To achieve our key results, our organization needs to undergo...- A transitional change in culture.
- A transformational change in culture.
Countless studies have shown that traditional efforts at organizational transformation often fail to achieve the desired objectives. For example, one popular study found that two-thirds of all corporate restructuring efforts failed to deliver the intended result. Every successful transformation or turnaround effort has at its heart a successful change in culture.
Culture change is essential to creating deep and lasting change in organizational results. In fact, one of our studies revealed that 64% of executives from different companies felt that a "Transformational change in culture," as opposed to a less intensive "Transitional" change in culture, would be necessary to achieve their key organizational results.
Learn about the three levels of change.
The Three Levels of Change
We use a simple model to show the three different levels of organizational change. In our Input/Output Change Model, an impetus to change (The Input) causes one of three kinds of change (The Output) to occur: temporary, transitional, or transformational.
A Level One Change is a temporary change, in which you make small, incremental modifications to existing patterns but do not maintain them over time. For example, you might acquire a new skill in a training workshop, practice it for a while, and then, for one reason or another, abandon it a short time later.
One top leader of a major client corporation enthusiastically implemented the skill of seeking personal feedback from the people with whom he worked, shortly after learning about it in a workshop. Everyone around him was delighted with the resulting dialogue and his interest in their viewpoints. However, a few weeks later during a follow-up call, we found that he had stopped the practice. When we asked him why, he could offer no good reason. He had just stopped doing it.
A Level Two Change is a transitional one, in which you make small, incremental modifications to existing patterns and consistently apply them over time. We saw this happen at a hospital that needed a transition in the way people approached shift work. In the past, the organization's pre-transitional actions included emphasis on tackling issues raised predominantly during the normal workday from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Now, with a desire to improve patient care around the clock, they needed to shift their focus to emphasize quality without prioritizing the "Prime time" hours over other times. Shifting the emphasis did not require a major remake of the culture, but it did entail an important change in the way people thought and acted relative to the needs of the customer. The word transitional suggests that the change is a matter of degree rather than a fundamental change in the way things are done.
A Level Three Change is a transformational one requiring a significant shift in the way people think and act. Because such a change demands entirely new patterns of thinking and acting, it poses a far greater challenge than either Level One or Level Two. It's this transformational level that offers the biggest potential payoff and, when done properly, will make the greatest difference in performance. In the case of the hospital that engaged in a Level Two Change, their shift to post-transitional actions and behavior in order to provide quality care around the clock might also qualify as a Level Three Change, depending on the degree of difficulty and the actual importance of the cultural shift itself.
More often than not, you will not accomplish full-scale cultural transition without making a number of Level Three Changes in the way people think and act.
Other recent research we have conducted shows that a full 63% of those surveyed felt that the culture of their organization was currently either a clear weakness that would be the reason for failure or that the organizational culture was having little impact in helping the organization achieve its objectives.
The Partners In Leadership process is a proven approach that utilizes the methodologies and best practices associated with the principles of greater personal and organizational accountability to help leaders achieve and sustain a transformation in the organization that produces results.
Below are several examples of the powerful and lasting impact the Partners In Leadership training and consulting process has on helping clients bring about their organizational transformation and turnaround to achieve game-changing results:
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The Story: The Alaris story is about a company that transformed an organizational culture and, as a result, literally changed the game in a way that significantly influenced an entire industry. Ultimately, it generated an increase in share price from 31¢ per share to $22.35 per share in just three years, growing revenue as much as 15 percent a year in a market where competitors were achieving a mere 3 percent. Purchased by Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, Alaris eventually became the nucleus of a company called CareFusion, a spin-off from Cardinal and one of the largest medical device suppliers in the world. The Alaris story is also about CEO Dave Schlotterbeck, who valued the transforming impact of culture on what he characterized at one point as the “
When we first met Dave Schlotterbeck, he was presiding over a merger between IVAC and IMED, the most highly leveraged medical device company in the world, with $350 million in revenue and $525 million in debt. Prior to Alaris, Dave had spent two decades effecting successful company turnarounds in the world of manufacturing. Previous experience had shown that he was good at what he did, developing what he considered a repeatable “recipe” for optimizing performance in manufacturing organizations. He had become adept at clearly seeing a company’s problems after simply spending time with a set of financials. He learned to spot “sloppy systems” and to identify when people were failing to pay enough attention to the details. The Alaris culture had fostered a mentality of survival; people worried more about protecting themselves than getting the results the company needed.
Dave made a conscious decision to stop focusing on financial performance. The company had racked up thirty consecutive months of losses, and he knew that similar financial results would no doubt continue for the foreseeable future. For the last eighteen months, he had been focusing on changing the financial performance of the company, a process he knew like the back of his hand, but it hadn’t made any difference. “In fact,” he said, “it was getting worse, and I was getting frustrated. I thought, why frustrate myself?” Instead of getting frustrated, Dave chose to concentrate his efforts on changing the culture, something that was new to him as a manager and leader, something that was clearly missing from the Alaris management team’s focus.
