Eurico de Freitas has spent a large part of his working life understanding the factors and the conditions that deliver top-tier results in organisations. He has assessed these insights in consultation with various clients across multiple industries. His expertise therefore comes from a rich combination of sound research into business performance, as well as direct experience in client organisations.
In 2000 Eurico was a founding partner in an enterprise consulting business called Business Sculptors (Pty) Ltd, named after the consulting process that he pioneered. Management consultants tend to add layers of complexity to lift organisational performance, this approach often overlooks constraints in the business that prevent innovation and change.
Like the stone sculptor that removes every part of the rock that does not resemble his vision, business sculpting seeks first to identify and remove constraints to an organisation’s
growth. These may include absent vision and strategy, inappropriate structures, toxic cultures, and unsuitable leadership. Resolving these challenges requires strong resolve from shareholders and directors. If you desire real change you need to grasp the nettle and make the tough decisions, only a few organisations across diverse industries get this right.
From Eurico’s experience five things prevent organisations from achieving their true potential:
- Lack of vision, ineffective strategy, and unsupportive culture
- Resistance to innovation and change
- Mediocre leadership
- Misreading industry and market changes
- Poor organisational alignment … top to bottom
The diagnosis of which of these factors are holding a company back can usually be determined through a high- level analysis of business results and interviews with key people.
The importance of leadership
We see the consequences of inadequate or mediocre leadership daily in every facet of our society. We see it in government, small and large private enterprises and in society. Ironically, these leadership deficiencies are usually the last aspects that are addressed, if at all. Why is this so? It is so because these are the most challenging matters to deal with, people and politics.
The solutions that Eurico brings to business usually involve tough decisions regarding people and resources, not theory laden strategies that run up consulting fees and deliver negligible results. Instead, he offers shareholders and directors useful evidence of the strengths and weaknesses of current leadership. In some cases, these deficiencies can be remedied by assigning executives to another portfolio to gain more experience, or access to a skilled mentor inside or outside the organisation. In other instances, the only solution may be to replace the leader, which may be critical to future organisational performance. Tough choices.
What are the key dimensions when auditing leadership talent?
From experience there are four categories of assessment, the last of which is most critical and usually overlooked. These are touched on briefly below but note that Eurico could provide your organisation with a comprehensive dossier on your leadership team, to the benefit of both the leaders and the organisation.
- Experience and expertise: This relates to technical expertise and length of time in a particular career or industry. Companies can assess an individual’s expertise without assistance from consultants. In some instances, though, an executive’s experience and ability to articulate knowledge masks serious deficiencies in the other categories.
- Behavioural profile: There are a number of assessment tools available to map an executive’s behavioural profile and to match same to the requirements of a position. When used in concert with other assessment tools this information is useful to both the executive and the company.
- Cognitive ability (CPA/IRIS) – Leadership capacity: This is the most important and least used assessment tool. Unlike other aspects of human capability, the cognitive level that an individual can reach is set through life and work experience by the age of 20 years. Some of it might be in the DNA like other human traits and some of it learned during formative years. We can measure seven levels of cognitive ability, and these have nothing to do with intelligence (IQ). A brain surgeon with an extremely high IQ might have level 1 cognitive ability and not, even with the required knowledge, be able to run a multinational corporation. This is fundamental. The best engineer in your firm may not be the best CEO for your engineering company. And here is the interesting bit, most shareholders, directors, and CEOs have never heard of CPA.
Organisations with capable leadership can overcome many things including the absence of resources and opportunity, but the reverse is not true. Ensuring that you have capable
leadership is also not a once off initiative. People change as do industries and markets, and we need to continually upskill an organisation’s resources, its leadership.
Leadership Development
Based on many years of experience Eurico has developed leadership initiatives that work for
organisations from group development programs to individual coaching. The diagram below
outlines the key elements of a comprehensive leadership program which has delivered positive results in client organisations. Eurico can nevertheless design and deliver lesser initiatives, intended to address specific gaps in company performance. These programmes deliver better results when company executives and senior staff have participated in the leadership assessment process. Both initiatives lead a company to becoming a learning organisation capable of reacting to market changes and exploiting opportunities.
Vision and Business Strategy
One assumes that organisations that have been in existence for a long time would be clear on vision and strategy. Readers might be surprised to learn that clear, unambiguous vision and well documented business strategy are the exception rather than the rule. You only have to surprise a second-tier management team in a meeting and ask each of them to write down, without consulting each other, the three key priorities of their business. Eurico has surprised many senior executives with this simple acid test.
Eurico can facilitate the development of fresh vision and strategy with existing teams via participation, and challenging and testing conventional organisational wisdom.
Understanding the “Why” of a business is part of this process.
Implementing business strategy usually includes the use of:
- Small teams Create small teams throughout the business to get people to collaborate, share ideas, and welcome innovation. People cannot hide in small teams – they will be forced to work and participate if they want to be part of the team.
- Productive culture With culture we refer to “the way things get done around here.” In a productive culture, people participate, collaborate, and deliver continuous incremental changes and improvements. Holy cows are sacrificed at the altar of productivity and innovation.
- After Action Reviews Part of engaging people and creating a learning and more productive culture is to get teams to review successful and failed projects, with the intent to learn from what has been done and what we should do going forward.
- Learning strategies Instilling the hunger to learn and develop will contribute to all the leadership development pillars. We are all players in a bigger business ecosystem (everything is connected), where our contribution or lack thereof has a direct impact on the effectiveness of the whole organisation. We need to better understand the impact we have on the business ecosystem. Without self and situational awareness, we close our minds to change and possibilities.
A few examples of Eurico’s interventions:
- Pharmaceutical company turnaround Eurico was a key member of a team of four business sculptors that turned around a technically insolvent niche pharmaceutical company and sold it to one of the major South African brands three years later. Results were achieved using business sculpting methodologies.
- Real-time case studies with USB Eurico initiated the concept of real-time case studies for Executive Development Programmes run by the University of Stellenbosch Business School. Instead of assigning students outdated paper-based case studies, Eurico took them into live organisations where that had to solve real problems in real-time, to the satisfaction of company executives.
- Identifying talent in the milling industry Eurico was a key player in an initiative in a large milling organisation with assets in a number of African countries. The initiative was to support a turnaround of the business by assessing the capability and suitability of the top and senior management teams. This led to the successful reorganisation of this business.
- Developing talent in the property industry Eurico collaborated with a major player in the property development industry over many years to revolutionise the way this organisation assessed, recruited, and developed talent at senior management level.
Contact Eurico
Whether you need to take your organisation to the next level or simply review an underperforming division, contact Eurico de Freitas for a detailed discussion on the needs of your organisation. This can be accomplished over a cup of coffee at a time to suit you or via a Zoom or Teams meeting.
Eurico de Freitas
082 453 6744