outlining the measurable results we have achieved across our last 1,000 engagements, a point which was not fully covered in the recent Financial Times Consultancy Ranking article, which did not highlight the performance component and value perceived by clients from those firms they ranked.

So, we did our homework to determine exactly what value we have added to our clients. It’s been a mixture of hard data – an astonishing 110% of promised operational and financial results achievement; and softer – real organizational change – transformation. These results are what brings us satisfaction. The reward of a job well done.

But it’s not just the track record that makes us keep going, and sparks the drive to be ‘all-in’. The real satisfaction in a job like mine comes from the most unexpected sources – namely, a simple email from a client this weekend that took me back in time, whilst I was enjoying family time on mid-term break. 

It was late 2015, and I was somewhere in South America. My client was a COO accountable for a turnaround of his business after a recent merger, from a loss to profit. The target was within 2 years. Not an easy task after several years of little investment, leaving poor infrastructure, lack of skills and poor management framework in its wake. On the positive side, he had a clear Aspiration on Transforming his organization and was supported by true Leadership on the Executive Committee. Now all he was looking for was a Trusted Partner whom could put him back on track.

I remember kindly the long hours during the initial 4 weeks of our Analytics component, working alongside him to design a solution aimed at accelerating the turnaround, using all of Proudfoot’s engine power. But I also recall his specific request from Day 1: “I want you to teach us how to do it ourselves next time.”

Jointly we embarked on that Transformation journey, and at the end of the initial phase, we over-delivered against our commitments, while setting the company up towards a sustainable trajectory of its own. The Transformation programme was recognized by the Holding Group (consisting of 5 major companies and over 100, 000 employees) as Group Project of the Year. This made us proud of both our client team and our own team, enabling them together to be shining stars.

Back to the email I received this weekend. It was from my client, the COO of this organization, and was accompanied by a video attachment. This was a motivational video to his team reminiscing on the start of the Transformational journey and the impact it had on 2016 results – where profit was made a reality, where 2016 benefits were doubled in the next year, and where a culture of people engagement and volunteerism was established through running weekly steering groups and using a measurement methodology integrated within a co-developed governance structure.

The objective of the video message was to set up the objectives for 2018-2020, based on the continuation of the Transformation journey initiated in 2015. Such a journey perfectly epitomizes a situation where Aspiration and Leadership ignite Transformation – where people willingly step forward and perceive themselves as an integral part of a whole, independent of their hierarchical level or function in the organization.

Together with the video, the COO provided a personal note of appreciation to Proudfoot for our collaboration on this journey, writing about our pivotal role in the Transformation and ultimate success of this company. Such an outcome is a great illustration of how imbuing people with the right skills and knowledge are infinitely more valuable than fulfilling a temporary need. Or to use the oft-quoted aphorism, “Give a Man a Fish, and You Feed Him for a Day. Teach a Man to Fish, and You Feed Him for a Lifetime”.

Clearly, I’m proud of our scorecard – evidence that our ‘all-in’ attitude towards Transformation is workable, deliverable and most of all, associable with our vision and identity as an organization. I am proud of who we are and what we deliver, and it is this satisfaction that informs my answer to the ‘is it worth it?’ question so often posed by my friends. Whilst nothing can replace family time, I am incredibly fortunate to have the best of both worlds – quality family-time and quality work-time, allowing me to bring my passions to my life. 

I’m looking forward to my next decade and the many, all-in Transformations I will be a part of.