FOR LEADERS REINVENTING THEIR FUTURE
Why are you here?
Are you an ambitious leader? A healthily paranoid leader? Is it time to reinvent your business?
Uprising dials up your organisation’s…
DIRECTION
creating or renewing the ambition & strategy – with compelling communication to build belief & followship
LEADERSHIP
galvanising & arming leadership teams with skills & behaviours to transform performance to execute the strategy
INNOVATION
embedding the structures, skills & behaviours to routinely build new products, experiences &/or brands
Sometimes just one of these unlocks performance, but often we join them up to maximise the impact.
WHAT… we’ve worked on.
Some recent examples of unlocking direction, leadership or innovation
Leadership | Innovation
Leadership
Innovation
Direction | Leadership
Direction
Leadership
Direction
Direction
Direction | Innovation
Direction
Innovation
Direction | Innovation
Direction | Leadership
Sector
Retail
Scope
UK, Ireland, Italy & global; €45 billion per annum revenue; 496 stores.
Work
Defined innovation capability, tools & language for the UK, Ireland & Italian leaders.
Led many innovation projects, for example:
- arming sales colleagues with simple ways to delight customers based on an ethnographic segmentation
- defining the UK’s sustainability strategy
- driving colleague engagement in Italy
- global in-store merchandising processes.
Impact
Varied from different projects; UK returned to revenue growth; Italy improved colleague engagement; global merchandising team reduced costs.
Sectors
Real Estate | Digital marketplaces
Scope
France, Germany, Belgium & Iseral; €1⁄2 billion per annum revenue
Work
At a transformation point of consolidating disparate country businesses into one European group, accelerated the new exec team in creating their purpose & strategy story, and defining the culture & behaviours to deliver it.
Designed & facilitated twice yearly events, with the top 80 leaders, to create belief and ownership of a transformation programme. Designed & hosted a 2-day event for the 850 strong tech & product team to strengthen belonging & delivery.
Impact
An aligned exec team, and a wider leadership with belief and energy to execute.
Sectors
Retail | Healthcare
Scope
UK; £2.4 billion per annum revenue; 937 stores
Work
Worked with the Audiology leadership team, and then the Optical leadership team, to get into their customers shoes as the starting point to define their ambitions, strategic opportunities and the tactics to get after them.
Impact
Both leadership teams aligned and committed to a prioritised and sequenced roadmap of opportunities, with the clear customer centred rationale to influence the wider businesses and win the followship of their teams.
Sector
Grocery retail
Scope
UK, £7.7 billion per annum revenue; 329 stores.
Work
Worked with the proposition development team to create the customer strategy, with the innovation strategy & organisation structure to make it happen.
Having previously created a new neighbourhood grocery proposition and multiple projects including fresh food counters, packaging reduction & shop-in-shops with John Lewis Department Stores.
Impact
Return to market share growth. A clear customer driven prioritised & sequenced innovation plan for future growth.
Sectors
Hospitality
Scope
UK, Saudi Arabia & global, $1.7 billion per annum revenue, 3,884 stores.
Work
Formulated a 3-year innovation strategy & roadmap.
Created tactical customer experience, liquid & packaging innovation to amplify the credibility of a brand refresh.
Created a highly innovative drive-thru proposition – based on smart consumer insight in Saudi Arabia & the UK.
Impact
A clear direction to focus innovation investment. Real customer experience and product enhancements delivering return on investment from an expensive brand refresh. First in market innovation in the highest growth channel (drive-thru).
Sectors
Sports betting | Gaming | Retail | Digital
Scope
Central Europe, Belgium & Brazil; €1 billion per annum revenue
Work
At a growth inflection point with a clear ambition to globalise, helped to the new exec team in creating their strategy story, and defining the culture & behaviours to deliver it.
Designed & facilitated annual events, with the top 70 leaders, to create belief and ownership of a transformation programme. Created an employee value proposition. Help define the purpose of the founder’s philanthropic foundation.
Impact
Clear strategy with a prioritised & sequenced roadmap with a wider leadership team with the belief & energy to execute and delivering high growth.
WHO… you get
Real world experience that leaves a lasting impact
Why would anyone pay for the junior consultants, the marketing budgets and the office overheads of large consultancies? When you can invest in real world commercial battle-scars and deep expertise.
Uprising is Matthew Cushen, plus a long-known team of exceptional associates with specialist skills. The breadth of talent within this associate pool means every project team is carefully cast based on the expertise needed and our client’s business culture.
Matthew grew up a retailer – quickly given leadership roles in Woolworths (late 90s when they were still a high street powerhouse) then the John Lewis Partnership. Giving him a retailer’s commercial pragmatism and passion for customers. Then followed 20 years consulting globally (with Kurt Salmon Associates and ?WhatIf! Innovation – both now part of Accenture). Broadening from retail to most sectors – including hospitality, FMCG, financial services, media, energy & utilities.
As well as helping large businesses, Matthew is an investor & director in a portfolio of start-ups. His investment business, Worth Capital, is well known for early-stage venture capital funding in the UK, including some successful exits. So when relevant, Matthew can share a unique perspective on the real lessons to learn from high-growth entrepreneurs.
Most of the associates have worked with Matthew for over a decade. Thay have diverse, specialist skills and experiences – for example, deep consumer or colleague ethnography; organisation & culture design; design to bring ideas to life; running live consumer experiments or commercial impact modelling.
Becky & Simon are two examples of the breadth of experience of the many available associates.
Becky has been boosting organisational & leadership performance her whole career. She has worked with leaders of the most complex organisations with highly challenging briefs. Including the leadership of BP to help them recover their strategic confidence after the Deepwater Horizon disaster and with the Command Board of the British Army modernising Britain’s fighting force.
Simon is a creative magician that can take a rough idea and turn it into something tangible to be scrutinised for its commerciality or tested for its practicality. He creates products for FMCG brands and others, but his stand-out skill is innovating & experimenting with customer experiences in shops & hospitality – including creating innovative propositions for Lego, Boots & Asda.
HOW… we show up.
Whilst the pool of Uprising associates have diverse skills & experiences, they have behaviours & values in common. An Uprising team is always …
LATERAL & LOGICAL
A potent balance of expansively creating & exploring possibilities along with reductive analysis & reasoning.
STIMULATING
Provocative, inspiring, challenging new points of view. Along with multiple techniques to introduce new perspectives.
STRAIGHT
Sophisticated thinking, simple human language.
Cutting out the business bullshit that obscures understanding.
HONEST
None of the overheads of larger consultancies, all fee investment is in the work. Transparent fees & expenses.
COMMERCIAL
Obsessed with return on investment – from revenue growth, cost reduction, customer satisfaction &/or brand cut-through.