Client Success Stories
Powell’s City of Books - Internet Business Unit Achieves $15 Million/Year Pace in Profitable Sales in Just 36 Months
LionHeart assisted the leadership team of Powell's Books, the world's largest used book retailer, to see the growth potential of online sales, and to create a strategic task force to pursue the opportunity. Through ongoing facilitation of the task force in development and implementation of the strategy, the "impossible goal" of hitting the run rate of $15 million dollars per year was achieved in 36 months.
The project began when we listened intently to the enthusiasm of the young technical people who had never had the credibility to “sit at the strategy table”. We graphically highlighted the fact that the company’s level of effort toward on-line book sales was insignificant compared to the opportunity. When the two senior strategic thinkers “got it” the energy level in the room went up tenfold. Their passion for bookselling was reinvigorated and had a contagious impact immediately. The team’s first hurdle was trusting that their lack of experience in this new distribution channel could be openly discussed without having the answers. Sometimes the brightest minds need permission to learn what they don’t yet know. We created a set of partnership agreements that made it safe to communicate openly without expertise. We also established an impossible 3 year goal that engaged everyone’s imagination of what it would be like to be wildly successful. With each weekly meeting came new ideas, challenges and problems to attend to. Sales grew steadily but behind the anticipated schedule to reach the goal. Two and a half years into the 3 year project a few of the key people gave up on the goal while acknowledging the huge breakthrough this new business was for the company. However, two assistant managers who’d been in the background for much of this time did not give up on the goal. Their ability to advocate for additional investments in technology sufficiently bolstered sales in the 35th month to have the team achieve its impossible goal!
Hughes Space and Communications - High Technology Margins Dramatically Improved Through Faster Time-to-Delivery
When intense competition began driving down prices for multi-million dollar communications satellite systems, LionHeart's executive coaching and team development helped a group of 50 skeptical engineers seriously commit to a radically new process, and the program team successfully slashed the cycle time for integration and testing by almost 60%, from a best ever 31 weeks to a dramatic 18 weeks.
The active ingredient in this project was creating an environment of “open mindedness” among a large group of rocket scientists who’d been doing things one way for many years within a culture where business concerns were secondary to technical expertise. We began with the program manager who was most willing to risk technical ridicule and articulate his vision for a breakthrough. He asked 3 to 4 of his top people to lock themselves in a room for a week and come up with a plan to cut the cycle time by 12 weeks. They returned with a revised process and a set of slides that explained what would have to change. We called the big meeting and promised lunch if everyone stayed in the room through the whole 5 hours. One skeptic publicly challenged LionHeart to make sure the meeting was worth the $20K-plus this pep rally was costing the company. These guys really were rocket scientists and they had calculators! We began with the program manager connecting the need for a business breakthrough with their job security. He also acknowledged how innovation was a core competency at the outset of the company and he challenged them to open their minds and hearts to what they did not yet know. We spent an hour exploring the ways expertise can lead to either limited thinking or expansive thinking. The skeptics were then able to open their minds and their hearts to the 2 hours of “how to” slides that the core team had developed. No one dozed off or preoccupied themselves with other work. At the end of the session we asked if anyone was unwilling to give the new process a try. No one spoke until the engineer who challenged LionHeart initially said, “I guess you were worth your fee today”. The program manager and almost 20 of these engineers and scientists met every morning for 30 minutes to work out the difficulties in the new process so they could stay on schedule. At the end of 18 weeks they were actually able to give the team a week off and still meet their business goal of 19 weeks.
The Leatherman Tool Group - The Inability to Meet Booming Customer Demand Transformed to 100% of the Production Schedule Achieved
When the company had difficulty meeting its ever increasing master production schedule year after year, LionHeart quickly ignited a strategic planning process, helped reduce inter-departmental conflict, facilitated problem solving, and created a spirit of collaboration and accountability. The result was a significant improvement in meeting the schedule to the owner’s definition, and providing on-time delivery to the customers.
This work initially involved a mediation session between the vice presidents of engineering and manufacturing. We shifted the conversation away from blame and defensiveness to what was actually inhibiting performance. Four hours later we had 64 problems listed that needed attention before the manufacturing VP could confidently promise on time production. We took that list to a teambuilding session among the managers of both departments and began to set priorities and ask individuals to take ownership of the items. We met weekly for two hours after that to engage in constructive problem solving and determine who would do what by when. Agreements were carefully recorded and reviewed each week and the list grew to 90 items as the managers discovered more problems. Eventually, a new manufacturing manager was brought in to bring a higher level of professionalism to his department managers. The managers had been elevated from their blue collar jobs with no formal training because they’d been the best technicians. We read books and set the intention for a culture of excellence. Some of the managers stepped up to the next level and others didn’t make it. It took two years but by the end of this project the manufacturing department was able to make a “day’s worth every day” of the almost 100 components that went into the different versions of the Leatherman tool – while sales had continued to grow rapidly. The Sales Department joined the Engineering Department in acknowledging the transformation that had been accomplished in Manufacturing.
Rejuvenation – The Manufacturing Division Recovers $500K of Lost Profitability
After moving their manufacturing operations into a new facility and installing a new information system, Rejuvenation, a specialty lighting manufacturer and retail/catalogue company, took a major hit to their bottom line. LionHeart provided leadership development, executive coaching and teambuilding. A system of accountability was created and LionHeart enhanced performance management skills, helping the company return to its previous level of profitability.
This work began with the CEO and owner declaring to the manufacturing managers that the most important ingredient of a socially responsible company was profitability, “to treat people with the dignity espoused in the company’s values is a costly proposition.” This was an important message to set the tone for higher levels of accountability. The workers on the manufacturing floor were almost all from other countries and there were 17 different languages represented. One of the company’s policies is to loan employees a down payment for their first purchase of a home and then forgive the loan with a specific number of years of successful service to the company. We worked with the lead craftspeople to understand the importance of performance management and helped them develop skills in having the tough conversations with people even though their cultural roots had not prepared them to be straightforward with these types of concerns. Standards for productivity were agreed upon and implemented until the numbers came back into line as the lead people learned how their courage to manage people related to the company’s ability to help people purchase homes.
Kaiser Permanente – One Department Moves from Conflict to Collaboration with $800K of Lost Time Returned to Productivity
Internal conflict evolved from a manager's misunderstanding of his power and responsibility to address disrespectful behavior. After gaining clarity and comfort around his level of authority through our coaching process, he initiated a team building project with LionHeart's facilitation to resolve the conflict and to get people back to work. This initiative enhanced the quality of work life for the entire department and returned $800K of lost time to productivity.
The manager of this department was about to leave his job because he thought his boss would not support his disciplining an employee who was married to a key doctor working in another part of the organization. We found him sitting in his car in the parking lot one day after he’d been shaken by yet another intimidating tirade from his troubled employee. We facilitated a conversation with his boss to set the record straight regarding his authority to intervene in disrespectful behavior. We met with the employee to address the concerns and provide him an opportunity to make the required changes. We also met with the team to attempt to rebuild the broken trust with this employee; however he was unable to follow our process for recovering his lost credibility sufficiently to regain the confidence of his team. He left the organization as the team chose to set a higher level of accountability with the projects the other departments were counting on from them. It was only after this employee left the organization that we discovered the extent of the wasted time the turmoil was causing. There had been technology disagreements that had escalated into acts of sabotage to discredit those with a different point of view. An informal survey of the 100 people in the department indicated that an hour per day per employee had been spent in this ideological battle, resulting in $800K of lost productivity. The manager and his team were surprised to discover the power of open honest problem solving.