A trusted partner in building resilient organizations that achieve distinctive, substantial, and lasting performance improvement.
Nathan Holt has driven more than 25 company and division turnarounds throughout his career—leveraging enterprise strategy, leadership development, organizational excellence, supply chain management, continuous improvement, and a passion for developing people, culture and organizational systems to identify billions in growth and untapped savings.
Nathan’s strategy career began at Accenture and Lean Horizons Consulting, where he delivered efficiency and stability for Fortune 500 companies undergoing growth and change. As a management consultant, he worked with the following clients in their pursuit of excellence: Acuity Brands, AT&T, Andersen Windows, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Meyers Squib, Cingular Wireless, C&S Wholesale, Merck, Newell Brands (formerly Rubbermaid), Qwest, Stanley Black & Decker, Toro, Venator Group, Vivendi Universal, Wawa, and Walmart.
In the mid-2000s, Nathan’s in-house leadership helped Avery Dennison and Office Depot restore fiscal health, increase workforce resiliency, and turn around downward trending stock. Over the past decade, Nathan’s global transformative leadership at Shell helped the company transform to an agile, reimagined low-carbon company—regaining the industry lead in shareholder return and increasing people engagement and diversity. See more on the Shell story, here
Throughout Nathan’s career he supported mergers and acquisitions in internal and consulting capacities, working with private equity firms as well as strategic buyers—spanning across buying and selling areas. Highlights include partnering with The Carlyle Group for integration support, supporting Lean Horizons Consulting’s M&A integration services, supporting various corporate divisional divestures, and contributing to Shell’s integration of BG—a $70B deal.
Nathan’s focus today stretches beyond his successes at Shell—helping energy-industry companies and M&A partners build organizational resilience and excellence transformation for preservation and growth. As a transformation advisor, he partners with leaders to build the cultures and capabilities for results in performance today, and for continued improvement needs for tomorrow.
Nathan is a speaker, thought leader, advocate, and voice of organizational excellence within energy-industry events, networks, and associations.
Nathan holds an MBA in international business, a bachelor of science in industrial engineering, and is a Shingo (Organizational Excellence) Examiner. He was mentored early in his career by a couple of the most successful human-centered business transformation executives in the world, including the chief executive architect of the Danaher Business System and by the senior leaders responsible for bringing The Toyota Way culture to the Americas.
Danaher is a recipient of both the Shingo Prize and Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and is considered by many to be the nation’s best-run organization, with greater than 20% annual total shareholder return consistently for the past 30 years. Additionally, Danaher is famous for its M&A and Continuous Improvement capabilities. See more on the Danaher story
Toyota is recognized as a long-time industry leader and holds notoriety for being the world’s most studied management system based on the company’s unprecedented performance. Toyota’s management system nurtures a harmonic balance between human and business needs. See more on the Toyota story
Nathan’s work also reflects expertise gained from today’s foremost academic thought leaders, including MIT professors Steve Spears, Jim Womack, and Peter Senge, as well as Shigeo Shingo, Jeffrey Liker, and Mike Rothers. Each has influenced the management systems designed by Ultimate Performance.
The majority of the Fortune 100 companies Nathan has worked with have identified tremendous underrecognized power in their people.
Nathan brings three core principles of sustainable growth in his work helping companies build resilient organizations. Together, they see growth not only as quarterly shareholder returns, but inclusive of the unlimited potential that all people bring to the table.
Growing a business means employees are secure and growing, too.
Nathan is committed to helping close opportunity gaps through corporate diversity, equality, and inclusion—advancing DE&I from HR-centered initiatives to whole-organization ownership that integrates inclusion through real-world Continuous Improvement.
Most recently, Nathan drew on his own family’s multicultural composition, as well as the diversity found in Shell’s own workforce, to help reinforce Shell’s long-standing advancement of global inclusion.
While there, Shell became the subject of a Harvard Business School study on D&I, earned a 100% score in the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, and was recognized as a top employer in the Workplace Pride Global Benchmark Survey.
It’s not enough to turn a profit.
Today’s purpose-driven company identifies growth opportunities and secures outsized returns, while committing to the principles of ESG and balancing the needs of its stakeholders.
When only one stakeholder is winning, companies may see temporary gains, but compromise long-term viability.
Also, people want to be part of something worthwhile and get behind something they believe in.
Finally, customers and investors expect companies to behave ethically in how they treat people and the planet.
What enables a fraction of a sector’s organizations to create and deliver market value in a way that outperforms their peers?
Nathan believes it’s how they invest in their most precious asset, their people.
Indeed, the best organizations create environments where their people learn faster than anyone else. By doing so, they respond and adapt to changing situations more quickly than their competitors.
This unleashes a sustainable competitive advantage.
These organizations can quickly attain immense business results by removing barriers to growth early, efficiently, and effectively.
Click below to schedule a no-fee Discovery connect.
We connect to understand your organization’s challenges and opportunities, and to discuss approach options to achieve desired outcomes.
We agree on resources and focus areas for your organization’s UP transformation. Together, we make it happen.
