CASE STUDIES

Challenge. 

A network of physician practices had undergone significant growth. The top leaders, including the Chairman of the Board, sensed that they needed a serious review of the foundations of their operating model. A primary goal was the buy-in of the diverse constituencies to the guiding documents.

Solution. 

We worked with the leadership team to define the essential elements of their operating model, beginning with their mission, vision and three year strategic plan. We also worked with the team and full organization on defining structures and processes, and the pivotal roles and behaviors that would be required for more integrated planning and execution between home office and the practice sites.

Results. 

This work resulted in an aligned Board and leadership team that had a clear sense of purpose and vision of the future. A newly defined behavioral contract and clear focus on pivotal roles paved the way for increased collaboration and effectiveness across the organization.

Challenge. 

The large scale construction business is a challenge in any market conditions. The complexity of projects and their inherent time and budget commitments can create immense stress within a team and the entire business.

In addition, large projects do not just show up. To secure that kind of work requires an extended business development process to ensure a healthy pipeline of work creating the right flow of work at a given point in time. The Weitz senior team, having had a successful, several years, could foresee new market challenges in the years ahead and needed to create new approaches to business development and how they worked together to handle an even higher number of complex projects. Through a series of facilitated meetings and individual coaching with each executive, the new path forward was established and operationalized.

Challenge.

Lincoln Financial is a life insurance industry leader, partially as a result of Dan Hickey's distribution team's performance. With an ever increasing array of competitors as well as distribution options, including digital options, Dan and his team were challenged to focus their efforts on the options most likely to be successful.

They had to make several strategic choices, where The Clarion Group's strategic planning approach was employed, and they had to become more aligned as a collective team, which is an embedded benefit in The Clarion Group's co-creative approach to strategic planning. Dan and his team had a "one and done" experience, where robust strategic planning and leadership team alignment was achieved though one facilitated process.

Challenge. 

A global insurance company has a Retail business that strives to establish robust strategic partnerships with other companies to help market and sell their personal insurance products.

This is done in a manner where both companies receive some mutual benefit from the partnership. The partnerships are complex to establish and manage. The team of senior leaders responsible for this are geographically dispersed and yet there is a need for a reasonably consistent approach to their collective work. The Clarion Group helped the team get aligned around their respective roles, the ways in which each leader had a unique success formula for their role, and where common approaches were needed to ensure consistency. In addition, agreed to Operating Principles were needed to ensure their collective behavior would yield the best results for their team as well as other areas of the enterprise with whom they worked.

A family-owned global design and manufacturing company of household products had 5 years of explosive growth in revenue and profitability. The senior executives had worked hard to achieve these results but had become somewhat worn down by all the effort they had put into driving the business to get to these results. In addition, market conditions were going to make yet another year of great results harder to achieve. They had differing views on how to handle this. So did the family members to whom they were accountable. The Clarion Group worked with the CEO and family members to create a process, related materials and a series of facilitated meetings to bring to light all the various perspectives, narrow the field of ideas into the most likely ideas for success, and align everyone to a going forward direction, its operating implications and the associated risks.

Challenge.

The Clarion Group believes how a team well "the team at the top" gets along with one another is less important that their collective acceptance of the unique role only they can play.

The vantage point over the entire business their positions provide enables them to make strategic business and organizational choices for the short and long term, and that there is a unique mandate as a result.

Working with each executive and the team together, we use a co-creative approach which ensures the resulting agreed to operating principles have their "fingerprints" on them, so that the direction they adopt is real and clear to them. Along the way, we bring the insights we have garnered from 27 years of advising executive teams to help them see options they would otherwise have overlooked. We play the role of advi

Challenge. 

The Board of a regional health care company had been functioning under a new structure for four years and was interested in an assessment of their effectiveness.

Solution. 

Working with the CEO, The Clarion Group interviewed each Board member, administered an on-line survey based on prior assessment work, and presented and discussed findings at a full-Board retreat.

Results. 

Confirmed a healthy governance structure and behavior. Brought greater attention to issues shared with other for-profit boards and heightened awareness of areas to watch in future.

Challenge.

A distribution arm of a major insurance company needed to raise the capabilities of their sales staff beyond basic sales, presentation and organization skills.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group, client line staff and client HR staff built and tested a success profile for the sales roles. Based on that time-tested profile, we created a development program that focused on the critical behaviors that differentiate performance. This took the form of multi-day events, over the course of a year, which combined presentation, small group discussion, role playing and peer-to-peer learning.

Results.

Client comments and manager observation indicate noticeable improvement on half the critical behaviors, resulting in increased sales. Sales staff surveyed rated it the best development activity they can remember.

The client had looked at their culture from multiple angles, finding that the behaviors that leadership and their direct reports were exemplifying did not represent or translate to the wider employee base the behaviors required to achieve superior performance in this challenging healthcare environment. To read more in the case studies below:

HEALTHCARE CASE STUDY

CONSUMER GOODS CASE STUDY

MEDICAL PRODUCT CASE STUDY

CONSTRUCTION_ENGINEERING CASE STUDY

RETAIL_OUTDOOR SPECIALTY CASE STUDY

RETAIL_GLOBAL PROJECT TEAM CASE STUDY

Challenge. 

A large global green energy company was growing, both organically and through acquisitions and partnerships. They knew the time had arrived to initiate efforts to develop the next level of leadership in the company.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group helped the client design, facilitate and oversee its first leadership development course. Using knowledge of Best Practices to guide the design, we helped design a three-day on-site training course and six-month team projects. Global teams researched, conducted studies and made recommendations to the senior team. Over the six months of the team projects, we worked with the teams on project planning and team dynamics; in some cases, we provided content expertise.

Results. 

