Company
A global real estate and financial services company, >$1B annual revenues

Background
Company B was formed by the 1999 merger of a North American firm and a European/ Asian-focused firm. The North American part of the firm had grown rapidly in the late 1990s via five strategic acquisitions and went public in 1997.

In late 2000, when Brimstone began working with the North American division, it was struggling to integrate its new businesses and capitalize on cross-business growth opportunities. Senior leaders and their organizations operated almost wholly independently and the firm needed to improve its organic growth rate and operating systems.

Process and Organizational Changes
Chuck Phillips, the COO of the North American division, recognized that major changes were necessary in the organization. He engaged Brimstone to gain alignment at the Senior Team level with the conviction that the rest of the organization could not get aligned and work effectively together until the senior leaders did the same.

During Company B's Senior Team Alignment Process (STAP), Brimstone helped the Senior Team become a more unified group, with clear norms and values and a consistent strategic view of the business and its future. Building a Strategic Business Framework helped the Senior Team gain that critical alignment. Examining what stood in the way of achieving the objectives described on the Framework surfaced a series of Critical Issues that Company B needed to address.

After identifying the six most compelling challenges, the Senior Team selected a group of 48 high-performance, high-potential leaders in the business to study the issues and develop solutions. Working with Brimstone, Company B then launched a Performance Leadership (PL) program to provide the cross-functional project teams with a structure and process to facilitate the successful completion of the project work

The teams worked for 100 days on their projects, aided by the support of a Senior Team sponsor and a Brimstone coach. Check-ins along the way ensured consistent feedback from members of the Senior Team as well as the other project teams. The PL programs concluded with each team proposing final recommendations and clear implementation plans to the Senior Team, followed by real-time yes/no decisions on each recommendation.

Financial Results
During the PL, each project team member had the opportunity to work on his/her leadership behaviors, receiving coaching and feedback from his sponsor, coach and other teammates. Each team member also had the chance to try new roles and learn about other parts of the business, in effect joining the Senior Team in the strategic decision-making process. And, of course, the projects themselves yielded tangible, bottom-line results for Company B. Specifically, the projects resulted in the following:

• The "Corporate Solutions" team's recommendations have so far yielded the greatest results. All the business lines have increased their focus on prospective multi-service Companies. Customer Z was a direct result of this focus. On an NPV basis, this win by itself was worth $30 million to the firm. In the first year, three additional assignments were won as a result of this project, generating $5 million in revenue and $1.5 million in profit in the first 12 months.
• Based on the recommendations of the "Economic Profit" team, Company B instituted strict rules relative to receivables. Within six months, Company B's receivables were reduced from 72 average days sales outstanding to 54 - resulting in reduced borrowing costs and interest savings of $700,000 annually. In addition, Company B restructured contracts in order to receive reimbursed payroll up-front, saving the carrying charge that they had incurred in the past. For one large Company alone, Company B saved $200,000 annually in working capital costs.
• The "Client Profitability" team's recommendations focused on improving the profitability of Clients. Key outcomes from this project included a new fee structure for low profit accounts and a reprioritization of support for high profit accounts. These changes have resulted in increased Client profitability and new business.
• The "Attract and Retain" team recommended changes that promise to increase employee satisfaction scores and reduce voluntary turnover over the next three years. Company B saw improvements in both areas in the first 12 months of implementation.
• The other two projects did not generate any tangible benefits in their first year. One simply did not launch due to a shift in strategic focus driven by changes in marketplace realities. The recommendations of the other, which focused on compensation, were forwarded to the global compensation committee, which is using their work to inform their decisions.

Conclusion
By the end of the PL process, Company B made significant progress in three critical areas. First, the project team members had the opportunity to become better leaders through consistent feedback from a variety of sources. Second, the organization had the chance to become more open to sharing ideas, best practices and solutions across business lines, and individuals began to develop long-lasting networks across the company. Finally, the Senior Team received well-researched, actionable recommendations to its most pressing issues - and acting upon these solutions yielded significant financial improvements.