Perform to Transform · Earning the change
Raise performance to reposition the business – simultaneously, not one after the other.
Europe's chemical industry is in a structural crisis, not a cycle. The strongest companies run two agendas in parallel: they lift earnings and cash from today's business – and use them to fund the strategic repositioning that secures their competitiveness. ChangeMaker is the operating system that brings both agendas together fast enough.
Chemicals is only one example among many: the same dynamic – hard competition with a shrinking competitive edge, not least versus China – hits large parts of European industry, the automotive sector just as hard.
01
No cycle. A structural break.
Unlike the crises of the 1990s and 2000s, today's weakness is structural in nature – it threatens the existence of a substantial part of Europe's chemical industry. Higher input costs, administrative complexity and regulation are amplified by two factors: radically intensified global competition, above all from China (capacity, cost positions that are barely reachable, a rapidly closing technology gap), and a broad downturn hitting the big customer industries such as automotive.
The consequence: the recipes of earlier cycles – standalone cost programs, selective portfolio steps, a gradual shift toward more differentiated businesses – are no longer enough. Incremental improvement alone is too little.
negative
total shareholder return of European chemical companies, Dec 2022–Dec 2025, below the world market, behind the US & Japan
McKinsey analysis · S&P Global, 2026
×6
increase in announced plant closures since 2022, around 9% of production capacity
Cefic, Jan 2026
~7 pp
2025 capacity utilization below the long-run average of ~82%
Cefic, Dec 2025
1–4 pp
typical EBITDA improvement of past programs, often eaten up again by market weakness
McKinsey, 2023–2025
Chemicals is only one example. The same dynamic – intense global competition with a shrinking competitive edge, for instance versus China – hits many European industries. What is described here through the example of chemicals transfers to them.
02
Two jobs. Simultaneously.
Companies are caught between two imperatives: radically repositioning the portfolio, the assets and the industrial footprint – and generating enough cash from today's business to fund exactly that.
Lift earnings & cash – now
- Cost, yield, throughput (AI)
- Energy, maintenance, logistics
- Capex & working-capital discipline
→ earns the funds
Secure competitiveness – tomorrow
- Portfolio & site network
- Footprint & capital allocation
- M&A and differentiated margins
→ spends the funds
Earning the change: performance funds the repositioning.
Whoever waits for strategic clarity before tackling performance loses cash, time and room to act.
If assets become less competitive, the threat is not just weaker numbers but the erosion of industrial ecosystems, innovative capacity and supply chains. That is why the strongest transformations treat strategy and performance not as separate, sequential agendas – but as one program, run at high speed.
03
In the rebuild, speed decides.
Proprietary McKinsey data shows: top-quartile transformations in chemicals achieve almost twice the impact after around 18 months compared with bottom-quartile programs. What is measured is the share of the bankable plan – the value potential made concrete through initiatives and an execution plan – that is actually converted into impact each week.
The difference lies not in the ambition on paper but in the speed at which the plan becomes delivered impact. And that speed comes from nine best practices.
The faster the bankable plan is converted into impact, the bigger the lead.
Share of the bankable plan converted into delivered impact, cumulative through week 78 (around 18 months) after the start of the planning phase.
04
Nine best practices separate the top quartile from the rest.
McKinsey identifies nine best practices with which transformations deliver a lasting leap. They describe precisely what to do – from the ambition through activating the organization to execution discipline.
But a list of practices explains neither why they work, nor does it offer a test of whether they work. Exactly for that you need a better mental frame – which we lay underneath next.
Set the highest ambition
Structural leaps, derived from the economics of the business – not from last year's budget.
Align leadership on a shared vision
Shared facts, shared accountability, consistent behavior at the top.
Win everyone with a compelling change story
Every level understands where the company stands and why the change is needed.
Give granular initiatives real line ownership
Every measure has an owner – from idea to P&L impact.
Integrate health & capabilities
Carry organizational health and skills along to make the leap stick.
Establish financial & non-financial incentives
Visibility, recognition and consequences – not just money.
Build dedicated infrastructure
Dedicated talent, led by a chief transformation officer with real authority.
Disciplined weekly cadence
A fixed rhythm of transparency, facts and decisions forces execution.
Shared language & single source of truth
One reliable data source everyone aligns on.
05
Why these nine work: 3C and seven experiences.
Best practices create no value as rows in a table. They work when they change human behavior – by dissolving the three fundamental barriers of every change: the 3C. The 3C are activated through concrete, tangible experiences.