Dave and his team successfully implemented the Culture Track Training detailed in our book, Change the Culture, Change the Game. Central to their effort was a simple model we call The Results Pyramid.® About three months into the change effort, Dave began to see signs of progress that would quickly evolve into a major turning point. While he could not measure them as precisely as the usual financial indicators, he began to see more of the go-to attitude he and the marketing manager had visualized spreading throughout the company. People were starting to “get things done.”
Dave had avoided sharing the culture change project with the board of directors, because, in the beginning at least, he didn’t think he could sell them on investing in a soft strategy in such hard times. Of course, he didn’t need to do much selling two years later when Alaris’s stock price had shot from 31¢ per share to $14 per share. They were now the heroes. Nothing could have delighted the board more than that bottom-line result.
It got even better when Cardinal Health, one of the largest medical device companies in the world, paid $2 billion for a company with a market cap of $15 million. That represented a whopping 7,000 percent return on equity investment from the day Dave and his team started working on the Alaris culture to the day they sold the company to Cardinal Health. Today, the company’s technology and products protect over 1.5 million patients each year! How did it happen? Dave Schlotterbeck and his Alaris team created a culture that allowed them to flawlessly execute a game-changing strategy.
Turnaround at the most highly leveraged company in medical device industry history...
The Result: A 7000% Return on Investment
The Story: The Alaris story is about a company that transformed an organizational culture and, as a result, literally changed the game in a way that significantly influenced an entire industry. Ultimately, it generated an increase in share price from 31¢ per share to $22.35 per share in just three years, growing revenue as much as 15 percent a year in a market where competitors were achieving a mere 3 percent. Purchased by Cardinal Health, a Fortune 20 company, Alaris eventually became the nucleus of a company called CareFusion, a spin-off from Cardinal and one of the largest medical device suppliers in the world. The Alaris story is also about CEO Dave Schlotterbeck, who valued the transforming impact of culture on what he characterized at one point as the “
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Watch Dave Schlotterbeck tell the Alaris Medical Systems Story (View Dave's bio).
Dave made a conscious decision to stop focusing on financial performance. The company had racked up thirty consecutive months of losses, and he knew that similar financial results would no doubt continue for the foreseeable future. For the last eighteen months, he had been focusing on changing the financial performance of the company, a process he knew like the back of his hand, but it hadn’t made any difference. “In fact,” he said, “it was getting worse, and I was getting frustrated. I thought, why frustrate myself?” Instead of getting frustrated, Dave chose to concentrate his efforts on changing the culture, something that was new to him as a manager and leader, something that was clearly missing from the Alaris management team’s focus.
Dave and his team successfully implemented the Culture Track Training detailed in our book, Change the Culture, Change the Game. Central to their effort was a simple model we call The Results Pyramid.® About three months into the change effort, Dave began to see signs of progress that would quickly evolve into a major turning point. While he could not measure them as precisely as the usual financial indicators, he began to see more of the go-to attitude he and the marketing manager had visualized spreading throughout the company. People were starting to “get things done.”
Dave had avoided sharing the culture change project with the board of directors, because, in the beginning at least, he didn’t think he could sell them on investing in a soft strategy in such hard times. Of course, he didn’t need to do much selling two years later when Alaris’s stock price had shot from 31¢ per share to $14 per share. They were now the heroes. Nothing could have delighted the board more than that bottom-line result.
It got even better when Cardinal Health, one of the largest medical device companies in the world, paid $2 billion for a company with a market cap of $15 million. That represented a whopping 7,000 percent return on equity investment from the day Dave and his team started working on the Alaris culture to the day they sold the company to Cardinal Health. Today, the company’s technology and products protect over 1.5 million patients each year! How did it happen? Dave Schlotterbeck and his Alaris team created a culture that allowed them to flawlessly execute a game-changing strategy.
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The Story: When Harold Blomquist first arrived at Simtek as their new CEO, he encountered a failing organization that needed a quick turnaround. He faced the challenge of needing to quickly reshape an organizational culture where people were accustomed to failing to meet commitments and was largely unaccountable for achieving results. Below The Line® behavior was evident in every part of the organization, and at every level. Attacking the problem with a top-down approach, Blomquist began to see improvements, but it would not be enough to get the results he needed.
To assist him in bringing about this organizational change, Blomquist turned to Partners In Leadership and implemented the Self Track™ Training and the Culture Track™ Training. As a result of Blomquist’s leadership in this enterprise-wide training initiative, things changed quickly. People at every level abandoned their “loser’s mentality” and adopted a winning mentality, took Accountability for succeeding in the daily work, and adopted an Above The Line® approach to problem solving both as individuals and as teams.
