Rob guides organizational transformations by driving programs that establish more agile operating models, including business turnarounds and restructuring efforts. With a strong focus on strategy and organizational health, he also leads initiatives that foster culture change and enhance leadership strength. Rob has served clients across a range of industries, particularly in the high-tech, consumer-goods, and chemicals sectors.
While on hiatus from McKinsey, Rob dedicated three years to serving as the transformation leader for a global high-tech company undergoing fundamental transformational change. Reporting to the CEO—and covering an enterprise comprised of 40 businesses serving 17 markets—Rob built a team of over 100 change agents to drive high-impact, end-to-end business transformations. Based on the insights gained from these transformations, he led an initiative to build a radically simplified and holistic process architecture as the backbone for a completely new agile operating model for this company.
Examples of his recent client work include the following:
- helping the top team of a leading telecommunications company in Spain design and implement a holistic enterprise-transformation journey over multiple years, including coaching the executive team to lead the culture change
- supporting the top team of a chemicals company to design and drive a holistic transformation, pursuing an unprecedented step-up in performance and health
- leading multiple business-performance acceleration and turnaround programs for several businesses in a leading global agriculture company
- leading a 3-year performance transformation for a beverage company across 15 countries in Eastern Europe and Russia
- developing a cultural-transformation program at a global sports-apparel company focused on the top 800 leaders
- driving the turnaround of a distressed food company in Hungary with the CEO and a new leadership team, securing a break-even within six months
- facilitating a business-performance improvement program for a large consumer-goods company across its three European divisions that established commercial and overhead effectiveness, portfolio optimization, and lean operations
To help raise awareness of the power of business transformation, Rob speaks frequently at conferences and executive forums. In addition to serving as lead faculty for McKinsey’s Change Leaders Forum, he is the founder of a new executive forum, McKinsey’s Transformation Summit. He is certified as a Newfield Institute ontological coach and is fluent in English and German as well as his native Dutch. Beyond McKinsey, he serves on the supervisory board of War Child, an organization that supports children in conflict zones.