Case Studies – Incedo Group in Action

The ABC Company had a hiring problem and they knew it. Over half the new hires who presented excellent credentials and said the “right things” in the interview quit soon after being hired, often with the first 3 to 6 months. As a result, ABC was always hiring, although they were not growing. Due to this high turnover, there were never enough experienced workers to do the job and hence, performance suffered.

When the Incedo Group was called in, we first determined whether the high turnover was due to poor interviewing skills, ineffective leadership/management, unclear job description, onboarding process etc. etc. After examining the company procedures manual and talking to staff, we found major shortcomings in all aspects of hiring, developing, and managing new hires. There was no formal plan for training and developing the staff or measuring their performance within the first 90 days of employment. Leadership established no clear direction as to the results they expected or how to achieve them. They were quick to tell employees what they were doing wrong instead of telling them what they wanted as results. Some new hires “failed” to achieve, while others left in frustration.

The Incedo Group initiated a series of steps that changed how ABC interacted with prospective and current employees.

• We refined job descriptions and expectations.
• We taught effective interviewing skills that focused more on the “who” of the applicant than what they necessarily did.
• We created a full scale onboarding process including metrics for the first 30-60-90 days, so new hires knew the milestones they were excepted to achieve.
• We developed the leaders’ communication skills so they could share specifics of their assessment of the performance with staff.

Within 18 months, the results were simply amazing:

• Turnover was reduced from 50% to less than 10%.
• Procedures to assess the performance of new employees were put in place, so corrective action or termination could be taken if necessary.
• Instead of taking 6+ months to determine the new employee’s performance level, we were able to determine within 90 days whether they would make it.
• Management spent considerably less time concerned about performance or dealing with employee issues.

A female executive had a very successful business, but was struggling with staff retention and leadership of the team. She was constantly frustrated and disappointed in the performance of her team members. No employee on her staff of 10 had been with the company longer than 6 months.

She spent a lot of time working 1-on-1 with clients, attending conferences and in business development. As a result, she was often not in the office and expected others to work around her schedule. Because she paid more than the market rate to staff, she assumed that this gave her the right to ask for more from her people and often expected them to stay late if necessary so she could meet with them.

• We initially worked to identify if she was hiring the right skills, but the wrong people for her environment. We determined that it was at least one factor in the challenge she was facing with turnover.
• Since she really did not want to manage people, we hired an office manager. This person’s job was to keep the team on track with deliverables and handle any personnel issues.
• We helped her change her interviewing focus and established more appropriate compensation levels.
• We adjusted her expectations that people would change their after-hours schedules to accommodate her. Instead, we implemented a deliverable schedule with specific milestones she was able to track, which eliminated the need for most after-hours meetings.

• Within a year, she had fired 3 more people, but had also hired 3 that had now been on board 12 months.
• The office manager was able to run interference for the business owner and thus eliminate her ongoing frustration with the staff and other issues.
• In addition, we worked on her leadership skills, including her ability to manage multiple spinning plates and her own stress level that negatively impacted the team.

The president of a software company was challenged by the dynamics of her leadership team. One key member was negative and often caused problems with the president and the rest of the group.

When we conducted four half days of facilitation with the executive team and the president, we found this to be one of the most dysfunctional units that we had ever met. The president consistently changed her mind depending on who spoke last and didn’t focus on goals. The meetings were free-for-alls where anyone could and did say anything they wanted; at the end of the meetings decisions were rarely made.

• During the facilitations, we focused on communication skills, listening to each other, and not interrupting each other.
• We helped the group create an agenda for the meetings to put the focus on actionable items to assure that decisions made were by the end of the meeting and also help keep the president on track.

• By the end of the 4 sessions, spaced over 6 months, the team was no longer fighting with each other or finger pointing. Instead, they had learned to ask questions, instead of making assumptions.
• The main “problem-child” executive, who was resentful and unhappy when we started, was still unhappy, but no longer saw himself as a victim.
• Meetings that had previously taken up to 4 hours were accomplished in 2 or less and ended in decisions and next actionable steps.
• In addition, the president had learned to trust the leadership team to make the key decisions and only intervened when something was going awry.

A female executive with three children thrived on the very senior level position she held within her firm. Yet, she felt that she needed better life/work balance.

Usually working 60+ hours a week and traveling 25% of the time, she felt like she was shirking her responsibilities with her family. She feared that her children were not getting enough of her time and she missed being able to attend soccer games, dance classes, and other family events.

• We worked with her to find her definition of work/life balance so we could help her identify what was and wasn’t currently in place and how she could establish “the right mix”.
• Since frustration often comes when someone is not living by their values, we worked through a values exercise to determine what living by her values would look like.

