CULTURE CATALYST UNILY CPO’S PLAYBOOK FOR ORGANIZATIONAL VELOCITY. PAGE 12
PUBLISHED BY INSIGNIAM | AN ELIXIRR COMPANY
Volume 12 Issue 3 | Fall 2025 | insigniam.com/quarterly-magazine
BREAK YOUR BOARDROOM WITH YALE’S LEGENDARY LUMINARY, JEFFREY SONNENFELD. PAGE 18
WAXING POETIC TURTLE WAX CEO ON OUTSHINING CPG DISRUPTIONS. PAGE 54
KAAPA ETHANOL CEO CHUCK WOODSIDE IS REDEFINING ENERGY RESILIENCE IN A HIGHLY-COMBUSTIBLE WORLD. PAGE 32
“You can’t wait for a blueprint. If you wait until all the rules are set, you’ve already missed the opportunity.”
—Chuck Woodside CEO, KAAPA Ethanol
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Shideh Sedgh Bina sbina@insigniam.com
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Jon Kleinman jkleinman@insigniam.com
CONTROLLER
Steve Niedzielski sniedzielski@insigniam.com
DIRECTOR OF MARKETING AND SALES OPERATIONS
Natalie Rahn nrahn@insigniam.com
DIRECTOR OF CONTENT
Jon Ball jball@insigniam.com
INSIGNIAM.COM
Mia Studenroth mstudenroth@insigniam.com
CONTRIBUTORS
Eric Breese, Katerin Le Folcalvez, Nancy Herbert, Adam Hofmann, Tracy D. Holloman, Anna Islamova, Ryan Jones, Jon Kleinman, Josh LeGassick, Camelia Palai, Will Parish, Kathy Plunkett, Nathan Owen Rosenberg, June Zerinque
IQ | InsigniamQuarterly is a thought leadership publication committed to transforming the world of business by offering content relevant to the C-suite and their executive teams at large, complex global enterprises.
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Let’s cut to the chase: if you’re waiting for the dust to settle before making your next big move, you’ll be waiting forever. Change doesn’t pause for the quarterly report. It doesn’t politely wait in the lobby until you’re ready. It barrels in—whether in the form of shifting regulations, global supply snarls, new AI breakthroughs, or the customer behaviors that rewrite themselves overnight.
This issue of IQ is about winning at the speed of change. Notice, I didn’t say managing it. Leaders who thrive in this climate aren’t the ones with the thickest binders of scenarios—they’re the ones who can turn uncertainty into momentum.
You’ll hear from Chuck Woodside, CEO of KAAPA Ethanol, on what it really means to bet big in a market where policy shifts and existential risks can make or break entire industries. Laurie King, CEO of Turtle Wax, shows us how to reinvent a legacy brand by transforming supply chains into real-time decision engines. Jenny Shiers, Chief People Officer at Unily, makes the case that culture enhanced by technology allows people to move faster than disruption. And legendary "CEO Whisperer" and Yale School of Management dean, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, reminds us that leadership, at its core, is tested most in volatile times.
We’ve packed these pages with candor, provocation, and a few uncomfortable truths. Because faster is the only way forward. So turn the page, lean in, and get ready to rethink not just how you lead—but how you win when the ground won’t stop shifting.
Shideh Sedgh Bina Founding Partner, Insigniam & Partner, Elixirr
12
EXECUTIVE Q&A CULTURE CATALYST
Unily’s CPO, Jenny Shiers, on building tech-enabled, people-first cultures that outpace disruption.
By Tracy D. Holloman
FROM THE BOARDROOM BREAKING BOARD BURNOUT
Fatigue is rampant across the Fortune 500. Yale’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld has a fix.
By Jon Kleinman
SEMINAL FEATURE IS YOUR OP MODEL KILLING GROWTH? Stop optimizing for yesterday. Learn how to build an organization that adapts in real time.
By Katerin Le Folcalvez
CPG INSIGHTS TURTLE WAX TRANSFORMATION
CEO Laurie King is re-imagining how the car-care staple’s supply chain can be a growth accelerator.
By Josh LeGassick
COVER STORY FUELING THE FUTURE
KAAPA Ethanol CEO, Chuck Wooside, is harvesting growth from a playbook built to win in uncertain times.
By Jon Ball & June Zerinque
THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE AI AT THE BEDSIDE OutcomesAI’s Chief Clinical Officer Sarah Bell is reshaping healthcare delivery via end-to-end AI.
By Ryan Jones
“Transformation is never easy, but if we engage, collaborate, and adapt, we can shape a future where [people] are truly empowered.”
-Sarah Bell, Chief Clinical Officer, OutcomesAI
04 TECH BYTE
M.I.T. says 95% of AI pilots fail. Learn how to join the 5% that win.
08 BROWSER HISTORY
Recommended reads for the C-suite.
10 BY THE NUMBERS
How organizational velocity impacts your bottom-line.
24 MISSION & LEADERSHIP
Commanding change—without commanding people.
PODCAST 1X1: CHUCK WOODSIDE
Tap to listen to his Insigniam B.I.T.s interview.
AUDIBLES
Listen to a reading of our seminal feature.
A recent MIT report says 95% generative AI pilots at companies are failing. The secret to implementing success? Stop piloting and start embedding.
By Adam Hofmann
According to a MIT report making headlines across news outlets and social media platform, 95% of enterprise AI projects have crumbled by the wayside. The graveyard is full of flashy demos, endless pilots, and millions sunk into proofs-of-concept that never touched a real customer or saved an employee a single hour.
If you’re a senior executive, here’s the hard truth: AI success is not a technology problem. It’s a leadership problem. And it’s solvable—if you treat AI not as an experiment, but as a discipline. Here’s how leaders in the winning 5% are doing it:
Don’t Chase Use Cases. Ruthlessly Destroy Them.
Many executives start by building a long list of “AI ideas.” Unfortunately, it's the wrong move. Start with your strategy: What are the two or three business outcomes that matter most right now? Then work backwards. For every proposed use case, ask yourself the following questions:
• Does it tie directly to one of those outcomes?
• Can we prove value in 90 days or less?
• Will success scale across multiple, crossfunctional teams?
If the answer isn’t yes to all three, toss it. The winners kill 80% of use cases on day one and pour resources into the few that matter.
Pilots are valuable, but only if they’re treated as stepping stones, not trophies. You do need space for testing and learning; often by starting small, proving the concept, and building confidence.
But the second a use case shows real value, the focus must shift to embedding it into the systems and workflows people already use every day. The goal isn’t to create new behaviors; it’s to make AI invisible—woven seamlessly into existing tools so adoption is frictionless.
Pilots are valuable, but only as stepping stones, not trophies. You need space for testing and learning; start small, prove the concept, and build confidence.
You wouldn’t outsource your understanding of financial statements. Don’t outsource your understanding of AI. Winning executives don’t become data scientists, but they do know enough to ask sharp questions, smell hype, and set realistic expectations. And literacy can’t stop at the top. Teams need to see not only how to use AI today, but also how their roles will evolve tomorrow. Show them: Here’s what AI can take off your plate now. Here’s how your role will expand as the technology matures. That clarity turns fear into confidence—and experimentation into momentum.
%
MIT notes that while only 5% of custom GenAI tools survive the pilot-to-production cliff, generic chatbots have an 83% adoption rate for trivial tasks, yet stall the moment workflows demand context and customization.
Executives love bold ROI headlines—“AI saved us $50M.” The winners measure something more mundane: minutes saved, error rates reduced, deal cycle times shortened. Why? Because those are the signals you can track weekly, that build trust, and that compound into massive impact over time.
Governance and security are essential—but introduced too early, they can strangle
innovation before it starts. The winning approach is phased: In phase one, test and validate the use case with minimal friction.
Next, once value is proven and adoption grows, move into phase two by layering in guardrails—ethics, bias checks, data security, and a human-in-the-loop review. By the time it scales to production or customers, you’re in phase three, where governance is robust and trusted, because it’s been tested alongside real use. This phased approach transforms governance from a brake into an accelerator.
AI success isn’t about betting on the right model. It’s about leading with discipline under uncertainty. Kill most ideas fast. Pilot with purpose, then embed relentlessly. Make literacy and role evolution nonnegotiable. Measure what compounds. And introduce governance at the right time— early enough to build trust, late enough not to kill momentum.
Most importantly, to join the 5% who win we should see this not as a technology challenge, but more of a stress test of executive leadership. IQ
Click to read Adam Hofmann's latest Quarterly AI Insights Report on leveraging AI to supercharge enterprise and leadership performance.
Rising risks. Relentless disruption. Shrinking margins.
Five shifts shaping the future of insurance
1. From protection to prevention.
Customers want partners who help them anticipate and avoid risk before it happens.
2. Technology as transformation, not tools.
AI, data and digital ecosystems only create value when they’re embedded into how your people think, operate and serve.
3. Cost discipline as innovation.
4. Trust through culture, not compliance.
5. The next generation won’t wait.
Efficiency is about freeing capital to reinvest in customer-led growth and bold new ideas.
Regulators may set the minimum, but true trust comes from integrity lived every day across your business.
Gen Z and Alpha expect insurance that works as seamlessly as the apps in their pocket.
We don’t just advise, we build alongside you. Change is already underway. The choice is whether you’ll lead it.
New releases for winning at the pace of change.
By
Kate O'Neill;
Wiley, Jan. 2025.
In a business climate where disruption is the only constant, leaders face a harder question than what’s possible with technology: what’s wise? Kate O’Neill’s What Matters Next offers an unflinching answer. With sharp insight and real-world frameworks, she shows how to harness AI and digital transformation without sacrificing humanity at the altar of innovation. This isn’t another “tech hype” playbook—it’s a strategic guide to making bold, empathetic decisions that drive growth and safeguard your future.
By Karen Hao; Penguin Press,
May 2025.
What if the biggest story in business isn’t AI’s dazzling potential—but the empire it’s quietly building around us? In Empire of AI, journalist Karen Hao delivers the definitive inside account of OpenAI, Sam Altman, and the breakneck arms race reshaping global markets, labor, and even the planet’s resources. With rare access and relentless reporting, Hao reveals how power, profit, and ambition collide behind the curtain of “innovation.” For any CXO betting on AI, this book is required reading.
that has
Work...By Simon Squibb; Crown Currency, Jan. 2025
Many CXOs know the grind of chasing numbers while quietly wondering: Is this really it? In What’s Your Dream?, entrepreneur and investor Simon Squibb flips the script. With raw honesty—from homelessness to building and selling a multimillionpound business—he proves that success without purpose is failure in disguise. Packed with practical tools, fearless lessons, and a playbook for turning ideas into thriving ventures, this is more than a business guide—it’s a manifesto for building the life you actually want.
Speed is no longer a competitive advantage, it’s the price of admission. For the C-suite, building an enterprise that can pivot, decide, and deliver in real time. The data makes clear: agility determines survival, velocity drives value.
From revenue growth to market valuation, the evidence is clear: companies that move first and adapt fastest capture outsized gains while laggards fall behind.
Top real-time firms earned more in three years than bottom quartile peers.1 Nimble firms outperformed peers in
AI-driven marketing and sales firms are 3X likelier to grow revenue.2
By 2030, the digital transformation market will be over four times larger than in 2025—rising from $1.3B USD to $4.7B USB—showing that speed requires bold, strategic investments.4
$5B
$4B
$3B
$2B 4X+
$1B
Growth versus 2025’s figure of $1.3B
Executives know that failing to invest in agility carries real costs—here are the top three threats they see impacting organizations when they don’t act.5
Unily’s Chief People Officer Jenny Shiers on building people-first cultures that fuel velocity, outpace disruption, and transform talent into a competitive edge.