The experience is the actual mechanism of impact. The best practice is only its shell.
Concerns
“Do I want this?”
Do people make the change their own concern – or does another concern win that does not help the program?
Capabilities
“Can I do this?”
Do people have the knowledge, the skills and the authority to act effectively – and are gaps closed individually?
Coordination
“Are we pulling in the same direction?”
Does the action of many add up to a whole – visibly, efficiently and mutually reinforcing?
The 3C are activated by seven canonical experiences: Belonging & recognition · Understanding the system · Co-creating · Seeing the joint effect · Being efficient · Managing negative emotions · Being well led. They are the touchstone: if a practice produces these experiences, it works. If not, it stays without consequence.
06
Every best practice is an experience – not a table row.
Lay the nine best practices over the 3C and the seven experiences, and a to-do list becomes an impact model. You see why a practice works – and how to tell whether it does.
Striking: Concerns carries five of the nine practices. The “wanting” is won or lost early. And best practice 9 spans all three C – exactly where a tool becomes decisive.
| # | Best practice (McKinsey) | 3C | Activating experiences |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Set the highest ambition | Concerns | Understanding the system |
| 02 | Align leadership on a shared vision | Concerns | Understanding the systemCo-creating |
| 03 | Compelling change story | Concerns | Belonging & recognitionUnderstanding the systemSeeing the joint effectManaging negative emotions |
| 04 | Line ownership | Concerns | Co-creating |
| 05 | Integrate health & capabilities | Capabilities | Understanding the systemBeing well led |
| 06 | Financial & non-financial incentives | Concerns | Belonging & recognitionBeing well led |
| 07 | Dedicated infrastructure (CTO) | Coordination | Seeing the joint effectBeing efficient |
| 08 | Disciplined weekly cadence | Coordination | Seeing the joint effect |
| 09 | Shared language + single source of truth | All 3C | Understanding the systemBeing efficient |
Why the experience is the better lever – point by point.
McKinsey practiceSet the highest ambition
The actual lever: Understanding the system
An ambitious number is quickly set. It is only understood and accepted against a real understanding of the system: why is this leap necessary at all – what does it take to be competitive in this market? It is not the number that convinces, but the insight behind it.
McKinsey practiceAlign leadership
The actual lever: Co-creating (at the top level)
A shared leadership direction emerges most reliably when leadership works it out together instead of merely announcing it. Co-creation at the top turns a prescribed direction into a shared concern.
McKinsey practiceChange story
The actual lever: Belonging · Understanding the system · Seeing the joint effect · Managing negative emotions
Change stories that do not trigger these experiences fizzle out. The real test is not whether a story was told, but whether it creates a sense of we, an understanding of the system, collective efficacy and takes away fear. The four experiences are the yardstick every story can be measured against.
McKinsey practiceLine ownership
The actual lever: Co-creating (at the working level)
Real ownership is best reached via the IKEA effect: what you helped build, you defend and carry. So do not assign responsibility – have measures co-created at the working level, turning the affected into the involved.
McKinsey practiceIntegrate health & capabilities
The actual lever: Being well led
“Integrating health and capabilities” stays abstract – until you hand it to leadership as a concrete job: spot and close knowledge and skill gaps individually. Only as lived leadership responsibility does an empty phrase become an effective lever.
McKinsey practiceIncentives
The actual lever: Belonging & recognition · Being well led
Competent and benevolent leadership – genuine interest in the substance, recognition, informed feedback – is the most effective way to motivate. Where leadership sees and appreciates, motivation emerges without expensive financial programs.
McKinsey practiceDedicated infrastructure (CTO)
The actual lever: Being efficient · Seeing the joint effect
A dedicated infrastructure is only as effective as the efficiency and collective efficacy it actually creates. The org chart and the transformation office are not the purpose – the purpose is the experiences they enable.
McKinsey practiceWeekly cadence
The actual lever: Seeing the joint effect (collective efficacy)
A program rhythm only becomes self-sustaining when people experience that everyone is pulling in the same direction. Otherwise success dies: if success takes two and only one contributes, it does not happen. Collective efficacy is the engine, not the calendar entry.
McKinsey practiceShared language & single source of truth
The actual lever: Understanding the system (across all 3C)
Behind a shared language lies, in truth, a shared understanding: interpreting the situation, the goal and the priorities the same way. The language is the surface – the shared understanding of the system is the substance. This is exactly where one reliable, shared data source becomes indispensable.
07
Excel activates none of the seven experiences.
