Lesson 01 · The Commercial Excellence Masterclass
Building a "Next-Gen" ComEx Academy
Roy van Griensven · Head of Commercial Excellence, LANXESS · He stopped the consulting plan one month into the job, and rebuilt it on 20% of the budget.
Reading this as a machine? This lesson as plain markdown.
What this lesson covers
- Why a technically correct capability plan produced no traction across nine business units, and what the first weeks in the job revealed about the reason.
- The proposal that got it stopped: twenty percent of the consulting budget, and permission to test a different design without it being argued down.
- Replacing one synchronized rollout with each business unit choosing what it works on first — and why the full capability set still gets built.
- Turning a hundred and forty slides into guided discovery: inspire, reflect, then ninety days of self-chosen work with an operator coach.
- Why mindset work on adversity response mattered more than any content in a company fluent in the reasons nothing can move.
- How the CRM went from rejected to requested, and five business units converging on ninety-five percent of the same design without a mandate.
- CFO-validated mid-eight-figure impact, ahead of plan, and why the business units stopped arguing about the number.
- What the design costs leadership: control over knowing in advance what will get worked on tomorrow.
In this lesson
Roy van Griensven took over commercial excellence at LANXESS, a global specialty chemicals company spun out of Bayer, and inherited a capability-building program already designed by a top-three strategy consulting firm. The concept was academically correct: every capability mapped, a curriculum written, and one rollout applied to all nine business units at the same time. It had produced very little traction.
What he heard in his first weeks was not an execution complaint. It was that people had seen it before. He was told he was the third or fourth person in the job, that it had not worked, and that this company was different. So rather than run the same design a fourth time, he went to the CEO with a proposal: stop the consulting engagement, take twenty percent of what was budgeted for it, and let him test a different approach without it being argued down.
Two things changed. The first was who chose the work. Instead of one sequence imposed across nine business units, he asked each business unit head a single question — what matters most to you in hitting your plan, whether or not it is on the list. Those conversations exposed the real problem: the leaders had been ticking a box because the CEO expected it. They did not believe the priorities were the right ones. Once each unit worked on what it had chosen, the same capabilities still got built; only the order changed, and what one unit built could be handed to the next.
The second was the shape of the teaching. The inherited program opened with roughly a hundred and forty slides. Talking to people in the organization, Roy concluded they largely knew what needed to be done — nobody had asked them. So the Academy runs upside down. Cohorts of about thirty move through mindset, skillset and toolset in that order: shown what good looks like elsewhere, then given room to work out what of it matters to them, then choosing what they will work on for the next ninety days, with an experienced operator coaching them through it rather than a junior consultant explaining their job to them.
The mindset work is the part he singles out as having the largest effect, separate from any content. In a company that had spent twenty years in survival mode, people were fluent in the reasons nothing could move: Chinese competition, overcapacity, dumping, tariffs, customers in trouble. All of it true, and all of it a reason to wait. The work was to get from that list to the one or two things still inside their influence this week — which is coaching on how a person responds to adversity, not instruction on how to write an account plan.
The results arrived in a shape the original program never reached. Around twenty programs are running company-wide, with more than seventeen self-selected Growth Projects behind them. The impact is signed off by the CFO — a mid-eight-figure result for the year, comfortably ahead of plan — and it is the only program with that validation, because the business units are reporting on work they picked and want credited. When severe financial measures landed in the budget cycle, cutting into personal compensation, the commercial excellence plan was left untouched. It was the one thing in the company people experienced as being listened to.
Questions this lesson answers
What is a next-generation commercial excellence academy?
It is a capability program built around work people choose rather than a curriculum they are enrolled in. Cohorts of about thirty are shown what good looks like elsewhere, decide what of it matters to them, then run a ninety-day project on a real commercial problem with an experienced operator coaching them weekly. The teaching stage is the shortest part; most of the program is the work itself.
Why did LANXESS stop a capability plan designed by a top-tier consulting firm?
Not because the plan was wrong. Roy van Griensven describes it as academically correct — every capability mapped, a curriculum written. It produced very little traction because it was pushed onto nine business units on one timetable, and the leaders were complying with it rather than believing in it. Running the same design a fourth time was the thing he declined to do.
What did he propose to the CEO instead?
Stop the consulting engagement, spend twenty percent of the money budgeted for it, and allow a different approach to be tested without being argued down. He asked specifically for it not to be objected to while it ran, rather than for extra funding.
How do you decide what each business unit works on?