By Tracy D. Holloman
What slows a business isn’t usually strategy, it’s people stuck in silos, drowning in noise, and waiting for permission to act. Jenny Shiers has spent her career solving that problem. After guiding people-strategy through rapid growth at Salesforce, she joined Unily in 2023 as its first Chief People Officer. Her mission: build cultures where speed is instinct and talent drives advantage. For leaders facing constant change, Ms. Shiers offers a candid look at how to move faster without losing alignment.
IQ: What does true “organizational velocity” look like in practice, and how does it translate into sustainable competitive advantage when markets are shifting daily?
Ms. Shiers: As you mentioned, we are in an era of extreme and unprecedented change. The companies who successfully embody organizational velocity are the ones who can mobilize their employees to adapt and pivot as seamlessly as possible.
In practice, this means having a workforce that is crystal clear on company strategy, and how they contribute to this. It also means they’re not being held back by silos. Regardless of what department or location people work in, communication and collaboration should be agile, so decisions can be made and implemented at the speed required.
These businesses are then in a stronger position to get ahead of change. While the competition is still in reactive mode, highvelocity organizations are acting decisively and pivoting quickly. Having this ability is now the true competitive advantage, rather than size or strength.
IQ: From your perspective, what are the most effective ways leaders can move their enterprises forward (at speed) without sacrificing alignment, clarity, or strategic focus?
Ms. Shiers: It’s important to build deep engagement with employees, so they’re aligned with what is required. Employees will naturally move faster when they understand why they’re doing what they do.
A key element for leaders is to make sure they’re regularly communicating
Jenny Shiers is Unily's first Chief People Officer, having joined in 2023 from Salesforce where she was VP of Employee Success UKI & North EMEA. She has significant experience working to develop and execute innovative people strategies, with a focus on equality and attracting, developing, and retaining the best talent in the market. She is passionate about maintaining and scaling Unily's strong and unique culture to support its phenomenal growth and believes that enhancing employee experience and engagement is the secret sauce for any business. Previously, she worked as an employment lawyer in city law firms.
with and receiving feedback from the people that are ultimately responsible for executing company strategy. This twoway communication ensures clarity on both sides, even when things are moving at speed. For example, if an employee can quickly pass insights from the frontline to leaders, this can help shape and refine company strategy fast.
IQ : In your experience, what hidden bottlenecks most often slow large organizations, and how can leaders remove them while building systems, rituals, or frameworks that enable rapid pivots?
Ms. Shiers: Today’s employees are drowning in a wave of digital noise. A recent Unily study saw 50% of employees reporting being distracted every 30 minutes, and nearly 60% saying that digital tools add to their stress.
This distraction and constant context switching is a huge productivity drain, negatively affecting performance. Finding ways to streamline things like communication and critical information can ensure your operations are able to run faster and with less friction.
IQ : How can technology—particularly digital employee experience platforms—be used to remove friction, keep teams aligned, and increase execution speed without adding unnecessary complexity?
Ms. Shiers: Employee experience platforms act as a single source of truth. They can centralize all the tools and information employees need, eliminating friction and
the need to app switch that I touched upon earlier. They also ensure that employees get easy access to the information they need, whenever it’s required. Rather than having to hunt across multiple systems for answers, they can self-serve or solve problems at speed, ultimately increasing the speed of execution.
IQ: What leadership behaviors and cultural traits separate organizations that adapt and thrive from those that stall when disruption hits?
Ms. Shiers: Creating a culture of trust is absolutely imperative to ensure your talent is resilient and capable of thriving during periods of uncertainty. This starts at the top with leadership communicating openly, building trust by normalizing failure, and asking for input.
Where this happens in an authentic way, employees learn that it is safe to take measured risks, which drives innovation and can help to unlock new solutions during periods of disruption.
All of this can be achieved by clearly communicating expectations to employees, facilitating employee input and driving alignment.
IQ: How can leaders design employee experiences that actively accelerate execution and decision-making across the organization?
Ms. Shiers: The first thing is to tie employee experience to business outcomes. It’s important that leaders don’t treat it as a soft initiative – it needs to be seen as a strategic enabler of speed and performance.
When designing employee experiences, you should always look to eliminate complexity where possible. There’s sometimes a feeling that complexity is inevitable with large enterprises in particular, but with the right mindset and technology, this doesn’t have to be the case.
It’s also important to use data to drive decision-making. A good employee experience has things like real-time
"It’s important to build deep engagement with employees, so they’re aligned with what is required. Employees will naturally move faster when they understand why they’re doing what they do."
Jenny Shiers CPO, Unily
Workflow On-the-Go
Unily is built to break silos and unite workforces everywhere. Acting as the digital home for your enterprise, it transforms disconnected systems into one trusted hub where people actually want to work. Employees shift from passive users to active contributors through dynamic communities, seamless integrations, and personalized experiences. Advanced AI and automation strip out friction, uncover insights, and supercharge execution. With limitless extensibility, Unily adapts to any use case, keeping enterprises agile in the face of disruption. This results in workforces that are highly engaged, aligned, and move faster.
One Stop Shop Unily’s Employee Experience Platform unifies communication, engagement, and productivity for large enterprises. Built on four pillars—Reach, Engage, Amplify, Extend—it offers a personalized hub with AI-driven campaigns, analytics, and integrations. By reducing digital friction and aligning global workforces, it empowers senior leaders with velocity, insights, and scalable, enterprise-wide employee experiences.
analytics and feedback tools, so decisions are made with both speed and confidence, as opposed to guesswork.
IQ : During periods of high uncertainty, what people strategies keep top talent engaged, focused, and performing at their best?
Ms. Shiers: It’s critical to ensure that top talent understands the role they are playing and how their contributions matter, particularly during times of change. It is motivating for employees to have a deep connection to the mission their employer
is on, and to feel that their contributions add value and are seen. Therefore, finding ways of connecting your employees’ day to day to company strategy and finding ways to reward and recognize those going above and beyond is highly effective.
IQ : During your tenure at Salesforce, you guided culture and people strategy through rapid expansion. What were the biggest ‘velocity’ lessons from managing change at that scale—and how are you applying them at Unily?
Ms. Shiers: The key for me was truly embracing change and viewing it as something exciting, as an opportunity rather than a challenge. Working at pace and ‘building the plane as you fly’ helps build resilience, while keeping you and your teams flexible and future solutions focused. Over time, this culture enables an organization to stay agile, responding to change and challenge with enthusiasm and innovation rather than dwelling on the past. At Unily, I get to help our customers build this type of culture using their employee experience platform, which is a key value add.
IQ: Having worked across EMEA, and in customer-facing HR and internal leadership roles, do you have any recommendations or best practices for tailoring velocity-building strategies to different regions, industries, or business functions?
Ms. Shiers: For complex, global organizations, it’s critical to build velocity by keeping employee experience consistent globally for the big ticket items but allowing for personalization by region or locale where needed. This is actually one of the things Unily’s customers value most about our platform, as it allows them to tailor messages and language where required. Landing key messages, setting expectations, and linking employee goals to company strategy is vital, so a balance of consistency and personalization works well.
IQ: What aspects of your work fill you with the most passion and pride? Conversely, are there any issues or challenges that keep you up at night?
Ms. Shiers: Building culture, getting employees behind the vision and unlocking their potential to drive business growth are things I’m really passionate about.
I wouldn’t say it’s an issue, but I am constantly thinking about engagement and the experience of our employees to ensure we’re delivering best in class career journeys.
IQ: If you could give the C-suite at large one piece of advice for creating an organization ready to “win at the speed of change” over the next five years, what would it be?
Ms. Shiers: Being able to adapt and pivot isn’t a one-off project. It’s a continuous need and is fast becoming a nonnegotiable. Build a culture where agility feels like a default behavior. IQ
"When designing employee experiences, you should always look to eliminate complexity where possible. There’s sometimes a feeling that complexity is inevitable with large enterprises in particular, but with the right mindset and technology, this doesn’t have to be the case. "
Jenny Shiers CPO, Unily
“CEO Whisperer” and Yale School of Management dean, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, is the ultimate boardroom provocateur—unafraid to clash with power or expose the fault lines of where governance and ego collide. When he says your board is burnt out, listen.
By Jon Kleinman
When Jeffrey Sonnenfeld talks about executive burnout, he doesn’t frame it as a matter of self-help or stress management. He doesn’t speak of yoga retreats, meditation apps, or resilience coaching. Instead, he goes straight to governance. Burnout, he insists, is not a private affliction or an HR box to be checked. It is a systemic risk that eats away at decision-making, strategic clarity, and long-term value creation. If left unchecked, it is as damaging to an enterprise as a cyberattack, a supply chain collapse, or a regulatory failure.
“Executive burnout has become a major challenge not only for management teams but for boards themselves,” Mr. Sonnenfeld says. “It’s not just about individual
resilience—it’s about how the board runs, how meetings are conducted, and whether the culture enables or exhausts leaders.”
It is a striking reframing from one of the most authoritative voices in corporate governance. As Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies at Yale School of Management and founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute (CELI), Mr. Sonnenfeld has advised thousands of CEOs and directors, witnessed boards stumble and recover, and seen how fragile leadership capacity can become under relentless disruption.
Cited as one of the 100 most influential figures in corporate governance, Mr. Sonnenfeld has been recognized by BusinessWeek as one of the world’s 10 most influential business school professors and by Worth magazine as one of its “Worthy 100
Boardroom Bona Fide
No stranger to executive dysfunction, BusinessWeek named Mr. Sonnenfeld one of the world’s 10 most influential business school professors, and Directorship magazine listed him among the 100 most influential figures in corporate governance. His CEO summits attract Fortune 500 leaders, world heads of state, industry titans, top investors, policy shapers, and influential powerbrokers.
“A board that can’t talk to itself is a board that can’t govern. When management tries to prevent that, it creates suspicion and isolates directors from each other. That isolation doesn’t protect against burnout; it accelerates it.”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld Yale School of Management
Leaders.” Frequently cited by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Economist, and The Financial Times, he has advised the White House, the U.S. State Department and Treasury, and the Council of Economic Advisers. His CELI summits draw a who’s who of global leadership—from Jamie Dimon, Bob Iger, and Satya Nadella to Janet Yellen, Larry Page, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy—to tackle the most urgent challenges of our time. For him, burnout is not a matter of personality; it is a matter of design.
The conventional wisdom holds that directors protect executives from overreach, anchoring them in strategic oversight and long-term vision. But as Mr. Sonnenfeld tells it, boards themselves often create the conditions that drive leaders toward exhaustion. He points first to the tyranny of the slide deck.
“Too many board meetings are consumed by encyclopedic PowerPoint presentations,” he explains. “They go on for so long that they consume the oxygen in the room. Board members sit there passively, numbed, unable to engage because they’re wading through a performance rather than participating in a conversation. And when management insists on holding back materials until the meeting, it only compounds the problem. Instead of preparing, directors are caught flat-footed, as if the goal were a big reveal. That’s not governance—that’s theater.”
The remedy, he says, is simple but rare: distribute materials well in advance, encourage directors to prepare on their own, and reserve meeting time for genuine dialogue.
“If you’re going to bring people together, make it conversational, make it interactive. Let them connect dots, challenge
assumptions, and push the thinking further. Otherwise, you’re wasting talent and accelerating exhaustion.”
What makes this diagnosis particularly sharp is that it addresses burnout at the structural level. Executives already juggle relentless demands, crises, and shifting expectations. When board meetings add tedium and inefficiency to that mix, they don’t just waste time, they drain capacity that leaders desperately need for strategic clarity.
Mr. Sonnenfeld is equally unsparing when it comes to the traditions and rituals that have calcified in many boardrooms. Over the years, governance reformers have pushed for independence, objectivity, and checks against cronyism. But in the process, they created new orthodoxies that often leave boards less effective and executives more isolated.
