M8-22 ANALYTICS o TEAMS • ORGANIZATIONS • SKILLS .fÿy.docx

M8-22 ANALYTICS o TEAMS • ORGANIZATIONS •
SKILLS .fÿy' ÿ,oÿ ()V)g
The Strategy That Wouldn't Travel
by Michael C. Beer
It was 6:45 P.M. Karen Jimenez was reviewing the
notes on her team-based productMty project tbr
what seemed like the hundredth time. I31 two days,
she was scheduled to present a report to the senior
management group on the project's progress. She
wasn't at all sure what she was going to say.
The project was designed to improve productiv-
it3, and morale at each plant owned and operated by
Acme Minerals Extraction Company. Phase one--
implemented in early 1995 at the site in Wichita,
I(amsas--looked like a stunning, success by the mid-
dle of 1996. Productivity and mo[ÿale soared, and
operating and maintenance costs decreased signifi-
cantly. But four months ago, Jimenez tried to
duplicate the results at the project's second
target--the plant in Lubbock, Texas--and some-
thing went wrong. The techniques that had worked
so well in Wichita met with only moderate success
in Lubbock. ProductMty improved marginally and
costs went down a bit, but morale actually seemed
to deteriorate slightl): Jimenez was stumped,
approach to teamwork and change. As it turned
out, he had proved a good choice. Daniels was a

hands-on, high-energy, charismatic businessman
who seemed to enjoy media attention. Within his
first year as CEO, he had pretty much righted the
floundering company by selling oft:some unrelated
lines of business. He had also created the share-
services deparnnent--an internal consulting organ-
ization providing change management, reengineer-
ing, total quailB, management, and other
services--and had rapped Jimenez to head the
group. Her first priority Daniels told her, would be
to improve productiviB, and morale at the com-
pany's five extraction sites. None of them were
meeting their projections. And although Wichita
was the only site at which the labor-management
conflict was painfiflly apparent, Daniels and Jimenez
both thought that morale needed an all-around
boost. Hence the team-based productivity project.
She tried to "helicopter up" and think about
the problem in the broad context of the com-
pany's history. A few ),ears ago, Acme had been in
bad financial shape, but what had really brought
things to a head--and had led to her current
dilemma--was a labor relations problem. Acme
had a wide variety of labor requirements For its
operations. The company used highly sophisti-
cated technologB employing geologists, geophysi-
cists, and engineers on what was referred to as the
"brains" side of the business, as well as skilled and
semi-skilled labor on the "brawn" side to run the
extraction operations. And in the summer of
1994, brains and brawn clashed in an embarrass-
ingly public way. A number of engineers at the
Wichita plant locked several union workers out of
the offices in 100-degree heat. Although most
Acme employees now felt that the incident had

been blown out of propo,'tion by the press, the
board of directors had used the bad publicity as an
excuse to push out an aging chief executive and
bring in new blood in the fbrm of'Bill Daniels.
The board had asked Daniels to lead the com-
pany in part because he came fi'om a prominent
management consulting firm that was noted [br its
At the time, Jimenez Felt up tO the task. She had
joined Acme in her late twenties with an MBA and
a few years at a well-known consulting firm under
her belt. She had been at the hehn of more than a
Few successful change efforts. And in the ten years
since she joined Acme, she had gained experience
in a number ofmidlevel positions.
With a hardworking team of her own in toÿq
Jimenez commenced work. First, she decided on a
battle plan. For several reasons, Wichita seemed
ideal as an inaugural site. Under the ÿbrmer CEO,
the site had spent long periods of time on the mar-
ket. The plant consistently tmderpertbrmed, and
the old regime wanted to be rid of it. Periodically,
frustrated by the lack of what he considered seri-
ous of Rrs, the fbrlner CEO ordered improvement
programs, which were ahvays abandoned alter a
short time, Jimenez believed that the failures of
those change programs were predictable: expecta-
tions had been unrealistic,_there had been little
commitment fi'om management, and the improve-
ment-project team members had been given little
authority to implement changi:s. As she consid-
ered her mission at Wichita, Jimenez was certain
that her new political clout combined with her
experience as a consultant would make the project