Some team recommendations were immediately implemented. The design and application of the development program will be repeated in the future. There was an increase in peer networking and learning from others in the target population. It was considered a very successful experience for participants and the senior team.

Challenge. 

A national consumer products company had lost its innovative edge and was getting bogged down in its centralized structure. They needed a stronger focus on new product innovation and ways to speed up decision-making at the top of the organization.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group worked with senior leaders to redesign the organization from a functional structure to a product-based structure with P & L accountability, ensuring that only those functions that drove competitive differentiation remained in the SBUs. We also helped the company establish a dedicated unit for “skunk work” product innovation and helped this new organization’s leadership team get aligned around its mission and how it would operate.

Results. 

The new organization design stimulated product innovation and created a new sense of purpose throughout the business.

Challenge. 

The senior HR professionals at a major financial services firm had “seats at the table” but were not delivering the value the business needed and their business partners expected. There were questions about their service delivery approaches, their tools, the consistency of their services and their capability to become true trusted advisors to their clients.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group worked with the senior HR team to define how generalists and specialists could better partner to serve their clients, understanding the types and complexity of projects and the relationships required for their business. We discussed many organizing options before determining which best suited their situation. Together, we then designed a series of learning sessions: we focused on the competencies where they had the biggest gaps; we supplemented their effective frameworks and tools with many of our own; and we designed the sessions around real-time business situations to allow for application and experimentation. Action plans were developed with each senior HR professional identifying specific situations and opportunities to step in with business leaders as a true advisor to the business.

Results. 

The HR professionals felt more aligned with each other and confident in the conversations they were having with their business clients. They found that they could take on business issues and more quickly determine how to engage their clients to generate meaningful solutions. Initial feedback from business leaders is positive indicating HR is adding more value and positively impacting business results.

Challenge. 

The Board of a niche mutual insurance company was redefining its governance role. The Board and the Senior Team needed to learn how to develop a strategic plan together.

Solution. 

TCG interviewed all Board members and all members of the Senior Team. We facilitated a strategic planning session with the Board that clarified a vision for the business and high level objectives to support that vision. Building on the Board session, we helped the CEO and his team create the appropriate level of initiatives, milestones and metrics to enable the Board to support a portfolio of initiatives.

Results. 

Greater understanding of the Board’s role in strategic planning. The creation of a business case for capital investment, due to aligned understanding of what the vision and objectives mean.

Challenge. 

A major insurer had a consulting service embedded as part of their retirement plan offering to their clients. That service was going to be pulled out and given its own P&L, to be offered to the market independent of the core retirement offering. Their challenge was to build an operating model for the new entity that would enable 2X plan growth in five years.

Solution. 

Working with The Clarion Group, the organization clarified their strategy, defined the desired culture, designed their structure and governance processes, and outlined leadership competencies and practices. After the organization changes were made and the new model implemented, our advisors met regularly, behind the scenes, with the leader to discuss his role and implementation and change navigation issues.

Results. 

The leader created strong followership in his implementation of the new operating model. The business is meeting its financial goals.

Challenge. 

A major professional advisory firm was going through a CEO transition that was accompanied by a major cultural change.

Solution. 

The firm wanted to move from a parental culture to a performance culture. They knew they needed to bring a new focus to the business and a new leadership mandate to the top team. The Clarion Group facilitated a series of meetings with the top team to establish a new direction for the business. We provided transition coaching to both the outgoing and the incoming CEOs. And we provided behavioral coaching to some of the top team members to help them solidify new ways of operating, given the emerging performance culture.

Results. 

The CEO transition was more orderly than expected, given the amount of change it accompanied. The new top team became more proficient in operating as one team.

Challenge. 

A major transportation and logistics company was facing a market crowded with competitors. They needed a growth strategy that increased their core business and identified new avenues of growth. And this needed to be done in the context of operational constraints in some sections of the business.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group facilitated a series of meetings with the senior team to generate growth ideas, and stayed involved through ongoing meetings and dialogue. Together, we developed business cases and created a Growth Committee to act as an investment review board to select the few right investments for the business.

Results. 

The Growth Committee reviewed the business cases, and made investment decisions about each, including leadership selection. The senior team opened up its thinking and has taken bold new steps on how to approach growth.

Challenge.

A national retailer of home products was transitioning from being publicly held to being privately held. They knew they would need a new governance model.

Solution. 

The Clarion Group worked with the senior team to streamline their decision making process and clarify their respective roles in that process. Part of that was delineating which decisions need to be made by the top team, and implementing a process to ensure that more material delegated strategic decisions got appropriate vetting from the senior team.

Results. 

The work significantly enhanced the team’s ability to negotiate and implement a change in ownership while also continuing to drive the sales volume.

Challenge.

A small environmental non-profit organization wanted to build a talent management process that would enable succession planning, talent retention and rotational assignments, knowing that the size of their organization meant limited career path opportunities.

Solution. 

We conducted informal discussions with the top leaders about creating new opportunities by shifting responsibilities for themselves and for their direct reports. Together, we defined roles, identified competencies, and discussed opportunities to expand skill sets and responsibilities.

Results. 

The organization identified the experience and competencies needed to assume senior roles, and opened up a list of possible development options.

Challenge. 

A major global financial services company was converting from a mutual company to a publicly traded company. The senior team, while positive about the access to capital that this move would enable, was concerned about the implications for the leadership culture that would come with this move.

Solution. 

The senior team engaged The Clarion Group to help them embed understanding of the deep leadership implications as the individual members worked their business part of the transition. We provided advice and help, much of it behind the scenes, to design a new business planning and target-setting process. And we advised them on how to effect the kinds of behaviors that would be needed in their new world.

Results. 

There was some turnover at the senior level, given the pace and direction of the change, but the company went public and has tracked successfully.