“One of the pathologies that developed from the governance movement was the idea that only the CEO should be on the board from management,” Mr. Sonnenfeld says. “There’s no evidence that excluding other senior executives makes boards stronger. In fact, it deprives directors of hearing directly from the people closest to the issues. Not because CEOs are dishonest, but sometimes they’re not the most eloquent, or they unintentionally underplay something. When you have other executives in the room, the conversation is richer, and the board has a fuller understanding.”
The same critique applies to outdated rituals of deference. Mr. Sonnenfeld recounts how a major beverage company once told new directors not to speak for their first year, a practice that Jack Welch—never one to hold his tongue—immediately rejected. He tells of banks with boards so large they resemble classrooms, with members seated
in neat rows, unable to spark real dialogue.
At one major U.S. bank, he recalls, the board’s size and seating killed conversation—until he suggested rearranging the chairs into a semicircle. The discussion transformed instantly.
“It sounds trivial,” he says, “but the physical layout of a room can determine whether you get a lively crossfire of ideas or a scripted routine. Too often, boards fall into rituals that are more about habit than effectiveness. And when meetings become ritualistic, people disengage. That disengagement is the soil in which burnout grows.”
Burnout, he says, is not only about workload; it is about wasted work. Executives feel fatigue not just because they are busy, but because they are busy in ways that don’t add value. A board that clings to rituals for the sake of tradition only amplifies that waste.
The warning signs of leadership fatigue are not always obvious. Declining results or missed targets might eventually reveal the toll of burnout, but by then, the damage is already done. Mr. Sonnenfeld urges boards to watch for subtler signals that executives are losing focus or capacity.
“There are five or six things to look for,” he explains. “Sometimes you’ll see directors or executives asking questions that have already been thoroughly answered—that’s a sign they’re not paying attention. Other times, they’ll ask something so basic that it was covered in the preparatory material, which tells you they didn’t do the homework. Another red flag is when you notice confusion that nobody dares to voice during the meeting. You hear it later in the hallways, whispered among colleagues. That means the culture of the boardroom isn’t safe enough for candor.”
Other telltale signs include irritability, short tempers, and emotional reactivity— executives snapping at questions or losing patience more quickly than usual. And then there are the directors who fixate on logistics—when the break will be, what’s for
dinner—rather than substance. All of these, Mr. Sonnenfeld says, are symptoms that the system itself is under strain.
“Burnout doesn’t always look like collapse,” he says. “Sometimes it looks like repetition, distraction, or obsession with process. Boards need to be alert to these cues, because they tell you the leadership capacity of the organization is being eroded.”
If boards are to play a constructive role, they must be willing to look in the mirror. That means asking hard questions about whether their own dynamics are contributing to the problem. Mr. Sonnenfeld recalls how Jack Welch once forbade directors at GE from speaking to each other outside formal meetings, a practice he considers disastrous.
“A board that can’t talk to itself is a board that can’t govern,” he insists. “Directors should feel comfortable comparing notes, asking questions, even bringing in outside experts to validate what they’re hearing. When management tries to prevent that, it’s a troubling sign. It creates suspicion and isolates directors from each other. That isolation doesn’t protect against burnout; it accelerates it.”
For Mr. Sonnenfeld, healthy boards create a culture where candid dialogue is not only permitted but encouraged. Directors must have the freedom to consult independent experts—whether legal, financial, or technological—without it being interpreted as an act of disloyalty. They must be able to challenge each other’s assumptions without fear of undermining management. And they must model the same resilience and openness they expect from executives.
Amid all the talk of governance, Mr. Sonnenfeld does not ignore the role of technology. During the pandemic, many firms began experimenting with new forms of digital engagement, from weekly CEO forums to open Q&A sessions that flattened hierarchies. Rather than reverting to old habits, he believes boards should seize the
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld is the Senior Associate Dean for Leadership Studies and Lester Crown Professor in Management Practice at the Yale School of Management, as well as founder and president of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, a nonprofit educational and research institute focused on CEO leadership and corporate governance. He has advised the White House, U.S. State Department, U.S. Treasury Department, and Council of Economic Advisers on Russian economic sanctions and business retreats and has testified to the U.S. Congress; in addition, he has been profiled by various media outlets, including TIME, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Washington Post, and Business Insider. BusinessWeek listed Sonnenfeld as one of the world’s 10 most influential business school professors, and Directorship magazine has listed him among the 100 most influential figures in corporate governance. He currently serves on the board of Lennar, a leading American homebuilder, as well as IEX, Atlas Merchant Capital, and the Ellis Island Honor Society.
Mr. Sonnenfeld says high-functioning boards create a culture where dialogue is encouraged. This includes affording directors with the freedom to consult independent experts without it being misinterpreted as disloyalty. Furthermore, he says, they must feel confident enough to challenge the assumptions of their peers without fear of it undermining management.
opportunity to institutionalize these practices.
“Some CEOs started doing Sunday morning calls during COVID—anyone could log in, ask a question, hear directly from the top,” he recalls. “Many large firms found those forums so valuable they kept them afterward. Technology can be a powerful way to maintain continuity, keep directors informed, and reduce the pressure on quarterly meetings. If used well, it can actually lighten the cognitive load rather than add to it.”
The key is to ensure technology is used to enhance accessibility and transparency, not as another layer of bureaucracy. A steady flow of updates prevents the fatigue that comes from trying to reconstruct conversations
months later. It also reassures directors that they are not being manipulated with shifting metrics or goalposts. “If you wait three months between meetings and then see the charts relabeled with different benchmarks, you start to wonder if you’re being played,” he says. “Technology can close that gap, sustain trust, and prevent the erosion of confidence that fuels burnout.”
Even with better meetings, more transparent processes, and smarter use of technology, Mr. Sonnenfeld cautions that no set of routines will ever fully shield leaders from disruption. The world is too unpredictable,
crises too varied, threats too novel. What matters most, he argues, is the character of the board.
“Consultants, academics, and lawyers like to create routines to protect boards,” he says. “But in reality, it’s not the routine that insulates you from the unknown. It’s the character of the board. Crises are more common now—technological disruptions, customers turning into competitors, geopolitical shocks. You can’t anticipate them all. What you can do is build a board with the character to respond with candor, adaptability, and courage.” Here, he draws on an unlikely source: Alexis de Tocqueville. When the French jurist traveled to America
in the 19th century, he was struck not by the tightness of U.S. laws but by their looseness—the way they allowed for flexible interpretation and adaptive governance. Boards, Mr. Sonnenfeld suggests, must adopt a similar posture: guided by principles, not shackled by scripts.
“You don’t need an AI protocol that spells out every contingency,” he says. “You need a board that knows how to respond when the unimaginable happens. Because it will happen. The question is not whether you have the right checklist; it’s whether you have the right culture.”
The implications are clear: boards that want to protect leadership capacity—and, by extension, safeguard enterprise value—must see burnout not as a peripheral concern but as a core governance responsibility. By redesigning meetings to eliminate waste, challenging rituals that sap energy, watching vigilantly for signs of fatigue, and encouraging candor and connection, they can cultivate the character to adapt when disruption strikes.
Mr. Sonnenfeld frames it not as a matter of compassion, though compassion certainly matters, but as a matter of performance.
“When leaders are burned out, they don’t think clearly, they don’t take smart risks, and they don’t inspire their teams,” he says. “That’s not just their problem. That’s a governance problem. Boards that ignore it are failing in their duty.”
In an age where the pace of change accelerates relentlessly, where crises arrive not one at a time but in waves, the capacity of leadership has become the scarcest resource of all. Protecting it is not optional. It is the board’s mandate. IQ
“Crises are now common; technological disruptions, customers turning into competitors, geopolitical shocks. You can’t anticipate them all. What you can do is build a board with the character to respond with candor, adaptability, and courage.”
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld Yale School of Management
A CEO can bark orders like a general, but without a connection to purpose and meaning, they’ll land flat. To lead like Ike, we must first master Commander’s Intent.
By Nathan Owen Rosenberg & Will Parish
Every CEO knows the scene: the strategy is clear in your head, but, as it communicated and put into action, the strategy fractures into competing interpretations. At times, you want to pound the table and shout orders, just to cut through the noise. Inside your head, a tiny voice whispers, "If only I could issue orders, like the military.”
It is a seductive image: Rigor, precision, victory! But the fantasy collapses the moment you inspect it. The culture of the military is one of discipline, chain of command, and hierarchical authority in a context of life-anddeath. Every member has taken an oath to follow orders.
In the business world, the most important asset of any
Clarity of Command "Commander’s Intent" defines the mission’s purpose and desired outcome, enabling disciplined autonomy. It empowers teams to adapt, innovate, and act decisively when conditions shift or plans fail. By articulating the “why” and “what” rather than the “how,” Commander’s Intent ensures clarity, resilience, and alignment, fostering initiative, trust, and rapid response across complex, unpredictable environments.
corporation goes home at night, and the executives pray that they come back the next morning. To get the daily work of the company done well, takes more influencing than controlling. And while executives love military analogies almost as much as sports analogies—while high stakes—business is not life-and-death.
This is not to say that business leaders should ignore the lessons of the armed forces, far from it. The military has developed leadership systems in the most volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous conditions imaginable—environments that Fortune 500 executives now recognize all too well. But the insight that transfers from the battlefield to the boardroom is not about obedience. It is about clarity. It is about creating a unifying thread of purpose so resilient that it holds even when communication fails, circumstances shift, and plans go awry. That thread is known in military doctrine as “Commander’s Intent,” and it may be the single most useful leadership principle for executives trying to win at the speed of change.
Commander’s Intent is deceptively simple. Instead of issuing detailed instructions, a commander articulates three things: (1) the purpose of the mission, (2) the method by which the team is expected to operate in broad terms, and (3) the desired end state. Once this intent is understood, subordinates are free to adapt tactics to meet reality on the ground.
The idea emerged from the battlefield. Radios fail and orders garble. The fog of war obscures facts. What allows a unit to keep moving, even in chaos, is not a checklist—it is shared understanding. If
Nathan Owen Rosenberg is a co-founding partner of Insigniam and a partner at Elixirr. A graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, he served as a U.S. Navy officer and aviator before taking on senior roles as Executive Support Officer to the Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor to the U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Through his consulting work, he often liaises with leaders in the defense, aerospace, and advanced technologies industries. Among his honors are the Joint Service Commendation Medal from the Secretary of Defense and the Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope, and Silver Buffalo awards from the Boy Scouts of America.
soldiers understand what the commander is trying to accomplish and why, they can adapt when the situation changes.
As U.S. Marine Corps doctrine puts it, intent allows subordinates “to exercise judgment and initiative—in a way that is consistent with the commander’s aims— when unforeseen opportunities arise or the original plan no longer fits.”
The parallel for business is apt. Markets turn, competitors strike, supply chains snap. The strategy you carefully drafted in January rarely survives intact through December. But if your people understand the purpose behind the strategy and the end state you are driving toward, they can adjust in stride. They can act without waiting for approval. They can make decisions at the edge of the organization that remain aligned with your vision. That is clarity without rigidity. That is velocity.
It is tempting to believe that once a strategy is set, execution will follow. The evidence suggests otherwise. Across industries, the gap between intent and impact is staggering.
The Chartered Management Institute, a professional body in the United Kingdom, found that only 26% of managers believe their organizations communicate strategy effectively, and fewer than 30% of employees say they understand what is expected of them.
Moreover, the Society for Human Resource Management uncovered similar patterns: 51% of employees reported they did not understand how their daily work contributed to the organization’s goals. The Harvard Business Review has gone further, documenting that just one in ten employees
feels genuine accountability for results—a chilling signal that strategies may be beautifully written yet fatally disconnected from execution.
