![[PHOTO] Light streaming through a key hole illuminating an old iron key.](../images/ph_findings.jpg)
Early in 2002, the senior executives of Freedom and Friends Cycle, a Northern California USA design, manufacturer, and worldwide distributor of custom motorcycles and parts, concluded that they had reached a strategic impasse. The key management went offsite on a weekend to dig deep into the heart of the matter and strike a course forward. After two days of long hours and a spirit of accommodation, a new vision, values, and strategic business plan were articulated. Three days afterward, the senior executives presented the vision, values, and strategy to all the associates. The presentation ended with a question and answer session followed by an outdoor barbecue. Everyone assumed that both top management and the 255 associates deemed the discussions, forward plan, and associate meeting an unqualified success!
Therein lay the problem.
Several months later Moravec and Associates were hired. Management told them, "We all went forward by everyone personally signing up to the vision, values, and plans. But nothing got done. It's not just one thing but hundreds of little things that slow implementation and slow the enthusiasm to a crawl. Yet we are profitable, have low turnover, employ creative hard-working associates who eagerly put in the extra hours for our customers and collaborate with a positive team spirit."
After participating in several focus groups, the associates concluded that although everyone appeared to agree on vision, values, and strategic plan, actually there was much disagreement.
The corporation was designed for continuity, not change. The management structure, processes, and decision making all supported maintaining consistency since the firm was founded. Designing Freedom and Friends Cycle for continuous operations may have made sense earlier, the associates observed. But the rate of change in the industry and markets had accelerated dramatically, rendering the corporate design unfit for rapid and durable growth.
Among the issues the executives needed to address was, "Did what the company thought it did best and was most proud of result in false security? Did the strong culture inhibit the company's ability to respond to late - breaking threats and market opportunities?" The paradox of growth for Freedom and Friends Cycle is that the strong core business gave the company more opportunities to move into related businesses and thus to lose focus. To keep pace, management needed to determine whether to reinvent parts of the business or expand in different directions.
Managers and employees were skilled at smoothing over conflict and differences. At meetings no one wanted to "slow the tempo with questions or alienate colleagues with unwelcome truths," said Arlene Kwok, an electrical engineer. "Everyone knows that being a team player means accommodating management requests," added Project Manager Hyman Silverman. Carlos Gonzalez, manager of IT, said that "we are not perfect but we have a good business going here. Meetings in many cases are a waste of time, but I won't call them off or change them because I'm afraid the associates might conclude that management isn't interested in their work."
Occasionally people would gain the courage to speak up, only to silence themselves because they wanted to be seen as accommodating and hard working. People said that they knew they should speak up, but they just couldn't. Everyone was proud of what they had created at Freedom and Friends Cycle and no one wanted to change or deconstruct it.
The associates concluded that since managers and employees were not openly expressing their thoughts or feelings, they were unknowingly creating a silent spiral gaining momentum and, ultimately, preventing any chance of real collaboration.
As a new top management hire put it, "It's a great company, a proud company, better than the one I came from where everyone speaks up, everyone listens and nothing gets done. However, it's floundering and they don't know it."
In collaboration with management of Freedom and Friends Cycle and the sponsorship of the CEO, Moravec and Associates implemented interventions to address key issues. Methodologies were tailored to create hard and soft solutions to achieve results. These methodologies included Facilitation, Business and Organizational Renewal, Build High-Performance Teams, and Value Stream Assessment.
The lead associates discussed the facilitation intervention: "Employees must gain the confidence to express differences openly, honestly, and strategically-in teams and settings where airing differences of opinion is important to the outcome of the task force or the relationship. The goal is mutual understanding and using differences to improve the quality of decisions. Every employee needs to be accountable for speaking up and listening in a way that both makes for clear communications and also makes it easier for others to join the dialogue."
In looking back over the last 18 months, the CEO Frank (Swift-rider) Davidson summed up the company's situation. "We no longer count on momentum and success to sustain performance. We are developing the ability to engage in business and organizational renewal and reinvent our business models and strategies as circumstances change and to continuously anticipate threats to our core earning power - and to change before the need becomes desperately obvious. We have conquered denial of conflict and use differences to improve decision making. We've liberated resources for new strategies and embrace--uncomfortable though it is--the paradox of strategic options. We've had turmoil as we shifted from the accommodation culture to recognizing open conflict and differences as vital to business results and our health as human beings."
(The names of the persons, company and certain situations are disguised due to a confidentiality agreement. The actual client approved this case study)