Blomquist shared in his letter “I became more effective working with the managers below me. In most cases, these senior managers became more effective working with the managers below them and we evolved the guiding principles into core beliefs and key results. Ownership was felt on a much broader scale than ever before. The company began to operate differently. People became more excited about their jobs.“
The result: they went from hitting none of their on-time delivery targets to hitting 98% the next year and saw major improvements in their operating capability which enabled them to triple their company revenue. Due to this amazing transformation and their increase in revenue it allowed them to purchase another firm, doubling their size and adding to their overall forward momentum.
September 16, 2008
Partners In Leadership, Inc.
27555 Ynez Road, Suite 300
Temecula, CA 92591
Dear PIL Partners:
Thank you for helping me "turn around" a failing enterprise and creating a winning environment of success. The Accountability Training taught over multiple years by Partners In Leadership helped us change our company culture from a "loser’s mentality," people who were accustomed to failing to meet commitments and who were unaccountable and operating Below The Line, to a winning mentality where they were no longer victims but were a team of people who were willing to take personal Accountability and operate Above The Line. Using the Partners In Leadership Accountability Training, Simtek tripled its company revenue and saw major improvements in operating capability and on-time deliveries.
When I first came to Simtek I worked with the management team to create a set of guiding principles for the company, including beliefs and objectives and set about encouraging company alignment with these principles. To a large extent, based on limitations characteristic of the company’s culture and management experience, I guided the creation of these principles myself, and it was implemented from the top down. Satisfactory results weren’t achieved immediately although an instantaneous sense of corporate accountability and responsibility for keeping commitments started to take root. After going through the Taking Personal Accountability training, and the Building an Accountable Culture things began to change more rapidly.
As the process of culture change unfolded and with help from partners at PIL at a number of key junctures, I became more effective working with the managers below me. In most cases, these senior managers became more effective working with the managers below them and we evolved the guiding principles into core beliefs and key results. Ownership was felt on a much broader scale than ever before. The company began to operate differently. People became more excited about their jobs. They were excited about taking Accountability and holding others accountable. People were operating Above The Line, and as a result we saw bottom-line differences.
Going through the training with Partners In Leadership was a challenging and enjoyable process. As with any cultural transition, employees and managers reacted initially with the full spectrum of attitudes – fully supportive to aggressively unsupportive. Most of the people chose to rise to the challenge of personal accountability and took seriously the individual responsibility they each owned for the successful operation of our company. A lot of what is being taught is good common sense. The approach that PIL offers combined with a solid framework for teaching sound principles along with the great experience-based storytelling technique that they use makes the training easy to learn, easy to relate to, and understand as well as significant, measurable and achievable. I encourage people to contact PIL, take the training, and then see the positive difference that it can make.
Sincerely,
Harold A. Blomquist
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Simtek Corp.
Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat…
The Results: Dramatic improvement in operating capability leading to a Tripling of Revenue
The Story: When Harold Blomquist first arrived at Simtek as their new CEO, he encountered a failing organization that needed a quick turnaround. He faced the challenge of needing to quickly reshape an organizational culture where people were accustomed to failing to meet commitments and was largely unaccountable for achieving results. Below The Line® behavior was evident in every part of the organization, and at every level. Attacking the problem with a top-down approach, Blomquist began to see improvements, but it would not be enough to get the results he needed.
To assist him in bringing about this organizational change, Blomquist turned to Partners In Leadership and implemented the Self Track™ Training and the Culture Track™ Training. As a result of Blomquist’s leadership in this enterprise-wide training initiative, things changed quickly. People at every level abandoned their “loser’s mentality” and adopted a winning mentality, took Accountability for succeeding in the daily work, and adopted an Above The Line® approach to problem solving both as individuals and as teams.
Blomquist shared in his letter “I became more effective working with the managers below me. In most cases, these senior managers became more effective working with the managers below them and we evolved the guiding principles into core beliefs and key results. Ownership was felt on a much broader scale than ever before. The company began to operate differently. People became more excited about their jobs.“
The result: they went from hitting none of their on-time delivery targets to hitting 98% the next year and saw major improvements in their operating capability which enabled them to triple their company revenue. Due to this amazing transformation and their increase in revenue it allowed them to purchase another firm, doubling their size and adding to their overall forward momentum.
Read what Harold Blomquist says in his letter.
September 16, 2008
Partners In Leadership, Inc.
27555 Ynez Road, Suite 300
Temecula, CA 92591
Dear PIL Partners:
Thank you for helping me "turn around" a failing enterprise and creating a winning environment of success. The Accountability Training taught over multiple years by Partners In Leadership helped us change our company culture from a "loser’s mentality," people who were accustomed to failing to meet commitments and who were unaccountable and operating Below The Line, to a winning mentality where they were no longer victims but were a team of people who were willing to take personal Accountability and operate Above The Line. Using the Partners In Leadership Accountability Training, Simtek tripled its company revenue and saw major improvements in operating capability and on-time deliveries.
When I first came to Simtek I worked with the management team to create a set of guiding principles for the company, including beliefs and objectives and set about encouraging company alignment with these principles. To a large extent, based on limitations characteristic of the company’s culture and management experience, I guided the creation of these principles myself, and it was implemented from the top down. Satisfactory results weren’t achieved immediately although an instantaneous sense of corporate accountability and responsibility for keeping commitments started to take root. After going through the Taking Personal Accountability training, and the Building an Accountable Culture things began to change more rapidly.
