Company profile:

• A worldwide leader in state-of-the-art detection and imaging devices, including advanced military, scientific, and commercial sensing and vision systems
• More than $300M Southern California-based business unit with about 800 employees locally and global sales

Business challenge:

• The existing organization structure was not aligned with the company’s vision for the future or its emerging markets worldwide
• A poor design led to an underperforming leadership team, lack of attention to new business development opportunities, and continual production delays

Organization design and change management solutions provided include:

• Worked directly with the General Manager to assemble the Design Team and officially launch the initiative
• Facilitated an all-day project kickoff session with the GM and Design Team members to clarify the project approach and initiate the current-state assessment
• Conducted extensive interviews with numerous senior leaders, program managers, customers, and support personnel; Identified 173 discrete operational issues and more than 20 common themes as a result
• Led Design Team members in determining which issues must be addressed by the new design; Developed new organization structures and ancillary business processes based on these requirements
• Created a functional structure organized around major activity groups and divided into three major components – Shared Resources, Strategic Planning and Business Development, and Program Operations
• Defined the implementation strategy to successfully deploy the approved design and process changes
• Provided ongoing communication and transition management support to review new design elements with key stakeholders, detail job descriptions for new positions, and document the cross-functional processes

Key business results:

• Created a smaller, more agile senior leadership team with improved decision-making capabilities and only five direct reports to the GM
• Defined clear operational accountabilities that provided enhanced customer focus as well as direct line of sight from the GM to his strategic functions
• Established a new “Entrepreneurial & Innovation Team” and instituted a focused sales and marketing organization to pursue expansion into new markets

Right from the start, Plus Delta’s team of experienced consultants focused on getting to know us and our future business needs. They successfully mobilized our Design Team and led us through the discovery process to create a more strategic and agile organization.

- General Manager

How many times have you said to yourself, “I know we could be even better…” but not known what to do to achieve those results? The problem for most people isn’t recognizing that there is a better way to do things. It’s figuring out exactly what to do and moving from “even better” to “even better if…”!

We’re currently in the midst of tremendous uncertainty and economic turmoil throughout the country and around the world. As a result, companies are under even more pressure than usual to streamline operations and improve organizational performance. At times like this, traditional approaches to organizational change won’t deliver the kinds of transformational results anyone wants – or needs – to achieve their intended results.

For example, you might see an opportunity for improvement in one particular area of the business and leverage your core strengths to change the way that work group functions. Or maybe you do some external benchmarking and decide to implement an industry “best practice” approach with that work group. These changes may help for awhile, but they probably won’t have the lasting impact you want them to have. More importantly, these changes are likely to create new problems in other areas of the business.

Why is that? Why does a change in one group cause problems somewhere else in the organization? Well, imagine a high-performance bicycle wheel with four spokes. The spokes of the wheel represent your company’s strategy, processes, systems and people. Now imagine that you change one of the spokes to be bigger or longer than the other three in an attempt to make that one spoke “even better”. How well will that wheel roll now that one of the spokes has improved strength and durability?

Each of these key elements in your organization is related to each other. That means when you change one thing in isolation, you impact everything else. Each part of the organization, including its divisions, departments, functions, and work groups are sub-systems within the overall company. Therefore, changes in one area of the business have significant implications for other areas too.

This common approach to implement organizational changes in isolation is a major reason why as little as 20% of all large-scale change efforts achieve their intended business results. To be effective, we need a more integrated approach. If we don’t look at our organizations as complete systems, we may achieve incremental gains in certain areas, but we surely won’t be effective in creating sustainable change across the entire organization.

At Plus Delta Consulting, we have shown numerous business leaders the systematic steps to take to realign their efforts and increase their team’s effectiveness. Rather than take a myopic view of any organization, we use a more integrated approach and focus our efforts on all four of the following performance factors that are critical to the success of creating sustainable change across an organization:

• Business Strategy – An organization’s business strategy clearly articulates the vision and longer-term objectives for that organization.
• Operating Processes – Defined business processes operationalize the strategic direction within separate but complementary work functions. If the strategy dictates “what” an organization will do, these processes demonstrate “how” they will get there.
• Technology Systems – Whether they are manual or leverage more advanced technologies, an organization’s operating systems enable the tactical execution of their core business processes to occur.
• People & Culture – Last but not least, people use the established systems to perform the actual process tasks that help the organization achieve its key business objectives.

When we use this integrated approach with our clients, we typically start with a Quick Pulse assessment to quickly determine what’s working well as well as what may need to be changed within each performance area. Through this disciplined diagnostic approach, we conduct executive interviews, facilitate employee feedback sessions, perform high-level process analyses, and oftentimes administer an organizational climate survey to get a full picture of the organization’s strategy, process, systems and people. We then use this information to make specific recommendations to improve performance and prepare a suggested roadmap for change.

