Why ThinqShift exists.

01 · Fifteen years ago

How much of it actually worked?

After twenty years working in business transformation across a lot of countries, one question kept nagging at me. Of all the money being spent on transformation, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars, how much of it actually worked?

02 · Twenty conversations

Five said yes. Fifteen said no.

So I went and asked. Through LinkedIn, I tracked down twenty former clients and asked each one question: did you actually realize the benefits you set out to achieve? A 25% success rate, and not far off the research: HBR at the time estimated that as many as 87% of business transformations fail.

Source: ThinqShift's own founding research (5 of 20 former clients interviewed)

03 · What the five had in common

The leaders had shifted.

In every one of the five, the mindset and behavior of key leaders had shifted to match where the organization was heading, not where it came from. The other fifteen had the best plans, systems, and technology money could buy. None of it mattered without that shift underneath.

04 · Two forces

Leaders were being built for a world that had stopped existing.

The world was getting more volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, while leadership development still assumed it was stable and knowable. And the best individual performers kept getting promoted into managing people, with no one teaching them that leading a team is a different skill entirely.

05 · The bet

Whoever adapts fastest comes out ahead.

That's what ThinqShift was built to fix: a new kind of leader and rising star, who thrives in volatility instead of being undone by it. Fifteen years ago, we believed an AI-driven shift in the global order was coming, and that the people who could adapt their own thinking fastest would come out ahead of it.

06 · The method

From overcoming fear to letting go of a habit of success.

The method came from an unlikely place: a year working with a neuroscientist using cognitive behavioral therapy, the patterns that help people overcome fear and rewire ingrained responses. Applied to leadership, it became Fabulous Leadership, put into practice through ReWire, Academy, and Orchestrate, for organizations that now pivot every 6 to 24 months, not every 3 to 6 years.

07 · A growing body of knowledge

Wisdom through the ages, singularly focused.

Over the years, Fabulous Leadership has grown into a body of knowledge in its own right, carefully curated from wisdom through the ages: strategy, leadership, economics, science, and philosophy. All of it singularly focused on one purpose: crafting Fabulous Leaders to succeed and reinvent the world in the VUCA era.

08 · Paying it forward

The same conviction, scaled.

Fifteen years and thousands of leaders later, ThinqShift Alums started asking how to bring Fabulous Leadership to more people in their organizations, communities, and causes. That became Thinqee: not a separate idea, but the same conviction scaled by AI, so ThinqShifters and Alums can pay it forward to the next generation.