The nine best practices only create value once the seven experiences actually come about. A spreadsheet conveys and activates not a single one of them – it was built as a calculation tool, not for human behavior. So no good habit forms, no positive momentum, and therefore none of the top quartile's speed effect.
Concretely, at each of the seven experiences Excel is missing exactly what matters – and that is exactly what ChangeMaker is built for:
Belonging & recognition
A spreadsheet creates no sense of we. The individual contribution is neither made visible nor recognized, no one feels seen.
ChangeMaker: a shared team workplace where every contribution is visible and earns recognition.
Understanding the system
Excel delivers numbers without context. Goals, connections and the bigger picture stay invisible – real understanding of the system cannot form.
ChangeMaker: links measures, KPIs and goals into a coherent overall picture.
Co-creating
Excel offers no co-creative flow. You fill in predefined cells instead of shaping things together – the affected never become the involved.
ChangeMaker: measures are worked out together and in real time, visible to all.
Seeing the joint effect
Excel makes neither your own nor the collective impact visible. Self-efficacy and collective efficacy stay hidden.
ChangeMaker: visualizes your own impact and the interplay of everyone toward the overall goal.
Being efficient
Excel is no shared, robust source of data. Error-prone and lost in version chaos – it creates friction instead of felt effectiveness.
ChangeMaker: a reliable single source of truth with automatic reporting instead of manual work.
Managing negative emotions
Excel has nothing that takes away fear. You cannot see that others are pulling their weight, and in doubt you stay alone – uncertainty grows rather than shrinks.
ChangeMaker: makes it visible that everyone is pulling together, and moves people into action through nudges – which lowers fear.
Being well led
Excel fosters neither competence nor benevolent leadership. It gives leaders no overview to prepare, give earned praise or fair feedback – leadership happens outside the spreadsheet, or not at all.
ChangeMaker: delivers an audience-appropriate, holistic overview. Leaders inform themselves in advance and radiate competence; the data lets them praise, give fair feedback and spot development opportunities – the leader is enabled to act with good intent.
The reason is simple arithmetic: near-zero effect times any number of participants stays zero. That is why an Excel-run program lands in the bottom quartile – at 40% instead of 84% of the plan delivered. The speed effect that everything hinges on only appears once the seven experiences are actively shaped. That is exactly what a tool like ChangeMaker does – a spreadsheet fundamentally cannot.
08
Exactly the tool the top quartile needs.
McKinsey names what top-quartile execution demands: a dedicated transformation infrastructure under a CTO, a disciplined weekly cadence, granular performance management (site by site, asset by asset, product by product) and a single reliable source of data.
And ChangeMaker pays into every single one of the nine best practices – here practice by practice, with the concrete features.
Set the highest ambition
Visible goals anchor the ambition in the structure of the business; the PerformanceMap® maps the whole system, dashboards show the gap between ambition and actuals.
Visible goals · PerformanceMap® · Dashboards
Align leadership
Goals, levers and priorities are worked out jointly by the leadership team, visualized – and announced that way: that creates commitment instead of apparent alignment.
Joint goal-setting · Visualization · Dashboards
Change story
Links measures, KPIs and goals into a comprehensible “why”; the presentation view with action titles tells the progress story on real data, visible to all.
Linked goals · Presentation view · Action titles
Line ownership
Every initiative has a clear owner and their team in the line. In their workbench they find everything they need: guidance, workspace, feedback, chat, automatic reporting.
Workbench · Guidance · Feedback & chat · automatic reporting
Health & capabilities
Builds project-management skills, understanding of project rules and more in place, on the job – instead of academic trainings whose effect evaporates immediately.
Training on real data · digital tutor · in-place guidance
Incentives
Contributions are visible and recognized; chat, notes and reviews give leaders the basis to praise in an informed way and give fair feedback – social recognition as the engine.
Visible contributions · Chat & notes · Reviews
Dedicated infrastructure (CTO)
The platform is the chief transformation officer's cockpit: automatic reporting, low-threshold analytics and AI features show where to challenge and where to escalate.
Automatic reporting · Analytics · AI features
Weekly cadence
Gantt with dependencies and overdues, KPI plan/actuals per period, initiatives by phase, nudges (“fill in the KPI”, “run the review”) – the rhythm becomes fact-based and visible.
Gantt · KPI periods · Nudges · Events/Kanban
Single source of truth
All data in one system; the Excel plug-in and Teams integration connect existing tools instead of creating silos; a shared language via categories, templates and confidence levels.
