$2B Wholesale Conglomerate

Client

Office of the CEO

Problem

Unpredictable external events consumed the CEO and Executive Leadership Team, forcing them into a highly reactive set of activities, disrupting the company’s strategic planning efforts, normal daily business processes, and internal and external communications. Dissonance and rumors began to grow regarding the company’s direction, resolve, and longevity. The CEO and Executive Leadership Team needed to regain focus, control, team-orientation, and proactive execution of the business plan.

Deliverables

The Medlin Group designed, developed and delivered several interrelated and complimentary business processes, tools, and roadmaps to the President and CEO including:

1. Individual and team composite leadership profiles for the Executive Leadership Team to facilitate the reintroduction, reorientation and reinvigoration of dispersed team members to each other. A composite portrait of the team’s collective strengths and styles was presented so the CEO could better understand how to most effectively leverage all of the company executives' skills during this challenging time.
2. Two critical planning offsites around Vision and Values and Strategic Direction designed to integrate the foundations of what the company stood for with the actionable plans of where it wanted to go.
3. Business Rhythm Roadmap to regain predictability and regularity into the running of the business, establishing regularly scheduled meetings with pre-defined objectives and timeframes for each of the divisional and operating units. The output of these interactions rolled up to the overall monthly, quarterly and annual corporate plan and financial reporting timelines.
4. Redefinition of metrics and accountability measurements for each operating unit that were aligned more closely with the short and long term strategic objectives established above.
5. Internal and external communications roadmap for delivering the right information to the right constituencies at the right time. This roadmap helped offset the rumor-like buzz that had started when the company leadership stopped communicating, either because of being consumed with the external events that were disrupting their marketplace or because of not knowing what to communicate given the volatile and confidential nature of the events. In addition an early warning system was defined and implemented by removing previous “silos” or internal organizational & protocol barriers. This allowed problems and concerns to be escalated and discussed more quickly and openly.