Beyond Performance 2.0, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4Assess

How Ready Are We to Go There?

When Charles “Chad” O. Holiday Jr. became the 18th CEO of the nearly two-hundred-year-old chemical giant, DuPont, he was the third youngest to have done so and was relatively unknown to the rank and file. His predecessor, John A. Krol, had continued a decade-long strategy to cut back bureaucracy, revitalize its traditional brands, and restructure the company to be more cost-competitive. While this evolution had yielded good results, Holiday felt it was time for a revolution, and set out on a change agenda more profound than any the company had aspired to for a century since it transformed itself from an explosives to a chemicals manufacturing business.

More specifically, Holiday and his team set a long-term vision to expand the company’s focus far beyond chemical products to become a science-based products and services company. The strategy to achieve the vision would involve achieving multiple mid-term aspirations such as reshaping the business portfolio, creating more knowledge-intensive value proposition (in Holiday’s words, “to get paid for what we know, not just the products we sell”¹), re-aligning the cost-base to fund growth investments, and improving the company’s standing on environmental issues. On the organizational health front, Holiday and his team aspired to move the company from one characterized by “mediocrity” and “malaise”² to one characterized by personal ownership, a creative and entrepreneurial work environment, ...