I Spent 25 Years Watching What Lasts
I kept seeing the same thing.
A team would build something good. Real progress. Energy, focus, results. Then time would pass. Key people would move on. Attention would shift. And slowly — sometimes quickly — the thing would fade. Two years later, you’d hardly know it happened.
I’ve watched this pattern dozens of times across 25 years inside one company. Change efforts that launched with fanfare and dissolved without a trace. Capabilities that lived in a few people’s heads and walked out the door when they left. Initiatives that worked brilliantly — until they didn’t.
But I’ve also seen the opposite.
Some things last. They spread. They get better through use. People teach each other. Five years later, it isn’t a “programme” anymore — it’s just how work gets done.
Same company. Same leaders. Same budgets. Different outcomes.
For a long time, I assumed the difference was commitment. Or executive sponsorship. Or picking the right problem.
Those things matter. But they’re not the thing.
The difference is whether you build something that depends on you — or something that works without you.
Why This Matters
This isn’t just about project management or change fatigue. It’s about strategic investment.
Boards approve transformation budgets expecting durable capability. What they typically get is temporary improvement — gains that erode the moment attention shifts elsewhere. The investment was real. The return was rented, not built.
I’ve started applying a simple test: If everyone who built this left tomorrow, would it keep working?
It’s a brutal test. Most initiatives fail it. Not because the people were lazy or the strategy was wrong — because of how the thing was built.
This pattern isn’t unique to where I’ve worked. It shows up in AI implementations that stall after the pilot. In post-acquisition integrations that destroy value instead of creating it. In scaling companies that lose what made them great the moment they outgrow the founders’ direct attention.
The context varies. The pattern is remarkably consistent.
How I Came to See It
I didn’t arrive at this by accident.
Before I joined the company where I’ve spent my career, I worked for eight years in the UN system — empowering young people to create change in their communities. I lobbied governments. I designed programmes. I learned what it takes to make things stick when you have no power to force them.
Then I made what my colleagues thought was a bizarre choice: I went to design school. Product design. “The most unsustainable profession in the world,” I joked. But I meant it. I wanted to understand what it takes to create change from the inside — to work on things that matter, within systems that resist.
That path led me to a company I’d loved since childhood. I joined as a product designer, developing new products from concept through production. I thought I was joining a stable, thriving business.
I wasn’t.
Within a few years, the company was facing collapse. The crisis came from overreach — chasing growth in the wrong directions, losing touch with what made it strong. I watched from the middle of the organisation, where strategy meets reality.
What happened next became a business school case study. New leadership. A return to fundamentals. A rebuild that took the company from near-bankruptcy to 74 billion DKK in revenue, from 3,000 people to over 31,000. I've been there through that growth — and five subsequent step-changes in scale.
I was there for that. Not in the executive suite — but in the rooms where it got real. Working on what the brand meant, what the values actually required, how to translate strategy into practice.
And I stayed. For 25 years now. Long enough to see what lasted from that turnaround — and what faded. Long enough to test my own ideas about what makes change stick.
What I’ve Tested
I’ve built things. Repeatedly. Not products, after those early years. Capabilities. Functions. Ways of working.
I’ve set up how a brand shows up beyond physical products — online, on the phone, in stores. I’ve inherited decimated functions and rebuilt them into something that shaped how the organisation thought. I’ve led consumer insights. I’ve transformed a broken digital platform into something that actually worked — piece by piece, over three years, with a team I had to rebuild from dysfunction.
Later: sustainability communications. Diversity and inclusion foundations. A marketing experimentation capability designed to spread through the organisation.
Each time, I’ve followed the same instinct: build it so it works without me.
One capability I built — a marketing experimentation infrastructure — generated 300 million DKK in incremental revenue in its first year. Three years later, the formal infrastructure is gone — reorganisation and shifting priorities claimed it. But something survived: eighty marketers who learned a different way of working. The structure didn’t last. The capability did. The skills outlasted the structure.
That’s when I started to understand: this isn’t just good project management. It’s a different kind of change entirely.
