Get Immediate Buy-In to Change, Ignite Increased Productivity and Growth
4aBetterBusiness helps management painlessly develop buy-in to change - in 1 day - and provides hands-on, collaborative implementation assistance to management and employees to rapidly achieve large-scale, transformational improvements in productivity, profitability and growth.
Challenged by:
- Low operating and financial performance?
- Need to scale?
- Repeatedly solving same issues?
- Lack of time?
- Initiatives that don’t achieve objectives
- Need to attract and retain employees?
- Can’t see where to start to resolve?
- Ineffective or inefficient processes
- Inventory problems
- Poor delivery performance
- New product delays
- Unreliable data
- Lack of Culture that Retains & Attracts Employees
- Ineffective technology execution
- Can’t achieve or sustain change
- Lack of employee engagement
- Low productivity
- Operating in silos
- Processes that won’t scale for growth
- Poor communications
- Stalled certification preparation
4aBetterBusiness’s Vision for our Clients:
- Achieve transformational improvements in productivity and growth
- Get enthusiastic buy-in to change – in 1 day
- Unlock employee knowledge, participation and contribution to change
- Implement change immediately to eliminate wasted time and effort and poor results – no training required
- Achieve an improvement-seeking culture that attracts and retains employees
- Create an environment for, and achieve, ongoing, successful digital transformation
- Get meaningful results in weeks and payback in months
Two core principles guide 4aBetterBusiness’s work with clients:
Core Principle 1: 90% of the issues that waste time and money and produce poor results in a company are embedded in a company’s processes and interactions. Important Caveat: Those often work differently than documented or expected.
Among reasons 4aBetterBusiness has regularly seen, across companies and industries, for divergence of processes from documentation or expectations:
- IT systems that don’t support business objectives (initially, or as a result of business changes – Excel is often the workaround)
- workarounds to ineffective or inefficient processes
- “temporary fixes” that became permanent
- no or inaccurate/incomplete/outdated documentation
- reliance on undocumented tribal knowledge
- lack of effective change processes
- issues around growth
Not knowing how processes and interactions actually work is costly and a major impediment to achieving and sustaining change.
Core Principle 2: Employees are the world’s experts at knowing what they do every day – their local processes and interactions.
How would we get employee buy-in and access to employee knowledge to support change?
Research from Gallup and others says 70% of change initiatives don’t achieve their objectives. The “conventional wisdom” from survey responses is that lack of engagement and employees resisting change are major obstacles to change. But the same results have been reported for the last 20 years or more, indicating a need for a new approach to change!
Since 4aBetterBusiness was founded over 25 years ago, we have helped organizations and entire companies, across industries, develop management and employee buy-in, participation and contribution to change and rapidly achieve large-scale change. Our experience is that employees don’t necessarily resist change itself. Rather, what employees really don’t like is being a changee, without a voice. If you engage employees in participation and contribution to the change and develop with them a better option, employees will change in a heartbeat.
4 Key Elements
4 key elements 4aBetterBusiness employs to collaboratively guide and support identification and implementation of change:
- Eliminate fear
- Acknowledge that employees are the world’s experts at knowing what they do every day
- Quickly capture and visually document in a Visual Twin (sm) the actual processes and interactions across the company
- As issues emerge as this Visual Twin (sm) is developed, engage employees and implement change immediately, as practical
Speed matters. If you do this in 2 years, nobody cares. If you do this in 6 months, nobody cares. But directly communicating and applying the principles and key elements outlined we get immediate, enthusiastic buy-in to change – in one day – and collaboratively implement change at a speed that has a transformational effect on the organization.
Instead of fighting to overcome resistance, all of your effort can be focused on implementing change that people actually want, engaging the entire organization in achieving increased productivity, profitability and growth as part of their daily activities.
Importantly, this creates an environment safe for change and develops an improvement-seeking culture that attracts and retains employees.
