In the Self Track^™ Training senior executive workshop, we asked the top management staff, "What are the three key results you most need to achieve as an organization?" Everyone on the team replied, "Profit margin." At first it seemed as if they were aligned around this result. But any appearance of alignment quickly disappeared with the answer to the next question, "What's the number?" One executive called out, "5.5 percent." Another immediately disagreed, chiming in with "3.5 percent." Then another quickly reacted with a bit of exasperation, "I thought we agreed it was 7.5 percent."

We turned to the CEO, who was intently listening to this discussion, thinking that she could settle this matter and clarify the number. When we asked her for the number, she responded adeptly, saying, "It's somewhere between 3.5 and 7.5 percent." Ignoring the laughter, she continued, "Let me explain: 3.5 percent is the number we told corporate we could hit, 5.5 percent is the number we think we will hit, and 7.5 percent is our stretch goal." Believe it or not, this management team is not alone. Confusion about results is all too common in most organizations.

When we spoke privately with the president, she told us that the parent company had clearly communicated the result they needed to achieve. In fact, corporate had told her that if the chain did not achieve the specified target, they might sell it. Corporate had also emphasized the fact that similar restaurant chains in the parent company's portfolio were achieving the expected return.

Because the CEO knew that the team would view the corporate expectations as unrealistic, she doubted that her team members would align themselves around that target. When we asked, "What's the margin that you must deliver?" she replied, "5.5 percent." Although they had been missing the number, she acknowledged that they needed to hit it, and soon. She also agreed that if they did not change the way people thought and acted regarding hitting the margin, from top management on down and throughout every restaurant, they could not possibly deliver the 5.5 percent.

Over the next several hours, we worked with the senior team to get them aligned around this key result and to determine the shifts in culture they would need to make in order to achieve it. First, they determined to stop sending their organization mixed messages and to start communicating the same key results to everyone in a compelling way. They committed to ensure that all employees could connect the dots between their daily work and the results they needed to achieve.

Within months, a check on the alignment in the company proved that people at every level of the organization and within every restaurant understood and embraced the key organizational results. A random visit to a restaurant would also reveal that even people busing tables understood the margin goals. When asked what their job was, they would respond, "My job is to achieve a 5.5 percent profit margin, and here's how I do it: "The faster I clean and set a table, the more people we seat per hour. The more people we seat, the greater our contribution. The greater our contribution, the better our margin. That's what I do." Powerful, impactful, and clearly conveyed, this answer represented the shift in culture that On The Border needed.

With that level of clarity and alignment throughout the organization around the few key results they needed to achieve, On The Border enacted a cultural transition that literally changed the game for them. Within eighteen months, this organization realized a 200 percent increase in profit margin and delivered on 7.5 percent. They went on to launch their national expansion and became one of the top brands in their category by most measures. Ultimately, they were purchased by one of the top casual dining restaurant companies in the world, an organization known in the industry as the "mutual fund of casual dining," with a portfolio of restaurants successful at generating positive cash flow and profits.

Before we started working with ALARIS, the company was carrying a backlog of nine thousand instruments, with five thousand spare parts on order, and disposable fill rates below 85 percent, all in the face of declining revenues. Key to turning around their poor performance, eliminating backorders, achieving dramatically improved product quality, and maintaining a twenty-four-hour delivery rate of 99.8 percent, were a series of Culture Track^™ Training cross-functional feedback sessions held between operations, sales, customer care, quality and service, where individuals confronted the group with hard facts that many did not want to hear. These sessions helped everyone to See It^® and build greater cooperation.

Sally Grigoriev, a vice president with ALARIS, said, "The sessions were the equivalent of 'walk a mile in my shoes' in both directions!" The prior adversarial relationship between operations and customer care disappeared. Sally describes, "Now when there is an issue, people pick up the phone. Before, people didn't pick up the phone because they did not know each other. Since that meeting, we've had customer care down to tour the plant, something they had never done before. Now, they understand our processes, have a feel for how things work, and have put faces with names."

The organization began measuring order fulfillment on a daily basis, a measurement the entire organization received daily by E-mail. This measurement showed performance during the last twenty-four hours. People saw it. In the past, hundreds of late orders on a daily basis came to no one's attention. Since beginning the candid and open cross-functional meetings, just one late order will send people scurrying to coordinate resolution of the problem between all the different functions. On this point Sally said, "It is just the most amazing transformation you have ever seen."