As the process of culture change unfolded and with help from partners at PIL at a number of key junctures, I became more effective working with the managers below me. In most cases, these senior managers became more effective working with the managers below them and we evolved the guiding principles into core beliefs and key results. Ownership was felt on a much broader scale than ever before. The company began to operate differently. People became more excited about their jobs. They were excited about taking Accountability and holding others accountable. People were operating Above The Line, and as a result we saw bottom-line differences.
Going through the training with Partners In Leadership was a challenging and enjoyable process. As with any cultural transition, employees and managers reacted initially with the full spectrum of attitudes – fully supportive to aggressively unsupportive. Most of the people chose to rise to the challenge of personal accountability and took seriously the individual responsibility they each owned for the successful operation of our company. A lot of what is being taught is good common sense. The approach that PIL offers combined with a solid framework for teaching sound principles along with the great experience-based storytelling technique that they use makes the training easy to learn, easy to relate to, and understand as well as significant, measurable and achievable. I encourage people to contact PIL, take the training, and then see the positive difference that it can make.
Sincerely,
Harold A. Blomquist
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer
Simtek Corp.
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The Story: “Universal” produces aluminum rigid container sheets for the packaging products market. Customers use those sheets to manufacture the bodies, ends and tabs of beverage and food cans, which are used in the soft drink, juice, energy beverage, packaged water, food and pet food industries. Universal’s leaders decided they needed to “go big or go home” with one of their key units, the Flexible Materials Division (FMD), a North America–based business. At one point, FMD accounted for over 30 percent of total company revenues and won praise as Universal’s flagship division.
With the implementation of a global strategy for organization-wide growth, however, FMD’s revenue contribution to the parent company had dropped to less than 10 percent, motivating the Universal board to question whether FMD should remain in the portfolio. The board threatened that if the FMD business could not get itself above the cost of capital and realize a reasonable return on that capital, then the parent company would find more promising opportunities for investing its money in the global markets.
In a final attempt to turn things around, the board decided to bring in someone from the outside to run FMD and recruited “Ken Jones” to serve as the division’s CEO. With prior experience in the steel industry, Ken brought a fresh perspective to his job. He knew that FMD’s “boss-centered” (C1--the current culture) culture, replete with boss-centered leaders, did not make sense for his division and its unionized workforce. He had learned that in such an environment, employees who were closest to the problems and who often had good ideas about how to solve them would not speak up and talk about what wasn’t working, that they would not easily tolerate risk, and that they would fear punishment for any and all failures. After quickly assessing the current culture, Ken determined that to save the business and drive success, the division would need to create an “employee-centered” (C2-the desired culture) culture in which everyone at every level was engaged in making the plant productive again.
As far as he was concerned, creating C2 meant blowing up the current “silo-like” organization and putting the business back together flatter, with more responsive pieces. At this point, Ken brought us in to help implement the Culture Track™ Training and change the culture of the organization. He needed game-changing results and knew that a focus on culture could make that happen. As the central theme of the new C2 culture, Ken encouraged what he called a new-business owner mentality. His Case for Change argued that the company’s survival as a viable entity depended on its ability to reduce costs rapidly while at the same time making the business more competitive. Ken believed, and communicated to every member of his team, that because Universal would probably end up selling them anyway, they might as well operate as though they had just bought FMD and take the risk to make the changes they thought the business needed. He convinced his management team to step up and act as if they were the new owners of the FMD business.
Ken knew that in order to become competitive and save the business, his team needed to boost return on capital (ROC) from 2 percent to over 10 percent. This became FMD’s R2: 10 percent–plus on ROC. To do that, he knew that one of the plant’s key production lines needed to produce 10 million more pounds than it currently churned out and that it needed to do it with the same number of people. With R2 in mind, he challenged his team to figure out how they could make that happen.
As a central part of the Culture Track Training, Ken and his team created a Cultural Beliefs® statement that captured the essence of the change they needed to make in order to achieve R2. At every opportunity, they reinforced those beliefs, which included major cultural shifts like Think FMD, Step Up!, Speak Up!, and Proudly Invest.
The end result? A 12 percent return on capital! Ken and his team changed the game for both FMD and Universal. They not only staved off the threat of closing the plant; they returned to their profitable status as a revenue producer in Universal’s portfolio. The culture changed so completely that it survived the turnover of almost every key player involved in establishing the new cultural direction, including Ken, who tragically died shortly after the transformation. The new leader, “Bill Weston,” found, to his surprise that the culture did not depend on Ken’s personality, but on the B2 beliefs that had been instilled at every level of the organization. On his first day, someone handed him a card containing the Cultural Beliefs, suggesting that he should start asking people about what they had done to change the way they work to reflect the Cultural Beliefs. He was also told that he should seek Focused Feedback® from a wide mix of people throughout the plant. Bill quickly learned that the way a leader responds to that feedback can make all the difference in continuing to move the culture change forward.