manageable. Moreover, she reasoned that because
many previous efforts had Failed, her efforts would
look doubly good if the project succeeded. If it
Module 8 . Mana oinÿ CbalLtÿ: in OiLmzuizatiems M8-23
failed, the situation could be positioned with the
proper spin as an intractable set of problems tlÿat
no one could solve.
The biggest problem at Wichita was clearly that
labor and management didn't get along. As a
result, costs to maintain the heavy equipment were
significantly out'of line with those incurred by
other operations. Wichita's high fixed costs and
razor-thin margins meant that every dollar saved in
maintenance was a dollar tbr profit. While operat-
ing costs were high, too, the3: weren't nearly as
high as maintenance costs.
]imenez set about fixing the labor relations
problem. And although things hadn't improved as
smoothly or as quickly as she had hoped, Wichita
was a great success. The problem was, Daniels had
wasted no time in touting the earl), successes to
stakeholders. In fÿct, not long at'ter the Wichita
project had gotten under way, he described it at
great length in a speech to the Financial Analysts'
Society on Wall Street. With characteristic embel-
lishment, he cited the project as a vision tbr the
fiÿttlre of Acme--indeed, he called it tl, Je organiza-
tion for the nventy-first century. He all but told
the analysts that the Wichita model would soon be

rolled out through the entire enterprise.
limenez had been furious--and more than a little
fi'ightened. She didn't want her fi:et held to the fire
like that; she knew that reproducing Wichita's suc-
cess might not be possible and that even if it were, it
might not be accomplished in a cookie-cutter i-:ash-
ion. In fhct, she had tried to let Daniels know of her
fhelings on more than a few occasions, long before
he spouted off'to Wall Street. She had met with him
and sent him reports, e-mail, and memos. The mes-
sage, it seemed, had fhllen on deaf ears.
motion, Wichita had shox,lÿ little coordination or
COnlmunication anlong these groups.
Jimenez knew that she had at least one stroke of
good luck in Wichita in the tbrm of David Keller.
Keller, a 39-year Acme veteran, had been looking
fbr one last job betbre he retired, and he wanted it
to be in Wichita, where his l-'amily had lived for
eight years earlier in his career. He wanted to retire
there. Keller was videly respected in the company
and Jimenez genuinely liked him. So, with the
blessing of Daniels and the other senior managers,
she had appointed him p,'oject leader.
She smiled as she thought about Keller. He was a
Korean War vet who had relocated several times for
Acme, serving in just about every possible line and
staff" position. He joined the company in 1957 and
was immediately baptized in the dust and heat of
North Afi'ica, where the COlnpany had set up opera-
tions soon after World War !I. Keller was a link to
Acme's heady past, when it had thought nothing of
clearing Allied land mines planted in the desert in its

drive to expand. It struck Jimenez tlÿat Keller had
joined the company befbre she was born.
Inside Wichita
Jimenez looked at the clock again: it was now
7:30: The $75 million project that could bl'ing
Aclne into the twenty-first century was listing, she
mused, and so was her career. She looked at her
computer screen for inspiration, but it was blank.
Maybe if" she reviewed the success story once
more. She opened the file marked "Wichita" and
studied the work-process flowchart. The site had
been unexceptional in almost every way. There
were thl'ee fimctional groups: operations, which
consisted of hourly workers who operated and
maintained the extraction equipment; "below
ground," a group composed of engineers, geolo-
gists, and geophysicists who determined where
and how to drill for the desired minerals; and
"above ground," a group of engineers in charge of
cursor), refinement and transportation of the min-
erals. Before the team project ha&been put in
Jimenez thought about the Wichita project's
rough spots. One of them had been the institution
of a monthly "problem chat," an optional meting
open to all staff to discuss unresolved problems. No
one attended the first one. She and Keller sat there
nervously, together eating six doughnuts before
she called a secretary and had them carted away.
But over time, people began to sho' up. After
about fbur months, the meetings were well-
attended, lively problem-solving discussions that

