Islington Group
Heading 3
Wholesale / Construction Supply
Role Filled:
Executive Director of Strategy & Execution and Group CMO (Islington Group); COO (Boundaryline)
The
Challenge:
Five family directors, two generations, and a group getting ready for permanent CEO leadership.
The Outcome:
A strategic leadership layer that set the group up for its next stage
Preparing a family group to appoint its first CEO
Wholesale / Construction Supply
Executive Director of Strategy & Execution and Group CMO (Islington Group); COO (Boundaryline)
Five family directors, two generations, and a group getting ready for permanent CEO leadership.
A strategic leadership layer that set the group up for its next stage
Role Filled:
The Challenge:
The Outcome:
Preparing a family group to appoint its first CEO
Wholesale / Construction Supply
Executive Director of Strategy & Execution and Group CMO (Islington Group); COO (Boundaryline)
Role Filled:
Five family directors, two generations, and a group getting ready for permanent CEO leadership.
A strategic leadership layer that set the group up for its next stage
The Challenge:
The Outcome:
Islington Group is a founder-led, family-owned business in the construction supply sector, with several operating companies beneath it, including Boundaryline. Five family members are active across the group as directors, spanning two generations, each a capable leader in their own right. The group's goal was to prepare the business to appoint a permanent, full-time CEO in future, whether from within the family or externally, and to make sure it was running smoothly and communicating well as it did so.
Background:
We started by consulting each family member individually, then bringing them together as a group, to agree the kind of leader they were looking for, what that person would be accountable for, and what success would look like. The real challenge was aligning five sets of expectations without closing off any individual's opportunity to grow within the business. That alignment, handled carefully, was as important as the appointment itself.
Understanding The Challenge
The first role was an Executive Director of Strategy and Execution, brought in at a senior level to help the directors get each business unit delivering against its three-year plan. The mandate went beyond leading change projects. It included coaching and mentoring the individual owners on their own business units, so that in time one of them could be ready to step into the CEO role. While that search was underway we identified a need for senior marketing leadership, which became a group-level CMO appointment across all the companies rather than within one. We appointed the Executive Director of Strategy & execution, and soon after he started, a clear operational need emerged at Boundaryline, which we filled with a COO.
The Brief
Background
Islington Group is a founder-led, family-owned business in the construction supply sector, with several operating companies beneath it, including Boundaryline. Five family members are active across the group as directors, spanning two generations, each a capable leader in their own right. The group's goal was to prepare the business to appoint a permanent, full-time CEO in future, whether from within the family or externally, and to make sure it was running smoothly and communicating well as it did so.
Understanding
the Challenge
We started by consulting each family member individually, then bringing them together as a group, to agree the kind of leader they were looking for, what that person would be accountable for, and what success would look like. The real challenge was aligning five sets of expectations without closing off any individual's opportunity to grow within the business. That alignment, handled carefully, was as important as the appointment itself.
The Brief
The first role was an Executive Director of Strategy and Execution, brought in at a senior level to help the directors get each business unit delivering against its three-year plan. The mandate went beyond leading change projects. It included coaching and mentoring the individual owners on their own business units, so that in time one of them could be ready to step into the CEO role. While that search was underway we identified a need for senior marketing leadership, which became a group-level CMO appointment across all the companies rather than within one. We appointed the Executive Director of Strategy & execution, and soon after he started, a clear operational need emerged at Boundaryline, which we filled with a COO.
What They Achieved
Each appointment brought experience from businesses beyond the group's own scale, while also having worked through periods of growth, so each understood a founder-led business rather than only a corporate one. The group now has strategic, marketing and operational leadership in place, the directors are supported rather than stretched, and the business is being positioned, deliberately and on its own terms, for a future CEO appointment.
Each appointment brought experience from businesses beyond the group's own scale, while also having worked through periods of growth, so each understood a founder-led business rather than only a corporate one. The group now has strategic, marketing and operational leadership in place, the directors are supported rather than stretched, and the business is being positioned, deliberately and on its own terms, for a future CEO appointment.