Project #1: Business Strategy & Product Innovation
Challenging Situation: One of the products offered by this company had been highly successful in terms of its ROI. Recent changes in technology and competitors’ advances were decreasing its market share and profitability though. Leaders recognized that they needed to make some major changes in this product, but weren’t quite sure how to go about it.
Actions: Thea was asked to assist. After becoming familiar with the product and the division and determining root causes of the situation, she designed and facilitated a process to engage the creativity and knowledge of employees to first create a new business strategy and then to reinvent the product.
Results: The process was highly successful. Employees were highly motivated to contribute to this work because of the way they were involved. Working with Thea, the group altered their business strategy. This allowed them to discover an innovation that took the product in drastically different directions, ones that proved highly profitable over the next few years.
Project #3: Cross-Group Collaboration
Challenging Situation: Two groups in this organization had complex interdependencies requiring joint brainstorming, decision-making, and actions for the successful development of a key product. Each of the groups had several hundred employees, and there had been problems between them for several years. Key delivery dates were regularly missed and customer relationships were negatively affected. In addition, resources were wasted as the departments were duplicating activities rather than leveraging each other’s work. The problems transcended all levels of staff, from senior leaders to individual contributors. Several attempts had been made by others to resolve the issues and assist these groups to collaborate more effectively. None of those efforts had resulted in sustained improvement.
Actions: Thea started by seeking a fuller picture of the situation, issues, barriers, and perspectives. Using this information, she facilitated several streams of work to improve systems and processes. They were able to work through and resolve the issues preventing the groups from working together effectively.
Results: Immediate positive results were seen in the way the groups collaborated. Ultimately, the most significant proof of results was the creation of a great product, on schedule.