Transformation Accelerator

Bring the transformation you are accountable for. Over 90 days, identify the human and organizational bottleneck holding it back, and we help you clear it.

Fully virtual. Cohort begins Wednesday, November 4, 10.00 to 11:30am ET (16.00 to 17:30 CET). Applications close October 8th. If you are planning to apply, hold that time now.

8 spots at $8,000 for the founding cohort.
One participant per organization.

You have the strategy. That was never the hard part. 

Maybe the transformation was decided above you, with no consultation, and now you are the one accountable for making it real. You can see the merits. The organization underneath you is depleted and quietly resentful at exactly the moment it needs everyone's best thinking.

Or maybe the pilot ran well for a year and never became how the organization actually operates, and the technology went fully live while the work underneath it stayed the same.

Either way, the same questions get reopened in every quarterly meeting, commitments loosen the moment people leave the room, and you are carrying the transformation while everyone around you stays busy.

Another strategy session will not change that. Neither will more communication about why the change matters.

What most organizations need isn't more leadership development. It's a much higher probability that the transformation that actually matters succeeds. 

When a good strategy is stalled, the problem is usually adaptive. The work requires learning, often around unresolved loss, de-conflicting competing commitments, or simply how to have the difficult conversations.  

In a large U.S. transit authority, KONU worked with managers whose instinct was to treat recurring safety and coordination problems as technical failures. The work was diagnosing the system conditions underneath them. Participants describe going back into cross-departmental relationships differently, asking better questions and actively managing the losses involved when they communicate a change.

In a global hospitality company, more than 1,800 managers across 52 cohorts have used the same approach on enterprise-wide shifts that cut across functions and geographies, which is where most of the difficulty in a transformation actually sits.

In a world-class research organization, scientists used the same methodology to expand their scientific impact through better collaboration and delegation.

The Accelerator brings that experience into a focused 90-day format built around one consequential transformation. 

A 90-day, disciplined process to find and clear the specific bottleneck blocking your transformation, through coaching, peer case work, Adaptive Leadership practice, and a small set of AI tools that cut the preparation work rather than adding more content to absorb.

Weeks 1 to 2: Transformation Diagnostic. We map your bottleneck together, including the stakeholders, the authority dynamics, the losses underneath the resistance, and the behaviors keeping the system in place. 

The 90-Day Bottleneck Contract. A specific, named bottleneck and a shared definition of "materially moved" by Day 90. 

12 weeks of focused support.

• Every week: a 90-minute cohort working session focused on live transformation cases. 

• Every other week: a 60-minute application session, alternating between individual coaching and a small peer Transformation Board. 

• Between sessions: asynchronous access to your KONU coach by email to help you interpret what happened, sharpen your next move, and stay in motion. 

• Plus: office hours when a particularly consequential intervention is approaching.

One special working session with Tim O’Brien, applying Adaptive Leadership directly to participants’ live transformation cases. 

A Transformation Progress Scorecard, customized to your case, tracking objective indicators, binary milestones, and whether the human system is actually shifting. 

Plan on roughly two hours a week beyond the sessions. Almost none of it is assignments. It is preparing and having the stakeholder conversations, testing interventions, and reviewing what happened, inside the transformation you are already leading.

Michael Koehler. Founded bilingual charter schools, spent years failing to change the German education system, teaches leadership at Harvard Graduate School of Education, focusses on clients in science, and government.

If your bottleneck still hasn't materially cleared by Day 90, we keep working with you at no additional cost until it does. 

To qualify, you need to attend at least 10 of the 12 core cohort sessions, participate in the agreed coaching and application sessions, complete the diagnostic, and execute the interventions you and KONU agree are required. 

This guarantee covers the agreed bottleneck, not the full transformation. 

This is likely a fit for you if: 

• A real transformation is underway now. (this is not a program for people with a general interest in leadership development only) 

• At least $500,000 in economic or strategic value is at stake over the next 12 months 

• The transformation is part of your role expectations, performance assessment or official goals  

• You have access to resources, and the people who need to be at the table 

• What's in your way is human: trust, competing priorities, unresolved loss, human resistance or a system avoiding the real conversation. If the blocker is purely technical, this isn't the right fit. 

The founding cohorT

Eight transformations, eight participants.

Small on purpose. We’re bringing KONU’s existing transformation work into a more focused, measurable 90-day methodology. The founding cohort will help us further refine how we diagnose, measure, and accelerate transformation, building on capabilities KONU has developed with leaders and organizations over many years. 

As a founding participant, you’ll receive direct access to KONU’s senior team, the full Transformation Accelerator methodology, and a voice in how the approach evolves. 

In return, we ask for candid feedback, participation in outcome measurement, and openness to an anonymized case study if the results warrant it. 

When: Wednesdays, 10-11:30am ET / 4-5:30pm CET, beginning November 4. Application sessions land on alternating Fridays, 10-11am ET. The cohort takes a break for Thanksgiving week and two weeks over the December holidays, running through mid-February. 

If you're applying, block this recurring slot before you submit. The 8 people we admit need to show up for it consistently, that's part of what we're actually looking for. 

QUESTIONS PEOPLE ASK

I do not have time for this. The sessions are 90 minutes a week plus 60 minutes every other week, and the work between them happens inside the transformation you are already responsible for. If the transformation is stalled, you are already spending more than that on it.

I need internal approval or a purchase order. Say so in the application. We can provide a scope description, invoice against a PO, and speak with your sponsor or procurement directly.

What if we identify a different bottleneck than the one I named? That happens, and it is often the most valuable thing that happens. We re-contract around the real one.

What if I have to miss sessions? Ten of twelve is the threshold for the guarantee. Sessions are recorded for participants only, and your coach will catch you up on your own case.

Can two of us come from the same organization? Not in the founding cohort. One transformation per organization keeps the cases distinct and lets people speak candidly.

Ninety days is enough time to find the real bottleneck behind your transformation and start moving it.