About on-boarding new leaders in the Culture Track Training effort, the SVP of Human Resources at FMD recounts: “Perhaps most telling is that our efforts have remained undaunted although we’ve experienced transitions and an 80% turnover of senior leadership. As one key leader said following her 90-day orientation, ‘I wish I had this 20 years ago! It is so simple and so powerful for leaders in today’s business environment’.”
Saving the day from 2% to 12%
The Results: A 12% return on capital, saving the plant, partnering with a unionized workforce.
The Story: “Universal” produces aluminum rigid container sheets for the packaging products market. Customers use those sheets to manufacture the bodies, ends and tabs of beverage and food cans, which are used in the soft drink, juice, energy beverage, packaged water, food and pet food industries. Universal’s leaders decided they needed to “go big or go home” with one of their key units, the Flexible Materials Division (FMD), a North America–based business. At one point, FMD accounted for over 30 percent of total company revenues and won praise as Universal’s flagship division.
With the implementation of a global strategy for organization-wide growth, however, FMD’s revenue contribution to the parent company had dropped to less than 10 percent, motivating the Universal board to question whether FMD should remain in the portfolio. The board threatened that if the FMD business could not get itself above the cost of capital and realize a reasonable return on that capital, then the parent company would find more promising opportunities for investing its money in the global markets.
In a final attempt to turn things around, the board decided to bring in someone from the outside to run FMD and recruited “Ken Jones” to serve as the division’s CEO. With prior experience in the steel industry, Ken brought a fresh perspective to his job. He knew that FMD’s “boss-centered” (C1--the current culture) culture, replete with boss-centered leaders, did not make sense for his division and its unionized workforce. He had learned that in such an environment, employees who were closest to the problems and who often had good ideas about how to solve them would not speak up and talk about what wasn’t working, that they would not easily tolerate risk, and that they would fear punishment for any and all failures. After quickly assessing the current culture, Ken determined that to save the business and drive success, the division would need to create an “employee-centered” (C2-the desired culture) culture in which everyone at every level was engaged in making the plant productive again.
As far as he was concerned, creating C2 meant blowing up the current “silo-like” organization and putting the business back together flatter, with more responsive pieces. At this point, Ken brought us in to help implement the Culture Track™ Training and change the culture of the organization. He needed game-changing results and knew that a focus on culture could make that happen. As the central theme of the new C2 culture, Ken encouraged what he called a new-business owner mentality. His Case for Change argued that the company’s survival as a viable entity depended on its ability to reduce costs rapidly while at the same time making the business more competitive. Ken believed, and communicated to every member of his team, that because Universal would probably end up selling them anyway, they might as well operate as though they had just bought FMD and take the risk to make the changes they thought the business needed. He convinced his management team to step up and act as if they were the new owners of the FMD business.
Ken knew that in order to become competitive and save the business, his team needed to boost return on capital (ROC) from 2 percent to over 10 percent. This became FMD’s R2: 10 percent–plus on ROC. To do that, he knew that one of the plant’s key production lines needed to produce 10 million more pounds than it currently churned out and that it needed to do it with the same number of people. With R2 in mind, he challenged his team to figure out how they could make that happen.
As a central part of the Culture Track Training, Ken and his team created a Cultural Beliefs® statement that captured the essence of the change they needed to make in order to achieve R2. At every opportunity, they reinforced those beliefs, which included major cultural shifts like Think FMD, Step Up!, Speak Up!, and Proudly Invest.
The end result? A 12 percent return on capital! Ken and his team changed the game for both FMD and Universal. They not only staved off the threat of closing the plant; they returned to their profitable status as a revenue producer in Universal’s portfolio. The culture changed so completely that it survived the turnover of almost every key player involved in establishing the new cultural direction, including Ken, who tragically died shortly after the transformation. The new leader, “Bill Weston,” found, to his surprise that the culture did not depend on Ken’s personality, but on the B2 beliefs that had been instilled at every level of the organization. On his first day, someone handed him a card containing the Cultural Beliefs, suggesting that he should start asking people about what they had done to change the way they work to reflect the Cultural Beliefs. He was also told that he should seek Focused Feedback® from a wide mix of people throughout the plant. Bill quickly learned that the way a leader responds to that feedback can make all the difference in continuing to move the culture change forward.
About on-boarding new leaders in the Culture Track Training effort, the SVP of Human Resources at FMD recounts: “Perhaps most telling is that our efforts have remained undaunted although we’ve experienced transitions and an 80% turnover of senior leadership. As one key leader said following her 90-day orientation, ‘I wish I had this 20 years ago! It is so simple and so powerful for leaders in today’s business environment’.”