These are not abstract failures. They are the silent killers of competitiveness. When strategy is misunderstood, employees waste energy on conflicting priorities. When accountability is diffuse, initiative tends to evaporate. When only a handful of executives truly grasp the company’s direction, the rest of the organization moves slowly, if at all. In an economy where consumer preferences shift overnight and supply shocks reverberate globally, delay is indistinguishable from defeat.
The problem is not that strategies are poorly conceived. It is because they are poorly cascaded. They are presented at off-sites, published in slide decks, and then smothered under layers of meetings and memos. The signal weakens as it travels downward. What began as a bold ambition ends as a confused activity.
Commander’s Intent offers an antidote. It demands that leaders distill strategy to its essence—the why, the what, and the boundaries—and ensure that everyone, from the C-suite to the frontline, can state it in the same way. Without that clarity, no amount of incentives, dashboards, or reviews will create alignment. With it, the organization can move as a single unit.
It is essential to stress what the Commander’s Intent is not. It is not a slogan, nor a laminated card with values printed in your brand’s font. It is not a quarterly objective that vanishes when the fiscal year turns. It is a living narrative of purpose, method, and end state that accompanies the strategy into the complexities of daily execution.
Reframed for business, intent looks like this: Leaders articulate the mission in plain language. They define what success will look like and by what measures it will be judged. They specify constraints, including what not to do. And then they empower
Sun Tzu's The Art of War has survived 2,500 years not because it teaches tactics, but because it teaches clarity. He warned that "strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory; tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." For executives, the lesson is timeless: plans fail, markets shift, but leaders who define purpose and align their teams around a shared end state move more quickly and adapt more effectively. Reading The Art of War is less about warfare than about cultivating the discipline of clarity—an advantage that never goes out of date.
Battle-Tested Strategies
Military leadership thrives in volatile, uncertain environments by fostering clarity and purpose—not obedience—offering Fortune 500 executives lessons in resilience, alignment, and adaptability amid shifting conditions.
teams to decide, improvise, and act within those parameters. This reframing requires trust. Military commanders understand that intent works only if subordinates are trained, competent, and committed. Corporate leaders must embrace the same principle. Micromanagement is the enemy of intent; if executives continue to secondguess every decision, the organization freezes. But if executives trust their people with autonomy, and if those people understand the intent, the organization accelerates. It also requires discipline.
Autonomy without alignment creates chaos. The genius of the approach is that it marries freedom with focus. People are free to act—but only within the frame of the agreed mission and end state.
In an era when employees crave meaning in their work, intent also provides emotional resonance. It connects individual tasks to a larger purpose. It answers the question “Why does this matter?” without requiring a town hall or a memo. And it ensures that when circumstances shift, the answer remains unchanged.
At Insigniam, we describe organizational transformation through a sequence of four moves: Reveal, Unhook, Invent, and Implement. Each move is about more than process; it is about shifting the culture of leadership from control to commitment. Commander’s Intent sharpens each move, embedding clarity where it matters most
The first move, Reveal, is about surfacing the hidden assumptions and unspoken commitments that silently govern behavior. Every company has them: the belief that risk must be minimized at all costs, the
assumption that certain approvals are sacred, the habit of delaying decisions until consensus is reached. These assumptions form a fog as dense as any battlefield mist. By articulating intent clearly, leaders cut through the fog. They reveal what truly matters and what does not.
The second move, Unhook, liberates the organization from the processes and habits that drain momentum. Bureaucracy thrives in the absence of clarity. People invent approvals and duplicate reviews because they are unsure of direction. Commander’s Intent dismantles the excuses. When the purpose and end state are explicit, many of the hooks that restrain action lose their legitimacy. Teams can stop justifying delay and start moving.
The third move, Invent, invites the organization to generate future-back solutions. Too often, innovation is stifled by the fear of straying from leadership’s intent. But when intent is precisely articulated, the boundaries are clear, and within those boundaries, creativity flourishes. Teams can propose bold ideas knowing they remain aligned with the mission. Autonomy becomes the fuel for invention.
The fourth move, Implement, is where discipline meets speed. Implementation is not about chaotic bursts of action; it is about deliberate rhythms of execution guided by intent. Weekly commitments replace vague ambitions. After-action reviews become opportunities to learn and adapt, not rituals of blame. Leaders measure progress not only in quarterly earnings but in the cycle time from signal to decision. Intent ensures that implementation is not a scattershot of activity but a coordinated march toward a defined end state. Taken together, the four moves transform organizations from cautious bureaucracies into agile enterprises. They replace the illusion of control with the reality of alignment. And they enable companies to win not by reacting to change but by commanding it.
Will Parish is a consultant with Insigniam and a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, where he earned a Master of Arts in National Security Studies. He spent more than a decade in strategic roles with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of State, including service as Director of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, Deputy Director for Strategy and Plans for U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, and as a Naval Flight Officer aboard aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. His decorations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal, and other commendations.
In an era when employees crave meaning in their work, intent also provides emotional resonance. It connects individual tasks to a larger purpose. It answers the question “Why does this matter?” without requiring a town hall or a memo. And it ensures that when circumstances shift, the answer remains unchanged.
The challenge for CEOs is not to copy the military; rather, it is to adapt the principles that make military units effective in conditions of extreme volatility. The question is not whether your people will obey orders; it is whether they understand your intent so clearly that they can act without orders.
Imagine testing your top 100 leaders. Ask each to write, on a single page, the mission of the company, the definition of success, the key boundaries, and the time horizon. Would the answers align? Or would they diverge into a tangle of priorities, metrics, and buzzwords? If you cannot count on alignment at the top, you cannot expect it anywhere else.
The future of leadership lies in reducing that divergence to zero. In the next decade, companies that master clarity will outpace those that cling to control. They will measure their organizational latency—the time it takes to respond to a change in strategy—not in quarters but in days. They will deploy teams that can improvise responsibly because they know the why and the what, even when the how changes hourly.
This is not fantasy. It is already visible in organizations that have embraced intentdriven leadership. They move faster, adapt quicker, and retain talent longer. Their employees report higher engagement because they understand the significance of their work. Their customers notice the difference in responsiveness. Their investors
reward the consistency of performance. For CEOs across the Fortune 500, the invitation is clear. Stop trying to command people and start commanding clarity. Replace the brittle comfort of detailed orders with the resilient strength of shared intent. Trust your teams with autonomy, but hold them accountable to purpose and end state. Build rhythms of execution that reinforce alignment, not control.
The companies that survive the next wave of disruption will not be those with the thickest binders of plans. They will be those who can adjust at speed without losing coherence. They will be those who move as one, even when the fog closes in around them. They will be those whose leaders mastered the art of Commander’s.
Real success does not come from marching your company like a platoon. It comes from leading like a commander: clear in purpose, precise in desired outcomes, and generous with autonomy.
The age of rigid planning is over. The future belongs to organizations that can translate strategy into intent, cascade it with fidelity, and empower their people to act. The executives who accept this challenge will discover that clarity is the ultimate competitive advantage. They will not just react to change. They will command it. And in doing so, they will win—not by control, but by commitment. IQ
"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity."
—General George S. Patton, Jr.
WINNING AT THE SPEED OF CHANGE
BY JON BALL & JUNE ZERINGUE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
From the cornfields to carbon markets, KAAPA CEO Chuck Woodside is turning fragmentation into cohesion—and disruption into advantage.
Chuck Woodside, CEO of KAAPA Ethanol, leads the company through the volatile energy landscape with a sharp focus on growth, resilience, and culture-driven transformation.
Corn harvest in central Nebraska is both a ritual and a reminder. As combines crawl through endless rows of gold, the grain they gather represents not only a livelihood for farmers, but also the lifeblood of a global energy system. The same kernels that feed livestock and line supermarket shelves also fuel engines, reduce carbon emissions, and anchor the business strategy of a company that has learned to thrive on uncertainty.
"Ethanol may be born of our corn here in Nebraska, but its fate is decided in boardrooms, legislatures, and on trading floors.”
—Chuck
Woodside CEO, KAAPA Ethanol
On any given day, Chuck Woodside, CEO of KAAPA Ethanol—a farmer-owned ethanol producer based in Kearney, Nebraska— wakes to check more than the weather forecast. He is tracking trade flows from Brazil, regulatory announcements from Sacramento and Ottawa, fuel credit markets in Washington, and the futures price of corn in Chicago. The numbers are never static. A federal appeals court upholding one piece of the Renewable Fuel Standard, a new state law opening E15 blends, or a swing in the price of corn by twenty cents per bushel— each carries consequences that ripple through his company and the communities that depend on it.
“The key thing,” Mr. Woodside says, leaning into a philosophy that has guided him for more than two decades, “is to be directionally correct. You don’t always get perfect clarity in this business, but you can build enough optionality into your strategy that you’re not stuck in cement.”
Optionality, in Mr. Woodside’s vocabulary, means more than hedging bets. It is about structuring risk so that KAAPA can serve multiple markets without being hostage to any single scoring system, policy framework, or trade lane. It is about building agility into an enterprise that produces more than 300 million gallons of ethanol annually and supplies over ten
You don’t always get perfect clarity in this business, but you can build enough optionality into your strategy that you’re not stuck in cement.”
—Chuck Woodside CEO, KAAPA Ethanol
Rooted in Resilience
Having witnessed what a farm crisis looks like first hand, Mr. Woodside's corporate strategy entails balancing bold investments with disciplined risk management, positioning the company to thrive amid constant market disruption.
percent of California’s ethanol consumption. And it is about making decisions that acknowledge the reality of a world in flux.
“KAAPA’s story is far from a Midwestern tale alone,” remarks Mr. Woodside. “Ethanol may be born of our corn here in Nebraska, but its fate is decided in global boardrooms and legislatures and on trading floors.”
For perspective, in 2023–24, the U.S. exported a record 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol, with demand rising in countries like Canada and the UK. Nationally, demand has risen with eight Midwestern states securing yearround approvals for E15, starting in 2025.
And in September, California lawmakers approved a bill to allow E15 sales, projecting a 20-cent-per-gallon savings at the pump once signed into law.
Each of these developments shifts the ground under Mr. Woodside’s feet. And while the sheer pace of change would paralyze a less experienced executive, this disruption has become less a threat than a defining condition, and he’s built an enterprise culture around it. In doing so, he’s also set a powerful example of what it means to win at the speed of change.
PHOTO BY KATHY PLUNKETT
Having served as KAAPA’s CEO since 2001, Mr. Woodside’s philosophy did not emerge in a lecture hall or a think tank. It was forged in the soil of Nebraska during the farm crisis of the 1980s, when plummeting commodity prices and crushing debt forced thousands of families to sell their land.
He carries those memories into every decision at KAAPA.
“I grew up on a farm nearby, and I’m a product of the farm crisis of the ‘80s,” he recalls. “One of the things I’ve found so rewarding here at KAAPA is that we’ve been able to generate a tremendous amount of wealth for our stockholders. We started out raising $20 million. We’ve distributed threequarters of a billion dollars back, and there is so much pride that our owners have in our company.”
That pride is rooted in KAAPA’s unique structure. The stockholders Mr. Woodside speaks of aren’t Wall Street speculators; the company is owned by roughly 600 local farmers. Nearly all of the corn KAAPA processes come directly from those farmerstockholders, creating a closed loop of supply, ownership, and reward. Stockholders don’t just deliver grain—they also share in the prosperity generated, with $750 million in distributions and $600 million in equity built since the company’s founding.
This ownership model reinforces the bond between growers and the enterprise.
“We’re in a unique position in that we have a really close relationship with our growers,” Mr. Woodside explains. “We buy well over 95% of our corn from them, and we’re able to get information about their sustainability practices on their farms that can also, in the future, translate into lower carbon intensity scores for our product.”
