Organisational rewiring for a hefty real estate asset manager.
- A branch of a major real estate asset manager needed an organisational revamp: financials, strategy, responsibilities and employee targets were distractingly unclear.
- We introduced the structure needed, recalibrating accountability in the division hierarchy to alleviate the co-CEOs’ overload.
- We adapted to the client’s tempo: only what’s needed to move forward, only when the timing’s right.
- We set the client on a clear path to professionalisation, ready in the wings to advise on natural growing pains.
Our client was the Dutch division of a mammoth real estate asset manager (£2.9 billion revenue, £7 billion assets under management). They’d been acquired by the larger player around a year before, and the waters were muddy. Financial breakdowns and strategy weren’t on paper; employees weren’t sure of targets; the co-CEOs were overloaded.
Bernadette Wijnings, founder of The Strategy Office, set things straight. She x-rayed and marshalled complex internal dynamics, becoming a trusted sparring partner for co-CEOs ready to make much-needed changes.
Challenge.
The Dutch division’s pair of CEOs felt they were constantly getting stuck in the daily turmoil of running the business. And, somehow, all the decision-making was ending up on their plates.
They needed to professionalise the organisation, recalibrate responsibilities and clarify the results expected from their employees. Pressingly, the acquisition agreement had included a performance fee. If the show that the co-CEOs were running failed to meet the time-bound targets, they’d lose out.
Approach.
First up was giving the client financial insight into how their business was structured. This was an easy value-add for Bernadette, admittedly; the client had just never had these baseline charts created before.
She then used this work to communicate the realities of the business structure to the client’s employees. It was their first time seeing a clear breakdown of the firm’s financial results. Likewise, seeing how their hours were billed, and how this informed their expected performance.
Better late than never
Interestingly, this division of the asset manager had never put its strategy on paper. So Bernadette made it happen.
She drilled the organisation’s strategy down to a single, practical page: not just what they wanted to achieve but how they would achieve it. (Yes, a strategy consultant who actually delivers both angles at once! Groundbreaking, we know.)
Bernadette introduced this qual-quant format for the client’s division as a whole, articulating its umbrella strategy. They later implemented her format across all business units, guiding their respective short-to-mid-term strategies.
Organisation, meet structure
Processes at the asset manager were moving — but horrendously unclear. Bernadette drew a much-needed line in the sand with straightforward organisational and responsibility charts.
Roles, actions, accountability and handovers finally came into focus. This was instrumental in freeing up minds and agendas, from the co-CEOs down. People could let go of tasks they clearly weren’t supposed to be picking up; simultaneously, it distilled the case for greater ownership lower in the organisation, alleviating the co-CEO overload.
With structure clarified, the focus turned to the company’s meetings culture — and the time-wasting it was causing. Bernadette asked the simple, but so often avoided, questions:
What meetings do we need?
Who actually needs to be there, rather than getting on with, you know, work?
What should the standard agenda look like?
How often should we meet?
The outcome: a straight-talking plan for meetings that were both as rare and effective as humanly possible.
Tuning in, with awareness and flexibility
There’s never any sense in foisting work on a client that’s not ready to fully benefit from it. That’s a principle we stick to at The Strategy Office — and it sets us apart from plenty of big consultancies. We would know; they’re where we all earned our spurs.
For this client, it meant Bernadette didn’t propose a lengthy, pre-defined work programme all in one. There was plenty to do, yes, but it had to be done at the client’s pace. So she offered and executed one cumulative strategic step at a time. Only what’s needed to move the client forward, only when the timing’s right.
Working to the asset manager’s tempo and agenda (rather than forcing them into a rigid runtime), she flexibly designed and rolled out her workshops. If a different and more urgent issue reared its head, the focus shifted.
Her awareness and understanding of these left-field occurrences run deep. As a founder and advisory board member of multiple scale-ups, she’s been there and done it.
Impact.
Onwards and upwards
The client’s working to adapt to its revamped strategy, maturing and professionalising its operation. Growing pains are natural, so Bernadette’s ready in the wings — a trusted partner to grease the cogs when things threaten to grind to a halt.
The personal, sparring-partner relationship she forged with the co-CEOs ensures her guidance continues to resonate. For this, balance is key: staying high-level enough to ignite management’s ambition while drilling deep enough to deliver practical, step-by-step advice on managing change and people.
What you see is what you get with Bernadette: a no-nonsense approach, complemented by tact and likeability. That’s a way of working she’s infused throughout The Strategy Office’s consultant collective.