Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Commercial Decisions
Sustainability and resilience are often well defined at a strategic level. They are discussed in boardrooms and captured in long-term commitments. But commercial teams are where those commitments are either realised or lost. Without the ability to navigate trade-offs in real time, decisions tend to default to short-term performance. The issue is not intent. It is integration.
What we did with Greencore
That was the starting point for our recent work with Jim Couchman, Sales Director at Greencore. Jim and his team wanted clarity on a direct question: How do systemic risks translate into margin, growth and customer implications over the next 12–24 months?
We ran a structured Commercial Risk & Resilience Session bringing commercial, sustainability and cross-functional leaders into the same room to:
stress-test assumptions
surface trade-offs with our expert coaches
connect systemic risk to live decisions.
As Jim Couchman, Sales Director at Greencore, explained: “The value of this is to enable our commercial sales, category and NPD managers to think differently about how they tackle health and sustainability challenges. If we can think differently, we can act differently and bring new solutions to solve the problems, both to Greencore and our retail partners.” The result was a clearer, shared view of where risk sits and how to act on it.
Resilience is becoming a core commercial discipline. What’s been most striking is that this isn’t about having the right ambition or the right plan. It’s about whether teams have the ability and confidence to navigate those tensions in real time, particularly when there isn’t a clear or comfortable answer. Greencore are doing the work of bringing those trade-offs out of strategy decks and into the conversations that shape performance day to day, which is where this shift either happens or it doesn’t.
If you are leading a commercial team and want systemic risk translated into clear commercial priorities, email us or book a call to get in touch to learn more about the structure of the session and how it can work for you.