Client Organization:
Secure-Comm was established in 1975, as an electronic security and burglar alarm company. The small family-owned company has grown to employ a full-time professional staff in telecommunications; security and microprocessor based low voltage systems. The company services over thirty-five hundred commercial, governmental, and residential customers providing and supporting turnkey electronic systems for many Fortune 500 companies throughout Northeastern Ohio.
Unique Challenge:
The company’s structure and culture was characterized as a functional/hierarchical organization with an authoritarian culture mired by numerous polices and procedures that left little room for employee involvement and participation. Growth of the organization had stagnated, employee morale was low, and the working relationship between the sales department and operations department was strained and cacophonous. Secure-Comm was also experiencing an increase in employee turnover in which good, knowledgeable individuals were leaving the company for other opportunities and taking their much-needed security and telecommunications intellectual capital with them. The new President, the younger of the two brothers who ran the company, realized that action needed to be taken to “right the ship” and to drive the company to higher levels of performance.
Client Objectives:
- Envision the company’s potential for positive influence and impact.
- Involve the entire organization in defining the core values, mission, and vision that would drive the organization.
- Empower the company’s employees to design the company’s systems, strategies, processes, and structures to support the new culture/organization.
- Develop projects and action plans for implementation.
- Determine how to keep the momentum moving.
- Build, bond and strengthen the Secure-Comm team.
What Was Done:
In 2001, an AI Summit was conducted as part of Secure-Comm’s transformation initiative. It was the catalyst for positive change within the company. Prior to the summit the organization conducted a company wide culture assessment that identified the positive values that the organization was striving to embody- – accountability, teamwork, customer satisfaction, commitment, and integrity. These five values became the topic of inquiry for our AI Summit. The AI Summit was scheduled for two days and attended by everyone in the company. The first day of the summit included the Discovery and Dream phases of the AI 4-D model and Design and Destiny phases were on day two. Everyone worked extremely hard over the two days by engaging in energizing storytelling and enthusiastically tapping into their creative sides with various exercises such as collage building and role-playing. The final session culminated with intense action planning and personal pledges and commitments by everyone in the organization to their team members. It was obvious by many of the comments made as the summit concluded that this collaborative, appreciative process had moved many individuals in a very profound way.
Outcomes:
Since conducting the AI Summit Secure-Comm has made some considerable strides. While the following is not an exhaustive list of the company’s accomplishments, some of the highlights include:
- The AI summit process generated 25 short-term and long-term initiatives to build and reinforce the new culture. Those initiatives were prioritized and many have been started and implemented
- Functional silos have been eradicated and teamwork has increased dramatically.
- The use of soft skills (e.g., giving & receiving feedback) has significantly increased.
- Interpersonal relationships are stronger.
- The organization is moving to a team-based environment characterized by empowerment and shared leadership.
- Appreciative inquiry has gained significant traction as an organizational mindset. Inquiries are being used to address everything from performance feedback to organization design.
- Financially, fiscal year 2002 was one of the company’s best years to date.
For Further Information
Contact: C. Keith Cox
keith.cox@tirawaconsulting.com
Phone +1 330.723.2222