A Division in Decline — With No One at the Wheel
In 2025, Abbott's Structural Interventions division in Italy was in trouble. Commercial performance was declining across segments and territories. The situation was compounded by a vacant leadership position and a growing absence of strategic direction on how to approach the market.
Team motivation had deteriorated under the combined pressure of high workload, missed targets and organisational instability. Without someone to own the commercial recovery end-to-end — not just define a plan, but actually execute it — the division risked a deeper, harder-to-reverse decline.
The EMEA Divisional Vice President reached out to Falcon. The mandate was clear: take ownership of the commercial recovery. Not from a distance, but on the ground.
"The situation required immediate action to restore focus, reestablish direction and deliver results — not just define a new plan."
Hands-On Leadership With Strategic Clarity
We stepped in with hands-on local leadership, combining strategic clarity with day-to-day execution. Our first priority was to rapidly translate the broader business priorities into a focused, account-level commercial plan — concrete enough to act on immediately, rigorous enough to sustain performance over time.
We worked to simplify and sharpen the commercial approach across four dimensions:
- Account prioritisation — we redefined which accounts required the most attention and realigned the team's time and energy accordingly
- Performance visibility — we consolidated data into a single, clear performance view and connected it directly to a bottom-up revenue plan
- Governance and accountability — we introduced stronger performance tracking and clear ownership at individual level to drive consistency in execution
- Team alignment — we realigned the team around shared targets and clear ways of working, restoring the sense of direction that had been lost
Crucially, we didn't design a framework and hand it off. We led the execution alongside the team — attending customer meetings, reviewing territory plans, and holding the commercial process accountable in real time.
From Stabilisation to Sustained Growth
The impact was immediate and compounding. Commercial performance stabilised within the first month of engagement. From September onwards, the division returned to growth. By Q4 2025, the results spoke clearly:
The business is now driven by a clear and focused account strategy, supported by improved performance visibility, stronger execution discipline and meaningfully higher team engagement. What began as a crisis engagement became the foundation for durable commercial performance.
The team didn't just hit a number. They rebuilt the commercial muscle to keep hitting them — with the structure, discipline and confidence to sustain momentum independently.