Consolidation · Excel plug-in · Teams · GraphQL
This is how the bankable plan turns into impact fast enough – to fund the strategic repositioning.
Efficiency and broad, effective participation shorten the path from plan to delivered impact. Exactly this speed advantage is the money that pays for the rebuild.
09
Fast enough – even under earnings pressure.
Where there is least time, speed of rollout matters most. Where classic enterprise software takes months – and transformations, as experience shows, fail not on the idea but in execution – ChangeMaker is productive within days.
Carried by training on the real data, videos and a digital tutor – four standard steps:
- 01
Upload data
Existing measures and KPIs flow in – no sheet of paper is left behind.
- 02
Customize measures
Tailor templates to your situation – through our customizers, included in the price.
- 03
Train teams
On real data, with videos and a digital tutor – adoption from day one.
- 04
Build reporting
In parallel with ongoing work – without interrupting operations.
10 days
to productive use when all four steps are run – fewer steps, faster still.
In days, not months.
10
The mandatory questions: solved.
Sensitive production, site and financial data demand solid answers to the security and compliance questions – before there is any talk of benefit. With ChangeMaker they are settled: certified security management, SSO/SAML and MFA, redundant hosting within the German legal domain.
11
That sounded like a lot. What you need to remember: nothing.
You do not need to know any of these mechanisms to benefit from them. ChangeMaker takes care of it – in the background, reliably.
Behavioral design that simply works
Optimized templates and built-in behavioral design make sure the seven experiences come about – without anyone having to trigger or remember them.
Smart decisions included
Our customizers make the good up-front decisions – included in the price. On request our consultants keep an eye on progress, impact and issues, and inform you or step in.
Frequently asked questions
What does “Perform to Transform” mean?
Running two agendas at once: lifting earnings and cash from today's business (performance transformation) and using exactly those funds to pay for the strategic repositioning of portfolio, assets and footprint. Performance funds the repositioning – whoever waits for strategic clarity before tackling performance loses cash, time and room to act.
Why is the crisis of Europe's chemical industry structural rather than cyclical?
Because the drivers do not swing back: radically intensified competition, above all from China, higher input costs, regulation, and a broad downturn in customer industries such as automotive. The symptoms are structural too – the total shareholder return of European chemical companies was negative from Dec 2022 to Dec 2025, announced plant closures have increased six-fold since 2022 (around 9% of production capacity), and capacity utilization sits around 7 percentage points below its long-run average.
What is the speed effect in transformations?
McKinsey data on chemical-industry transformations shows that top-quartile programs convert 84% of their bankable plan – the value potential made concrete through initiatives and an execution plan – into delivered impact by week 78, versus 40% in the bottom quartile. That is more than twice the impact after around 18 months, and the speed comes from nine best practices, not from more ambition on paper.
What are the 3C and the seven experiences?
The 3C – Concerns, Capabilities, Coordination – are the three fundamental barriers of every change: do people want it, can they do it, and are they pulling in the same direction. They are activated through seven canonical experiences, from belonging & recognition to being well led. The framework, developed by Principia Mentis, explains why the nine McKinsey best practices work and provides the test of whether they do.
How quickly is ChangeMaker productive?
In days, not months. The standard rollout has four steps – upload data, customize measures, train teams and build reporting – and reaches productive use in around 10 days when all four are run. Fewer steps, faster still. That speed is what counts when a program runs under earnings pressure.
The market figures cited come from the third-party studies referenced below and relate to the periods and samples stated in each case. The 3C model and the seven experiences are a framework by Principia Mentis. Statements on rollout time and scope of features are indicative.
Sources
- McKinsey & Company, A dual transformation agenda for Europe’s chemicals industry, July 2026 (Exhibit 1: top quartile ~2× the impact after ~18 months). mckinsey.com
- Cefic, Facts and Figures of the European chemical industry 2025, Dec 2, 2025 (capacity utilization). cefic.org
- Cefic, Chemical plant closures rate surges six-fold in Europe since 2022, Jan 28, 2026. cefic.org
- McKinsey analysis based on S&P Global, 2026 (total shareholder return of European chemical companies). mckinsey.com
- 3C model & seven canonical experiences: a framework by Principia Mentis / ChangeMaker. changemaker.ai
Next step
Perform to Transform – on your own case.
In a short demo we show you, on real data structures, how ChangeMaker translates the nine best practices into lived experiences – and how quickly your bankable plan becomes delivered impact.