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What was
your initial impression when you first heard of Stop
At Nothing?
For the most part, I think our team was fairly open
to the team building process. The Myers-Briggs information
introduced a fun element, got people to relax, and
they starting talking about themselves. Then we did
something called Continue-Start-Stop. Our organization
had a lot of unspoken issues that we were having trouble
getting to, and this process brought them right out.
Once we got the issues out, it was "wow, I didn’t
realize you perceived things that way." Most people
want to be successful and I think once everybody understood
the perceptions and issues, they made a legitimate
effort to address them.
How would you describe the process of working with
Stop At Nothing?
I think it worked extraordinarily well for our team.
We started out very business-oriented, talked about
the culture and cultural change. We migrated from that
toward personal change and helping people determine
what’s right for them, and letting people take
more personal responsibility for the outcome of their
lives and their own feelings. I think it’s a
superlative approach.
What changed for you as a result of working with Stop
At Nothing?
Business-wise, I learned a lot more about tolerance
and perceptions of other people in the work environment,
and how to work with different personality types. I’m
a lot less confrontational than I used to be. It certainly
made for a better work environment and much less stress.
What stands out as the most significant change overall?
The biggest change was the cultural change. Everyone,
director and up, went to the High Impact Leadership
Seminar and we pushed our learnings all the way down
to hourly employees. Everyone was exposed to at least
the Self Leadership And Empowerment Seminar and people
bought into it. As a result, we implemented an empowerment
program. People started speaking up, sometimes talking
back, but in positive and constructive ways.
We put measures in place quickly, too. We posted them
every day. The energy level picked up, productivity
picked up. In Customer Service, for example, productivity
rates and effectiveness went through the roof. It was
really dramatic.
Why do you think it was such a dramatic change?
People at that level often don’t get much attention.
They don’t have a voice and the culture we were
trying to move toward gave them one. They knew it was
real.
Do you recall any measurable impact on productivity?
We achieved pretty close to the industry benchmarks
in everything, all in about a nine-month period. It
happened extraordinarily fast.
Abandon rate on the phones was probably around the
20 percent range, if not higher. It took 60 days to
ship a product, and we basically got it down to about
three percent abandon rate, where no one was ever waiting
any more than about two minutes on the phone. Shipping
was reduced to approximately seven days.
What do you think attributed to the speed?
If you expect one or two people to make all the decisions
and have that kind of change, it’s not going
to happen. But if you give everybody the ability to
make the change, it can happen. The cultural change
made a difference.
What other significant impacts did you see?
Turnover dropped pretty dramatically. Customer Service
had turnover of 30 percent a month and we got it down
to 20 to 30 percent a year.
What was the underlying factor that made you see the
value of cultural change?
We knew we needed to make change and believed that
the best way to run a company is to have good people
making decisions, not just trying to control it all.
We found that getting people to make changes was tough.
They would say "yes" in the meeting, the
go out and do nothing. We had to make them realize
that change was not something to be afraid of, and
we realized we needed someone to come in and help manage
that process. We needed the objectivity of an outside
party.
What advice would you give to others in a similar situation?
Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. You can
waste a lot of time and money trying to do these things
yourself. Maybe you could if that’s all you had
to focus on, but it isn’t. Spending money to
bring someone in to make it happen more quickly and
better is money well spent. Pay what it takes to do
it right.
I think a lot of companies say, "We can do that
ourselves." You can’t. |
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Interview with Matt Jordan, The Hamilton Collection. |
