The Transformation Pilot
Prove it small. Then commit.
Three to six months · Priced against the decision
You know roughly what has to change. The analysis has been done, the case has been argued, and there is broad agreement in the room.
What nobody can tell you is whether it will work here, in this business, with these people, under this clock. The cost of finding out the usual way is a year, a budget, and a reorganisation you cannot reverse.
So don't commit the organisation. Commit one route.
What happens
Map
Model how the business is actually wired. Where value is created, where it leaks, where authority and accountability come apart.
Pilot
Run the change with real customers and real data. One delivery route. One product vertical. One market. Small enough that failure is cheap, real enough that the result means something.
Hand back
Named owners, decision gates, and a continuation plan for the six months after we go. If your team cannot carry it without us, the pilot failed.
The proof
When the cost line turned out to be the growth engine
Primo Waters came out of a run of acquisitions needing to realise synergies and future-proof a B2B business carrying over 60% of pre-COVID revenue. The company could not categorise its own business customers, so one flat approach was applied to all of them.
We changed one delivery route. Then the next.
Two findings. Customers had moved home, so deliveries had to be re-routed around work-from-home patterns. And the delivery drivers held the highest Net Promoter Scores in the entire company, while being managed as a cost line.
The people customers trusted most had the least strategic role in the business. So we changed the role. Drivers were retrained as Trusted Advisors, able to personalise offers and sell credibly to people who already trusted them.
New portfolio, new distribution, new fleet, and a corporate mission grounded in thousands of advisor conversations rather than asserted in a workshop. The board's objective was value realisation. In November 2024 Primo Water was combined with BlueTriton Brands to form a business with pro forma net sales of $6.5bn.
What you get
- The structural diagnosis, meaning what is actually constraining the business
- The designed pilot, and the pilot run, with real data rather than a proposal
- An implementation plan with owners, timelines and decision gates
- A continuation plan for the six months after we leave
- A shortlist of vetted specialists for anything beyond our scope
What it costs
Priced against the decision, not the days. The same three months is worth something different to a foundation than to a fund with an exit on the line. Pricing it identically would be dishonest to one of them.
Fixed fee once scoped. Invoiced across the engagement. No retainers. If you have come from a Pilot Case within 90 days, 50% of that fee is credited here.
What it is not
- Not a change programme
- Not a transformation office
- Not eighteen months of workstreams with a steering committee
We are not looking for a permanent role in your business. The engagement is designed to end.
Where the answer is that the capability itself has to change, the next step is an Embedded Unit.