Chris Jansen

Chris Jansen

Boardroom Advisor

Focus Change management – assisting with the strategic improvement of companies and business units, and accelerating the improvement of sales and internal operating organisations, leading to sales and profit improvements, the purchase or sale of businesses or business units and the financing thereof, and cultural change – transforming the culture and employees into a pragmatic, collaborative, no-nonsense, results-oriented environment.
Expertise Commissioner, boardroom executive (listed), general management and sales management. Focusing strategies and implementing them, including the acquisition and sale of businesses and business units, improving operational results and implementing changes, advising and assisting C-level board members and senior management. To enthusiastically inspire large groups of people, empowering them and enabling them to collaborate and achieve better results.
Markets Business-to-Business (B2B), ICT, business services.
Motto ‘From A to Better’, emphasising that the leadership across the entire business is crucial.

Chris’s motivation is the achievement of exceptional results by employees, thus contributing to job satisfaction and lasting customer relationships. He achieves this by realising well-run companies through working with their people, processes, systems, products and services.

Experience

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  • Change management – strategic/operational (re)orientation and realisation: 3-year perspective

Chris has helped several large companies (or business units; x.000 staff) reverse a trend of declining turnover and profits and declining customer and employee satisfaction. Working with the management teams, he formulated revitalising strategies and translated these into operational consequences. 3-year step-by-step plans were developed to put a sustainable transformation in motion. In addition, all disciplines (8-10) were addressed, including strategy, availability to customers, the sales and delivery methods, the underlying (legal and operational) governance structure of the companies, the financial structures, and the HRM policy. With clear objectives and a reinvigorated management team, he worked with the companies to achieve improved outcomes, which lead to an increased turnover and profits and a great improvement in staff and customer satisfaction.

  • Accelerated improvement of customer service and increasing turnover

Several large companies (x.000 employees) considered cost reductions (in staff and resources) when the growth of their turnover slowed down and then threatened to stop altogether. Chris developed an offensive strategy for the businesses in which the energy was focused on the ‘outside’ of the businesses – the customer – rather than on the ‘inside’. He opted for a fully integrated customer dimension (integration proposition and marketing, sales, delivery and support, including the underlying financial systems). Thanks to the implementation of a highly pragmatic, clear and disciplined sales process with supporting tools and a strong disciplined sales culture with good management teams, the turnover started rising again relatively quickly (within 6 months). A good understanding of the customer base and its turnover data, and a disciplined sales process – with a strict deal qualification, go/no go decision points, and a clear and transparent up-to-date sales funnel linked to the budget in order to achieve reliable forecasting – were both of the utmost importance.

  • Selling and acquiring business (units) and the financing thereof

Some listed multinationals (x.00 employees) need to buy or sell businesses in order to grow strategically in a number of countries or to apply focus in the number of core competences and products. Chris realised (5) acquisitions and (1) sale (in 3 countries) based on external financing (in the form of an equity issue and banking provisions) and part internal financing (equity). When the acquisition was initiated, both the strategic intent and the (dis) integration afterwards already received a lot of attention during the preparation of the strategic plans and the due diligence process. Along 12 operational dimensions, Chris worked out what the organisation would look like after the integration. He also addressed the integration of the corporate cultures. Only once no insurmountable dimensions were found and the integration seemed guaranteed, Chris would proceed to the actual negotiation of the acquisition and sale. Eventually he successfully integrated all six companies. Where the acquisitions were concerned, the share price rose by approximately 25% within two years. Where the sale was concerned, the continuity of the sales was specifically taken into account in the interest of both the customers and the employees, and valuations were maintained.[/twocol_one][twocol_one_last]

  • Accelerated improvement of operating profits through internal collaboration and quality

Two national organisations (x.00 people) that were part of huge multinationals (x00.000 people) had problems with reduced profits due to poor coordination between business units. To realise an improvement in profits it is not only imperative to get an insight into the ‘system of value chains’, but also to determine where the handover between business units and/or within a business process is not running as smoothly as it should. Chris let small internal teams from different units develop improvements together, with simplicity, pragmatism and results taking centre stage. The chosen changes had to be especially useful in practice on the shop floor. With this approach, Chris quickly achieved results in both cases; improving collaboration and quality and eliminating unnecessary internal costs. The profitability of both organisations turned from loss to profit within the first year and rose to unprecedented levels of profit over the two subsequent years.

  • Culture Change – transforming culture and employees

In several large companies (x.000 employees), the employee and corporate culture was not functioning as it should. There was no common vision and/or goal and ‘the tone at the top’ was not providing enough guidance. A number of ingredients were required in order to transform these environments. To solve this, Chris set ‘the tone at the top’, spoke out in favour of a clear and shared vision and a corresponding set of shared rules of conduct, and got the management to actually ‘walk the talk’. Furthermore, he had all internal processes and KPIs analysed for unintended inconsistencies that went against the experience of ‘one culture’. Repetition and consistency are of great importance in such transformations. After about a year, the new system caught on and the staff became confident of the fact that the chosen direction had been established and secured as a new cultural environment. In most cases employee satisfaction rose from incredibly low to extremely high within two years.

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