In 14 years of consulting, GMT has helped a wide range of clients to address their most pressing competitive challenges—whether these challenges involved market understanding, product or market innovation, supply chain management, or entering the e-business arena.
However, GMT's consultants have found that some of the most difficult challenges that our clients face are cultural obstacles such as:
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Ensuring that all employees share a common vision and a "good for the company" mindset |
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Overcoming departmental loyalties and achieving effective teamwork |
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Aligning the senior team so that it can truly lead the business |
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"Knitting" a number of distinct improvement initiatives into a cohesive strategy |
Over the years, we have gathered a number of interview comments from those clients who have been most successful in managing these difficult issues—and creating a collaborative culture they can use as a powerful competitive weapon.
We've assembled these comments into a "virtual roundtable" that we believe offers useful insight for those businesses interested in increasing collaboration within their culture—and increasing their culture's contribution to strategic growth.
Why is it critical to begin a strategic planning process with aligning the executive team—and addressing any barriers that exist among team members?
Ron Berg
Senior Vice President, Inventory Management
and Strategic Facility Support
United Stationers
I think if somebody is going to embark on a strategic planning process that it has to start at the top and move down. The people at the top have to fully embrace change—and not just on the surface. Guaranteed, this process will bring out controversy and the only effective way to stay the course is to have a team at the top that can manage through those situations and provide the stability that the organization will require. "Barriers" will have no place in the strategic planning process and will only serve to limit the success of the project. Without alignment at the executive level the process really can't go anywhere. On the other hand, if they can embrace change, and the alignment becomes evident in how they operate, the shared plan will be successful.
Melissa Orme
Former VP and Chief Financial Officer
The Coleman Company
Our senior team began by answering the questions posed by GMT: "What do you want your company to be? What kind of culture? What kind of environment? What are you trying to accomplish?" Then GMT helped to facilitate the effort to make that happen. By the time our strategic plan was completed to the presentation stage, we had a very cohesive, energized management team that was absolutely committed to achieving those objectives. Today, we do not have a presentation done by GMT, which just sits on the shelf. Because we began with a senior team commitment, it is Coleman's plan—and we will achieve it.
Anton Elsborg
Former President
Textron Power Transmission
When I went to present our division's strategic plan to Textron Corporate, I had the additional confidence that the people that had been involved in the GMT planning process—which was most of my senior executives—were fully committed to delivering this plan. This was their plan, this was our plan. And that's a fundamental culture change within this business. There's a much deeper and clearer level of responsibility and involvement and ownership from that standpoint in saying where this business is going.
Once the senior team is committed, why is it so important to create a collaborative culture—and involve employees in the strategic planning process?
Randy Larrimore
President and CEO
United Stationers
I think in any organization it is difficult to get people to look beyond their department or the facility in which they work. It really takes throwing some people together in a crossfunctional, cross-departmental team where they start realizing that there is a lot of value in sharing ideas one with another. Most people in business today have specialized in a particular function, either by choice or by default. But they probably think of themselves as a businessperson first, and then an inventory control manager or merchandising person second. People really enjoy the opportunity to think more broadly about a business and share their ideas with somebody else.
Anton Elsborg
Former President
Textron Power Transmission
An important part of the GMT planning process was to enable the people within the organization to share their ideas, their expectations, and their perspective on where this business could go. That's quite a scary process from a senior management standpoint. You let go of some of the reins that normally you expect to hang onto tightly. And that really was one of the culture changes that we went through as a management team. At the heart of this process was a periodic review by the senior group, which forces the discipline on the people that are coming up with the ideas to actually then deliver those ideas, argue those ideas. And accept then the group decision on where the business goes, from that stage.
Larry Miller
Senior Vice President, Independent Dealer Channel
United Stationers
Some of the best ideas came from the places we never expected—in fact, some of the most eye-opening sales and marketing issues were often addressed by people in operations jobs in the field. So, first we realized that we have good people that can do that. Second, we realized the benefit of looking ahead. There were a lot of us, myself included, who said, "Oh great, we'll write a strategic plan. We'll say it's the two-year plan, five-year plan, or whatever. We'll put it on a shelf in a real nice binder—and we sell binders, so we're good at that—and then it will be done. And we can go back to doing our jobs." Well, by participating and having so many people involved, we realized that it was something we really had to do. And we became committed to it.
Melissa Orme
Former VP and Chief Financial Officer
The Coleman Company
What we have now is this broad Coleman-wide group who are all engaged in the direction and in all these different pieces of the business. We have a tremendously increased level of awareness regarding everyone else's priorities and what is on everyone else's plate. The most casual conversation that you have with someone is fundamentally different as a result of having been through this participative process. We have a completely different perspective on individuals' roles, responsibilities, and objectives for the next four years. It is a completely different company than it was before the GMT change process.
What benefits has your business realized from encouraging collaboration and involvement?
Bill Phillips
President
The Coleman Company
The mood at Coleman today is fantastic. It is an exciting time in Coleman's history, and I think that comes from what we would call the shared vision. Almost all employees have been able to participate at one level or another in the past 12 months worth of learning and strategic planning. Coleman sat still for a long time, and sitting still is not fun. Not knowing what direction you're heading is not fun. Coleman employees have not found themselves in a position to kind of feel the wind in their faces, the positive momentum, until the last few months. It is exciting for each Coleman employee today, and that is great progress in a year's time, in my opinion—just positive momentum.
Anton Elsborg
Former President
Textron Power Transmission
Following this experience that we've had with GMT, we have a much clearer view now of where the business is growing and going. I think the future for the business is bright. Textron Power Transmission now knows how it's going to grow, and where it's going to grow. We know what we need to do to make that growth happen. The GMT collaborative planning process has been absolutely fundamental to delivering that confidence within the business.
Larry Miller
Vice President, Independent Dealer Channel
United Stationers
We have a common way of addressing issues—bringing a team together to work on something versus one smart person. And we talk about having goals that are beyond just the next quarter. That doesn't mean we don't focus on short-term things, that we don't have challenges that come with being a public company, and having to perform every month and every quarter. But we actually sit down and talk about what are we going to do longer-term as well—and make decisions in that context.
How has participating in a collaborative strategic planning process changed you personally?
Linda Killinger
Former Senior VP, Customer Services and Systems
United Stationers
After the process was finished and actually evolving through it, I started looking at what my job was. And I started to feel differently about it. I started to look at my responsibility to stop being a tactical manager and being more of a strategic manager—and to understand the difference between the two. And I also began relying on the people that worked with me to be more tactical people, but also contributing to the strategic thinking. So my vision of what my responsibilities are as a vice president of the company dramatically changed after that—for the better, I think.
John Kennedy
Former Vice President
United Stationers
I feel like I got an MBA in a very short period of time, because I was engaged at a very deep level with understanding parts of the business that I'd never been engaged with before. So my role changed in that I felt like if there was a topic that I was really passionate about, that I was really interested in, that it was okay for me to volunteer to be a part of that.
Tom Helton
Former Vice President, Human Resources
United Stationers
I've been doing the kind of work that I do for 25 years, and I've been at work probably full-time for 30 years, and I've never ever before seen anything like this environment. And if I left tomorrow, I would be happy to have experienced it one time in my life. It truly is unique. I'm a student of organization, and I've been in a number of organizations that I consider really great places. But there has never been in my experience a place like this where everything was lined up to really cause this to be not just a good place, but a great place. I pinch myself sometimes and say, "How did I get so lucky to happen to land in a place like this, with what's going on here?" And I think that it's rare.
