Smithers Testing Laboratories –
This small, but impressive science company was experiencing some internal growing pains. Brought in by the General Manager, the Collaborative facilitated a short series of meetings with cross-sectional representation of the corporate staff to identify strategic issues.
The meetings gave employee and leadership a common language to talk about dynamic challenges they faced. In addition to identifying key dynamic challenges they were facing, they created an enterprise-wide map depicting the relationships among the functional areas and various performance measures.
The combination of the systemic view, with the compare and contrast of different strategies eventually led to a much needed strategic expansion in the local plant, as well as several supporting initiatives. Systems thinking at its finest.
The group, representing scientists, sales people, managers, and technicians, together thought through several plausible strategies, given the key strategic choices they had (e.g. pricing, technical sophistication, breadth of services). The team was then able to identify and communicate a mismatch within the de facto strategy they were being charged with implementing, given their operational situation. The mismatch was creating intense pressure for employees, which was clearly and courageously expressed in the meetings. The project eventually enabled management to negotiate a more cohesive strategy, with a commitment to build and maintain an operation that was capable of execution.