4aBetterBusiness’s Vision for our Clients:
- Achieve transformational improvements in productivity and growth
- Get enthusiastic buy-in to change – in 1 day
- Unlock employee knowledge, participation and contribution to change
- Implement change immediately to eliminate wasted time and effort and poor results – no training required
- Achieve an improvement-seeking culture that attracts and retains employees
- Create an environment for, and achieve, ongoing, successful digital transformation
- Get meaningful results in weeks and payback in months
What is failing to resolve the challenges you’ve identified costing your company in time, money and frustration? Are you ready to take action NOW to resolve these and achieve a brighter future?
Here is the Process for Working Together
- An initial discovery call to speak about your situation, objectives and fit
- An assessment, to develop and agree on a custom implementation plan
- Custom implementation, as agreed based on the assessment
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you really get buy-in to change in 1 day?
Yes. For more than 25 years, 4aBetterBusiness has unfailingly achieved this result with companies across multiple industries and ownership structures.
How do you deal with resistance to change?
Listening to and engaging employees in participation and contribution to change minimizes creating the situations that generate resistance to change. We’re also “out-executing the naysayers”. In one case, after General Manager introduced us and outlined the initiative, we had developed buy-in from the whole organization – in one day. Except for 1 senior employee. He clearly had influence beyond his job position. He looked me straight in the eye and said “We’ll see about that.” (He scepticism was deserved – they had tried a number of initiatives, without success). Within a few weeks, working across the organization, we collaboratively resolved an issue he had been working on for 2 years. He liked the “bully pulpit” that he had (I am O-for-lifetime seeing anyone who had a bully pulpit willingly give it up). He saw that the process worked, so he became a convert. The whole effort benefited from his positive attitude and influence.
What are the benefits of an improvement-seeking culture?
You are likely familiar with the concept of “continuous improvement”, celebrated by Toyota and many other companies. An improvement-seeking culture takes continuous improvement to a next level. Continuous improvement has a general group or organizational context. In an improvement-seeking culture, each individual is actively seeking ways to improve their work, as well as processes and interactions with other areas.
We're already busy. Won't this just add to our work?
We implement change as we proceed in development of the Visual Twin(sm). As a result of identifying and implementing change as we proceed, we are continually reducing time, effort, poor results and cost as we proceed. This is easy on the organization, does not “add work.”
It's a busy time. Let's wait for things to calm down before proceeding.
As one of our clients observed, “We waited to start until things ‘calmed down.’ If I had realized how easy this would be on our organization, and how quickly we would see results, we would have started months ago.”
Don Ortiz, former General Manager, Promax Automotive.
How much of my time do I need to manage the process?
4aBetterBusiness provides complete guidance and management of the initiative, while the organization continues to work, by design, with minimal disruption. We schedule and conduct interviews throughout the organization, at a time that works for them. We speak with people and observe where they work and as they work. (e.g., not yellow post-its on the wall and taking groups of people away from their work in conference rooms). This continues to build engagemenet and buy-in as we proceed. We develop and validate the Visual Twin(sm), minimizing time requirements on management and staff . This continues to build engagemenet and buy-in as we proceed.
How does this feel in the organization as we go through this?
The listening and implementation of changes builds momentum. Employees “chase us down” to share issues, because they know these will be addressed. In one company production supervisors stopped going out for smoke breaks, and instead came to speak about process changes and practices. A company with chronic absenteeism transitioned to a record number of perfect attendance awards.
How long will this take?
While each situation is different, you can reasonably expect to see meaningful results in weeks, and payback in months.
Are the transformational improvements in productivity and growth sustainable?
Yes. The process engages the entire organization, and develops capabilities to achieve ongoing improvement. The way of working to achieve the transformational results – an improvement-seeking culture – becomes “the way we do business here”, with daily interactions supporting this at every level of the organization.
“We’re delighted with the process and outcomes. As impressive as those results are, we’re especially pleased with the way the process developed the buy-in of our employees.
We will be able to sustain those gains and achieve ongoing improvements in performance and profits.”
– Levi Cottington, President, CHT Products
What if this doesn't work?
