Blair Severn
Chairman
Business, Financial and Performance Strategy
The Best There Is At
Blair is best known for building strategic growth for businesses. With an innate ability to fuse design thinking with financial rigour, he sees break-throughs where others don’t. He’s the best there is to devise, validate, design and operationalize a strategy into a sustainable advantage.
How I Became An Expert
Blair honed a talent for business strategy through both formal education and real world practice, solving increasingly complex issues and retooling organizations of expanding scale for new growth.
While full time as an acclaimed Marketing Executive, he earned a Master’s degree in Corporate Finance & Investment Banking. Blair studied Strategic Business Design and Integrative Thinking under the stewardship of UofT Dean Roger Martin, named one of the top 10 management thinkers in the world.
Expertise
Equally capable with a start-up or international organization, you may find Blair retooling an SME for growth or infusing entrepreneurial creativity into a stagnant corporation. His skills grew from learning the unique dynamics of a family business, heading a retail chain, as a national marketing executive and a strategy advisor to the CEO and Board of Directors of one of Canada’s largest banks.
Blair has led multiple non-profit organizations as Chairman and served on various Boards.
- Business and Financial Strategy
- Corporate and Organization Governance
- Business Analytics and Planning
- Finance and Performance
- Leadership and Teams
- Brand Strategy
- Marketing
- Retail Concept Development and Management
- Sales Management
- Operations Design and Management
Why Hire Me?
With a unique talent to analyze opportunities and issues through a multi-disciplinary lens, when others see unavoidable trade-offs, Blair sees collaborative and integrated solutions.
Having organized and led the profitable growth for companies of $1 million, $10 million, $30 million, $100 million and Multi-billion enterprises, no matter what level you are at and what level you want to get to, Blair has experience in mobilizing a break-through of that plateau.
Contact Me
Thomas White House
Box 791
10535 Islington Avenue
Kleinburg Ontario L0J 1C0
(905) 939-9444 x102
Email
Blair's Showcase
SpinUp, enabling ideas®, TalentRise and Viaduct join forces to power innovation and growth.
We are thrilled to announce a wide-ranging collaboration among SpinUp, the University of Toronto’s newest and first wet lab-based incubator, enabling ideas®, and Aleron Group companies TalentRise and Viaduct. This ...
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Prototyping Workshop – Rotman Design Challenge
Often overlooked in practicing Business Design is the ‘business’ part. Many incorrectly think a Business Design approach to problem solving means dialling down ‘Business’ techniques and dialling up ‘Design’ techniques. ...
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Congratulations! You have now graduated a Sales Champion
The Client: A multi-national consumer products company. The Ask: Help us transform our Sales Management into a dynamic high performance team. The Reveal: The company sales performance although generally acceptable ...
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If only I could get the financing, I could scale up.
The Client: A small professional services firm. The Ask: Help us pitch our bank for more financing to support our growth opportunity. The Reveal: The company’s ability to grow was ...
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I want a divorce. I didn’t get what you promised in this marriage.
The Client: A multi-national consumer hard-goods manufacturer. The Ask: Help us divert a merger disaster. The Reveal: The company acquired a key competitor that included, among its sales distribution, a ...
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It’s a new ESG era. Say ‘hello’ to a new investment product.
The Client: A scaling up Investment Products & Asset Management company. The Ask: Help us develop a marketing plan to launch our new investment fund. The Reveal: The company has a ...
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I’m a Celebrity and I have a Brand. Now All I Need is a Business.
The Client: An aspiring Media company. The Ask: Help us grow our business. The Reveal: The company had a celebrity, a cool brand, a website, a roster of sponsors to ...
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Customer Insight & Engagement – GNCC Lunch and Learn
Learn what motivates customers to choose you, and keep choosing you. Businesses are in a constant battle to both attract new customers and maintain the loyalty of current customers. It ...
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Think Tank REWIND – The Colliding Forces Raising The Bar For Organizational Design
In this Episode – How will you re-imagine your organization for the post Covid world? Will simple role, capability and location changes be enough to keep up with the dizzying ...
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THINK TANK rewind – BUILDING ACROSS BOUNDARIES
IN THIS EPISODE: The Economist Intelligence Unit reports that 61% of Senior Executives report struggling to bridge the gap between strategy and implementation. Our expert panel explores how to overcome the ...
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THINK TANK rewind – Breaking Through Decision Bias
In this episode, decision bias stems from our most basic human biases and can have a profound impact on the success of our decisions – good and bad. Our expert ...
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THINK TANK rewind – Breaking Through Decision Bias
Decision bias stems from our most basic human biases and can have a profound impact on the success of our decisions – good and bad. Our expert panel talks about ...
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Generating Lead Flow & Making Sales in a Social Distancing Environment – Workshop
Stacking Up In A New Way. Our specially assembled multi-field ‘suite of agencies’ team help you re-imagine your revenue engine activities and guide you through building a playbook for the ...
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Re-imagining and re-tooling your growth engine with Blair Severn – Chairman enabling ideas®
Download presentation slides (PDF) Download workshop workbook (PDF) ...
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MOBILIZING-WISE: PRACTICAL TIPS FOR GETTING RESULTS
It takes an Engine (not an Event)! You’ve set a Vision, Mission, Objectives as the strategy experts say you are supposed to do. You have an emotionally stirring Kick Off ...
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Mobilizing-Wise: Practical Tips for Getting Results
When we can, means never will! When planning any initiative outside your normal daily or weekly workflow, the first order of business to mobilizing a successful outcome is to ‘find ...
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Mobilizing-Wise: Practical Tips for Getting Results
Cut Anchor! When pursuing a new strategy or when upping your game it’s natural to strategize, plan out and put into action what we are going to now start doing ...
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How did they do it? Target Stores
When the game is stacked against you, create a new game! Knowing how they did it, how Target Stores became one of the most successful retailers in the world, begins ...
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How Did They Do It? Brunello Cucinelli
“It’s not about me as a brand, it’s about humanity” Knowing how they did it, how Brunello Cucinelli became one of the most successful luxury brands in the world begins ...
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Conquering Disruption
At the University of Toronto, enabling ideas® presented Conquering Disruption. The event examined how to get in front of disrupting forces that challenge Organizations and their Leadership. Executive guests participated ...
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