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EY-Parthenon professionals recognize that CEOs and business leaders are tasked with achieving maximum value for their organizations’ stakeholders in this transformative age. We challenge assumptions to design and deliver strategies that help improve profitability and long-term value.
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Enter Sharath Sharma, Americas Leader, Strategic Transformations and CEO Services at EY, who guided the companies’ leaders through the change. “This was about as complex a situation as you can imagine,” he recalls. “There were multiple incoming and outgoing management teams, with multiple priorities.” In addition to aligning the strategy, cost takeout targets and timelines and regulatory approvals for the reorganization, the process required integrated input from over 500 legal entities in more than 70 countries, coordinated to a strict timetable. “We brought EY’s resources and global relationships to bear—and we were able to execute on the original timeline,” Sharma says.
That kind of timeliness is critical to lead effective change, Hayes notes. “Time is a finite resource,” he says. “You can always borrow more money or get more land or materials, but you can’t get more time.”
Corporate transformation is never easy. “From my personal experience, you need the right team—and for that team to be committed to your vision,” Grier says. “And you have to be courageous and relentless, because you’ll be tested along the way.”
Those qualities are essential for making the difficult, even painful choices inevitable in a reorganization. Hayes acknowledges his decisions haven’t always been popular. “But all have been to set up the business for sustainable growth over the long term,” he says, noting that improving the firm’s resilience will benefit employees, communities and partners as well as shareholders.
The work is never finished: “We need to bring our people along on the journey,” he says.
“That means fostering an environment where people feel they can speak truth to power.” Hayes says. “It’s rare that the CEO will be the smartest guy in the room. The key to consensus building is to have a diverse group of smart people around you who can offer contrarian viewpoints openly and honestly. To me, that is the most important thing a CEO can do.”