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The Story: Kaiser Permanente Ranks Highest in J.D. Power and Associates Employer Satisfaction Study and Ranked #16 “Best Places To Work in 2011” from Computer World Magazine. This HMO tripled their profits after implementing The Oz Principle® Accountability Training® for 500 Executives. However, they didn’t always rank that way. Faced with a financial decline the leadership team struggled to turn things around, putting their efforts into adding more people in order to produce better results. Instead, the financial decline just got worse.
After a review of their core competencies at every level of the organization the pattern was clear, they identified that they needed a major shift in their culture to greater accountability. Using the Culture Track™ Training to support their financial turnaround initiatives, the leadership team began to see things change. Within the first few months performance began to improve. Ultimately, they increased productivity and, without adding additional resources, tripled their profits. Steven A, Pereira the Director of Workforce and Organization Development said “We found the course, as well as the certification process, to be pragmatic and real-time focused. Once certified, we tested the material with some clients we believed would be accountable to sponsor the course’s lessons. They became as enthusiastic as we had become.” The Oz Principle is now a fundamental component of every learning and development process they employ and has created a lasting transformation within their organization.
A Thriving Financial Turnaround...
The Result:Tripled Profits!
The Story: Kaiser Permanente Ranks Highest in J.D. Power and Associates Employer Satisfaction Study and Ranked #16 “Best Places To Work in 2011” from Computer World Magazine. This HMO tripled their profits after implementing The Oz Principle® Accountability Training® for 500 Executives. However, they didn’t always rank that way. Faced with a financial decline the leadership team struggled to turn things around, putting their efforts into adding more people in order to produce better results. Instead, the financial decline just got worse.
After a review of their core competencies at every level of the organization the pattern was clear, they identified that they needed a major shift in their culture to greater accountability. Using the Culture Track™ Training to support their financial turnaround initiatives, the leadership team began to see things change. Within the first few months performance began to improve. Ultimately, they increased productivity and, without adding additional resources, tripled their profits. Steven A, Pereira the Director of Workforce and Organization Development said “We found the course, as well as the certification process, to be pragmatic and real-time focused. Once certified, we tested the material with some clients we believed would be accountable to sponsor the course’s lessons. They became as enthusiastic as we had become.” The Oz Principle is now a fundamental component of every learning and development process they employ and has created a lasting transformation within their organization.
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The Story: When "Smithfields," a major publicly traded restaurant chain with over four hundred stores, experienced succeeding quarters of losses and a probable $40 million shortfall in projected profits, the new CEO, "Mario Rizzuto," announced that the plan for the new year was $42 million in profit. Because everyone in the organization had grown so accustomed to seeing loss after loss, that announcement struck most people as an absurd impossibility-from a $40 million loss to a $42 million profit? We assisted the new CEO in implementing the Culture Track™ Training and creating an environment where people took accountability to align with execute on the key organizational priorities. Eighteen months later, this culture initiative turned all that initial astonishment into pride, when Smithfields reached $42 million in profit.
Their effort began by clearly defining results and eliminating all confusion around key organizational priorities. When Mario discovered at one point the company had fallen $4 million behind plan, he broke that $4 million down in terms of the number of people visiting the restaurants and the number of shifts and the number of employees who served them. His analysis concluded that Smithfields only needed to generate 11 cents more in revenue per customer served. Executing on this one initiative would quickly put them back on plan. The management team went to work engaging everyone in the restaurants to ask the Accountability question, "What else can I do to help achieve this result?"
The organization became energized as restaurant employees, engaged in execution on this important initiative, applied the principles of personal accountability for achieving the key organizational results and searched high and low for ways to make a difference. For their part, managers who had previously conducted table visits during their shifts made it a point to drop by each table to offer patrons a tiny card that highlighted a delectable appetizer that just happened to be the most profitable item on the menu. Servers never failed to present each table with a table-tree showcasing a tempting display of desserts. Everyone knew that in order to achieve the overall objective, all they really needed to do was sell one appetizer or dessert to every table. With this new culture of personal ownership for clear results, people were motivated to stay focused and achieve the result-serving up a miraculous transformation in financial performance and hitting their number. Now, the culture is one of urgency and focus. People are not only enjoying better results, but better jobs and better morale. Cultural transformation always brings a better working environment along with improved performance.
Just one more dessert makes a million dollar difference...
The Results: From a 40 million dollar loss to a 42 million dollar profit.
The Story: When "Smithfields," a major publicly traded restaurant chain with over four hundred stores, experienced succeeding quarters of losses and a probable $40 million shortfall in projected profits, the new CEO, "Mario Rizzuto," announced that the plan for the new year was $42 million in profit. Because everyone in the organization had grown so accustomed to seeing loss after loss, that announcement struck most people as an absurd impossibility-from a $40 million loss to a $42 million profit? We assisted the new CEO in implementing the Culture Track™ Training and creating an environment where people took accountability to align with execute on the key organizational priorities. Eighteen months later, this culture initiative turned all that initial astonishment into pride, when Smithfields reached $42 million in profit.
