Why it was built
An invite-only peer community for Commercial Excellence, Strategy, and Transformation leaders.
Learn from others who share your mandate at many of the world's top global enterprises.
Heads of Commercial Excellence sit between three broken options.
- Consulting firms that advise and leave.
- Analysts who speak in theoreticals.
- Trainers who don't get habits to stick.
None of them bridge strategy to sustained mindset and behavior change.
The Consortium fills that gap — a peer room where the people carrying the mandate compare notes honestly and pressure-test what works.
No sponsors.
No service providers.
No SaaS vendors.
No consultants.
Who's in the room
Senior operators at 200+ global enterprises
Director, VP and C-Level Commercial Excellence, Strategy, and Transformation Leaders
Purpose
The Consortium started because one approach was working in a market where most were not.
“People don't resist change. They resist being changed. The role of leadership is not to manage change — it's to engineer the conditions for adaptation to occur naturally.”
Roy stepped into a new role as Head of Commercial Excellence at a €7B specialty chemicals company.
He inherited a traditional classroom-style training and ‘up-skilling’ plan from a top-tier strategy consulting firm.
He had watched that exact design fail before. Polished workshops. Strong attendance. Great feedback scores. Zero impact on behavior or earnings.
We call it “The Illusion of Change.”
He scrapped the consulting firm's plan and cut 80% of the consulting budget.
Over the next two years, he partnered with Demand Metric to co-design and implement what is now known as TransformationOS™.
It's a behavioral operating system for driving rapid mindset and behavior change at scale, without triggering passive resistance.
It runs on a specific sequence:
- Mindset first — adversity as fuel source, not threat.
- Skillset through real work — frontline leaders run 90-day Growth Projects™, coached weekly by Operator Coaches™ — experienced industry veterans, not consultants.
- Toolset on demand — only when the work calls for it.
Mid-eight-figure, CFO-validated EBITDA impact.
Six Academy cohorts across five continents. 300+ frontline leaders measurably improved.
Jesse started the Consortium to share the playbook — one other leaders can run inside their own organizations without the need for expensive consultants.
The team
Operators and practitioners — not consultants.
What makes this team distinct is simple: they have run businesses in your industry. They have sat in the seat you are sitting in. They have carried accountability for outcomes they did not directly control. When they coach, they are not advising from a slide deck. They are drawing on what they have actually done.
Founded the Commercial Excellence Consortium in 2026. Built Demand Metric over 20 years into the world's most trusted library of Playbooks & Toolkits serving 6,500+ companies. Co-designer of the TransformationOS for accelerating mindset and behavior change at scale.
John has performed 100+ benchmarking studies in partnership with top technology companies including Microsoft, Salesforce, Marketo, Demandbase, and many more. He speaks frequently at industry events on the impact of data and technology as a strategic partner of the ANA.
Head of Commercial Excellence and Business Transformation for a €7B specialty chemicals company. Coaches every Operators Lab™ member personally during Phase 1. Available to Lab participants weekly via the group coaching clinic. Designed and ran the proof case (above) that anchors the Lab's methodology.
After serving Mitsubishi Chemical Group for 30+ years in various leadership roles (R&D, innovation, market strategy, CTO, GM), Ron retired and launched a successful business in the music industry. As an Operator Coach, Ron helps teams perform better by asking the right questions, not giving them the answers.
Former partner at Impact Learning Systems (now Miller Heiman Group), where he designed sales and customer service training programs for the world's largest technology companies. As CEO of Mentored Pathways, his team mentored 50,000+ students in 11 countries. Advisor, investor, mentor, and coach to over 700 companies.
The world's leading authority on grit and resilience. Harvard Business School selected his Adversity Quotient® (AQ®) tools for its MBA and Executive Education programs. Featured on Harvard Business Review. Coaches the U.S. Olympic team. Former faculty at MIT and Carnegie Mellon.
The Science of Success
What actually predicts performance when the pressure is on.
The behavioral science under our method was developed by Dr. Paul Stoltz over four decades. Two measures — AQ® and GRIT™ — consistently out-predict IQ and EQ for sustained performance under adversity.
Your hardwired pattern of response to adversity.
AQ® measures how you interpret and respond to setbacks — the single most reliable predictor of who adapts, persists, and performs when conditions get hard.
High-AQ people treat adversity as fuel. Low-AQ people treat it as evidence they should stop. The pattern is measurable, trainable, and visible inside 90 days.
3,500+ peer-reviewed studies · 110 universities · 137 countries
Your capacity to dig deep for what matters most.
GRIT measures growth, resilience, instinct, and tenacity — the capacity to do whatever it takes, in the right ways, to achieve what matters.
Stoltz separates Good GRIT (aligned, sustainable) from Bad GRIT (misaligned, destructive). Most organizations reward the wrong one.
40+ years of research · Taught alongside AQ® in executive coaching
Dr. Paul G. Stoltz is the originator of both AQ® and GRIT™ and the world's leading authority on human adaptability, resilience, and performance under adversity.
Harvard Business School · MIT · INSEAD · Carnegie Mellon
The U.S. Olympic Team (coaching all coaches)
Apple · Amazon · FedEx · Marriott · AT&T · Deloitte — and dozens more Fortune 500 enterprises.
The full picture
The Consortium is where you start. The Operators Lab™ is where you build.
Free membership is the peer room. For members ready to build a CFO-validated proof case, the Operators Lab™ is the next step.
Consultants tell you what to do. We work with your people to get them to actually want to do it, and get it done consistently.
Ready to join the Consortium?
Invite-only. Directors and VPs of Commercial Excellence, Strategy, and Transformation at $500M+ enterprises. Applications reviewed weekly.
No sponsors, service providers, SaaS vendors, or consultants.