Cultivating and preserving those relationships—in addition to navigating fragmented rules, volatile inputs, and an uncertain policy landscape—have only
sharpened his instincts for balancing risk and resilience. “You can’t wait for a blueprint,” Mr. Woodside emphasizes. “If you wait until all the rules are set, you’ve already missed the opportunity.”
Few industries feel the tug of outside forces quite like ethanol. Policy and markets collide daily to create volatility that can either open new lanes of growth or slam the door on hard-won advantages. For Mr. Woodside, the challenge is not to tame that chaos, but to structure KAAPA’s operations so the company is never beholden to a single market, metric, or political whim—and so the enterprise can act as one company, not a collection of plants.
Carbon scoring is a prime example. Jurisdictions across North America measure ethanol by different yardsticks. Some models emphasize indirect land use; others weigh sequestration; still others prioritize renewable natural gas or co-products. KAAPA positions itself to win no matter whose rules apply.
“Out of the five low-carbon markets that we serve, there are at least four different models for how we’re measured,” Mr. Woodside explains. “It’s a huge regulatory function just to stay aligned.”
That posture underpinned one of KAAPA’s boldest decisions: investing in carbon capture and sequestration (which entails capturing and permanently storing carbon dioxide underground so it doesn’t enter the atmosphere). Several years ago, the company committed to a pipeline that will carry its CO₂ to Wyoming, building out compression capacity while partners developed the laterals.
“It’s another way to make a large impact on our carbon intensity score,” Mr. Woodside says. “It opens up additional markets. That’s why we felt there were good opportunities— not only serving the low-carbon markets we already serve, but opening others as well.”
But policy fragmentation extends well beyond carbon scoring. For years, E15—the blend of 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline—was caught in a tangle of seasonal restrictions and state prohibitions. In the past 12 months, the tide shifted: eight Midwestern states secured year-round approval beginning in 2025, and California, the nation’s largest fuel market, passed legislation to permit E15 sales.
“California was the latest state in the nation to accept it,” Mr. Woodside says. “That is huge.”
Such wins are the result of consistent advocacy, he says. “Our business is typically nonpartisan. We have supporters on both
sides of the aisle, and we make it a priority to be involved. That involvement, from a regulatory perspective, is our social license. There’s really no compromise there.”
Amid shifting rules, the most stubborn challenge remains corn volatility. Prices swing on weather shocks, trade disputes, and shifting demand. KAAPA’s countermeasure is discipline, not speculation.
BY
“Corn volatility is just part of our world,” Mr. Woodside says. “We work hard to manage our risk with futures and options, making sure we’re not taking a commodity risk beyond what’s acceptable. History shows that the companies that try to outthink the market get into trouble. If
"I grew up on a farm nearby, and I’m a product of the farm crisis of the ‘80's. There is so much pride that our owners have in our company.”
—Chuck Woodside CEO, KAAPA Ethanol
you remain in the spot market and keep your commodities matched, it serves you really well.”
For leaders outside the energy space, the lesson is still relevant: when rules are fragmented and inputs are volatile, resilience comes from designing a business that can succeed under multiple scenarios—and from aligning once-siloed units to pivot together.
For KAAPA, competitive advantages start with geography. Nebraska’s proximity to both supply and markets is often called the “Golden Triangle,” with ready access to corn, ethanol, and feedlots.
and team are fueling the nation’s energy future—delivering across the U.S., to states like California, which recently expand their E15 approvals, thereby increasing demand.
Distillers’ grains feed cattle; manure can be converted into renewable natural gas to displace fossil fuel in the plants. This ecosystem not only lowers cost; it also drives down carbon scores.
“Our plants are efficient, and they’re in the middle of the Corn Belt,” Mr. Woodside says. “There were plants built outside the region, and they have a whole set of logistical challenges we don’t have. That difference matters. This triangle has been incredibly successful.”
Innovation in the Corn Belt often comes laterally. KAAPA adopted centrifuge technology originally designed for pressing olive oil to extract corn oil—a change that altered the economics of ethanol production. It is also exploring renewable natural gas partnerships with feedlots, another example of creating value by thinking beyond traditional boundaries.
Furthermore, the company is investing in AI to optimize plant performance, which Mr. Woodside notes is intended to make processes more efficient. “In the immediacy, we believe emerging technologies will help our plants run better, and there’s even more we probably haven’t realized yet,” Mr. Woodside says. “There’s a tremendous amount of tech coming from many areas that are changing the economics of our industry. I’m excited about those opportunities.”
This pattern is instructive: build reinforcing ecosystems, import ideas from adjacent industries, and apply digital tools where they compound operational learning. The cohesion modeled by KAAPA can turn scattered innovations into enterprise-level advantage.
Chuck Woodside is CEO of KAAPA Ethanol Holdings LLC, a farmer-owned company that, since 2001, produces over 300 million gallons annually. He has led KAAPA through major growth, including joint ventures and plant acquisitions. Prior to his current role, Mr. Woodside served as CFO at Gopher State Ethanol and held senior positions at MBC Holding and Koch Industries. Under his leadership, KAAPA has emphasized culture, integration, and risk discipline, especially in volatile markets. Known for his work with feedstock relationships, sustainability efforts, and regulatory navigation, Woodside combines hands-on industry experience with long-term strategy to position KAAPA for the evolving energy transition.
more at
Growth in ethanol isn’t just measured in gallons; it’s measured in bushels of complexity. Each new production plant brings scale, but also its own way of doing things: different soil, different yield, different weeds to manage. KAAPA’s acquisitions were never about simply adding acreage; they were about cultivating a stronger, more resilient field.
In 2022, KAAPA closed a joint venture with Aurora Cooperative, assuming a majority interest in the Aurora, Nebraska, ethanol and grain facilities. Today, the Aurora plant—operating as KAAPA Partners Aurora, LLC—produces roughly 100 million gallons of ethanol annually, adding both scale and strategic reach to the portfolio.
KAAPA also demonstrated its ability to create value from distressed assets with the acquisition of the former Abengoa Bioenergy facility near Ravenna, Nebraska. Following the purchase, KAAPA invested approximately $40 million in improvements, including expanded grain storage and plant upgrades, which boosted annual capacity from about 90 million gallons to 120 million gallons. The Ravenna expansion underscored a philosophy that acquisitions are not endpoints but beginnings—opportunities to reinvest, modernize, and integrate.
These disciplined moves enabled KAAPA to expand rapidly, but growth also revealed new challenges. By the time the company had completed its third acquisition, it had grown fivefold in headcount and dramatically expanded its footprint. With that scale came complexity: five distinct cultures, sometimes splintered further into subcultures within maintenance, production, or logistics.
“We realized people still identified with their location, not with KAAPA,” Mr. Woodside recalls. “That was never going to get us where we needed to go.”
The problem wasn’t friction so much as fragmentation. Lessons learned in one facility stayed locked within. Employees struggled to find information, new hires lacked clear expectations, and silos slowed collaboration.
“We kept seeing the same problems pop up across different facilities,” Mr. Woodside admits. “Until we addressed culture intentionally, we were never going to clear the path for future growth.”
Thusly, KAAPA got intentional. The first step was a cultural assessment that forced leadership to see the enterprise through the eyes of its employees.
“No matter what you think your culture is, it really doesn’t matter until you hear the perceptions of your employees,” Mr. Woodside says. “That was a real eye-opener.”
From there, the company planted smaller initiatives—low-hanging projects where cross-functional teams solved problems side by side. Employees who had never raised their hands before suddenly had space to lead. Ten of them have since been promoted in just the past 18 months. Those modest rows of change grew into bigger harvests: reinventing onboarding, boosting sixmonth retention above 90%, and instilling confidence that collaboration was the fertilizer for growth.
Equally transformative was shifting from an entrepreneurial “figure it out” culture to a common language of promises, requests, and breakdowns.
“We’ve all learned that a breakthrough usually comes from a series of wellmanaged breakdowns,” Mr. Woodside notes. “With that shift, candor became normalized. It means employees could point out problems without fear, trusting they’d be treated as opportunities to improve rather than failures to bury.”
The payoff? Cohesion. Employees no longer cluster by plant at meetings; they organize by function, share insights across sites, and work as one company.
"Many executives acknowledge culture, but far fewer recognize the opportunity—as Mr. Woodside has—to intentionally develop their people so they can lead and sustain that culture."
June Zeringue Partner, Insigniam
“Processes are easy to install, but culture isn’t,” Mr. Woodside reflects. “Building ‘one KAAPA’ has been the multiplier on every acquisition we’ve made.”
That cultural integration also emboldened Woodside, who recalls a moment early in KAAPA’s history when the company weighed a $5 million acquisition while carrying $20 million in equity and $40 million in debt.
“Our board members still remember it today,” he says. “They’ll tell you making that $5 million decision then was probably way tougher than the last $100 million decision we made.”
The relevant lesson, for Mr. Woodside, is that seeds of strategy only sprout when culture tends the soil. Capital buys equipment, but humility, communication, and persistence create cohesion. Moreover, collaboration, gratitude, and enrollment are the fertilizers that turn silos into fields of collective strength.
Or, as Mr. Woodside puts it, “Being willing to say, ‘We had a breakdown, we’ve got to correct it’—that makes all the difference in how we move forward.”
As another Nebraska harvest begins, the metaphor comes full circle. The
future cannot be controlled, but it can be cultivated. Leaders who plant wisely, steward carefully, and act boldly will find themselves winning—not despite the speed of change, but because of it.
This is the essence of KAAPA’s story, written in both numbers and values. Ethanol is no longer just a blendstock for gasoline; it is fast becoming the foundation for sustainable fuel for a multitude of applications. From compression to sequestration, KAAPA is not waiting for markets to mature—it is preparing to shape them.
“It’s really exciting to think about what’s possible by building ecosystems that reinforce one another,” says Mr. Woodside. “Ethanol is a tremendous platform for other products, and the opportunities in front of us are as big as anything we’ve seen in this industry.”
For senior executives, Mr. Woodside’s example is clear: The leaders who endure will not be those who stand idle for certainty, but those who move first, create options, and unify their organizations to pivot as one. The harvest of resilience is not accidental; it is the result of catalyzing cohesion and turning disruption itself into fuel for the future. IQ
Stop optimizing yesterday’s organization. It’s time to build a system that adapts in real time, no matter the disruption.
By Katerin Le Folcalvez
The faster the world moves, the stronger the instinct to tighten our grip. At Insigniam, we see its effects across industries and verticals. Markets whipsaw, technology compresses planning horizons, supply chains knot without warning, and the operating model that once felt dependable begins to feel like a constraint. The common reaction is to add control: more approvals, thicker playbooks, tighter gates. The impulse is understandable and the effect is predictable. However, the lesson of the past few years is not that enterprises must engineer more certainty;
it is that operating models must perform without it. Resilience is not a response to disruption. Resilience is the operating model.
This is why legacy designs optimized for control and efficiency are buckling under new expectations. Customers care far more about how we make them feel than how we are organized internally. Employees are unwilling to expend their best effort in systems that stall learning and blunt initiative. Partners judge us by the speed and clarity of our commitments, not by the elegance of our org charts. When any one of these constituencies encounters friction, the cost shows up everywhere else—churn, rework, delays, missed opportunities. Furthermore, data shows that the trend lines are clear. In the United States, employee engagement fell to 31% in 2024— a decade low—and global engagement declined 21%, with managers experiencing some of the sharpest drops. Those are not HR anecdotes; they are operating-model diagnostics. If people are disengaged, the model is failing them, and it will fail the strategy next.
