Case Studies and Clients

CEVA Logistics, a worldwide $7bn logistics company with around 56,000 employees, was preparing to go public and needed to prove it could deliver profitable, sustainable growth. Expansion had stalled and top-talent turnover was high. Their strategy was in good shape. It was their leadership that was the bottleneck.

Beginning in 2016, we’ve partnered with CEVA’s executive team to transform the organisation, running a top-level leadership programme across the globe. It became so central to the change that Executive Director Leigh Pomlett spent around a quarter of his time on it, calling it the single thing he did with the biggest impact on CEVA’s future. Leaders learned to move beyond business-as-usual thinking and take on bold Breakthrough Projects, from entirely robot-controlled depots to new land routes from China to Europe, building a culture that rewarded innovation and a commitment to bold projects.

The shift showed up in everyday leadership. One sector head grew her account 23% the following year by listening and engaging differently; a regional vice-president turned a hostile trade-union negotiation, a year after a strike, into a win-win by moving from defending to genuinely listening. As leaders changed how they saw themselves, it changed how they dealt with people and lifted team performance.

FirstHuman enabled an immediate shift in performance and set us on a journey that brought the desired results, excitement and energy back.

Leigh Pomlett, Executive Director, CEVA Logistics

We were called in during the 2018 British high-street retail crisis. John Lewis was playing catch-up, building an online offering to compete with the likes of Amazon and ASOS. Bolting digital onto traditional marketing ended up creating two functions in one. Each side had its own way of working and its own measures of success, and over time they’d hardened into two camps that didn’t trust each other.

Worse, everyone knew the business goals, but no one was sure who should do what, or how. The result was paralysis. We opened things up by starting to read back, anonymously, what people had actually told us. Realising what was being said behind each other’s backs, a transformation began there and then. Coaching them to listen to each other powerfully, we helped them candidly address their dysfunctions.

The change lasted because it belonged to them. The two groups that had lost trust started working together as one team, facing issues directly and settling tensions that had blocked decisions for months. With digital and traditional teams finally working together, they could focus on shared goals to keep up with the market.

We're now speaking more openly, and we're together as a leadership team; it's so much better!

Lisa Garwood, Head of Customer Insight & Analytics, John Lewis & Partners

Northern Lights JV (NLJV) is the world’s first commercial, open-access transport and storage network for CO2. It is a NOK 7.5 billion JV between Shell, Equinor and TotalEnergies and located on Norway’s west coast. In 2023, FirstHuman was brought in by the MD to breakthrough the multiple agendas of the ExCo members, who were seconded from the owners, and galvanise the team around an ambition, strategy and plan that went beyond what the owners individually looked for.

Through a structured programme of ExCo sessions, the hidden frustrations of operating in a JV were revealed, a shared ambition and commitment was established. With an aligned top team the whole organisation became revitalised and the entrepreneurial flame was re-ignited. As a result, they completed Phase 1 on time and demonstrated both the technology and commercial viability of the plant, as well as gained sufficient rust from their owners to gain approval of a major expansion plan.