The Number I Could Not Make Peace With

By Yannick Schilly, Co-Founder, President & CEO of ALTIX Consulting

Seventy Percent.

It is one of the most frequently cited figures in transformation: roughly seven in ten transformation efforts fail to achieve their intended outcomes.

We can debate the exact percentage. What I find much harder to accept is the reality behind it. We have decades of experience, methodologies, technology and data — and yet transformations still fail too often.

Why?

That question has followed me through more than 25 years leading industrial operations and transformations across Germany, China and the United States, and more recently through our work with more than 150 companies at ALTIX.

I have seen transformations that worked and others that did not. Over time, I became convinced of something: the problem is not that we don’t know how to transform. It is that too few organizations build the capability to keep transforming.

That conviction became the starting point for The Superfit Company.

Transformation is a Capability

Most companies still treat transformation as an event — something triggered by a new strategy, technology, restructuring or crisis.

The strongest companies operate differently.

They build the organizational fitness to sense change early, make difficult decisions, execute with discipline, learn quickly — and do it again. They transform while the business is strong, rather than waiting until circumstances leave them no choice.

Transformation stops being something the organization occasionally does. It becomes something the organization is continuously capable of doing.

I Did Not Learn This On a Whiteboard

Some lessons in this book came from successes. Others came from mistakes, setbacks and moments I would have preferred not to experience.

One of the most personal takes me back to Jinan, China, where our plant was under formal environmental sanction and fundamental change was no longer optional.

Within twenty-four months, our team moved the operation from sanction to group benchmark.

I am proud of what we accomplished. But what those two years demanded — from the organization, from the team, and from me personally — rarely appears on a transformation roadmap.

It is the chapter that took me the longest to write.

Before Publishing The Book, I Wanted It Challenged

More than 20 industrial CEOs, executives, board members and transformation leaders have now read the manuscript.

What struck me was not simply their response, but what each chose to take away. Some focused on complacency and resilience. Others on people and trust, on AI and human judgment, on leadership, or on the responsibility to transform while the business is still strong.

Their perspectives reinforced for me just how differently leaders experience transformation — and how universal the challenge has become.

I look forward to sharing who these leaders are, and the ideas that resonated most strongly with each of them.

What Makes A Company Superfit?

That is ultimately the question behind the book:

What makes a company fit enough not only to perform today, but to continuously adapt, transform and outperform tomorrow?

I don’t believe the answer is a single technology, methodology or operating model.

Technology can be acquired. Processes can be implemented. Expertise can be hired. But judgment, leadership depth, organizational reflexes, resilience and the ability to execute through uncertainty are built over time.

That is what I mean by a Superfit Company.

October 29 and 30

I am especially grateful to Serge Joris, CEO of Frigoglass Group, for writing the foreword. Serge joins us as keynote speaker at the ALTIX Global Leaders Forum & Industrial Excellence Honors on October 29 in Mason, Ohio, where the book will be officially launched. It publishes the following day, October 30.

I wrote it because I believe the winners of the next industrial decade will not necessarily be the companies that execute one extraordinary transformation.

They will be the companies that build the capability to never stop transforming.

ALTIX Consulting