Their effort began by clearly defining results and eliminating all confusion around key organizational priorities. When Mario discovered at one point the company had fallen $4 million behind plan, he broke that $4 million down in terms of the number of people visiting the restaurants and the number of shifts and the number of employees who served them. His analysis concluded that Smithfields only needed to generate 11 cents more in revenue per customer served. Executing on this one initiative would quickly put them back on plan. The management team went to work engaging everyone in the restaurants to ask the Accountability question, "What else can I do to help achieve this result?"
The organization became energized as restaurant employees, engaged in execution on this important initiative, applied the principles of personal accountability for achieving the key organizational results and searched high and low for ways to make a difference. For their part, managers who had previously conducted table visits during their shifts made it a point to drop by each table to offer patrons a tiny card that highlighted a delectable appetizer that just happened to be the most profitable item on the menu. Servers never failed to present each table with a table-tree showcasing a tempting display of desserts. Everyone knew that in order to achieve the overall objective, all they really needed to do was sell one appetizer or dessert to every table. With this new culture of personal ownership for clear results, people were motivated to stay focused and achieve the result-serving up a miraculous transformation in financial performance and hitting their number. Now, the culture is one of urgency and focus. People are not only enjoying better results, but better jobs and better morale. Cultural transformation always brings a better working environment along with improved performance.
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The Story: The mid-Atlantic area of Johnson Controls suffered such misalignment before the company decided to implement the Self Track™ Training. Although each function and department had been focusing on meeting its own objectives, it wasn't achieving overall business results. When the company put together proposals and bid on major climate control projects for large buildings, the same problems kept cropping up: Each department and function prepared its piece of the proposal, they combined them all together and submitted them promptly, but the company kept losing out to competitors. According to area manager Allen Martin, "We were so process oriented that we fell into a sort of default mode, just doing the same thing over and over. But the different parts of the organization did not want to change."
Market share declined, growth stagnated, morale plunged, and customers grew more and more dissatisfied with the company's performance. As Martin recalled, "People in the different departments were so concerned about covering their tails and documenting the things they'd done to prove their value that it really impeded the organization's ability to be innovative and strategic, and no one was working together to build the business." That's when the Accountability Training® came aboard.
After several months spent building greater accountability around the three strategic thrusts of the organization-grow 15 percent, become number one in the market, and change the business's value proposition-everything started to improve. "15, 1, and change" became the mantra of every department in the organization. Sales, operations, installation, and services all began working together in harmony. "People began rethinking their roles and responsibilities, they started communicating with each other and they got aligned," Martin recounted. "Once everyone had been through the training, they began saying things like 'okay, we need to do something different. "A jumbled box of puzzle pieces now fit together beautifully as people became more operationally flexible and began building greater trust between departments. The emphasis changed from the tired old excuses and finger pointing to "What else can we do to get the results we want?"
"We had to actualize everything that we'd gone through in the training," Martin told us in a recent interview. "First we had to, see what the issues were, what was impeding our ability to implement. We had to look at our situation from each of the Oz steps-See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It. That's when the Accountability Plan started to take hold. Everyone seemed to recognize that this was the only way we were going to turn things around-by getting our business Above The Line together." In the three years after Johnson Controls implemented the training, Allen Martin's mid-Atlantic area sales more than doubled, profitability tripled, customer satisfaction soared, and employee turnover dropped to its lowest level in years. Now the business is chanting, "25, 1, and change!" One region even set a goal of 50% growth. The manager of this particular area put his team through the training and stringently executed the accountability principles in his area. As a result, they delivered 46% growth, surpassing all other areas in the company.
15-1-and Change!
The Results:Transformed the Value Proposition of the Company and exceeded growth targets of 25% in an industry growing at 7%!
The Story: The mid-Atlantic area of Johnson Controls suffered such misalignment before the company decided to implement the Self Track™ Training. Although each function and department had been focusing on meeting its own objectives, it wasn't achieving overall business results. When the company put together proposals and bid on major climate control projects for large buildings, the same problems kept cropping up: Each department and function prepared its piece of the proposal, they combined them all together and submitted them promptly, but the company kept losing out to competitors. According to area manager Allen Martin, "We were so process oriented that we fell into a sort of default mode, just doing the same thing over and over. But the different parts of the organization did not want to change."
Market share declined, growth stagnated, morale plunged, and customers grew more and more dissatisfied with the company's performance. As Martin recalled, "People in the different departments were so concerned about covering their tails and documenting the things they'd done to prove their value that it really impeded the organization's ability to be innovative and strategic, and no one was working together to build the business." That's when the Accountability Training® came aboard.
After several months spent building greater accountability around the three strategic thrusts of the organization-grow 15 percent, become number one in the market, and change the business's value proposition-everything started to improve. "15, 1, and change" became the mantra of every department in the organization. Sales, operations, installation, and services all began working together in harmony. "People began rethinking their roles and responsibilities, they started communicating with each other and they got aligned," Martin recounted. "Once everyone had been through the training, they began saying things like 'okay, we need to do something different. "A jumbled box of puzzle pieces now fit together beautifully as people became more operationally flexible and began building greater trust between departments. The emphasis changed from the tired old excuses and finger pointing to "What else can we do to get the results we want?"