What It’s Cost
I should be honest about something.
Not all success is worth the cost.
There was a stretch — successful by external measures — where I lost my voice. Roles that looked good on paper but took more than they gave. I couldn’t measure my real impact, so I started looking for validation from the wrong people. For a while, I felt like a stranger to myself.
Getting it back took years, and taught me things the successful years couldn’t. But that’s a story for another time.
The Pattern Named
So what’s the difference? What separates change that fades from change that lasts?
I’ve started calling it the difference between change that depreciates and change that compounds.
Change that depreciates generates activity, maybe even early wins — but capability concentrates in a few people. When they leave, the gains leave with them. The organisation invested real money and effort. The return was temporary. Two years later, they’re starting over.
Change that compounds builds capability that grows over time. Know-how spreads — people teach each other. The thing works without its creators. It improves through use. Five years later, it’s still running, still evolving, still generating value.
Most change depreciates by default. Not because anyone chooses that. Because the incentives push that way. Quick wins. Clear credit. Being indispensable.
Change that compounds requires giving things up: speed at the start, credit clarity, being needed. Not everyone wants that trade.
But if you want change that lasts — that’s the only trade that works.
There’s a deeper distinction here — between what I’ve come to call extractive and regenerative approaches. Extractive change pulls value out without building capacity back in. Regenerative change builds capacity that outlasts the effort. I’ll explore this more in future pieces. For now, the key point is simpler: most strategic investment depreciates. It doesn’t have to.
The Gap This Fills
There’s no shortage of frameworks for strategy. No shortage of advice on change management. Brilliant thinkers have mapped out what makes companies last, how to make strategic choices, why competitive advantage erodes.
What’s missing is honest examination of what happens in the space between strategy and reality — where strategic intent either becomes lasting capability, or quietly dies while everyone pretends it’s working.
I’ve started calling this the messy middle. Post-strategy, pre-value. The territory where transformation budgets get spent and strategic plans get tested. Where most initiatives fail — not from bad strategy, but from architecture that guarantees depreciation.
That’s the territory I want to explore. Not from theory — from 25 years of building it, breaking it, and watching what survived.
What’s Coming
After 25 years inside, I'm starting to write publicly about what I've learned — while I'm still close enough to remember how it actually felt.
This newsletter is called The Tenon. A tenon is a woodworking joint — the part that fits into the mortise so two pieces become one load-bearing structure. I’m interested in the joint between strategy and reality. The place where vision either becomes lasting advantage — or gets lost in the messy middle.
I’ll be writing about:
Why strategic investments depreciate. The structural reasons most transformation spending doesn’t build lasting capability — and what boards should ask but rarely do.
What compounds instead. The architecture of advantage that lasts. What to embed, how to design for durability, why principles matter more than processes.
What it demands of leaders. The specific capabilities required to bridge strategy to reality — and why they’re different from the skills that get you to the top.
Where it shows up now. AI implementation, post-acquisition integration, scaling culture — the places where these patterns are most visible and most urgent.
I’ll draw on what I’ve seen inside — not as a case study to admire, but as a source of patterns that apply more broadly. And I’ll bring in what I’m seeing elsewhere, because this pattern isn’t unique to any one company or industry.
Who This Is For
If you’re tired of transformation that doesn’t stick.
If you’ve ever watched a strategic initiative launch with confidence and fade with a whimper.
If you’re responsible for making strategy real — inside an organisation, as an advisor, as a board member.
If you suspect there’s a pattern to what lasts and what doesn’t, and you want to understand it.
This is for you.
An Invitation
I’m not presenting this as a finished system. It’s still forming. I’m a practitioner sharing what I’ve learned, in public, as I refine it.
If any of this resonates — if you’ve seen these patterns too, or you’re wrestling with them now — I’d love to hear from you. Reply to this post. Find me on LinkedIn. The best ideas come from conversation, not isolation.
Subscribe if you want to follow along.
Here’s to what lasts.
—Cecilia
