Strategy & Execution Leader

Bringing clarity to complexity.

Growth rarely creates a strategy problem. It creates an organisational one. As priorities multiply, ownership blurs and decision-making slows, the challenge is to maintain the clarity and structure needed to execute well.

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Executive GovernanceStrategy ExecutionOrganisational EffectivenessOperating Model DesignTransformation Leadership

Good leadership is not about having every answer. It's about creating the conditions for the right answers to reach the decision.

— Maurice Elema

My expertise

From strategy to execution.

I excel at the intersection of strategy, governance, organisational capability and execution, helping leadership teams navigate complexity and create lasting impact.

Strategy & Executive Governance

Creating clarity around strategic priorities, decision-making and organisational alignment: from running Annual strategic planning and the Rhythm of Business for EVP leadership to governing a $560M+ investment portfolio with budget variance held under 1%.

Organisational Effectiveness

Designing the structures, capabilities and ways of working that enable organisations to perform, including Canon Europe's commercial planning process and cutting the planning cycle from over five months to around two.

Operating Model & Execution

Connecting strategy, accountability, governance and execution across complex organisations: redesigning a new Marketing operating model for Canon Europe's B2B business, with clear roles, governance and decision rights across central, regional and local teams.

Strategic Workforce Planning

Aligning workforce capability with business priorities and long-term organisational needs: building a global workforce-planning framework at Salesforce covering more than 1000 people and in line with business reduction targets.

Transformation & Change

Helping organisations translate strategic ambition into sustainable organisational change: leading Canon Europe's Campaign to Offer transformation across 18 EMEA countries and functions with 100% adoption across people, process and technology.

Where this has actually played out

Anyone can say what they're capable of. Here's where it happened.

Salesforce, workforce planning & investment governance

Situation

Headcount, contractors, capacity and budget for a 1000+ person organisation sat in disconnected plans, and a $560M+ investment portfolio was tracked through fragmented reporting that made it hard for leaders to move from data to decision.

What I did

Built a global workforce-planning framework integrating headcount, contractors, capacity and budget into one process, and personally built the Tableau dashboards that replaced fragmented reports with a single, scalable executive view.

What changed

Governed a $560M+ investment portfolio (with direct responsibility for around $170M) while holding budget variance under 1%.

Salesforce, Chief of Staff to Executive Leadership

Situation

Global strategy needed to become concrete operating plans and investment decisions, and leadership needed a working rhythm of decisions and follow-through rather than a plan revisited once a year.

What I did

Ran strategic planning and the review cadence for executive leadership, translating strategy into operating plans and priorities, and organised the monthly and quarterly business reviews (MBRs/QBRs) that kept progress, choices and accountability visible for all stakeholders.

What changed

A repeatable monthly and quarterly executive cadence that let executives focus on leadership and strategy, while the organisation around them kept functioning based on closed-loop feedback.

Canon Europe, B2B Marketing Operating Model & Planning redesign

Situation

Roles, governance and decision rights between central, regional and local teams were unclear, and the Annual Marketing planning cycle took more than five months end to end.

What I did

Designed and implemented a new operating model (clear roles, governance and decision rights across central, regional and local teams) and redesigned the planning process, introducing Marketing Performance Management to connect planning, forecasting, investment and performance.

What changed

Cut the planning cycle from over five months to around two, with investment and performance now tracked in one connected process instead of three disconnected ones.

Canon Europe, Campaign to Offer transformation across 18 EMEA countries

Situation

The business was not able to get an accurate and timely view of performance against revenue targets, as regions had different ways of working, unaligned technology and levels of understanding.

What I did

Led the largescale transformation programme end to end: aligning the organisational, process and technology changes, then driving implementation and adoption country by country and function by function.

What changed

Consistent adoption across 18 EMEA countries, leading to a consistent sales pipeline and forecast, embedded in technology and aimed at the quality and direction of business performance.

Want to know more?

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In their words

Not just my account of it.

01 / 09

“

I really valued working with Maurice at Salesforce. He was a trusted partner to me and my leadership team, particularly as we worked through decisions around budget, headcount, T&E and where to put our resources. Maurice has a real ability to bring structure and clarity to complicated conversations, while also understanding the realities of the business. He asks good questions, pushes thinking in the right ways and helps leaders make better decisions. I always appreciated his perspective, his judgment and how easy he was to work with.

