Client - A Single Division of a $40B Manufacturer of Construction Equipment

Presenting Business Need - Employee survey revealed significant conflicts between top leadership and manufacturing floor personnel; company realized that in order to produce to customer demands, it needed to address the breakdowns in communication between production personnel and the top leadership team.

Solution - The focus involved several simultaneous initiatives, all aimed at better understanding the issues related to the production conflicts and taking steps to open up improved communications and production work flow processes. Primary deliverables were as follows:

• Developed and implemented a process for data collection and analysis, in order to better understand business and organizational issues. A core element of this process consisted of in-depth interviews with a diagonal slice of the organization.
• Reviewed historical documentation to assess past practices, changes in present leadership philosophy and practice.
• Worked with internal leadership to identify key people from a cross-section of the organization to work with consultants to shape a plan for change initiatives.
• Consultant facilitated the change management team to conduct further assessment throughout the organization, design a process for change, including organizational redesign, team-based leadership on the production floor, identification of a management team to facilitation problem resolution across engineering and production and recommended leadership development strategies focused on building a high-involvement culture.
• The change management team put forward their six major change recommendations to executive staff; top leadership embraced the change actions and provided resources to implement.
• Consultant worked with all change initiative leaders to guide and coach the leaders in their roles of implementation and culture change.
• Worked with more than 85 individuals directly (250 indirect) over a one-year period, assisting them to become self sufficient in their engagement processes going forward.
• Conducted an organizational evaluation in collaboration with corporate offices of the change initiatives, including a mini-survey with all employees to evaluate progress against specific metrics.

Impact - Results showed significant improvements in all metrics and employee work satisfaction measures improved 89% year over year. Business indicators demonstrated improvement with "on-time delivery" of products, revenue growth of 35%, and productivity increases of 83%. Participating leaders of change initiatives reported significant learning in their ability to lead in a participative environment. A 3 year-plan was developed for the future, continuing and expanding upon initial efforts to bring the business to new levels of growth and productivity.

For more information about this and related cases, please contact:

Elaine Millam
emillam@alexcelgroup.com  
651-739-1669

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