• Since she valued both her career and her home life, she learned to plan ahead to block out more time for home. She was conscious that the choice she made for work would make her unavailable for some things and became comfortable with it.
• She learned to plan 3 or 4 day weekends at least once per quarter, adjusted her work schedule so she was home more often for dinner, and worked in the evening once the kids went to bed.

A small business owner/entrepreneur worked 70+ hours a week, and was stressed out 24/7. He felt like he couldn’t let go of anything, so even while on vacation, he called the office every day. In addition, he was the caretaker for his mother’s finances and well being.

Even though he wanted to be able to let go and delegate and feel less tense and stressed out, he didn’t have confidence in his staff. He wanted to lose weight and get back to exercising, but he didn’t feel as if he had the time.

• We worked on identifying and honing his organizational skills/time management skills so less time was wasted worrying.
• Additionally, we identified performance metrics for key personnel, so he could learn to delegate and be able to determine if they were performing.
• We also identified the roadblocks in his thinking about time for himself and the ability to create the space he needed.
• We helped him realize that he was not solely responsible for the care and well being of his mother, as he had siblings who could help if asked. We encouraged him to reach out to them.

• Within a year, his work week had dropped to 60 hours while business gross revenue had increased by 15%.
• He was at the gym 3 times a week and able to work on his personal goals of staying fit and losing weight.
• With systems in place, he was able to delegate successfully to 2 key people, terminated 2 others, and found replacements that he was comfortable with.
• His siblings each came once a month to care for his mother so he could feel confident his mother was receiving proper attention.

After 15 years, an entrepreneur bought out his partner. He was a great salesman, but realized he needed some help to get his new business on solid footing.

During the 15 years the business had been in existence, the partners had consistent financial challenges and had no real plan for marketing, staff development, hiring, etc. The new owner was in over his head with strategic planning.

• We worked with the new owner to created quarterly plans for the business including specific goals and an implementation plan for each quarter.
• We focused on their core competencies. So that the owner could spend 90% of his time selling, we helped him define employee roles and responsibilities, develop job descriptions, and hire 3 additional people.

• Within the first 12 months, their revenues had stabilized. The owner was paying off his debt consistently every month, and now had a reserve in the bank in case receivables were slow in coming in.
• By the end of the 2nd year we had developed a full scale marketing plan and a business plan for the year, hired 2 more people, and restructured his marketing activities so he could use some outsourcing, which he estimated netted a savings of roughly $30K per year.

This growing financial services firm did about $4M in business annually, largely based on the excellent sales skills of their CEO. Because he was smart, determined, and a hell of a marketer, he had consistently driven business to the company throughout the 10 years the company had been in business. However, costs were spiraling out of control, and the company was losing customers.

Despite the obvious financial success, the firm grew based on personal charisma, not appropriate planning. Their idea of strategic or business planning was to get the team together and say “we want a 20% increase in revenues.” Then a bit of discussion would follow on which companies to focus. If that didn’t work, the company would shift gears and try another strategy or throw more money into advertising, without any analysis of effectiveness. Occasional discussions on current business challenges never resulted in a plan on how to meet them.

While the company was growing, they hired often new staff, but rarely trained them or hired based on specific need. There were no systems in place for evaluating performance, so people were given raises and promotions based on longevity or whim. As a result, when they needed someone to fill new roles or responsibilities, they often lacked people with the right skills.

• Realizing that the lack of planning was limiting the company’s potential, we worked with the CEO to outline key strategic goals for the company for the upcoming year, which we shared with the department heads.
• We had each of the department heads do some self-examination to determine how their department could help the company reach its goals and ascertain the goals for their department. Then, we assessed the current processes and procedures, etc. for each department and determined the proper staffing/training/performance metrics to give them the best opportunity for success going forward.
• Each department head then created a budget for their area. Even though they did not have P&L responsibility, we wanted them to understand how their department contributed to the profitability of the company.
• We then spent 2 days with the department heads and CEO going over their individual plans and filling in gaps that the group felt were missing.
• From this we created a full-scale plan for the company with measurements for performance, implementation, etc.

• For the first time, the business created a marketing plan with specific markers for determining ROI in a given timeframe, so they could make adjustments to the plan as necessary. This enabled them to truly measure ROI on their expenses and investments.
• The business saw a 20% increase in both gross revenue and profitability, while decreasing expenses by 7%. Advertising expenditures were cut by over $100K with no drop in sales.
• The staff had performance metrics in place so raises and bonuses were based on tangible results rather than “gut feelings” of the management. Department heads had specific criteria to use for evaluating as well as hiring personnel.
• Team dynamics improved as department heads worked more closely to achieve common goals. Finger pointing (sales saying marketing was not doing their job, customer service blaming sales etc.) decreased to the point where the executive leadership was spending less than 2 hours a week on problem resolution.
• Customer retention was increased by over 10%.

