WHO WE ARE
Dr Elsbeth Johnson
Founder & Managing Director
Dr. Elsbeth Johnson founded SystemShift in 2016, in response to leaders asking her to help them solve a range of issues, all of which needed a combination of academic knowledge and commercial experience if they were to be solved.
Some of these issues – such as "we have an execution problem" or "we're not growing fast enough" – suggested they had a strategy problem. It needed to be either clearer, and/or more widely shared and understood within their organisation.
Other issues – such as "we need better leadership", or “we need to do more with less” – suggested they had capability and/or culture gaps they needed to address.
Whatever the issue, Elsbeth’s approach was to consider the whole system that was producing these results and diagnose, and then close, the underlying gaps. This was the founding philosophy for SystemShift, and remains so today.
Elsbeth’s background, as an equity analyst, a corporate strategist and a business school professor, brings an almost unique skill-set and perspective to the issues an organisation is facing. This background, combining both academic rigour with commercial acumen; and the approach it enables, is at the heart of what SystemShift offers clients – and what makes us different. While still led by Elsbeth, we now have a network of fellow “pr-academics” and coaches with these same combinations. Which means our clients get concrete, actionable solutions, grounded in the best research – solutions that neither professors without business acumen, nor consultants without academic heft, could offer.