Getting More for Less

The Challenge

Leonardo Foods has grown sales and profit at a fast rate. The management team greatly valued their autonomy and respected the energy of the founder (Bob), but they were frustrated at his “idea a minute” personality and frequently changing goals. This bred tension between Sales, believing you should always say “yes” to customers, and Production, which struggled under endless schedule changes. Missed deadlines were common. In 2001, optimistic sales projections fell short and the company posted its first loss.

OGSP® as the Solution

Bob chose OGSP® to build a more credible strategic plan for 2002. In three separate sessions, over 90 days, Bob and his team built a 2002-04 Leonardo Foods OGSP®. We first asked Bob to clearly articulate success for Leonardo. This one sentence Objective was a great relief to the leadership team. They now knew that profit was preeminent, and that Bob wanted to sell this business someday. The team created yearly Base Goals to track progress that were at an 80% confidence level, but also crafted Stretch Goals (33% Confidence Level) to satisfy Bob’s desire for building company value. A new bonus plan, consistent with the OGSP®, was deployed by HR.

Utilizing Where Play/How Win, the team identified six potential strategic focus areas and worked between meetings to analyze pros and cons of each. These cross-functional work teams, each led by a Strategy Captain, helped build a new spirit of cooperation. The four highest potential Strategies were then selected, with an profit assessment on each to ensure they delivered the Goals. About 4-5 high level Plans were selected to deliver each Strategy, with a single point Owner and due Date for each, and a detailed Project Summary for each Plan to clarify for the entire organization how their work fit into the OGSP®.

Bob somewhat reluctantly agreed to creation of a Won’t Do List® for Leonardo to make abundantly clear that focus was critical. The OGSP’s requirements were carefully matched to organization Capability. An Internal OGSP Process Owner was selected from the team, and they maintained an OGSP Binder where all team members maintained the key documents. All throughout 2002 and 2003, we helped the team conduct quarterly OGSP® reviews, and an annual OGSP® renewal in the fall.

Results

In 2002, sales and profit grew 20% and 6%, respectively as the leadership team pulled together to re-energize growth behind a shorter list of big ideas. In 2003, sales grew 43%, as the bigger ideas took hold and due dates were met. Profit grew 28% (to an all time record for the company), as the team used scale and collaboration to drive efficiencies throughout Leonardo. In 2004, Bob accepted an offer to sell Leonardo to a global conglomerate for 2.5 times the business’s appraised value only two years earlier. The team believed OGSP® made a difference – in fact, two of them later hired us to lead OGSP® planning at their new companies.