actually produced SOlne improvements. In one case,
a maintenance worker explained to a thcilities engi-
neer that one of the standard equipment configura-.
tions was f:ailing as a result of high levels of heat and
sand contamination, resulting in occasional down-
time. With Keller mediating, the complaint had
been taken well, without the usual fi'iction. The
engineer easily fabricated a new configuration more
suitable to the conditions, and downtime was 'irtu-
all), elilninated. Such insights were common at the
problem chats. Previously no organizational mecha-
nism had existed for capturing solutions or transfer-
ring them to other parts of the operation.
j'imcnez and Keller then introdtlced teams to
"select a problem and implement a tailored solu-
tiou," or SPITS. These were ad-hoc groups made
up of members fi'om each of the functional a,'eas.
The groups were formed to work on a specific
project identified in a problem chat; they were dis-
banded when the problem was solved. It was the
implementation of SPITS teams that led some
eight months later to a wholesale reorganization of
the Wichita work site. ]imenez believed that
SPITS had been a breakthrough that had shown
M8-24 ANALYTICS • TEAMS ÿ ORGANIT_ATIOIÿIS
, SKILLS
her how to boost productivity and morale--the
goal tlÿr Daniels had set lÿ)r her. The program had
given cross-filnctional teams of 12 to 15 people
fi'om operations, above ground, and below
ground the responsibility and authority to address

problems as they occurred without seeking the
approval of management.
Jimencz reminded herself that even after
SPITSÿ there were still some rocky moments in
Wichita. Solne engineers resented having to work
alongside operations personi}el. They told Keller,
"These miners don't understand why we do what
re do." Likewise, some operations staff balked at
having to work with engineers who "knew how to
mine only on a computer screen."
But one },ear into the pilot, things began to
hum. People weren't just working together, they
were socializing together. At one of the problem
chats, an operations worker jokingly suggested that
the brains and the brawn duke it out once a week to
get rid of the tensions. Keller jumped on the joke
and had T-shirts made that said BRAINS AND
BRAWN; he then challenged the groups to square
of'f weekly in a softball game. EaHy into the first
game, a 200-pound miner slammed into a thin,
wiry engineer at home plate, and limenez, watch-
ing fi'om the sidelines, was sure that her corporate
change plan had just been called out. But the engi-
neer simply d usted hilnsclfofl-; laughing and swear-
ing at the same time. At the next game, the
engineer showed tip wearing knee and shoulder
pads, and Jimcnez heard both his colleagues and
the operations guys laughing. She knew something
had changed. Later that night at a bar, the beer
flowed in massive quantities, but she happily picked
up the check. Her BItAINS AND BRAWN shirt
now lntmg on her of'rice all--a symbol of everything
that was wrong and everything was possible.

Cookie-Cutter Conundrum
Jimencz again came back to the present. She
closed the file, got tip ab,'uptly, and grabbed her
cdat., She needed some air and some food and
derided to walk the two blocks to the local sand-
with joint. She felt a little like an inventor who had
just dcvel{Jped a great new invention that is certain
to make the compan.v tons of money. <'That's
great!" an imaginary boss replies. "Now give me
another 50 joist like it!"
As she walked, she tried to think objectively
about the I,ubbock site. Lubbock was in better
shape than Wichita to begin with, but not by
much. Operating costs there were too high, and
the plant rarely met its production goals. Acme
had considered divesting itself" of Lubbock on
more than one occasion. When Jimenez initially
planned the team-based productivity rollout, she
had thought of Lubbock as a beta site; kinks fiom
Wichita would be worked out there, and then the
plan would be rolled out to the rest of the corn-
pan}, over a two-year period. The shared-services
department didn't have the staff" to oversee
Wichita's fine-tuning and concentrate on Lubbock
as well, so Jimenez assigned only one of her top
internal consultimts, Jennifer Peterson, and two of
Peterson's staff to the Lubbock PrOject. She then
engaged Daniels' foriner consulting firm and
assigned Dave Matthews, a vice president of the
firm, on-site responsibility.
Bad news seemed to dog Jimenez at every turn.
For example, Keller declined to be a part of the