Heidi E.

VP Marketing, Salesforce

“

I had the immense pleasure of working with Maurice on a large transformation project aimed at equipping Canon EMEA to meet tomorrow's challenges with excellence. Maurice is a true professional with a broad knowledge base and a lively and ameable character. He always keeps the end goal in mind and is an excellent leader and counsellor for his employees. He is a very inspiring leader that I can highly recommend!

Anine T.

Commercial Leader

“

Maurice has developed different projects at european scale, being responsible for the development and implementation of some of them in Spain and Portugal. His work and leadership have been the main drivers for the success of those projects in Spain and Portugal.

Jose M.

Marketing Director, Canon Europe

“

Working with, then for Maurice has been a great pleasure. He has a strong grasp of the link between people, process, methodology and technology as it relates to sales and marketing excellence. He is a strategic thinker who can easily connect and build credibility with people all the way to the most senior levels, motivating and leading a team toward a common goal.

Rachel N.

Customer Success Leader

“

As an HR Business Partner my contact with Maurice was brief. Despite this he managed to leave a lasting impression on me as a dedicated and devoted professional. In my opinion he is pragmatic, focused and extremely professionally agile. I would have no hesitation in recommending Maurice.

Mick D.

HR Business Partner

“

Maurice is bright and intelligent. He approaches business extremely professionally and ethically. He is a great team player and coach and a natural leader. In all my dealings with him I have always been impressed and I have only ever heard people speak about him positively.

David W.

Commercial Leader

“

Maurice and I worked together on a pan-European consulting project at Canon Europe. He has proven himself an intelligent project manager who combines great business sense with the social sensitivity to develop a warm but professional relationship with colleagues. His observation skills, structured analytical thinking and commercial focus assure he adds great value to any commercial organization.

Jeroen S.

Client Partnerships Leader

“

It has always been fun to work with Maurice as he is a very open-minded and trustworthy person. I can praise his perfect combination of strategic sales management skills and hands-on account management deliverables.

Stephan S.

Global Head of Sales, B2B

How I work

Collaborative by nature. Clear by necessity. Persistent by design.

Bring people together

I listen carefully, connect perspectives and build the trust needed for a shared view of the work.

Make the choice clear

I help turn competing priorities and incomplete information into decisions leaders can stand behind.

Stay with the execution

Decisions matter only when they change what happens next. I create the rhythm and follow-through that keep progress moving.

Hold the line

Clear is kind. I make boundaries explicit, defend the choices that matter and do not let go before the work is embedded.

How I see organisations

Four beliefs that shape how I approach organisations, leadership and execution.

Read the full view

01 / BELIEF

Ambition needs structure.

Ambition becomes real only when the organisation has the structure to carry it into execution.

02 / BELIEF

Complexity needs clarity.

Complexity is not the problem. Unmanaged complexity is.

03 / BELIEF

Clarity enables choice.

Good decisions start with knowing what matters, what the options are and what needs to be decided.

04 / BELIEF

Accountability creates freedom.

Clear ownership and decision rights give people the room to act with confidence.

Executive perspectives

Observations on what can hold growth back.

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Perspective #01

What Scales Faster?

Strong leadership capability helps an organisation move further, faster.

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Perspective #02

The Steering Committee nobody wanted, and why it kept the programme alive

Governance is not bureaucracy. It's where the disagreement finally has somewhere to go.

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Perspective #03

Why growth breaks structure before it breaks strategy

The org chart is usually the last thing to admit the company has changed size.

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Perspective #04

The quarter we stopped agreeing on what "done" meant

Most execution problems are alignment problems wearing an execution costume.

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About Maurice

Connecting people, plans and performance.

I excel where strategy, leadership and organisational execution meet. Over more than twenty years, I have partnered with leadership teams in global and EMEA organisations to strengthen the conditions for execution: clearer priorities, stronger governance, better decision support and organisational capability. Most of that time was spent inside two organisations, not moving between them: global Strategy & Operations leadership at Salesforce, and before that more than a decade at Canon Europe across B2B markets, European sales management and major IT transformation programmes. I stayed because the work was rarely finished in a single push, and I'm the kind of person who stays until it is. I can consult, but get more energy from delivering until the impact is achieved.

More about my background

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