Is your company holding fast to its past successes? Are your profits growing…or eroding? Do you believe your business will continue as it has? Do you have support for change, if change is needed? The bottom line is always to cut costs and increase profits…but what will happen if the marketplace shifts?

Can you afford not to change?

Successful corporations seek help when they need it. The number one reason why companies fail to implement improvements in their corporations is that the President/CEO doesn’t believe any improvement is needed and believes the business and profits will continue as they have in spite of any economic fluctuations.

At ISSI, a cutting-edge international firm providing high performance memory for telecommunications, industrial instrumentation, personal computers, networking, multimedia, and more, President Jimmy Lee said, “I knew my vision, but not how to communicate it to my team and get them to buy in. We needed tools put in place so everyone could focus and improve our culture as well as our profitability.”  They sought help. In one year, their profits rose 543%, and no single customer accounted for more than 7.5% of total sales.

If a President/CEO doesn’t believe internal or external support will help, or doesn’t make company improvement a priority, his company may be heading for trouble. Time, resources and money must be committed, and timely decisions to support this outlay are essential. It begins with accountability and commitment, and change must start at the top if it is to be effective. If a CEO expects change from others but isn’t willing to modify his own convictions, change will not endure. Words, without action, are totally ineffective. Accountability must begin with the entire senior staff before it can be transmitted to employees.

If no one changes, nothing changes! A CEO who lives by his values and holds others accountable to his high standards is a remarkable beacon lighting the way to personal and corporate success.

Before training is begun, a complete assessment of the company is made, including analysis of the culture, management team, organizational dynamics, operations, quality control, and sales and marketing. The reports include triage plans: in other words, critical issues and recommendations made for the resolution of those issues.

The President/CEO may not realize that state-funded training reimbursement may be possible.

A business assessment must be conducted to identify the problems, challenges and issues, and recommendations developed to address them.

If problems aren’t specifically identified, solutions are not possible.

 A comprehensive business assessment must include critical success factors and a determination of the required projects and training on which the organization must focus.  It identifies the skills and knowledge of the managers and personnel and any gap between where they are and where they should be.

This business improvement plan includes the company’s Vision, Mission and Values statements.

In a strategic planning session, the executive team agreed on the B & B Vision: that is, what they wanted to be in the next three to five years. They created their Mission statement: who their customers and markets would be, what their products would be and how they would be produced. They also brainstormed on the distinction between B & B and their competitors, and why they were in business. In addition, the company Values statement was determined, the driving force of B & B, and the reference point for decisions and behaviors within the company. The Vision, Mission and Values are a solid foundation for profitability and excellence.

B & B Specialties, Inc. faced an increasingly competitive market for its special fasteners and socket head cap screws. President Bruce Borchardt says, “I’ve noticed many people referring to our values; it helps all of us make better decisions, knowing where we came from and what we stand for. We want to be open to change and hold ourselves accountable.” B & B has consistently grown 20% annually, or 103% in four years.  The company is now an aerospace manufacturing quality system with FQA approval and accreditation for QMLS – Quality Manufacturer’s list.

Gary Fischer, ISSI’s Senior Vice President, pulled a copy of his company’s Values statement from the wall and stated, “There is not a week that goes by that I don’t take this down and use it to coach one or more of our team members on behaviors that exemplify our values. These values are embedded in this company now, and our value systems extend to our representatives and customers.”

A tactical plan identifies priorities and the strategy to achieve stated goals, but objectives are kept simple, focused and result-oriented.
At B & B, a yearlong, company-wide training program was launched, in which all participated in both classroom training and lab sessions to practice skills. Each team had its own goals derived from mutual consent and the company’s vision, mission and values statements. Results were impressive:

Tim Rutan of the Executive Management Team set up production team leaders who picked their men from the company roster, much the same way as professional sports players are drafted. Each team had specific goals and six weeks to complete them. Cash incentives were given, based upon their success. The results were astonishing! Set-up time was reduced by 72%, on-time delivery is now 90%, and production levels are up 25%.

It must be also be determined if the participants in the company are qualified, competent and experienced to learn and grow with the company’s performance goals.

At Waltco, a 55 year-old machining and assembly company, a retraining program transformed a sagging company into a world-class manufacturer and enabled them to win a prestigious Hewlett Packard “Most Improved Supplier” award. The retraining had to involve employees who had worked at the company for 20-25 years and were functioning in the “Entitlement” mode; they didn’t want anyone coming in from the outside to shift their mind-set until they could believe the changes would be beneficial for them.

If personnel feel they’re too busy to retrain and, therefore, improve, failure to achieve goals will result, so a reward system is developed and implemented to recognize achievements. And if training is only done by rote, to please those who are ‘watching,’ instead of focusing on results, success is doomed.

