PLAN — THE NEXT STAGE

I build the organisation that carries your company's next stage.

CEO / Managing Director for industrial companies in family, founder or private-equity transition — permanent, or as a transition mandate with a clear end date. Margin recovery, professionalisation and growth: hands-on, with a clear brief and measurable delivery.

EBITDA from –€1.2m to +€1.45m in twelve months, while revenue grew from €19.8m to €23.5m.

Portrait of Lieven Vandendriessche
L. VANDENDRIESSCHE — BUILDER
25+ yrs
of CEO and MD mandates in industry
€20m–€700m
revenue scale, from SME to international group
14 sites
and ±3,000 people led as Group VP Operations
+51%
EBITDA growth delivered in Europe

01 — THE MANDATE

When you call me

  • You bought a company and year one is not delivering what the investment memo promised.
  • You built your company yourself and want to step back — without the company stepping back.
  • Margin is leaking away and nobody can point to exactly where.
  • The organisation has grown faster than its structure, and it is starting to strain.

What I do

I sharpen the management team, restore cost and margin, install processes and steering, from the shop floor to board reporting, and reposition commercially where needed. And I leave the organisation in a state where it can run without me.

The form

Permanent or interim — the promise is the same: I build the organisation so that it does not depend on me. In a transition mandate that means an explicit end date and a successor ready to take over; in a permanent role it means a management team that carries the company itself. Interim work runs through my management company, hands-on, typically twelve to eighteen months.

Built like an entrepreneur, delivered like a professional: sound common sense, coupled with modern management practice.

02 — TRACK RECORD

Evidence before adjectives. Every row is a delivery: what stood when I arrived, and what was built when I left.

PERIODCOMPANYSCALEWHAT WAS BUILT
2025–2026 Xenex Charging (ES)Interim CEO start-up · ultra-fast EV Strategy, governance and funding preparation with PwC Madrid. Role concluded; I remain a non-operational shareholder.
2022–2025 RemotecCEO €23.5m · ±100 people Turnaround: EBITDA from –€1.2m to +€1.45m in twelve months, with revenue growing. Four sites consolidated into one. Commercially repositioned towards larger customers and recurring projects.
2019–2022 LatexcoCEO €132m · BE/ES/US/ID Profitability restored across multiple loss-making activities. Costing, pricing, reporting and purchasing professionalised; ERP & APS implemented; Moreganic sustainability platform built.
2016–2019 Balta GroupManaging Director, Carpets & Tiles €316m division · PE Divisional team rebuilt, strategy redefined in a shifting market. Pricing transformation with Simon-Kucher, industrial footprint optimised, Bentley Mills (US) integrated.
2011–2016 BekaertDesleeGeneral Manager Europe €123m · 6 countries +16% sales and +51% EBITDA. Enbasa (Spain) acquired and integrated; lean, ABC costing, key account management and SAP introduced.
1995–2011 DeceuninckGroup VP Operations & earlier executive roles €700m+ · 14 sites Group-wide restructuring after a 20% market decline. European footprint redesigned: >€12m recurring savings. German subsidiary Inoutic turned around (+€8m EBITDA). Seven acquisitions integrated; ERP & APS rolled out; SynergeBuild founded.

03 — HOW I WORK

Five steps, two principles

Two principles sit beneath every mandate. Evidence before adjectives: before we start, we define the KPIs — baseline, target and measurement rhythm — so that afterwards the result is measured, not judged by impression. Clarity up front: brief and decision space are on paper before the first working day — for the owner as much as for me. Within that, I always work in the same five steps.

The method — five steps

STEP 1
Understand

First the reality: the shop floor, the numbers, the customers, the people. No plan before the company is understood.

STEP 2
Align with the owners

Ambition, brief and measure of success at one table — and on paper, before the start.

STEP 3
Mobilise

Off-site strategy session with the key players. Output: a strategy that turns the owners’ vision into reality — carried by the people who have to execute it.

STEP 4
Implement, project by project

The workload broken into feasible projects, each with an owner and a deadline. Systematic follow-up in a fixed rhythm.

STEP 5
Report

To the board and to the organisation, in a fixed rhythm, so that everyone sees the same progress.

04 — ABOUT ME

Born in Roeselare, shaped by the West Flemish industrial heartland, worked from Belgium to the US and Asia. I have led companies in family hands, under private equity and on the stock exchange — and learned that the best organisations can do two things at once: steer professionally and stay entrepreneurial. Building that balance is what I do.

Experience that keeps moving

I keep my experience deliberately current. I am following an Executive MBA at Augment, taught by people who built what they teach: the founders of Waze, YouTube and Wikipedia, and Zack Kass, who led the team at OpenAI that launched ChatGPT and with whom I completed the AI strategy module. And I follow the energy transition at close range, as a non-operational shareholder in Xenex Charging, a Spanish ultra-fast EV charging player.

I work in Dutch, English and French, and live in Wortegem-Petegem, Belgium.

05 — DIAGNOSTICS

Three self-diagnostics from my practice

Every company leaks value somewhere — in operations, in commerce, or in the strategy itself. These three scans — 24 questions, ten minutes each — give you an immediate score per domain, red, amber or green. Free to use, and each scan ends with the same offer: a 30-minute conversation about your result, directly with me. No pitch.

S&OP Health Check — the operational side: demand, capacity, inventory, purchasing, process and data.

Pricing & Margin Health Check — the commercial side: price setting, price realisation, customer profitability, mix and contracts.

Strategy & Alignment Check — the top layer: does everyone know where you are going, and is everyone working on it? At its strongest when owner, management and key people each complete it separately: the gap between their answers is the diagnosis.

There is room for a next mandate.

If you know — or are — an owner, board member or investor with a company in transition: a first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

lieven@vandendriessche.consulting +32 475 37 36 00 LinkedIn
BUILDING BUSINESSES  ·  CREATING VALUE