Most transformations don't fail.
They fade.
For almost thirty years, the transformation failure rate has held near 70%. Not because plans were weak or people weren't committed, but because most programs are built to be sustained through effort rather than embedded into how the organization actually works
OE Partners is built for the long term: we partner with you end to end, design your organization and stay to embed the change and upskill your leaders, so the new way of working becomes the path of least resistance, not another program to keep alive
Most firms design the strategy or implement it.
We support you through all of it, end to end.
A boutique advisory firm specializing in operating model design, organization design, and workforce transformation. We draw the future-state design, stay to make it real, and upskill your leaders to run it. We build a long-term partnership accountable for what happens after launch, not just at it. And you can bring us in at any stage, whether you are shaping a design, launching change, or resetting a transformation already underway and off track.
We design.
Operating models, organization structures, governance, and decision rights that fit your strategy and your people, not a template. The same caliber of design our partners led at the world’s largest firms.
We embed.
Then we stay. Our embedment approach redesigns the underlying mechanics, that form the basis for how your organization runs day-to-day, so the new ways of working are the "path of least resistance" and results compound instead of eroding.
We upskill.
We coach and upskill your leaders as we go, transferring the judgment our partners earned leading operations, HR, organization design, and leadership practices at major corporations and consulting firms, so ownership stays with your team.
Landing the first reorganization in a generation
An organization was reorganizing for the first time in over 20 years. Structural change was straightforward to design but difficult to operationalize, requiring thousands of employees to adopt new ways of working while performance management, team transitions, and leadership capabilities all shifted at once.
Reviving a transformation stalled in implementation
An ambitious transformation had stalled. It ran longer than planned and was missing its financial, workforce, and performance targets. Decision-making had blurred, operating models had fragmented, and an overly collaborative culture slowed progress. The effort needed realigned priorities, stronger governance, and renewed focus to deliver in its second half.
End-to-end transformation while integrating AI
The mandate was to go dramatically faster on every front at once: bring outsourced capabilities back in house, redesign the operating model and org structure, rebuild talent strategy and succession planning, and prepare the whole company for AI. Doing so required a multi-pronged, complex approach.
Boutique by design.
After decades advising large and mid-sized organizations, our founder kept seeing the same pattern. Companies would invest enormous money and energy in transformation, work with excellent strategy firms, and still watch results erode within a few years. The gap was not in the strategy. It was in everything after: the embedding, the capability building, the sustained leadership attention that big-firm engagement models are not built to provide.
OE Partners was founded in 2024 on a different model: a long-term partnership, not a project. Our partners have led operations, HR, organization design, and leadership practices at major corporations and consulting firms, and we bring that judgment as a seamless extension of your team, end to end through the full arc of change. We stay boutique on purpose, senior people do the work, and we upskill your leaders so the capability stays with you. Our model is built to be sustainable, efficient, and cost-effective.
“We do not believe in forcing a set plan or in appearance over substance. We measure ourselves on whether the change is still working long after we are gone. Your success is not just our goal. It is our promise.”
Sustainment holds change in place.
Embedment makes it the path of least resistance.
Most programs try to defend a new operating model against decay with dashboards, oversight, and leadership reminders. But organizations are not machines that can be retooled and left to run. Their real mechanics, how budgets are set, who approves spending, what gets someone promoted, keep operating regardless of the transformation. If those mechanics still favor the old way, the organization drifts back the moment leadership pressure shifts.
Embedment redesigns those mechanics so the new behaviors become the rational default. When all four of the elements below are present, the new operating model is no longer something to be sustained: it self-corrects and propagates on its own.
So when results stall, the system, not the people, is what has to change. Designing your operating model well is not boxes and lines or cost cuts, it is systems engineering in service of complex strategic goals.
Leadership
People watch what leaders do, not what they say, especially under stress. Leadership standards get wired into reviews, promotions, and pay, so they hold when attention moves on.
Rules
Decision rights, approval thresholds, and planning cadences, written and unwritten. The signal that a rule is embedded is simple: peers enforce it, not managers.
Purpose
A decision-making compass for when the playbook runs out. It lets people in different parts of the business make different but aligned calls on the same edge case. Speed without chaos.
Community
New employees learn what peers actually do before they learn any policy. Norms shift through social proof, not enforcement, which is why sustainment programs can never move them.
If every dashboard, communication, and oversight activity disappeared tomorrow, would the new behaviors still be the rational choice? If no, you have a sustainment program that can erode. If yes, you have redesigned the system, and it holds the change for you.
With AI, restructuring pressure, and shrinking budgets, organizations can no longer afford change that has to be redone every three years. The 70% failure rate is not destiny. It is a symptom of designing for the wrong objective.
Three ways we help, from design through embedment.
Operating Model & Organization Design
Our differentiator is systems thinking. We do not just redraw boxes and lines or chase cost reductions, we engineer how the whole organization works, its structure, decisions, processes, and incentives, so it can achieve complex strategic goals.
Explore this practice →We treat your operating model as a system, the design elements that bridge strategy and execution: governance, decision rights, performance, structure, talent, tools and platforms, delivery model, processes, and workplaces, each intentionally architected.
We intentionally rewire this system to reflect the new way you want work to get done to support your strategy and goals.