An asset management/liquidation company had been in business about 12 years and averaged about $4M in business. Growth was inconsistent, expenses were high, and debt excessive. The CEO was unfocused and changed directions often. The company started with one primary line of business, but things got tricky when they added a software business and three other lines of business that were tangential to the core business, but not directly related to the business.

The company had never done a business plan nor created a budget for expenses or projects they were considering. All the add-on businesses were funded by the core business, which caused problems when trying to marshall the resources needed to assure project completion, consistent sales, staffing, debt, focus, client development, and marketing.

• In our first year working together, we identified which lines of business were making money, achieving attractive ROIs, or could ramp up sales quickly. We also looked at areas such as how one line of business could leverage other lines of business or utilize their marketing for one entity to support others etc.
• We then created a plan that included revenue goals for each line of business and devised a way for the software business to stand alone and not be funded by the core business.
• Our final step in Year 1 was to work on full-scale sales and marketing plan for the business overall as well as the individual businesses.

• After analysis, they put one line of business on hold and one major project on hold. Postponing the one project alone saved them almost $100K.
• Expenses were reduced by over $150K as revenues increased by almost $250K the next year.
• They landed a 5 year federal contract, providing a minimum of guaranteed revenue in excess of $500,000 annually.
• The software business was almost stand alone, with the final steps to make it independent taking place the following year.
• The full scale marketing plan allowed them to see where they were using resources most effectively, how to leverage those resources across multiple lines of business, and which trade shows to visit or to exhibit. The marketing plan was well thought-out and connected to the over-arching goals of the business.

A Fortune 100 company was trying to face the harsh reality that they needed widespread layoffs to withstand financial pressure. They felt loyalty to their employees and didn’t want to let anyone go.

Compassion not withstanding, the company had a lot of dead wood. Even when workers were clearly underperforming, supervisors made excuses for them and never held them accountable. Management never had the conversations with people that put them on notice that they needed to do better, as they watched team dynamics suffer.

In an initial two hour presentation, we faced the elephant in the room: many people were not doing their jobs and this issue was not being addressed. We then proceeded to employ exercises designed to help managers learn how to verbalize the hard truths.

• In 6 months, there were still personnel cuts taking place but managers were better equipped to have the necessary conversations about the layoffs.
• Managers were now able to discuss performance issues with employees.
• Within 6 months, some under-achieving employees resigned.
• In half the cases where employees were put on a PIP (performance improvement plan), their performance improved enough that they were taken off the program.

A division of a major government agency was having communication problems that made it the poster child for doublespeak. Despite an abundance of meetings and memos, staff was unclear about what it was supposed to do.

A division head confounded the staff by changing direction every time someone complained. People were so confused that projects often changed, stopped, and re-started, until their department heads eventually escalated their concerns to HR and the unit head. This division head also held many assumptions and beliefs about individuals that negatively affected how he viewed them.

We showed how unclear communication was impacting the success of the projects. The style used by the division head was disruptive, as was the pattern of other managers sidestepping him to complain to HR and the unit head.

• The number of meetings that took place to discuss a project or handle a problem was reduced by over 60%.
• Complaints by staff members to upper management were reduced so significantly that leadership coaching was eliminated.
• The unit head’s trust in the division head increased so significantly that he no longer entertained discussions from others about their unhappiness with the direction of the division and pushed those conversations back to the division head. This virtually eliminated the constant changing of direction.
• A strategic plan was developed that included clear, concise goals and an implementation plan.

A young entrepreneur had great ideas and excellent business acumen and was able to take his company from a worth of $10M to almost $50M within four years. As president, he prided himself on his open door policy, but relationships with his staff were somewhat rocky.

Though he thought of himself as a great leader, he had a difficult leadership style. He created an atmosphere where people were afraid of him. When he didn’t like what he heard or performance was an issue, he avoided direct communication with the staff and would often communicate his frustration with them through email. When he was dissatisfied with performance, he would most often ignore the underperformer, usually until he ultimately fired them.

• We worked with him on his communication skills, his expectations of others, and his ability to communicate his expectations and unhappiness about performance and do it face-to-face rather than hide behind email.
• In an effort to eliminate the constant frustration of staff performance differing from his expectations, we created performance metrics that he clearly communicated to them.
• We built on his warm and friendly personality to help him interact positively with staff.

• We put in a layer of management under him to handle many of the operational areas he was managing, thus reducing his day-to-day involvement with procedure and personnel. As a result, he could focus his energy and skills in areas that were interesting to him and valuable to the company.
• Within 2 years, he had stopped using email as his primary mode of communication and replaced it with face-to-face meetings.
• Once a month, he had team meetings with various groups and departments, so he became not the guy behind the screen, but someone you could laugh and have fun with.