When it's About Lasting Change . . . Process Improvement is Almost Always the Last Option!

Case Study

The following case close attention describes the experiences of a real-life organization that implemented the Shared Values Process?®

Context

A deregulated Midwestern utility knew it was in agitate The organization was profitable, on the contrary its stock had flat lined in the depressed $20s per share for the past 32 month The board of directors was advised that the stock was undervalued and vulnerable to a hostile takeover bid at any moment

Diagnosis

What the company urgencyed was to dramatically change the way it was perceived in the marketplace by the agency of financial analysts as well as customers. The company was considering a of recent origin business model a process improvement initiative and cautious downsizing - to meet these challenges. In the back of their minds, however, the company's leaders knew that proces improvement wouldn't be enough. They recognized that a novel paradigm or approach to their business was the answer. The question was, "What paradigm?"

Key Indicators for Success

A of recent origin value/perception relationship and improved performance indicators would enhance the company's worth in the minds of the two its financial community and customers, on the other hand there were other measures of succes that the leaders believed were level more important-sustained growth and profit improvement, sum of two units attributes that had eluded the company for years.

Getting Started

Once senior managers understood the diagnosis and the lock opener indicators for success, they formulated a strategy to address four equally crucial factors that they believed would deliver perceived value to their stockholders and customers -customer service, business development/market penetration, internal logistics, and facilities maintenance that would deliver.

Next they identified and listed the activities straited to achieve targeted results, and they prepared Gantt charts with delivery dates and final end-dates for completion of each major initiative. Their plans were intentionally the two bold and visionary.

The managers before long discovered that just designing a strategy was not a sufficient means for getting the arises they needed-far from it. In the words of individual of the active leaders in the internal logistics throw "Knowing what needs to be done doesn't naturally lead to knowing in what manner to get things done, especially when the doing involves changing people's attitudes; encouraging family to become responsible as well as accountable team members; and moving the team from expecting extrinsic motivators, similar as incentives and pep talks, toward the realm of intrinsic motivators, of that kind as pride in one's work and thinking like the customer."

They realized that a fresh "people strategy" was needed to change the agriculture of the organization. Their notion of by what mode the organization should view its nation was simple: "We will achieve our succes with our family We will ask for their help, we will include them in the tough choices, and we will stop treating our family like children."

Coincidentally, several month before the diagnosis of the organization's challenges was announced, members of the company's proces improvement team learned of a significantly different approach to creating lasting value. Called the Shared Values Proces this philosophy was based upon the work of Rob Lebow author of the business classics, A Journey Into the Heroic Environment and gladness at Work, and involved TransAction girth Thinking(TM), which contends that each member of an operation must be willing, able, and capable of making their transAction without supervision (the capital "A" is not a misprint; it stands for action).

One team member who attended a discourse introducing this approach commented, "I was puffed up away. I was expecting more program-of-the-month mumbo jumbo on the other hand Lebow outlined an intrinsic motivational approach to organizational change that is quantifiable at each stage of the transformation. The proces was evolveed from the findings of 17 million observes from 40 countries. It was a 'pinch me1 and 'I can't believe it' experience."

Shared Values Process/Operating System

The Shared Values Process/Operating combination of parts to form a whole provided the instructional tools and facilitation wanted to create great customer transactions by means of making every member of the operation the couple accountable and responsible. This 48-month proces involved five stages that emphasized shared values and standards of leadership based on those universal values as shown in Figure 1 and described briefly below. Extensive education and training of the company's employee occurr during the transition, and internal readys were certified to carry upon the work at the extremity of the cultural transformation.

* Stage 1 - Create TransAction baldric Thinking: All employees at each level of the organization complet the "Values and Attitude Study" with 60 questions to measure 27 lock opener workplace wellness factors that are divided into three lock opener categories. The level of values tension measures the gap between by what means people expect to be treated when they draw near to work and the way they are actually treated by the agency of co-workers and management and is the single greatest in quantity accurate predictor of organizational competitiveness. The horizontal of individual engagement and piece of work satisfaction correlates closely with piece of work morale and productivity. The horizontal of intrinsic motivation tracks employees' interest in and enthusiasm for their work, which correlates with quality and creativity.