By asking the business unit head what matters most to hitting their plan, explicitly including things not on the corporate list. In this case those conversations revealed that leaders had been ticking a box because the CEO expected it, and did not believe the assigned priorities were the right ones.
If every unit picks its own priority, do you still build all the capabilities?
Yes. Across nine business units the full capability set was still addressed — what changed was the order each unit took them in. Once one unit had built something, the others were willing to adopt it, because they had been allowed to start with what they believed in.
What was wrong with a hundred and forty training slides?
It assumed people did not know what to do. Talking to the organization, Roy concluded they largely did — they had not been asked. A program that opens by explaining their job to them spends its first hours confirming that nobody is listening.
What does guided discovery mean in practice?
Inspire, then reflect, then choose. Participants see examples from outside the company, work out which parts matter to them, and select what they will work on for the next ninety days. The destination is often the same one a mandate would have named; arriving at it themselves is what changes whether it lasts.
What is a Growth Project?
A ninety-day piece of real commercial work a team selects for itself, on a problem it already has, with weekly coaching from an experienced operator. It is how the capability gets built — by doing the work rather than by attending a session about it.
Why use operator coaches rather than consultants?
Roy is direct about the dynamic: a junior consultant with three years of experience telling someone with twenty years of marketing experience how to do their job typically does not work. An operator who has done the work for thirty years is not there to judge, only to help when a team gets stuck — with examples, with the right questions, and with what worked and what did not.
How long does a cohort run?
Ninety days of project work after the workshop, with weekly coaching. In this program teams were asking what happened next before the ninety days were up.
How did a company that rejected CRM end up asking for it?
It was never introduced as a CRM program. The company had said CRM was unusable and that its business did not fit an opportunity model. When the question became what visibility do you need to manage your business, teams arrived at pipeline transparency themselves — and then asked when they could start using the system, because it was the way to get what they had asked for.
Did letting business units choose produce inconsistent designs?
The opposite, in the case that mattered most. Five business units worked on opportunity and pipeline management separately and arrived at ninety-five percent of the same setup — the same stages, the same data, the same configuration. A mandate would have needed two years and an argument to achieve the same convergence.
How do you prove return on investment for work driven by intrinsic motivation?
By reporting on it monthly and having it validated outside the program. This one is signed off by the CFO — a mid-eight-figure result for the year, ahead of plan. There is no debate with the business units about the number, because they chose the work and want the impact credited to them.
Why was the original impact number rejected?
The inherited program carried a two-to-three-hundred-million impact figure that the business units were fighting as unrealistic. It was parked rather than defended, and the argument was dropped. Impact tracking became straightforward once the units were reporting on work they had chosen.
What happened to the program when the company made severe financial cuts?
Nothing. On the day the CEO announced measures that hit individual compensation, the commercial excellence plan was discussed and left unchanged. It was the one thing in the company people experienced as positive, and as evidence they were being listened to.
Who finds this approach uncomfortable?
Leadership, rather than the teams. Sales and marketing run at it because the priorities are theirs. The unease sits with headquarters, the board and business unit leaders, who give up knowing in advance exactly what will be worked on tomorrow.
Should you start with the leaders or with the people doing the job?
Both are needed, but the weight goes to the people who do the work. Roy finds influencing a leader easier than influencing the field, so he spends his time in the field. When a business unit leader is unwilling, starting with them stalls; when the motivation builds under them, they tend to come along.
How do you keep a CEO focused on capability when the current quarter is bad?
By separating the two conversations. Questions about this month's margin and volume are legitimate and stay in the business review. Growth gets its own dialogue: is the pipeline healthy, are we on the right customers, what support is missing. Roy's framing to his CEO was that the current months were going to be bad regardless, so the question was whether the work being done now put the company in a better position in six months.
What should a CEO do differently under this model?
Reward people who try, and resist asking what is not correct. Roy asked his CEO for one behavior specifically: say thank you, and do not open with the two questions about what went wrong, because that is what signals whether bringing an idea forward is worth it.
What are the hardest parts of running it?
Three. Influential leadership is a skill his own team had to build, because the program cannot be delivered by presenting at people. Some business unit leaders are simply not interested and generate friction that costs time. And intrinsic motivation alone is not enough where people have never seen what good looks like — those cases still need inspiration, delivered without it feeling like instruction.
What are the unintended benefits?
Visibility for people who would not otherwise have had it. Individuals rose from inside the organization on the strength of their ideas, including cases where someone junior presented to the CEO and was considered for future leadership — a route the normal promotion path would not have produced.