At the end of this process, our goal is for our clients to complete the statement, “We would be even better if…” As we said before, most people know there is a better way. They just don’t know exactly what to do. So we partner with our clients to prioritize any number of possible actions and then implement those changes to get the organization to the next level. And our commitment is to complete the initial Quick Pulse assessment in 30 days or less so that they can more quickly take that next step towards achieving their intended results.

Can Plus Delta help you create sustainable changes and produce “even better” results? To learn more about our integrated change approach, give us a call at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send an email to info@plusdelta.net. You can also visit the Quick Pulse page of our website for more information.

Change can be an exciting and exhilarating experience. Change can lead to innovation and renewal in many areas. Better utilization of technology, more efficient process flow, and enhanced individual and team productivity are all potential benefits of change.

Far too often though, organizations fail to achieve these benefits. In fact, it’s not uncommon for only 20% of major change efforts to ever achieve their intended business results. Whether it is a systems implementation, a process redesign or any other organizational transformation initiative, that means that up to 80% of these change projects fail to achieve their intended business results. For this reason, Plus Delta has developed the Positive Change^SM approach not only to ensure project success but also to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

The Positive Change^SM approach is based on the work of today’s leading change and consulting scholars as well as decades of applied consulting experience. The approach synthesizes this information into a robust and comprehensive methodology in order to create a substantial return on investment. A distinct goal of the Positive Change^SM approach is to produce self-sustaining clients by developing long-term capabilities inherent throughout the project. Thus, our clients continue to achieve successful results long after the consulting engagement has ended. Finally, this approach strives to increase our client’s sense of gratification during the change process by involving key stakeholder groups in the process and by achieving multiple successes along the way. Therefore, our clients speak encouragingly about the change and remain committed throughout the entire consulting engagement.

Unlike most consulting approaches, Positive Change^SM focuses on both the tactical and personal sides of the consulting engagement. In order to ensure success on the tactical side of the consulting engagement, we use a five-phase consulting model that focuses on the employee and organization simultaneously and utilizes a strategic approach to communication.

The five phases include:

1. Initiation – Confirm project objectives and define the Positive Change^SM strategy for the engagement
2. Assessment – Analyze the organizational business challenges and identify potential solutions
3. Design – Develop specific solutions to improve performance and create the final transition plan
4. Implementation – Execute learning and transition strategies to enable a more efficient organization
5. Evaluation – Monitor ongoing performance and identify opportunities for continuous improvement

The hallmark of the Positive Change^SM approach is its emphasis on both the organization and employee. Change often has a ripple effect throughout the organization (i.e., a change in one department affects another). Positive Change^SM recognizes the interdependence that exists within an organization and strategically evaluates the intended and unintended consequences of every action. Thus, our clients attain improvements in multiple areas within the organization.

In addition, Positive Change^SM recognizes that organizations are only capable of change when employees decide to change. Therefore, this approach works closely with key stakeholders and emphasizes employee involvement. An employee-focused approach entails meeting with key stakeholders, project champions, team members, and affected employees. During these meetings, Plus Delta discusses previous experiences with change, obtains feedback from employees about the change project, and most importantly, creates solutions that match the client’s reality. Thus, open communication plays a significant role in the success of a change initiative.

While the specific activities that one undertakes during the consulting engagement represent the tactical side, the activities that help build the client relationship represent the personal side. Numerous consulting and change management models fail to realize the importance of the client relationship. The Positive Change^SM approach, however, recognizes that this relationship is the foundation for a successful consulting engagement. The partnership and trust that grows from a healthy client and consultant relationship permeates throughout the project. This relationship, which is grounded in helping our clients succeed, creates an environment where they freely discuss their current situation and desired end states without hesitation. Such an open discussion increases the likelihood that our clients will achieve their desired results.

A successful client relationship goes beyond effectively managing the client engagement and delivering high quality results. It also includes:

• Understanding the business need and helping our clients identify an effective solution
• Immediately adding value and alleviating client “pain”
• Honoring commitments and follow through on all tasks within an agreed upon time frame
• Creating a collaborative environment for mutual problem solving and decision-making
• Listening to our clients’ needs and asking for input and feedback throughout the engagement
• Supporting our clients by publicly promoting their value-add to others in the organization

Every consulting engagement entails developing some type of relationship with the client. The Positive Change^SM approach consciously acknowledges this fact and strives to create a successful client and consultant relationship.

Can Plus Delta help you improve performance? To learn how you can be more productive and deliver smooth and successful change projects, please call Plus Delta at +1 (310) 589-4600 or send us an email at info@plusdelta.net