Case Studies
Aligning Stakeholders
Deciding What Not to Do
Deciding What Not to Do
Culture eats strategy. Learn how a company surfaced areas of misalignment among managers and used a structured approach to reach alignment and ownership for results.
Deciding What Not to Do
Deciding What Not to Do
Deciding What Not to Do
Strategy means making hard choices. Learn how one stopped organizational activities unrelated to the strategy, resulting in better outcomes during strategy implementation.
Achieving Results
Deciding What Not to Do
Achieving Results
Research confirms that customer satisfaction and employee engagement impact financial outcomes more than any other factor. Learn how one company grew by prioritizing both.
Case Study: Aligning Stakeholders
Problem
A major energy services provider CEO had difficulty moving his business strategy into execution via his executive team, despite their assurances were working on implementing it. Metricus deployed an executive assessment of strategy understanding, and the results showed had only 20% alignment with the CEO.
Solution
Customer research confirmed that their satisfaction depended on the firm's performance in three key areas, none of which featured in the strategy. The team worked together to change the strategy, realign performance KPIs, add cross-function initiatives to support the strategy, and stop initiatives that did not.
Result
One year after deploying the strategy, customer satisfaction improved 10%, customer retention improved 20%, and revenue increased 24%. And as a result of focusing on initiatives that contribute to the strategy while stopping others, employee retention and employee engagement also improved.
Case Study: Deciding What Not to Do
Problem
A global engineering and construction firm faced challenges in focusing employees on their strategy actions because according to employees, their daily responsibilities made it impossible to do so. Metricus worked with the executive team to understand all of the major initiatives and activities employees juggled.
Solution
Through an iterative process, the firm prioritized all current initiatives, decided which ones to continue, delay, or stop entirely. Using the new strategy, the firm added a small number of new initiatives that would enable employees to implement the strategy as part of their day-to-day responsibilities.
Result
With employees now focused on activities supporting the strategy instead of those within their functional silos, progress and alignment improved across cross-functional teams in each country. The number of initiatives to track decreased by 60%, and SG&A as a percentage of revenue also decreased.
Achieving Results
Problem
After developing a new strategy based on customer needs, a manufacturing firm was not seeing consistent results in customer satisfaction in its fabrication business. After conducting interviews with the front-line teams, Metricus discovered that employees did not have the appropriate resources to execute the customer-focused strategy, which centered on improving product quality.
Solution
Leaders from the impacted site conducted in-depth sessions to uncover the key focus areas where front-line employees needed more support and resources to do their jobs. In general, leaders discovered that employees needed better training, adequate tools and more bandwidth (reduction in meetings and initiatives not related to customer needs).
Result
Four months after making key changes, the manufacturing firm improved safety performance, reduced quality defects, and improved on time delivery. In addition, the firm reduce employee turnover from more than 70% to 30%.