I. Establishing a Sense of Urgency

A. Examine the current internal and external business environments to determine whether the current business model is appropriate (“Sooner or later something fundamental in your business world will change” – Andy Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive)

The Facilities Transformation began with Sponsor level interviews of key customers and people at all levels within the Facilities organization. These interviews quickly unearthed the disconnect between the customers business drivers and requirements and the level of service they were receiving from the Facilities organization. The customers, specifically PRI, were energized behind the recently announced OSB strategy. They were prepared to find ways around using the facilities organization, if Facilities could not provide the quality and depth of service they needed. Within Facilities, there was a highly skilled and talented workforce that was unmotivated, lacked confidence and was deeply divided into silos.

Simultaneously, a benchmarking study was performed that showed, despite years of cost-cutting, that the Facilities operations were out of alignment with the efficiencies and effectiveness of Best-in-class companies.

B. Demonstrate that “business as usual” will be detrimental to the future of the company by exposing major weaknesses in the company, sharing customer satisfaction (dissatisfaction) information and financial short-comings to people throughout the organization

C. Communicate, over and over, the need for change throughout the organization

Through facilitated sessions the leadership team, and later the guiding coalition, composed the “Case for Change”, the fundamental business case for why the status quo could no longer be tolerated. This served as the initial rallying cry for getting people within facilities and customer groups to agree to participate and cooperate with the change effort.

Step II >>