Client story: Seco Tools
In this Organizational Development partnership, Seco Tools embraced a learn-it-all mindset and unlocked impact across the organization
With a presence in more than 75 countries and almost 100 years of history to its name, Seco Tools is a leading global provider of metal cutting solutions.
Seco chose Hult Ashridge Executive Education as its Organizational Development (OD) partner to address the business problems of growth and competitiveness – and enable the organization to lead its own transformation.
x3
pipeline for integrated offers tripled
+35%
growth in year-on-year sustainable solutions revenue
82%
of leaders felt confident facilitating transformation conversations (+24%)
+14 NPS
Employee Net Promoter Score (from 11 to 25)
Seco Tools was facing an industry inflection point driven by digital disruption, sustainability imperatives, and shifting customer needs. Without decisive action, the company risked being reduced to a component supplier with the emergence of lower-cost competitors in a traditional market.
Seco was outgrowing the logic that had once made it successful and, to adapt, a shift in attention was needed. Governance rhythms pulled leaders toward what felt urgent and controllable – crowding out the work that builds tomorrow.
The challenge was to reconfigure how the organization worked as a system so that innovation, collaboration, and learning could happen in real time, across boundaries. A shift was needed from heroic to collective leadership and sense-making, and from a reliance on technical excellence alone to adaptive capability.
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“We needed to get away from pure product sales and find another way to create value for our customers. That meant shifting from selling components to solving problems – building solutions around our customers’ needs and positioning sustainability as a commercial advantage"
– Stefan Steenstrup, CEO, Seco
From the outset, it was clear this would not be a traditional leadership program, but an OD partnership – focused on building the organization’s capacity to lead its own transformation.
Rather than working at the level of individuals, the focus shifted to the collective: how teams operate, how leaders make sense of change together, and how the wider system supports progress.
Early in the journey, a process of co-inquiry surfaced key tensions. While ambition for growth was strong, leadership attention was often drawn to short-term priorities, with limited shared practices for connecting strategy to execution. Structural barriers and low psychological safety made open challenge difficult, and teams were often working in isolation.
Transformation would succeed only if strategy, change enablement, and team capability were developed together – as a cohesive organizational movement.
We had three key objectives:
Develop a global leadership culture and learning community
Develop individual and team leadership capabilities
‘Be’ the transformation – a social movement developing the capabilities for Seco to lead their own transformation
“Our role was to mirror, provoke, and support the organization to see itself – so Seco could lead its own change, rather than risk dependence on others.”
The focus was on strengthening how the organization learns and leads in real time. Space was created for more open dialogue and shared ownership, with teams becoming the primary vehicle for driving change. Learning was embedded into live business challenges, making reflection and adaptation part of the day-to-day.
Work began with the Senior Management Group (SMG) in four steps focusing on leading self, strategy, teams, and collaborative innovation to release Seco’s potential. The SMG then engaged the top 80 leaders to co-create their transformation journey, building a global learning community.
“The intention was for transformation conversations to take place inside the business – in leadership meetings, customer reviews, even plant visits – so learning was inseparable from work."
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Eighteen months into the partnership, Seco had launched more than a dozen pilot projects. And after two years, more tangible shifts emerged:
Stronger strategic dialogue
+25%
Increase in time devoted to transformation on senior management agendas
Better collaboration
67%
Organizational Health Index collaboration scores rose by
Early business outcomes
+375%
Organizational Health Index collaboration scores rose by 9%
25%
Increase in time devoted to transformation on senior management agendas
67%
Organizational Health Index collaboration scores rose by 9%
+375%
Growth in new solution-based commercial models
The transformation is most visible in how Seco creates value, with a shift from component sales to solution-based partnerships built around collaboration and customer needs. As teams began working differently, business results followed, with a growing pipeline of integrated offers and landmark contracts that would not have been possible under the previous model.
Sustainability has also become a major driver of growth rather than a parallel agenda. It is now embedded into customer propositions, shaping how solutions are designed and delivered, and strengthening Seco’s position as a strategic partner focused on long-term value creation. The company has achieved a 55% deduction in Scope 1 & 2 emissions and a 172% increase in buyback material.
At the same time, the organization has reconfigured how it works. Leadership has shifted from individual expertise to collective capability, with teams taking greater ownership of transformation. Reflection and dialogue are increasingly built into how work gets done, enabling more open challenge, stronger collaboration, and better alignment between strategy and execution.
CEO Stefan Steenstrup also highlights transformative shifts in Seco’s external collaboration: “We went from being an island within our parent company to a collaborative partner within that ecosystem. We went from inventing everything inside to actually being able to co-create with external partners.”
True partnership is not acting for another organization, but with them. The Seco–Hult Ashridge partnership is one that shifted mindsets and practices. By the final year, Seco was leading its own learning cycles.
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“We started seeing conversations shift – from reporting what happened to exploring what’s possible”
– Silvia Ciceri, VP for HR, Seco
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