Center for Strategy Realization

Change management is a key enabler of business strategy and technology implementations. Yet, the vast majority of these initiatives land far short of expectations, with many executives reporting attainment of less than 50 percent of expected financial results, triggering a ‘crisis of confidence’ with their stakeholders.

According to Kimberlee Williams, President of Center for Strategy Realization and HR industry expert, “Many leaders approach program implementation from the perspective of installing new technology solutions, rather than assuring deeper mindset and behavioral changes are in place to fully realize and sustain business results over time.”

It has long been known that ‘sponsorship’ is the number one driver of successful change programs. But inspiring, engaging, and holding the workforce accountable for change is different than day-to-day leadership, and few leaders a know how to effectively sponsor major change. This is precisely what Kimberlee empowers organizations to achieve through her firm, the Center for Strategy Realization.

Unlike most change management providers, staffed by career consultants and trainers, the Center for Strategy Realization fields a team of seasoned business professionals who held corporate leadership roles and were responsible for delivering results on big programs. They partner with senior leaders to enhance specific change leadership skills, amplifying the impact of traditional change management approaches. Change leadership also delivers the added impact of improving employee engagement and developing a vibrant execution culture, from the boardroom to the breakroom. By directly addressing change leadership as a root cause of initiative performance, the Center for Strategy Realization enables its clients to achieve more significant, reliable, and lasting results.

The firm follows a three-pronged knowledge transfer approach. The first is robust advisory services, partnering one on-one or in groups with executives to develop pragmatic change leadership capabilities that deliver results.

The second is to up skill program managers and other senior change agents to develop their change influence capabilities, particularly in how accelerate major change through governance, facilitation of high-impact executive prioritization, and decision making. Change management workshops are also offered in tandem to upskill change managers and project team members. The final lever is assessment of employee engagement, culture, and 360-degree leadership skills, to enhance workforce change capabilities at the organization, team, and individual levels. This comprehensive approach assures that clients more quickly achieve desired results, develop reusable capabilities to become ‘consultant independent’, and do so at a lower investment point than traditional consulting.

The firm has pioneered delivery of in-person and virtual services since 2012. Virtual capabilities were especially beneficial for clients during the pandemic and support resilient business continuity and seamless change management programs going forward. Their collaboration platform gives leaders and employees easy access to their assignments, learning materials, guides, and tools while working with Center for Strategy Realization advisors.

The firm’s competencies are best exemplified through the case study of one of the world’s largest public transit agencies. Without a cohesive alignment of the stakeholders in its $1 trillion asset management initiative (comprised of complex technology, process, and structure changes), the client faced numerous execution challenges. After the Center for Strategy Realization deployed its approach, the agency was able to re align middle management and executive expectations. Successful change management pulled forward five-year results to two years (accelerating $150 million in savings) and formed the basis of the Enterprise-wide change management framework and toolkit now in use on other initiatives.

The firm team has experience in more than twenty industries and is at the forefront of providing change leadership capabilities to address the many change management challenges their clients encounter. The Center for Strategy Realization empowers senior leaders to inspire their people during times of change and fully realize major business results.