"We had to actualize everything that we'd gone through in the training," Martin told us in a recent interview. "First we had to, see what the issues were, what was impeding our ability to implement. We had to look at our situation from each of the Oz steps-See It, Own It, Solve It, Do It. That's when the Accountability Plan started to take hold. Everyone seemed to recognize that this was the only way we were going to turn things around-by getting our business Above The Line together." In the three years after Johnson Controls implemented the training, Allen Martin's mid-Atlantic area sales more than doubled, profitability tripled, customer satisfaction soared, and employee turnover dropped to its lowest level in years. Now the business is chanting, "25, 1, and change!" One region even set a goal of 50% growth. The manager of this particular area put his team through the training and stringently executed the accountability principles in his area. As a result, they delivered 46% growth, surpassing all other areas in the company.
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The Story: With pressures from a declining economy in a state with a population shrinking faster than that of any other state, and with the state's industrial base in dire straits, the leaders of a regional health insurance provider, "Eastside HealthPlans," knew that they needed to make a major shift in the results they were achieving, and they knew they needed to do it quickly.
For some time, the company had focused on customer satisfaction measures that were mandated and monitored by a multinational parent company that owned several other regional health care organizations. The parent's customer satisfaction program included several measurements of how timely and accurately Eastside enrolled new members, processed claims, and resolved inquiries. The measurements involved a "points earned" system that awarded points depending on how well the organization performed against the established standard for each of the customer satisfaction performance categories. At the time, Eastside ranked in the bottom quartile of all the health care organizations in the parent company's portfolio, ranked at number 32. Everyone recognized that the culture was dragging down the organization's performance. As we began working with the executive team to assess their culture, we heard distinctive themes repeated by leaders at every level of the organization. Most people agreed about what new employees would hear when they asked, "How do things really work around here?"
From Almost Last to First-A Total Transformation
The Results: From the bottom-quartile of companies to the number one spot in the nation!
The Story: With pressures from a declining economy in a state with a population shrinking faster than that of any other state, and with the state's industrial base in dire straits, the leaders of a regional health insurance provider, "Eastside HealthPlans," knew that they needed to make a major shift in the results they were achieving, and they knew they needed to do it quickly.
For some time, the company had focused on customer satisfaction measures that were mandated and monitored by a multinational parent company that owned several other regional health care organizations. The parent's customer satisfaction program included several measurements of how timely and accurately Eastside enrolled new members, processed claims, and resolved inquiries. The measurements involved a "points earned" system that awarded points depending on how well the organization performed against the established standard for each of the customer satisfaction performance categories. At the time, Eastside ranked in the bottom quartile of all the health care organizations in the parent company's portfolio, ranked at number 32. Everyone recognized that the culture was dragging down the organization's performance. As we began working with the executive team to assess their culture, we heard distinctive themes repeated by leaders at every level of the organization. Most people agreed about what new employees would hear when they asked, "How do things really work around here?"
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The Story: Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor in the world, is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government The Greenville, South Carolina site engaged Partners In Leadership and implemented the Self Track™ Training and the Culture Track™ Training to help them execute on achieving their key results of refurbishing 240 C130 airplanes and 24 P3 Submarine Reconnaissance planes, which represented a 20% increase in work requirements over the previous year. Not only were they able to successfully execute on this aggressive initiative, they did it while hitting their Zero Defects objective. Bob Owen, Senior VP and Site General Manager said: "We saw a notable culture change with an obvious increase in motivation, professionalism and knowledge of processes. There was a visible display of the employees' dedication and commitment with an importance of understanding and following procedures and processes, and a recognized increase in teamwork, cross-functional communication and management's commitment to process improvement and customer satisfaction. Evidence supported significant improvement as a result of Project Odyssey."
Zero Defects and On-time Delivery
The Results: Refurbished 240 C130 Airplanes, 24 P3 Submarine Reconnaissance Planes, Zero Defects
The Story: Lockheed Martin, the largest military contractor in the world, is the largest provider of IT services, systems integration, and training to the U.S. Government The Greenville, South Carolina site engaged Partners In Leadership and implemented the Self Track™ Training and the Culture Track™ Training to help them execute on achieving their key results of refurbishing 240 C130 airplanes and 24 P3 Submarine Reconnaissance planes, which represented a 20% increase in work requirements over the previous year. Not only were they able to successfully execute on this aggressive initiative, they did it while hitting their Zero Defects objective. Bob Owen, Senior VP and Site General Manager said: "We saw a notable culture change with an obvious increase in motivation, professionalism and knowledge of processes. There was a visible display of the employees' dedication and commitment with an importance of understanding and following procedures and processes, and a recognized increase in teamwork, cross-functional communication and management's commitment to process improvement and customer satisfaction. Evidence supported significant improvement as a result of Project Odyssey."
