The pandemic has created a host of new business challenges, some of them never faced by the modern working world. In the early days, companies scrambled to move their workforces out of harm's way, putting many non-essential, but still important, strategic priorities on hold in deference to worker and client safety. At this late stage of things, companies are slowly but surely coming back to execute on those strategies, but in a very different environment than seven months ago. Ankura recently appointed Kevin Cowherd to lead the firm's Strategy & Performance practice. We recently caught up with Cowherd to talk about his new role, and how clients are making opportunities out of challenges.
Consulting: What will be your key priorities stemming from your recent appointment as the head of the strategy and performance practice?
Cowherd: Given the complexity of issues today, our worldwide clientele expects innovation in our approach to create and protect value in their ventures. Accordingly, my key priority is to adapt and integrate the expertise of my colleagues throughout Ankura into purpose-built solutions. Through diversity of thought and collaboration, we deliver a superior outcome that can be practically implemented to our clients' advantage. Making this creative process into actionable strategies for our clients comes from recruiting and retaining the best talent. Consequently, another key priority is to attract and mentor emerging leaders with the requisite skills to meet the client challenges of the day.
Consulting: How have client demands shifted between the early days of the pandemic and today?
Cowherd: Following the start of the pandemic, many clients had the natural reaction of stopping non-essential activity to protect valuable resources. Mission critical projects continued, but our usual client responsibilities shifted in response to the rapidly changing workforce dynamic caused by COVID-19. During the initial weeks of the pandemic, we were focused on assisting our clients in the transition to remote programs and the translation of in-person activities like process improvement workshops or brainstorming sessions into the remote environment. Today, however, we see that our clients are executing their key strategic priorities that once were put on hold.
Consulting: What are the biggest consulting opportunities you are seeing?
Cowherd: Three key themes have emerged as we work with our clients: ruthless prioritization of resource investment to causes deemed most important, disciplined program execution that accelerates value creation, and intense focus on growing profit. Our consulting opportunities center on aligning leaders with strategic priorities for performance, transforming operating models, optimizing operations and accelerating the execution of strategic initiatives.
Consulting: Are you seeing any industries eyeing transformation efforts that in normal times tended to keep the status quo?
Cowherd: Retail, particularly ecommerce – clients are making investments that just a few months ago were incomprehensible. Significant investments are now being made in digital transformation, process simplification and human capital. We are seeing that upstream and downstream companies like distribution, logistics and data science providers are benefitting from this new dynamic.
Consulting: Talk about what you see as the pandemic's impact on companies' growth or transformation aspirations
Cowherd: Times of crisis create opportunities for leaders to focus and accelerate decision-making. For many, this time is a critical inflection point that can lead to investments that accelerate the creation of value, market share gains or the transformation of the business that would have been impossible in a "normal" year. The risk is high, but the reward is also outsized.
Consulting: What do you think will be some of the biggest challenges for strategy consultants over the next 6-12 months?
Cowherd: As strategy consultants, our role is to help clients rise above the day-to-day, consider a broad set of related data, learn from adjacent or analogous examples and place big, on-strategy bets. That is particularly challenging in our current environment. However, it is exactly at moments like this when those with the courage to lead can positively transform an organization for years to come.
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