Situation
Our client was a private sector food manufacturer that provided high performance products and value added ingredients for the baking and retail industry across North America. With a history of over 80 years of experience in the industry, the organization wanted to continue to remain competitive. After a business great turnaround, the company was looking at ongoing opportunities with respect to their management team.
Requirement
Schroeder & Schroeder was commissioned to:
- Assist the organization in introducing a high performance culture to increase management engagement
- Advise the organization on an approach to help the organization reach its strategic and operational improvement objectives
Challenges
The main challenges we faced on this project included:
- Obtaining the engagement of all the management team
- Effectively introducing new approaches and ways of thinking within the organization
Actions
To address the requirements above, our consultants performed the following tasks:
- Conducted a diagnostic analysis – one-on-one confidential interviews with each of the six people on the management team were conducted using a structured interview format.
- Analyzed interview results – information collected through the interviews was analyzed and the “red thread themes” and root causes around management engagement and the introduction of a performance-based culture were identified.
- Gathered the management team in a workshop setting – met as a group with the management team to review and validate the findings, with a view to obtaining a consensus around the table around the root cause of some of the issues and challenges.
- Identified action steps moving forward – strategic and operational steps were examined and a specific set of go forward action steps were developed that the collective management team could move forward with to realize its strategic and operational improvement objectives.
Results
Through our work, Schroeder & Schroeder was able to:
- Increase collaboration among the management team
- Identify the key gaps and barriers for growth
- Assess the implementation requirements around needed cultural shaping levers
- Identify improvement initiatives pertaining to processes/technology, people, structure, and culture — based on the root cause analysis
- Develop a high-level strategic roadmap and implementation plan that incorporated the ideas of the management team
At the conclusion of the project all the objectives had been achieved, and the client was highly satisfied with the deliverables and the value added by Schroeder & Schroeder Inc.