If training and implementation are not customized to achieve specific results, a corporation may stumble.

M-Flex is the fourth-ranking flex company in the United States but highest profit-maker. Their president, Phil Harding said, “Because of an excellent business assessment and training, individual coaching and implementation of new skills and techniques, we maintained our 11% profit margin in spite of an 11% decline in sales due to a general business slowdown.” They were proud of receiving Seagate’s 1998 Number One Supplier award after all the improvements M-Flex instituted after training.

A successful corporation not only survives, but thrives.

Strategic business planning creates a vision of the company three to five years out. It develops a mission reflecting the product portfolios, emphasis and markets and how the company will produce the products, while recognizing that change is a constant force.  It defines and develops the values that drive the company. This needs to be refined by the movers and shakers within the company, and agreed by consensus. It is absolutely essential to the company’s future.

Improved communication skills, especially among a diverse cultural workforce, need to be a priority. When training and implementation and interactive skills are customized and integrated into the existing company, impressive results may take place in a relatively short time.

At IMO Wiggins Connectors, an established company making high-tech couplings for the aircraft industry, retraining reduced duplication of efforts and redundant functions. Employees at all levels (including union machinists) adjust  their job responsibilities to where the work is and if a function doesn’t add value to the process, it isn’t done.  Teams have the authority to eliminate or change any function when it will result in a higher level of customer satisfaction. Wiggins won Boeing’s “President’s Award.”

Erin Houghton, B & B Human Resource Manager states, “When we did strategic and tactical planning, the management team saw that we needed to change our culture. With help, we crafted a plan to grow the company so that we could be more efficient and productive; we knew we needed an empowered and proactive workforce. We needed to change our culture from one where there was a total lack of trust to one where there was mutual trust and communication between employees and managers.”

At ISSI, John Unger, VP of Quality Assurance, said, “Even though we have already benefited so much from the training, it needs to continue. This should not be done internally. I’m convinced you have to bring in an outside facilitator, who has no ax to grind, is objective, and who critiques ideas rather than people. I feel we should do it quarterly now that our building blocks are in place.”

Jack Hradesky, founder and President of National Summit Group, Inc. (NSG), has an impressive history to back up his questions and solutions of business issues. His management company in Newport Beach, California, conducted the extremely successful assessments, strategic planning and training of M-Flex and B & B Specialties,  ISSI and Waltco. 

Mr. Hradesky was named entrepreneur of the year in 1990, was an invited speaker and panel member at Dr.Edwards Deming’s seminars, and has written two acclaimed management texts: The TQM Handbook (McGraw Hill, 1995), and Productivity and Quality Improvement (McGraw Hill, 1997). A third book, 'Corporate Fantasies That Came True' is in process.

Mr. Hradesky says, “When companies falter for any reason, it is not a red light to stop change, but a green light to begin them. Industrial insanity is doing the same thing the same way with the same people and procedures, but expecting different results. Sanity lies in taking what doesn’t work for the company’s highest good and with help turning the negatives into positives.”

He summarizes his reasons why companies falter or fail to implement improvements:

• The President/CEO doesn’t believe improvement is needed, is satisfied with today’s profits, and believes business will continue as it has.
• The President/CEO does not believe improvement is possible, either by internal or external support.
• The President/CEO is not committed; that is, he does not put Business Performance Improvement (BPI) as a priority by spending time, authorizing resources, investing money, making timely decisions or by establishing accountability.
• The President/CEO thinks he is committed to change, but deceives himself. He may spend time, money and resources, but does not make timely decisions and does not hold people accountable. He expects others to change, but not himself.

Senior staff is not committed or focused. If they don’t walk the talk of the values, they are not role models,  so no one holds them accountable because they represent words, not action.

The company does not:

• Have a vision, mission and values
• Does not work the plan
• Does not walk the talk
• The company does not have a tactical plan that identifies what the priorities are and the strategy to achieve the vision or mission.

A reward system for results and shared values is not developed and implemented.

The objectives have too many simultaneous tasks and efforts are diluted. The objectives need to be focused.

Participants are not experienced enough to implement the goals, or not qualified or competent enough to achieve them.

Training and implementation are not customized or integrated to achieve specific goals.

Companies tend to create an unproved or unsound approach if they believe they are unique. They attempt to do it all themselves, with an attitude problem of ‘not invented here’ preventing sound solutions.

Training is done for the sake of training, instead of focusing on achieving results.

Training is piecemeal—not adequate in depth, breadth or duration to sustain over a period of time.

Personnel do not take time to train and implement because they believe they’re too busy to improve.

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