What did commercial excellence leaders name as the hardest part of capability building?
Asked to rank seven challenges, the room put managing change fatigue and building intrinsic motivation joint first, with demonstrating business impact close behind. Getting budget, sourcing content, and deciding what to work on ranked lowest — the constraint is behavioral rather than material.
Why is change fatigue so hard to manage?
Because the resets come from above and arrive faster than teams can act. Participants described new leaders bringing new directions, go-to-market models changing and priorities resetting with them, and technology moving faster than anyone can absorb — until people stop investing on the reasonable assumption it will change again.
Is transformation the right word for this work?
Several in the room argued not. Transformation implies a start and an end, when what is being asked for is continuous adaptation. One participant described uncoordinated, siloed transformations arriving one after another as a domino effect that teams experience as never ending.
Why do people resist tools that would help them?
Because they are measured on something else. A participant put it plainly: salespeople are incentivized by their number, and are not rewarded for using the system. When a rollout then removes flexibility they had, they lose faith in it and revert — and the program pays for that at go-live.
Why does capability building get cut in a downturn?
Because leadership hears it as training. Framed that way it looks deferrable — the existing skills can get the company through. Framed as the organization's ability to adapt to the conditions it is in, it becomes the thing that gets you through, and the measures of progress change with it.
What is the role of AQ and GRIT in this program?
To move people from cataloguing constraints to acting inside them. In a company fluent in the reasons nothing can move — competition, overcapacity, dumping, tariffs, customers in difficulty — the work is getting to the one or two things still within influence this week. Roy names this as having had possibly the largest effect of anything in the design, separate from content.
Terms defined in this lesson
- Guided discovery
- Letting people arrive at the answer through questions rather than being told it. In the Academy, participants are shown what good looks like elsewhere, then work out which of it applies to them, then choose what to act on. The topic often ends up the same as a mandate would have produced; the difference is that they asked for it.
- Growth Project
- A ninety-day piece of real commercial work that a team selects for itself, on a problem it already has, coached weekly by an experienced operator. It is the unit the Academy delivers in — capability is built by doing the work rather than by attending a session about it.
- Mindset → Skillset → Toolset
- The order capability is built in: how people interpret a setback first, then the skills, then the systems. Most programs run it backwards, starting with a tool rollout and treating mindset as a communications problem.
- Change fatigue
- The state produced when priorities reset faster than teams can act on them — a new leader, a new operating model, a new set of messages — until people stop investing in any of it on the reasonable assumption that it will change again. Named by this roundtable as one of the two hardest problems in capability building.
- Adversity Quotient (AQ®)
- A measure of how a person responds to setbacks, developed by Dr. Paul Stoltz. In this program it is used with GRIT™ to get teams from cataloguing why nothing can move to naming the one or two things still inside their influence.
- One-size-fits-all rollout
- Applying the same capability program to every business unit on the same timetable, on the assumption that it is more efficient. It is the design Roy stopped, on the grounds that it standardizes the sequence rather than the outcome.
- The knowing–doing gap
- The distance between people knowing what to do and doing it. Named in this session as the fallacy underneath most adult learning design: that showing people the plan and what good looks like is enough to change behavior afterwards.
“Maybe doing the same thing for the fourth or the fifth time is just not the right thing to do.”
“What if we take twenty percent of what you're budgeting to spend on consulting, and we stop the whole consulting?”
“They actually knew what had to be done. The problem was no one had ever asked them, what do you think?”
“We didn't have to do anything to get people motivated to work.”
“You need to trust that the right things start to happen, and that you're not in control of telling everyone what they're doing day to day.”
“The discomfort is not at the board level, it's the level below. The sales and marketing teams, there is zero discomfort. They run through brick walls by now, because they have the feeling they're listened to.”
“They were actually asking for when can we start using CRM.”
“Reward people that try. As a CEO, say thank you. No matter how big the urge is to ask the two questions about what's not correct, don't do it.”
“The people that actually do the job, that's where the change happens — not the people that sit in management positions.”
“The biggest single fallacy in adult learning is that all you need to do is put a bunch of people in a room, show them PowerPoint, show them what good looks like, and then somehow expect behavior changes after.”
“Every time there is an organization change, the message being sent to the commercial team keeps changing, and it makes the team very confused on what to focus on.”
“Transformation implies a start and an end. Isn't it really about constant adaptability?”