Problem
Through mergers and acquisitions, a newly formed competitor threatened to change the dynamics of the transportation market. Our client needed a rapid response, well before disaster hit. The CEO organized a four day offsite for his management team and Board of Directors. We were asked to design and facilitate the event.

Approach
The management team worked for two months to prepare for the offsite. Their goal was to create a comprehensive view of the business, presented in such a way that the Board would reach the same conclusions as they had about the need for change. They also knew these experienced entrepreneurs, many of them third generation owners of the family business, would only act if they concluded for themselves that change was needed. In other words, the management team’s conclusions were practically irrelevant. For four days, a group of thirty immersed themselves in basic facts about the business. Divided into teams, small groups of board members and executives entered one of four Discovery Rooms where they immersed themselves in facts about the business organized by domain: Growth and Profitability; Customers; Competitors; and Enterprise. Each team was tasked with summarizing and interpreting the data. After 45 minutes the teams rotated to the next room where they began the task of building on the insights generated by the previous group. By the end of the day, each team had visited each room and a long list of insights emerged. Then the group met for general session to begin winnowing down the list to the smallest number of meaningful facts possible. These facts taken together tell the essence of the story. In a facilitated discussion, they talked and argued, laughed and groaned. By the end of the day a short list of insights emerged. Despite their past success, the business had to change. And the required changed would tug at the very heartstrings of the company: entrepreneurial freedom and discretion. To grow in the future they would need greater collaboration around more standardized processes that focused on what the customer wanted rather than what the business could provide.

Results
The Management Team and Board of Directors crafted a two page story depicting “The Truth About Today.” For the first time in many years, owners shared a common view of the strategic and operating challenges facing the business. Their work resulted in new commitments to implement a consumer-centric value proposition, improve quality, and organize critical administrative functions centrally. New programs for quality enhancement, leadership development, and simplified pricing were launched and implemented. The organization’s action allowed our client to disable the new competitor before it achieved sufficient momentum to represent a real threat to its leading market share position.

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