In our work, Insigniam advises clients to pay attention to signals—early, often uncomfortable indicators that the current way of operating no longer serves the enterprise. In consumer markets, unfamiliar entrants often start winning for reasons that are difficult to explain from within the incumbent's frame. In the B2B space, teams often design around internal constraints because they lack direct data from end customers and cannot clearly see real demand to inform their design. On the talent side, when missed hiring goals are casually explained away as "we should raise compensation," it is often a sign that the employee experience is broken, not just the pay band. These moments precede performance decline and illustrate when a model is out of tune with reality.
Leaders who catch these signals early can act while they still have degrees of freedom.
The leadership trap we most often encounter is the belief that an operating model can deliver certainty. It cannot. At its best, an operating model provides three things: consistency—the shared principles and decision rights that keep a complex enterprise pulling in the same direction; adaptability—learning loops that turn weak signals into timely action; and structure— clear ways of working that create speed instead of friction. Demanding certainty produces the opposite. Processes harden, decisions centralize, and responsiveness decays. The external environment makes the point plain. This year's Global Risks Report, published by the World Economic Forum, ranks armed conflict and extreme weather among the most urgent nearterm risks, while misinformation and disinformation remain top short-term threats—an agenda that argues for rapid reorientation, not rigid plans.
We describe future-ready operating models with three characteristics: experience-led, culture-powered, and dynamically governed. Experienceled means we design backward from the outcomes we intend for customers, employees, and partners—what people should consistently experience when they interact with us—and only then align value streams, capabilities, and technology to make those outcomes reliable. Culturepowered means the behaviors, norms, and leadership practices actually match the model we are installing. Too many transformations die in execution because the culture remains calibrated for a previous strategy. Dynamically governed means that decision rights and mechanisms evolve in response to the context.
Leaders must paint—and continually repaint—a vivid picture of the future made possible by agility and innovation. Otherwise, your people will feel that this future is out of reach.
We simplify, decentralize, and push authority to the edges, where information is freshest, while maintaining the center through a small set of explicit principles and a transparent framework for trade-offs. These are not optional features. They are design constraints. Remove any one of them and performance will slip the moment conditions change.
At Insigniam, our Target Operating Model (TOM) exists to hardwire those characteristics. We begin by asking deceptively simple questions, and we refuse to advance until we can answer them in plain language. What do we want customers, employees, and partners to experience when they encounter us? Which value streams actually produce those experiences, end to end? What business and capability requirements must exist to deliver them every time? How will we organize, lead, and govern to keep that promise at scale? What is the sequence of work, the benefits, and costs that
50 %
The percentage of employers who say they will reorient their business to target new AI-driven opportunities—an explicit operating-model shift.1
will bring the model to life? And finally, what does implementation look like when it is paced so that customers feel the change quickly and employees are equipped to thrive as it scales? While the method may be straightforward, the discipline is not. The gravitational pull of the old model is strong, and the organization's immune system is real. Hence why we must "act consistent with the future we want, now.” Leaders must paint—and continually repaint—a vivid picture of the future made possible by agility and innovation, so people want to go there, not because a program office insists, but because it is obviously better than the status quo. This denotes a structural shift from "efficiency only" to "experience and efficiency." Additionally, in a world where switching costs are low, outcomes beat outputs. Customers expect intuitive, personalized, low-friction interactions that respect their time. Employees expect modern tools,
60 % 85 %
Data from Gallup indicates that more than half of all remotecapable employees prefer hybrid work— evidence of operatingmodel flexibility becoming table stakes.2
The percentage of IT leaders who say CIOs are becoming organizational changemakers signaling an op model shift toward faster, cross-functional decision rights.3
coaching-centric managers, and visible mobility. Partners expect clarity, speed, and credible commitments. When any one of those groups meets unavoidable friction, the whole system pays.
The macro context is both bracing and encouraging. According to the Conference Board's Measure of CEO Confidence report, positive sentiments rebounded toward neutral territory, rising in the third quarter of 2025 after a trough earlier in the year. The data is a reminder that, even in choppy markets, leaders see opportunities to seize. At the same time, the skills agenda has become inescapable. The World Economic Forum predicts that 39% of workers' core skills will change by 2030, and 85% of employers plan to prioritize upskilling as their top workforce strategy. An operating model that cannot close that gap while it runs will not keep up.
One question we're frequently asked— especially as emerging tech continues to rewrite the executive playbook—is what role technology should play in the op-model conversation.
Without question, technology belongs in that conversation, but only in its proper place. It is an amplifier of the operating model, not a substitute for it. When the model is unclear, automation accelerates confusion; when the model is crisp, it accelerates value creation.
Evidence from the Work Trend Index is instructive: Compared with skeptics, ardent users of AI report that they have re-oriented their workdays in fundamental ways and are saving more than 30 minutes per day, with gains concentrated in drafting, search, and summarization; savings that compound when paired with redesigned roles and decision rights. Those results do not happen by magic. They occur when we rewire our ways of working and equip people to utilize the tools to focus on the work that matters most. And although tech can be an accelerator, culture is where models live or die. No operating model survives a culture that contradicts it.
ANorth American wealth-management firm faced stalled growth and decision-making delays across its core value streams. Insigniam convened a cross-functional leadership cohort and used our Target Operating Model to design backward from client and advisor experience. Teams mapped end-to-end flows, exposed bottlenecks, and redesigned decision rights with clear risk, spend, and brand thresholds, removing approval layers that added time but not value.
To sustain the change, Insigniam installed an internal proctor model that scaled capability building inside the operating model. Proctors coached managers and frontline teams to "make the future present," translate signals into action, and adopt common language and tools across business units. By piloting the design in priority flows over 90 days, the team established a learning cadence and installed principle-based guardrails with fast-lane escalations—sequencing technology after roles, data, and decision clarity.
Results included shorter signal-to-decision cycles, fewer exceptions and handoffs, and a repeatable blueprint to scale across business units—with dynamic governance and culture reinforcing the operating model, rather than resisting it. IQ
Future-ready operating models are experience-led, culture-powered, and dynamically governed. Combined, these characteristics provide a path for continual breakthrough. WINNING AT THE SPEED OF CHANGE
If we flatten governance to move decisions closer to customers but still reward riskavoidance, people will wait for permission. If we invest in data and AI but underinvest in management capability, middle managers become bottlenecks—not by intent but by design. The economics underscore the point.
Gallup estimates that not-engaged and actively disengaged employees account for roughly $8.9 trillion in lost productivity— about 9% of global GDP—while manager engagement itself has declined in the most recent global data. On the P&L, replacement costs commonly reach a third of the base salary, and as much as 40% of overall turnover occurs in the first year, when investments in recruiting and onboarding have not yet yielded a return. The case for an experience-led, culturepowered model writes itself.
Organizations that move quickly know exactly who makes decisions, at what threshold, by when, and with what inputs. They establish review rhythms that turn data into decisions—weekly operating reviews along value streams, monthly forums that surface cross-enterprise experience patterns, and quarterly strategy refreshes anchored in signal analysis rather than habit. They replace encyclopedic rulebooks with a handful of non-negotiables—safety, trust, privacy, and financial stewardship—so teams can act locally while staying aligned globally. Recent headlines indicate that markets are rewarding this posture, and capital is flowing into the infrastructure necessary to run more automated and data-driven operating models.
Case in point, Microsoft guided record quarterly capital expenditures to the order of $30 billion, and Alphabet raised its 2025 plan to about $85 billion, signaling more to come. Investors do not fund those sums unless speed of learning and speed of decision are real sources of advantage.
In effect, these measurement keeps us honest. If we track only top and bottomline outcomes, we miss the mechanics that produce them. In our work, we separate the external value loop and the internal capability loop and insist they speak to each other. The value loop covers growth, margin, and cash, and pairs those with indicators that reflect lived experience, such as loyalty and the share of spend we earn over time. The capability loop tracks the health of the model itself, including the cycle time from signal to decision, engagement levels by manager and team, adoption of new ways of working, first-year retention, quality at the source, and adherence to the model versus exception rates.
We advise choosing a small set of leading indicators, publishing them widely, and making it everyone's job to improve them. If the signal-to-decision cycle stretches, the model is telling you where it hurts. If first-year retention improves while rework declines, culture is translating into performance.
Leaders often ask how to begin without creating a program that is so heavy it collapses under its own weight. We recommend starting by naming the future rather than the problem. Describe, in unambiguous terms, the experiences you intend to create for customers, employees, and partners. If those outcomes cannot be expressed clearly, the model cannot be designed to deliver them.
Next, we advise mapping value streams to the experiences that our clients intend
Leaders often ask how to begin.
Start by naming the future, rather than the problem.
to deliver, so the outcomes are tied to the work that actually produces them. We trace the flow end to end to see how value really moves—surfacing hand-offs, bottlenecks, and the shadow processes people rely on to get work done. That view makes the cost of legacy governance unmistakable: approvals layered in the name of control that add time but not judgment. With the reality on the table, we redesign decision rights and roles so decisions sit as close to the work as prudence allows, using clear thresholds for risk, spend, and brand that turn escalation into a fast lane rather than a maze. Finally, we build the enabling system—skills, data, technology, and incentives—around those choices so the new design holds in day-today operations.
As we redesign how value is created, we must also redesign how people build the skills to deliver it. The World Economic Forum's latest analysis quantifies the scale of change: core skills will shift by nearly two-fifths this decade, and a decisive majority of employers plan to prioritize upskilling through 2030. This is why capability building must be integrated into the operating model, not merely alongside it. We embed learning into roles, workflows, incentives, and reviews so capability growth is part of running the business, not a side program competing for attention.
Once capabilities are defined, we install a learning cadence that converts signals into changes in how work is done. Weekly operating reviews surface patterns and test fixes; monthly forums examine customer and employee experience; quarterly strategy resets align investments to what the data now shows. Managers play a different role in this cadence. We equip them to coach rather than police, because behavior change is what turns tools into outcomes. Where organizations provide teams with modern tools and explicit permission to use them, we consistently see time freed from lowvalue tasks and redeployed to work that matters to customers; the Work Trend Index echoes these gains among power users when new habits stick.
A quick health check is straightforward: Are teams shrinking the time from signal to decision? Are managers spending their weeks on priorities, blockers, and improvement rather than status? And are first-year retention rates improving while rework falls? When the answers are yes, the model is learning.
Winning now requires a choice, not a slogan. Choose to run the business on an operating model built for motion. In practice, that means making a time-bound commitment: in the next quarter, name the outcomes you will create for customers, employees, and partners; pick one or two value streams where those outcomes matter most; and publish who decides what, at what threshold, and on what cadence. Put leadership attention where it converts fastest—weekly operating reviews that turn signals into changes in how work is done, managers who coach rather than police, and a small set of leading indicators everyone can see and move. Treat every source of friction as a defect, not a personality trait; remove it and keep moving forward.
As capability builds, sequence technology to amplify the new design rather than decorate the old one. Start where judgment is bounded and the work is repetitive; stage AI and automation into those flows once roles, data, and decision rights are clear. Reinvest the time you free into better experiences and faster learning loops. Measure progress in cycle time from signal to decision, in first-year retention, in fewer escalations and exceptions—because those are the mechanics of advantage. When you miss, adjust the model, not the aspiration.
This is the leadership mandate: make the future present, wire the enterprise to learn faster than conditions change, and insist on a culture people are proud to own. The organizations that act on this now will not merely cope with uncertainty; they will turn it into momentum. That is how we win at the speed of change. IQ
For over 35 years, executives at the world’s largest and best companies have relied on Insigniam’s unique consulting to produce critical, unexpected outcomes, utilizing proprietary methodologies that marry breakthrough performance and innovation.
that your people will think newly, act differently and deliver unprecedented results.® For more information, visit www.insigniam.com
WINNING AT THE SPEED OF CHANGE
In a dynamic CPG market, Turtle Wax CEO, Laurie King, is turning the company's supply chain into a competitive engine—proving agility matters as much as brand strength.
