Family-Owned Steel Fabrication Firm
Project Activities
- Developing a vision for change and reduced dependency on the owner’s day-to-day management.
- Create a lexicon of key components and their definitions which the Owner saw as crucial to achieving greater market responsiveness and help him devote time to his other businesses
- AlEx™ (Process and software to Align Expectations ) was then configured specifically for Genzink Steel
- The in-coming Production Manager and CFO were interviewed prior to them joining Genzink during which their Expectations and Assumptions were elicited.T he same process was used for existing managers.
- After quality control, reports were run including:
- Paired Relationship Reports showing the extent of misalignment between to individuals
- Distraction indices by key components and those with the group and Ken Genzink (all such reports showed Distraction Indices over 70%, i.e. more than 70% of KG’s Expectations were not being picked up by his Management Team – Note: These Distraction Indices are typical for this type of Project)
- TDF – Think, Do ,Fix which looks at the imbalance between Expectations, e.g. the more Thinking related Expectations the slower the organization is likely to be able to move – “paralysis by analysis”
- Channel Matrix which looks at the extent and type of interaction (or lack of communication) between the owner and his five managers, i.e. maps the 36 communication channels and examines are the intended interactions matched by what people expect of each other.
- Following the feedback selected paired sessions led to resolving many of the distractions. This included putting time-bound expectations into a project management plan.
- Of 1220 Expectations and Assumptions 30 unresolved issues were taken into a Management Strategy session where all issues were resolved
Project Summary Results
The AlEx™ process helped Ken to:
- Gain insight about the new people and those we had on board for some time
- Realize more than ever that many decisions and observations were assumptions. The AlEx™ exercise verified and challenged his assumptions
- Verify and tested other peoples’ assumptions by mapping out the key inter-relationships in the company that have to work
- Depend on five key managers by using “The Channel Matrix” which showed how well they hooked up and how he could get to the point of standing back
- Provide insight in reading interactions AlEx™ helped store issues and revisit them in a systematic way in order to measure progress by tracking commitments people made and their progress toward achieving them.
Update
Ken now works at another location devoting the time he needs to the other Family businesses. Gross Revenues have steadily increased from $20 to $30m, and Genzink is now on the acquisition trail.
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