RUDOLF RODENBURG
SENIOR STRATEGY AND TRANSFORMATION DIRECTOR
From direction to organisation-wide action
I help leadership teams set direction,
then make it work: through stragegy, brand and culture, into daily practice.
British Airways · BKW Energy (Switzerland) · Novo Nordisk Pharma · Aimia (Canada) · Euro Pool System Logistics (EU) · SOS Children's Villages
When direction needs to become shared action
Organisations bring me in when something has to change: a shifting situation, a hard choice, or a direction that isn't working yet.
– The market is shifting and the current direction no longer fits.
– Leadership needs to look beyond old assumptions and make hard choices about where to focus.
– A strategy exists but hasn't translated into priorities, measures or daily action.
– Brand or culture no longer reflects the strategy, or guides decisions and behaviour.
– Growth, repositioning or integration calls for one shared direction.
– Unresolved tensions or difficult conversations are slowing decisions and progress.
The starting point differs. The need is the same: a sound direction, made to work.
From understanding to action
UNDERSTAND + CHOOSE
– Look outward and inward: markets, customers, stakeholders, competitors, technology and organisational capabilities.
– Challenge assumptions and decide where to focus, including what to stop doing. These conversations are hard to have internally.
– I help make them possible, so the organisation reaches well informed choices, even the difficult ones.
ENGAGE + IMPLEMENT
– Translate direction into strategies, priorities, measures and clear responsibilities, so people know exactly what changes for them.
"– Build real ownership through participation. People who help shape a direction stay engaged, defend it, and implement it well.
– Put it into practice through brand, culture, customer experience and behaviour, until it genuinely shows up in daily decisions.
Whenever I begin a mandate, I may not know the solution yet. But I already know what it must do: help people decide, and work differently, in practice.
How brand guides decisions
Business strategy sets direction. Brand strategy translates it into a promise one that guides product, marketing, partnerships, culture, and even how the story gets told to investors.
That promise rests on a brand's DNA: the beliefs, personality and principles that make it distinctive, and the connection between what people care about and what the organisation can credibly offer.
Three connected areas of work
Strategy, brand and culture are usually managed apart. In reality, each shapes the others — and a mandate that begins in one still has to work with the whole.
STRATEGY + EXECUTION
I help organisations read what's changing: markets, customers, competitors, capabilities, and make the hard choices that follow.
Direction becomes priorities, measures and clear responsibilities: not an ambition, but a basis for deciding what to do differently.
BRAND STRATEGY +
ACTIVATION
I use brand as a management tool, not just an identity.
It translates business direction into a promise that guides decisions across marketing, sales, product, culture and communication: strengthening preference, trust and long-term value.
CULTURE + ORGANISATIONAL ALIGNMENT
Strategy isn't real until people understand it, see their role in it, and act on it.
Through participation and dialogue across functions, levels and geographies, I build the ownership people need to apply it well, instead of just agree with it.
How I work
Strategy does not begin with a presentation, or end with one
Grounded
in reality
My role is not to present a theoretical answer and leave the organisation to determine whether it can be implemented.
I work with the people involved to develop something that can be understood, applied and used in their everyday reality.
Knowledge from across the organisation
Structured involvement draws on knowledge from customers, markets and operations.
It reveals obstacles early and builds the real ownership that turns agreement into action.
Building lasting capability
I train the people who support implementation, not just those doing it directly.
That way, translating strategy and brand into daily work becomes a capability the organisation keeps."
Built with, and owned by the organisation.
Selected work
Different situations, one connected approach
BKW (Energy, Switzerland)
Energy and utilities · Strategy, brand and organisational transformation
BKW was preparing for the opening of the Swiss energy market, and needed to become more competitive and customer-focused. What began as a request for a new logo became a full transformation mandate. I led the strategic work, developing guiding principles that shaped design, communication and behaviour, introduced to the organisation's top 500 managers.
Aimia / Groupe Aeroplan (Canada)
Loyalty, data and marketing services · Canada · Integration and shared direction
Following acquisitions and mergers in Canada, The US, UK, Italy and Chile, Groupe Aeroplan needed to bring different businesses and cultures together under one identity.
I contributed to the research, positioning and naming work, drawing on 42 stakeholder interviews and input from over 100 employees.
Aimia launched in October 2011, uniting roughly 3,800 employees across 20 countries.
Euro Pool System
European fresh supply chain, reusable packaging · Strategy rollout and organisational alignment
Euro Pool System needed to turn its strategic direction into coordinated action across Europe.
I led the development of one-page strategy and execution plans and brand application workshops across all regions and most functions. This connected direction to daily decisions and behaviour.
SOS Children's Villages International
Global NGO, 130+ countries, 30,000+ employees · Brand strategy and corporate leadership
As Global Communications Director and head of one of five global functions in a 130+ country, 30,000+ employee matrix organisation, I led the global brand strategy and was part of the leadership team shaping corporate strategy.
A participatory process gathered input described as 2,000 voices from across the organisation, building one shared brand direction across very different local realities."
A career across the complete strategic arc
I studied Business Economics in Groningen, then built my career from the ground up: advertising and communication strategy, then brand strategy, then corporate strategy and organisational alignment.
That progression matters. Corporate strategy shapes brand strategy. Brand strategy shapes communication, experience and behaviour. Having worked across that whole chain, I know what a strategic direction actually needs to survive in daily reality.
My perspective has also been shaped by working across different countries and business cultures, including two extended periods in London between 1997 and 2013.
I've built and led work with people across dozens of countries, from a 130-country NGO matrix to advisory and campaign work spanning Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and India.
Operating at that scale doesn't really need me to adjust to it. It's how I already work.
And I'm just as much at home with a smaller, locally-focused organisation looking for a fresh, outside perspective.
That fluency becomes a practical asset whenever an organisation is building a relationship with a market it doesn't know as well as it thinks.
Canadian companies turning more deliberately toward Europe are one example.
Understanding how a market thinks and decides matters more than simply translating for it.
This is where the fluency comes from:
real projects, real markets, real people.