In 25+ years of leading initiatives as primary consultant or Interim COO, I have had exactly 1 situation that didn’t work out. Shortly after founding 4aBetterBusiness, the leadership of one of my first clients drastically changed their objectives and attitude towards employees from what they originally professed. I terminated the engagement, provided all the deliverables developed to date, and put them in contact with another consultant who would work in the way they wanted.
Ensuring we have shared values up front has been a critical part of a mutual decision to move forward. There are always un-anticipated events that occur, but with shared values we can always come to agreement on “what good looks like” and how to achieve the desired outcome.
Client Examples
Implementation that:
- collaboratively resolved 75 issues in 30 days
- raised earnings 30% in 6 months without firings
- pursued and achieved, within 12 months, first-ever business with Toyota. See More…
Implementation that:
- resolved failed acquisition integration
- increased on-time delivery from 50% to 96%+ on-time, while reducing inventory by 22%.
- achieved above-market value in sale of company See more…
Implementation that
- gained accolades from customer
- achieved record number of Perfect Attendance awards
- first-year hard dollar savings of $1.2 million. See more…
Automotive: Tier I & Tier II parts supplier was operating at lower-quartile performance, with quality and delivery issues.
4aBetterBusiness developed immediate, enthusiastic buy-in to change. Working with management and employees, resolved 75 issues in 30 days and achieved a 30% increase in EBITDA within 6 months, without firings or layoffs.
Used the streamlined processes and improvement-seeking culture developed to pursue and achieve, within 12 months, their first-ever business with Toyota. Then doubled sales and tripled EBITDA within 18 months.
“It’s easy to say “we know our business”, but working with 4aBetterBusiness developed in our people – through action – a new level of understanding of how to put customer focus into – and take cost and effort out of – our business. We’re “lean everywhere”.
With the streamlined processes and superior execution capability developed, we’ve won new customers, and we’ve doubled our sales in 18 months with the same management and support staff.
– Sander Szoke, General Manager, Venest Automotive (Unit of Magna)
Specialty Chemicals: PE portfolio company, driven to 50% on-time delivery by a failed acquisition integration. 4aBetterBusiness developed immediate, enthusiastic buy-in to change.
Collaborative process re-building achieved 87% on-time delivery in 5 months. Further several-stage digital transformation achieved 96%+ on-time, in-full delivery while reducing inventory by 22%.
Developed new and accelerated processes for new product development. Company was then sold for above-market valuation.
“We’re delighted with the process and outcomes. As impressive as those results are, we’re especially pleased with the way the process developed the buy-in of our employees.
We will be able to sustain those gains and achieve ongoing improvements in performance and profits.”
– Levi Cottington, President, CHT Products
Value-Added Distribution/3PL “We put goals once thought unattainable in our rear view mirror and made process-driven thinking and improvement the “way of doing business” here.
We’ve achieved our highest productivity ever, better identification of customer requirements, increased customer satisfaction, improved team dynamics…and ongoing returns that are multiples of our investment.”
“We gained customer accolades, achieved a record number of Perfect Attendance awards, and first-year hard dollar savings of $1.2 million.
If I had known how easy this would be on our organization, and how quickly we would see results, we would have started months ago.”
– Don Ortiz, Genreal Manager, Promax Automotive
Industries – Manufacturing and Engineering
- Discrete/Process/Project based
- Complex
- Automotive/Truck
- Specialty Chemicals
- Aerospace/Defense
- Pipe/Tube Mill
- Extrusion
- Capital Equipment
- General Industrial
- Stamping
- Highly Engineered Product
- EV Battery Production
- Engineering Services
- Plating/Anodizing
- Finishing
- Machined Product
- Pipe & Tube Mills
- Extrusion
- Custom Assembly
- Electrical Components
- Ship Design, Construction and Operation
- Railway Industry
Industries – Distribution, Transportation and Services
- High Volume Distribution
- Warehousing
- Third Party Logistics (3PL)
- Value-Added Distribution
- Rail and Port Systems
- Marine Transportation
- Freight Forwarding
- Publishing