Welcome to Taking Stock, a podcast designed to discuss some of the most pressing issues facing corporate executives. This podcast series is designed to share thought-leading topics, ideas, and innovation with its listeners. Listen to previous episodes here.

Transformational leadership, once a nice-to-have, has quickly become an organizational imperative in the face of a fluctuating business landscape. There are many market dynamics making the balance between growth and optimization more challenging than ever before. There is uncertainty in the economy, growth in digital spending, increasing speed of disruptive innovation, and shifts in the global economy from both developed and emerging markets.

These issues and more are compounding, making it increasingly challenging for organizational leaders to set, execute, and sustain their corporate strategy. Executives must take into account how to think about and plan for the future without being constrained by the challenges and limitations of the present day. And, as challenging as that is, the greater hurdle is often gaining organizational alignment around the strategy and making it actionable.

It’s more critical than ever before that organizations have the right process and approach to setting a corporate strategy. In this week’s Taking Stock, I sit down with Sebastian Valencia, a Partner at Clarkston Consulting and the leader of our Management and Operations Consulting Practice. Sebastian is responsible for advising senior executives from global organizations through strategic business transformations, with specific areas of focus including strategic planning, product and process innovation, organizational performance, supply chain strategy, digital transformations, and mergers and acquisitions.

In this discussion, you will have an opportunity to learn what is it that separates transformational leaders and their ability to set a visionary strategy for their respective organizations. Perhaps more importantly, we discuss how these leaders get their organization to believe in the mission, align around a common purpose and singular vision and, finally, ensure the right level of actionable goals and measures are disseminated throughout organizational functions. Sebastian will also share his perspective on the right time horizons for a corporate strategy and what are the keys to success to ensure the right level of ‘stickiness’ and accountability through time.

You can download and listen to Transformational Leadership: Taking Stock with Sebastian Valencia here.

Taking Stock

In this podcast series, Clarkston Consulting Partner Steve Rosenstock sits down with experts and thought leaders from both within Clarkston and throughout its consumer products and life sciences client-base, covering a range of topics from industry trends and consumer dynamics, to organizational governance and business strategy. Steve provides you access into the passions of its guests and allows you to benefit from their stories, knowledge, and deep expertise.

Podcast production by Zach McClughen