team. Mystified and a little hurt, Jimenez turned
up the pressure a bit, hinting that it might look
bad for him not to work on the Lubbock site.
Keller was resolute.
"Look, Karen," he had said. "I'm 63 },ears old.
My kids are all out of the house. I've relocated ten
times for the company, but I plan to retire soon. I
don't want to spend the next three years burning
myself out traveling all over the cotlntry. I'm stay-
ing in Wichita. If I have to, I'll take earl}, retire-
ment and walk." Although Jimenez thought he
might be bluffing, she couldn't afford to call his
hand. Keller had many powerfnl allies in the com-
pany and was viewed as the prototypical Acme
man; his latest success with the Wichita turn-
around was seen as yet another in a series of
impressive achievements. Jimenez knew she
couldn't afford to lose his experience and knoxsd-
edge; if she couldn't get him thll time, she would
do her best to pick his brain and transfer his
knowledge to a project team.
Keller had promised full access to his entire
staff; the consultants could interview and brain-
storm and strategize all they wanted. Jimenez,
Peterson, and Matthews took advantage of that
opportunitB but even extensive interviews with
Keller and his staff hadn't yielded any truly valu-
able insights. No matter how carefully Jimenez
and her group tried to recreate the circumstances
and techniques that had worked so well in Wichita,
they made very little progress. The Lubbock
employees just didn't seem to react with the same
enthusiasm as the Wichita workers had. Because
no one was showing tip for the problem chats--

despite the "selling" of the meetilÿgs' benefits by
Jimenez, Peterson, and Matthews--attendance
was made mandatory. It was true that Jimenez's
team had attempted to reduce 'the cycle time and
"total time to investment recovery" of the project,
but that goal hadn't seemed unreasonable.
Jimenez thought that there would be fiewer mis-
takes in Lubbock and that the project would need
tess time and fewer resources than Wichita had.
Module 8 , MamTgiHg ChaHgc iJl OrqaMzatiolls M8-25
)
f
1
|
If" anything, just the opposite occurred. Prob-
lems never encountered ill the Wichita project cre-
ated havoc at Lubbock. One particularly vexing to
Jimenez was that the Lubbock workers refused to
engage in any of" the team-building exercises and
events developed fbr them by the project team.
The softball games that had been played with
enthusiasnl in Wichita were skipped by the Lub-
bock crowd until the project team finally off'ered
to spring for food and beer. Even then, there was
more eating than playing. I felt like I was bribing
prison inmates, Jimenez remembered.
e
s

l
I
2r
t
expected, the improvements weren't enough--and
Jimenez knew it.
There had been some improvements. The site
had begun to meet its weekly goals more. consis-
tently and had seen some reduction in operations
and maintenance costs. Normally, Jimenez would
have been complimented on a job well done, but in
the context of'what had gone bef;ore and what was
She returned to her office, still without all
answer. Full and generous fimding had been
approved fbr the team-based productivity project by
the steering committee at the personal request of,
Bill Daniels; this level off filnding was not easily
come by at Acme. How could she convince him--
without looldng like a f'ailure--that the project
couldn't be rolled out with the speed and grace he
envisioned? What's more, it was clear' that stalling
the implementation would dull some o}: the pro-
ject's luster and in all likelihood jeopardize fimding.
She did think that the project would work, given
time. But she wasn't exactly sure how. And any waf-
fling might get her crucified by her colleagues.
The meeting with the senio," managers was rap--
idly approaching. What could she say to them?
}.

Graded Case Analysis #2:
Case Study “The Strategy That Wouldn’t Travel”
Be prepared to discuss the following questions:
Where would you place the Wichita change initiative on the
four dimensions of change initiatives?
What were the main problems at the Wichita facility that
Jimenez’s change initiative addressed? Why was the initiative
successful at the Wichita facility?
What are the problems at Lubbock? Why is the change
initiative not as successful at the Lubbock facility?

What actions should Jimenez take immediately? If you were
brought in to advise Jimenez, what actions would you
recommend to her to move the change initiative forward at
Lubbock? Within the company as a whole?

M8-22 ANALYTICS o TEAMS • ORGANIZATIONS • SKILLS .fÿy.docx

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M8-22 ANALYTICS o TEAMS • ORGANIZATIONS • SKILLS .fÿy.docx