Transformation Embedment
This is our signature work. Most partners step away once the design is done and the program launches, which is exactly when embedment begins. We stay for that stretch, shaping the culture, capabilities, incentives, and leadership behaviors that turn new ways of working into simply how your organization operates. Embedment unfolds over the year or two after launch, and we meet you there for as much of it as you need.
Explore this practice →Built upon a deep body of research and practitioner experience spanning organizational psychology, behavioral and decision-making science, change management, and leadership, distilled into a library of initiatives with guidance on how to sequence, communicate, and reinforce the new ways of working.
We draw on a large proprietary portfolio of proven initiatives, so your plan starts from what already works and is tailored to your organization.
Workforce Transformation & Capability Building
Transformations succeed when people at every level can do the new work. We design and deliver capability-building programs, leadership development, and workforce transition strategies that prepare your organization for what is next.
Explore this practice →Grounded in adult-learning, leadership development, and behavior-change research, we build capability in the flow of real work and prepare your leaders to carry it forward. We focus on changing behavior in the field, where it actually matters, not just in the classroom.
Our team draws on deep experience building custom capability and workforce-transformation programs, tailored to a wide range of transformations across levels and industries.
Across all three practices, the people who scope your work are the people who do it. We built a sustainable model around deep expertise and a practical, high-performing edge, the caliber of the big firms, without the overhead that prices them out of the work that matters most.
Who we typically begin our partnerships with
Wherever you are in the journey, at the start, mid-launch, or resetting a transformation that has stalled, you can bring us in at the stage where you need us most.
CHROs & transformation leaders
You own a major transformation: a new operating model, a restructuring, a post-merger integration, or a shift in how work gets done.
Private equity portfolio companies
Value creation plans depend on organizational execution. We help portfolio company leadership design the organization the thesis requires, build the leadership capacity to run it, and embed the operating disciplines that protect returns through exit.
CEOs & boards
You need senior transformation expertise but not a 40-person consulting team. We bring the judgment of firm-trained partners in a right-sized, high-trust model.
Partners who have led operations, HR, and org design practices at the world’s top firms.
Caitlin Hewes
Caitlin is a recognized expert and published thought leader in organizational transformation, writing regularly for Forbes on operating model design, workforce transformation, and why change fails to stick. Previously an Expert Associate Partner in McKinsey & Company’s Organization Practice, she has led major transformations for Fortune 250 companies and family-owned businesses across agriculture, industrials, financial services, and healthcare. Her expertise spans operating model design, governance, decision-making processes, and organizational health. Caitlin holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, from UC Berkeley.
Ashley Goulding
Ashley is a leader in organizational effectiveness, change management, and workforce development across manufacturing, energy, and technology. As Director of Organization Effectiveness at Novelis, she built the company’s global change management framework and led worldwide engagement and capability programs. At McKinsey & Company, she advised Fortune 300 executives on operational excellence and cultural transformation, contributing to more than $600M in efficiency and performance improvements, and helped launch McKinsey’s Digital Capability Centers in North America. Ashley holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Georgia Tech.
Mark Redgrave
Mark is a senior executive in organizational effectiveness and business transformation with more than 20 years of experience across the UK, Sweden, New Zealand, and the US. As Chief Transformation Officer at The Warehouse Group, he delivered a 20% productivity uplift and 3x faster time-to-market; at Spark New Zealand he led operating model redesigns that drove significant productivity and revenue gains. He also serves as a Senior Advisor at McKinsey & Company on global transformation work.
Christopher Copeland
Christopher is an executive consultant in strategic, operational, and financial transformation across utilities, logistics, higher education, and the social sector. As an Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, he led initiatives delivering more than $100M in cash flow improvement for a major electric utility and $40M in EBIT gains for a logistics client. He holds dual master’s degrees from MIT with a background in nuclear engineering and policy.
Emily Mendelsohn
Emily specializes in leadership development, organizational change, and enterprise AI adoption, helping large organizations put new tools and ways of working into practice at scale. Most recently an Engagement Manager at Valence, an AI leadership-coaching company, she partnered with Fortune 500 talent leaders to drive adoption and measurable behavior change. She was previously an Associate in McKinsey’s People and Organizational Performance practice and holds a degree in chemical and biological engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Philip Cimbak
Phil is an experienced leader in operating model design, organizational effectiveness, and large-scale transformations, helping organizations redesign how they work to improve performance and build future-ready capabilities. His work during an 8 year career at McKinsey & Company includes identifying $500M+ in operational efficiencies, modernizing talent and workforce models, and leading executive forums and capability-building programs for Fortune 500 companies.
John Larson
John is an AI and technology executive with more than 15 years of experience scaling AI product portfolios, including delivering over $40M in new net revenue within a single year. He works with CEOs and CTOs to align AI strategy with business goals and brings deep experience in AI research, product architecture, and change management across North America, Europe, and Latin America. John holds a master’s and B.A. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA.
Our thinking on what really drives organizations who deliver
Most Transformations Fail Because The Way They’re Run Hasn’t Changed
The 70% transformation failure rate has been a fixture of business research for nearly three decades, and it has not moved. The problem is not the strategies. It is that the operational system running the transformation has not changed.
Let's talk about what you're trying to change.
Whether you are scoping a transformation, mid-flight and worried about what happens after launch, or looking for senior leadership capacity, we would welcome the conversation.