Commercial systems are not transformed by adding more to them. They are transformed by understanding what they currently produce, what they have drifted away from, and what they were never designed to hold.
I work with senior commercial leaders, business executives, and boards on the design of commercial systems – the architecture beneath the functions, where intent, boundaries, shared meaning, decision authority, and interfaces are either explicitly held or slowly erode.
How the work begins
The work typically begins with a question that has been sitting unresolved – sometimes for years.
Why does our pipeline keep inflating?
Why do our forecasts erode in the second half of every quarter?
Why does every transformation cycle leave us with the same problems in slightly different forms?
These are rarely the questions they appear to be. The first work is to look beneath them – to understand what the current commercial system is designed to produce, what assumptions it was assembled to hold, and what conditions it was never built for.
What follows is shaped by what that surfaces. Sometimes the work is to redesign architectural elements that have collapsed. Sometimes it is to slow a transformation in flight before structure is imposed on something not yet stable. Sometimes the most valuable contribution is simply giving a leadership team the language to name a problem they have been working around for years.
Who the work is for
This work is for leaders who suspect that adding another methodology, process, tool, or enablement initiative will not resolve what they are facing – and who are willing to look at the design of the system itself.
In practice, this is mostly Chief Commercial Officers, Chief Revenue Officers, and Chief Executive Officers of B2B organisations, and the boards or investors shaping the conditions in which they operate. The work applies across organisations of very different shapes: early commercial systems still being assembled, mature systems that have aged faster than their markets, and the particular complexity of holding two commercial systems together after a merger.
It is less likely to be the right fit for leaders looking for an execution partner, a packaged transformation programme, or a methodology to deploy. This work starts earlier: with the architecture that determines what execution can produce.
How to start a conversation
The most useful first message describes what is prompting the outreach – what is sitting unresolved, what has already been tried, and what kind of conversation would be useful.
Advisory work is provided through Patrik Sporre AB.