BY JOSH LEGASSICK
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ERIC
BREESE & NANCY HERBERT
n his seminal book Outliers: The Story of Success , author Malcom Gladwell waxes poetic on the topic of legacies. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them."
In the world of consumer-packaged goods, legacy is often a double-edged sword. History can be an anchor, a weight that slows a company's response when markets shift. Or it can be an asset—a foundation of trust and recognition that helps a brand cut through increasingly crowded aisles and crowded minds. For Turtle Wax, one of the most iconic names in car care, that duality defines the present moment.
The family-owned brand has occupied garages and glove compartments around the world for nearly eight decades, a familiar name in a category where loyalty is earned one bottle at a time. Yet the pace of change in global CPG is relentless. Consumers have come to expect instant gratification, retail channels continue to evolve overnight, and cost volatility can destabilize even the strongest players.
Case in point: In July, U.S. consumer spending grew by 0.5%, but the core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding volatile food and energy prices, ran at 2.9% year-overyear, signaling that rising financial stress is straining households. Meanwhile, globally, inflation remains stubborn.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports headline inflation at around 4.0% in May 2025 across its member nations, with core rates near 4.4%. That puts additional strain on households worldwide—not just in the U.S.—amplifying the urgency for brands to move fast. That combination of demand and strain makes the market both promising and punishing.
What does it take for a heritage brand to thrive at this velocity? For Turtle Wax, the answer resides with CEO Laurie King.
Ms. King joined Turtle Wax in 2006, where she steadily rose through sourcing, manufacturing, and global operations positions over the two decades that followed. In that time, she shaped the company's
"You can't mandate courage. However, you can build a place where it's safe to try a new path and volunteer a dissenting view."
-Laurie King, CEO, Turtle Wax
backbone, transforming its supply chain into a strategic asset and embedding operational excellence into its culture. In 2019, she was appointed chief operating officer, and in 2025, was named CEO. Now, from the vantage point of chief executive, she's
In the Driver's Seat Laurie King’s 19-year Turtle Wax journey spans sourcing to COO, culminating as CEO, where she drives global operations, supply chain transformation, and cultural reinvention for sustained growth.
tasked with a delicate balancing act: protect and nurture Turtle Wax's time-tested and trusted position while building the agility to win in an unforgiving market.
"As a company, we had to move from being reactive to being anticipatory," Ms. King says. "That sounds simple, but it's truly transformational. It changes the way people behave, the way we make decisions, the way we show up every day."
Ms. King's leadership has reshaped Turtle Wax into a faster, more resilient, more collaborative enterprise. Her acumen is not just about car care. It is about what it takes to lead at the intersection of brand equity and disruption—about how to win at the speed of change.
Operations have always been Ms. King's arena. Early in her career, she discovered that the "plumbing" of business—sourcing, logistics, supply networks—was often treated as tactical, even invisible. She saw it differently.
"At Turtle Wax, supply chain is our nervous system," she explains. "We've built a team that is constantly assessing and modifying in real time—looking at market conditions, business requirements, customer requirements, and costs. That flexibility,
paired with a global mindset, has been an enormous advantage."
Her words are not hyperbole; Ms. King and team have designed a variable manufacturing model that gives Turtle Wax the leeway to shift quickly and still maintain a competitive cost to serve.
For instance, when container delays threatened distribution, Turtle Wax adjusted its production schedules without compromising service levels. When raw material costs spiked, pricing models adjusted with minimal disruption. When an e-commerce partner doubled orders in a matter of days, the company absorbed the surge.
Furthermore, what keeps the brand competitive is not scale alone, but the agility it gains from a dense network of local suppliers and logistics partners.
By outsourcing manufacturing to a global partner base while leaning on regional collaborators for raw materials, packaging, and last-mile fulfillment, Turtle Wax has built a supply chain that flexes with demand rather than fractures under it.
The result is a dual advantage: the brand can deliver uniform quality and reliability across continents, while still adapting to the nuances of local retail channels, consumer expectations, and even the shocks of geopolitical disruption.
Moreover, Ms. King is hardly alone in prioritizing this agility. According to The Conference Board, 71% of U.S. CEOs—and 77% of their European counterparts—plan to modify their supply chains over the next three to five years. That level of consensus shows how central that agility has become to corporate survival.
Yet, even if flexibility can be engineered, it's only successful when collaboration is built in—not bolted on.
"We make sure we have representation from all the key business areas," Ms. King says. "That way, people understand not just their own piece but the why behind the whole. It creates a cohesive process and allows for faster, higher-quality service for
Laurie King is the Chief Executive Officer of Turtle Wax, Inc., a global leader in automotive appearance products. She brings more than 30 years of expertise in operations, supply chain management, and strategic leadership. Since joining Turtle Wax in 2006, Ms. King has held roles spanning strategic sourcing, outsourced manufacturing, and global operations before being named CEO. Known for transforming supply chain into a competitive advantage and fostering cross-functional collaboration, she has guided Turtle Wax through cultural renewal and global growth. Ms. King holds a Bachelor of Science in Business and Marketing from Elmhurst University and is based in Chicago.
our customers." The result is an enterprise that moves as one. Marketing sits with the supply chain before a product hits a pallet. Finance is not reviewing after the fact; it is part of shaping the plan. Sales doesn't discover constraints mid-promotion; it weighs them early and competes smarter.
"Constant learning and improvement mean assessing our supply infrastructure and modifying in real time," Ms. King continues.
"It's not just about faster execution. When people understand that they're connected to the bigger picture, they make better decisions. That creates a more cohesive process and better service."
While most companies still treat their supply chain as a cost center, Turtle Wax has connected this through-line to its bottom line; it has become a source of consumerfacing value, including speed to shelf, reliability of experience, and confidence that the product will be available when customers look for it.
Walk the halls at Turtle Wax and you feel the brand's impressive heritage as an omnipotent presence. After all, 80 years of credibility can't simply be bought with ad spend. For the company, heritage is not just a marketing message; it is a lived reality. Yet as Ms. King notes, "heritage alone cannot win the next decade."
"First and foremost, we honor and take pride in our heritage," she says. "We use those nearly 80 years to guide us—being a category leader, a trusted name, producing breakthrough innovation. In that sense, we are using our very DNA to guide us toward our future."
That leadership position is measurable: according to Future Market Insights, Turtle Wax holds an estimated 22% share of the global car wax market, underscoring the brand's enduring weight in its category even as competition intensifies. And on a global scale, demand is only intensifying. Analysts at Mordor Intelligence note the APAC
"First and foremost, we honor and take pride in our [nearly 80 year] heritage. In that sense, we are using our very DNA to guide us toward our future."
-Laurie King CEO, Turtle Wax
region is growing fastest and already holds the largest share of many car care and wax product markets, making it one of the most competitive battlegrounds for global brands like Turtle Wax.
Demand aside, consumers are also recalibrating their shopping habits. 77% expect CPG prices to rise, and brands are increasingly turning to smaller pack sizes to keep price points accessible. Together, these trends underscore the importance of agility in product development, pricing, and positioning.
"We recognize the competitive landscape in our space, including the differences in size and scale, but our ability to be flexible and adaptable to create that innovation and commercialize it with great speed is truly where we excel. We have a team of employees who have extreme talent, experience, and passion, and our longtime family culture actually cultivates that."
Ms. King underscores an important point:
Turtle Wax is a family-owned business with deep cultural roots. The company, which was officially minted in 1946 by founder Benjamin Hirsch, can actually trace its heritage back to the 1930s, when Hirsch invented liquid auto polish in the family's bathtub. In the years that followed, Hirsh built the company on hard work, inventiveness, and a personal connection to Chicago—blending polishing wax by hand and selling it in small storefronts. After his death, Hirsch's daughter, Sondra, and her husband, Denis Healy, assumed leadership, preserving his vision, treating employees as extended family, and maintaining the company's Chicago roots, even as the business grew globally.
This continuity of ownership has fostered a culture of respect, trust, and loyalty—one where heritage, identity, and innovation reinforce each other. That, in turn, enables the company to embrace new methodologies, test new processes, and challenge old assumptions. And if
culture is where those paradoxes get resolved, Ms. King speaks about the environment she wants in plain terms.
"You can't mandate courage," she says. "You can, however, build a place where it's safe to try a new path, to volunteer a dissenting view, or to say, 'this process no longer fits the speed we need.' When people are comfortable, respected, and treated with value, they're motivated and excited to do things differently and succeed—and, most importantly, to collaborate and work together. That's one of our biggest strengths."
That internal cultural momentum is beginning to show up in the marketplace. In June 2025, Turtle Wax launched its global brand campaign and platform, "You Are How You Car™," debuting fresh creative work and new TV spots. The campaign reframes the company's heritage through a modern lens, underscoring how caring for a vehicle reflects
personal identity—no matter where you are or what you drive. For Ms. King, the disruptive platform is not just advertising— it's proof that heritage can fuel relevance when paired with agility and imagination.
"Change is constant, but it takes work and commitment," she says. "The reward is the possibility of unprecedented results. That's what keeps us motivated every day."
Leaders in consumer packaged goods need not be told that market volatility is the new normal. Hence, Ms. King argues, the only way to survive is to build decision systems designed to manage turbulence.
"We've spent quality time making sure our processes are rigorous," she says. "We use RCI models—Rapid Continuous Improvement, a team-based method for diagnosing problems, testing fixes, and embedding improvements. We've put strategic guardrails in place, and we've clarified decision rights. That clarity removes barriers and helps people move forward decisively."
"Short and long-term strategies are both critical — you have to be able to adjust based on results or conditions, internally or externally, and still stay true to the end goal."
Long-term strategy is the anchor, but it cannot be static. Under Ms. King, Turtle Wax built dynamic feedback loops— constantly revisiting assumptions and adjusting without losing sight of the end goal.
"Anchoring our priorities and decisions to our long-term strategy is extremely important," she says. "But at the same time, incorporating agile methodologies keeps that strategy dynamic, not static. Short-and longterm strategies are both critical—you
have to be able to adjust based on results or conditions, internally or externally, and still stay true to the end goal."
This is where the anticipatory mindset becomes a reality, Ms. King reaffirms.
"By being driven by data, embracing agile workflows, and diversifying our thinking, we can see what's coming and shape it rather than just respond."
If there's a glue keeping it all together, it's communication, she says.
As CEO, Laurie King is transforming Turtle Wax’s supply chain into a strategic asset—embedding agility, collaboration, and operational excellence to drive resilience, growth, and competitive advantage.
Polished Performance
Turtle Wax is not the only company with a storied name in a volatile market, says Ms. King, yet it is a “clean and shiny” example of what it means to win at the speed of change without sacrificing the elements that make a brand endure.
"Making sure we're communicating regularly and transparently with the entire team has made a big difference," Ms. King says.
Transparency, for her, is not optics; it is oxygen. When information flows, rumor has nowhere to take root. And when teams understand constraints, they innovate inside them instead of ignoring them. When viewed in full, Ms. King's leadership illustrates how to create a company hard to knock off balance.
Ask Ms. King what excites her most, and she doesn't cite revenue growth or category leadership. She talks about coaching.
"What I enjoy most is working handin-hand with people—teaching processes, practicing methodologies, seeing the light bulb go on," she says. "When people see results, they get excited and motivated. That's the most satisfying part of leadership."
But satisfaction comes with responsibility. "Lots of things keep me up at night," she admits. "There's the fiscal responsibility,
"Ms. King is a true transformational leader; her passion, acumen, and genuine care for people inspire teams to embrace change and achieve extraordinary results."
-Anna Islamova, Consultant, Insigniam
of course, but also the responsibility to customers and consumers—their experience and service—and, of course, to our employees. Making sure we're firing on all cylinders is extremely important to me."
Across enterprises, the people math is sobering: research from Gallup shows that just 32% of U.S. employees are engaged—a decade low—while global engagement slipped to 21% in 2024, costing an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity. The data underscores Ms. King's emphasis on coaching and clarity; it is less a style or survival strategy and more a guiding discipline. With this, her vision for Turtle Wax remains clear.
"To strengthen our position as a category leader, we remain focused on driving meaningful growth and relevance. By providing our consumers with a powerful and consistent global brand experience, we will continue leading in innovation, digital footprint, and operational excellence."
Then she adds what she values most: "Being known for a culture rooted in integrity, respect, and inspiration—for our employees, our customers, and our consumers. That's what endures—beyond any one leader, beyond any one strategy."
It is a fitting aspiration for a leader guiding a legacy brand through disruption: to marry growth with values, speed with purpose, history with evolution.
And while Turtle Wax is not the only company with a storied name and a volatile market, it is a "clean and shiny" example of what it means to win at the speed of change without sacrificing the elements that make a brand endure.
Ms. King's playbook is specific and transferable: build a decision engine where your cost center used to be; put collaboration in the room when choices are made; use heritage to anchor judgment; design your strategy to breathe; and coach like results depend on it—because they do.
Her leadership demonstrates what it looks like when honoring the past and accelerating the future occur simultaneously within the same company, with the same people, at the same time. It looks like Turtle Wax moving with intention. It looks like leadership tuned for velocity.
IQ
By Ryan Jones OutcomesAI’s Chief
Clinical Officer Sarah Bell on reshaping nursing care via end-to-end AI, reducing burnout, and building workforce sustainability in a strained healthcare system.
What happens when the glue holding together the global healthcare apparatus decides it’s had enough?
Nurses are the backbone of the system, yet a 2024 study by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing found that as many as 40% of nurses in the U.S. alone are eyeing the exit. Globally, that number balloons to 45%, says BMC Nursing. Retirements, post-COVID distress, and a relentless grind have created a workforce on the edge—and a system that demands more while offering less. For hospitals, the math doesn’t work. For patients, the stakes are life and death.
Sarah Bell refuses to accept that as the future. After 20 years in scrubs—including 18 at the Mayo Clinic—she has seen the collapse of old models up close. Now, as Chief Clinical Officer at OutcomesAI, she is rewriting the playbook. Her mission: use end-to-end artificial intelligence to give nurses back what burnout has stolen—the time, focus, and human connection that define real care.
OutcomesAI's Glia® is an ensemble of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Large Multi-Modal Models (LMMs) for healthcare. Unlike singular data type models, OutcomesAI is focused on building a multi-modal foundation model (using text, audio, images, sensor signals) for healthcare applications— ensuring safety and clinical performance by pre-training on trusted clinical data and fine-tuning using human feedback.
IQ: Tell us about your background and why this issue has become so central to your work.
Ms. Bell: I’ve been a nurse for 20 years, with the first 18 spent at the Mayo Clinic. My passion for virtual care began in 2013 when we opened our Electronic Intensive Care Unit (eICU), where I witnessed firsthand how deploying new care models could transform practices, support teams, and drive meaningful change management.
Over the past two years, I’ve focused on designing and deploying virtual care
solutions, and now serve as Chief Clinical Officer at OutcomesAI. In this role, I am building end-to-end AI for nursing care teams, working to make an impact on the troubling statistic of nurses rapidly leaving the bedside. Burnout is prevalent, it’s strong, and it’s widespread—and I believe our profession urgently needs support. I feel both blessed and energized to be in a position where I can help build solutions that positively impact my colleagues and, ultimately, the future of nursing.
IQ: How has the nursing profession evolved over the past two decades, and how do you see AI playing a role in addressing today’s challenges?
Ms. Bell: When I began my career, there was no shortage of nurses. In every setting— whether an ambulatory clinic or a hospital unit—you had a mix of very experienced nurses who had been there for decades and new nurses who were well supported by mentorship. The result was strong cohesion, manageable stress, and enough time and resources to care for patients well. That brought real joy to the workforce.
By the 2010s, the landscape shifted. Baby boomers began retiring, and then COVID supercharged the shortage. The unexpected wave of burnout and fatigue led to an exodus from the profession, creating an untenable, exhausted workforce across nearly every care setting.
I have family members who are nurses, and within their first year on the job many say, “I’m not sure I want to be a nurse anymore.” The job has always been challenging, but the combination of chronic short staffing, increasingly complex patients, and overfilled hospitals has created a level of moral distress that feels unsustainable.
At the same time, nursing remains an incredibly resilient profession, and we’ve seen the rise of nurse innovators. There are more of us now in leadership positions, helping lead the design and future of technology and AI in ways that are built around the realities of nursing care. Tech and AI should work for the person. We shouldn’t be making people work for it. Virtual care was new to us just a decade ago, yet, today it is everywhere, with nurses often at the forefront. That same mentality— seeing a problem and fixing it—will carry us
"We need to shift the conversation from 'AI will replace nurses' to 'How can AI help nurses and care-teams deliver safer, more efficient care?' That distinction is essential."
—Sarah Bell Chief Clinical Officer at OutcomesAI
into the AI era. If we continue putting nurses in positions to succeed and lead, AI can be a critical part of reshaping and ultimately strengthening the healthcare system.
IQ: What do you say to nurses or healthcare leaders fearful of AI replacing their jobs?
Ms. Bell: That’s been a hot question: will AI replace nurses? The answer is no—it can’t. Technology and AI are here to serve people, not replace them. Certainly, there are tasks I have taken on as a nurse that I will no longer need to do because AI can handle them, but always under my supervision as a licensed nurse.
It’s also critical to have nurses at the table when these tools are developed so that AI is created thoughtfully and designed to support nurses in an efficient, end-to-end way. Right now, there are many point solutions that address only one part of the workflow: some might write a note, others may act as a voice to call patients, or help with certain documentation. But when we design solutions that support the entire workflow, that’s when you create real relief, take a true burden off care-teams, and help sustain the workforce moving forward while keeping patients flowing in a meaningful way.
We need to shift the conversation from “AI will replace nurses” to “How can AI help nurses and care-teams deliver safer, more efficient care?” That distinction is essential.
IQ: Can you share examples of how AI makes that possible in practice?
Ms. Bell: Absolutely. For perspective, when electronic health records (EHR) came into use in the early 2000s, they put a computer directly between the nurse, the physician, and the patient.You can see it today— whether it’s a nurse, physician, or advanced
practice provider, so much of the interaction is spent looking at a screen, documenting in the EHR, while only partially engaging with the patient.
Yet, healthcare is human. What AI makes possible is restoring that human connection— the ability for nurses to focus fully on caring for the person in front of them. That’s why many of us entered the profession, and what gives us joy in the work.
For example, nurses often arrive early and spend 20 to 30 minutes preparing for their shift— reviewing charts, reading notes, gathering information. AI can pull that data from the EHR and deliver it within seconds. It eliminates the prep burden, ensures that the information is presented in the correct sequence, and gives nurses confidence they’re not missing critical details.
During patient care, AI can listen to the conversation, record and transcribe it, and tee up documentation. Instead of staring at a computer screen and clicking through flowsheets, the nurse is present with the patient. AI handles the note taking, with the nurse reviewing and signing off at the end.
And when issues arise in the moment— whether a patient problem or a clinical decision—AI can surface guidelines and protocols in real time. That reduces the time spent searching, ensures accuracy, and helps nurses deliver timely, appropriate care.
Often, our assessments draw heavily on experience. AI can serve as that added layer of expertise, supporting us in real time. At OutcomesAI, we’ve also developed patient navigators—AI voice agents that nurses can deploy to call patients, gather information, and return it directly to the care team. This empowers nurses to work at the top of their license and scope.
Instead of being limited to “the doer,” the nurse now has tools to extend their reach and keep patient care moving in ways only humans can.
IQ: You’ve painted a picture of what the hospital of the future could look like with end-to-end AI solutions. In your work at OutcomesAI over the past two years, have you encountered resistance or hesitation to this kind of change?
Ms. Bell: It is a big change, and one of the most important lessons is that AI must be embedded directly into the nurse’s workflow. Too often in virtual care, new platforms or systems are simply added on top of the EHR. That only shifts the nurse’s focus from one screen to another and does not create an integrated, usable workflow.
What we are doing instead is building tools within the EHR itself, so that they are part of the nurse’s day-to-day. That makes the technology immediately usable, which is essential. Nurses don’t have the time to learn an entirely new system. What they need is something intuitive, easy to use, and able to provide immediate relief. The other key is effectiveness. AI solutions cannot require months of use before showing value.
There must be immediate ROI— something tangible that helps the nurse right away. That is why having multiple agents capable of supporting different aspects of the workflow is so important.
Healthcare is inherently multi-modal— voice, video, text, and images—and AI must be able to support across all those modalities. Nurses need assistance not just with one task, but across the full, end-to-end workflow.
The response so far has been excitement. People are amazed when they see a voice agent call a patient, interact naturally within the guardrails we set, follow a checklist, and then return a note directly into the EHR— deploying a human nurse only when needed. They are equally excited by agents that can understand the EHR. Instead of spending ten minutes sifting through notes, orders, medications, labs, and flowsheets, a nurse can simply ask for a patient summary and have it delivered in seconds. Of course,
excitement is just the first step. Successful adoption requires co-development with the people actually doing the work. Companies in this space must listen, adapt, and remain flexible.
The good news is that AI itself offers incredible flexibility, which makes this possible. Where we are today is a mix of excitement and urgency: “Can I have it now?" is a question we hear often. Proper integration is critical for longterm adoption, but the momentum is real. I truly believe this is just the beginning. Within the next five years, I expect AI to be embedded across healthcare in the same way virtual care is today and when that happens, we will see a very different, and much stronger, nursing workforce.
IQ: What kind of results are you seeing so far?
Ms. Bell: The results have been very encouraging. In our clinical testing, nurses using AI tools are saving up to 60% of the time they normally spend preparing for a shift. What used to take 20 to 30 minutes— reading through charts, piecing together information, making sure nothing was missed—can now be completed in seconds. That time goes back into patient care or even into the nurse’s own well-being, both of which are critically needed.
Frontline nurses also describe the technology as creating a new sense of safety and support. For those who are newer to the profession, AI can serve as an experienced partner—helping validate decisions, surface guidelines, and ensure nothing is overlooked. For seasoned nurses, it provides confidence that the details are covered, allowing them to focus more on the patient.
What excites me is that nurses see AI not as a threat but as a reliable ally. They feel more secure knowing that they have an intelligent system working alongside them, catching details in real time and reducing the constant
mental load. That sense of confidence and relief will be critical as we move forward
IQ: Lastly, with nursing at a crossroads, what will it take to catalyze a new future for the profession—and to transform the model of healthcare delivery itself?
Ms. Bell: That’s a great question, and it speaks to the beauty of nursing: we have the ability to reinvent ourselves again and again, always in service of patients and people. And I believe that right now, we are at the very beginning of another reinvention— redefining what it means to be a nurse.
For that reinvention to succeed, nurses must have a seat at the table. We need nurses in leadership positions, helping to
design and shape the tools and solutions that will support our workforce and create sustainability for the profession. Without that involvement, technology risks being developed in ways that don’t meet the real needs of the people using it—a mistake healthcare has made too often in the past.
My message to health systems and vendors is this: ask yourself, Who are the nurses informing your solutions? Make sure they are part of the process. Listen to them, and then move forward with what they recommend.
Transformation is never easy, but if we engage, collaborate, and adapt, we can shape a future where nurses are not only sustained but truly empowered. IQ
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