The Client Situation

A successful IT Consulting firm in the U.S. Midwest region was looking for ways to take their organization to the next level. Specifically, they wanted to address productivity issues that leaders felt were impeding their ability to work more cohesively and collaboratively as a set of teams. Internally, the organization operated with one large technology team and several smaller teams in operations, finance, sales and marketing.

As we met with leaders of this business, we heard a specific word repeatedly—potential. Firm leaders believed that they had the potential to produce far more profit from their existing model without resorting to draconian control measures or hiring additional staff. The firm’s executives had instituted Managed Services a couple of years before engaging with us. This business model was delivering credible value to their clients and was profitable. But leaders believed they could do much better.

The Shattuck Group’s Recommendations

The Shattuck Group came to the table and interviewed the entire executive team, department leads and key employees. We also interviewed 10 foundational clients. Our analysis confirmed that business leaders were indeed correct. They could increase productivity and profitability without adding additional staff. But the strategies and techniques they were considering probably wouldn’t work.

The leadership team’s primary assumption was that they needed to change their marketing message to focus on value levers that would be more compelling to clients, allowing them to charge higher fees. But our interviews with clients did not confirm this. The clients we spoke with expressed a high degree of satisfaction with existing service level agreements but a very low tolerance for fee increases.

We suggested to the leadership team that their profit increases would need to come from within, by creating stronger alignment, collaboration and teamwork. Based on our deep-dive analysis of their situation, we recommended the following services:

• Principal Coaching—to help their COO and CTO focus on their most important growth initiatives.
• Leadership Council—to establish a formal leadership body to share responsibility.
• Leadership Alignment—to create gut-level trust and clarity about the mission between leaders.
• Organizational Health—to drive cooperation, adaptability and productivity among teams.
• Mentorship Coaching—to foster trust, good will and upward career mobility.

The Service Package

We began our engagement by instituting Principal Coaching with the COO and CTO of the firm. In any given month, these two leaders were presented with a host of business challenges, any one of which could be very time consuming to address. We helped them decipher which problems they were best suited to address and which they might delegate to other leaders in the business. This triage activity empowered both executives to apply their focused energies on their most important growth initiatives. It also allowed them to serve as coaches to other leaders in the business, helping them enhance their problem-solving skills and visibility within teams. 

We also formed a Leadership Council which took effect almost immediately. We worked closely with the COO to identify five people within the business, besides the CTO, to join the council. We positioned this as an opportunity for emerging executives to advance their careers and to take greater responsibility for the outcomes of the business. Everyone who was extended an invitation to the council said yes.

We established a Leadership Council meeting sequence of two-day in-person sessions and virtual sessions. Our first in-person session was a game-changer for this firm. The emerging executives gained insight into business operations and challenges and immediately began to make great suggestions. The COO and CTO said they felt more positive energy, support and camaraderie from that two-day session than the entire time they’d been with the company.

Our first task with the Leadership Council was to create alignment between them by getting clarity on several foundational questions:

• What are we trying to achieve as a business—the BHAG (big, hairy, audacious, goal)?
• What does our end-state look like—once all of our strategies have worked?
• What is our exit plan?
• What metrics indicate to us that we are on the right path?
• Which behaviors do we value and which do we abhor?
• How long do we reasonably think this will take?
• Which milestones are most important to us this year?

The Leadership Council identified Organizational Health as a top Collective Objective. They believed that an absence of free-flowing information was hindering the business and creating unnecessary side conversations that drained productivity and collaboration. Staff were spending working hours trying to understand what was happening with the business and why certain decisions were being made, rather than focusing on the work at-hand. This also resulted in trust issues with the COO and CTO, where their decisions were not acted upon with zest and gusto.

By committing to Organizational Health, the Leadership Council took it upon themselves to create clarity with everyone in the firm about what was happening and why. They also committed to expedited in-person communication with their teams so every individual in the firm could ask clarifying questions. Within 24 hours of Leadership Council meetings, all decisions and discussion points were presented to employees in down-flow communication. This also allowed for up-flow of concerns and suggestions from employees to leaders. Several important changes were instituted as a result of up-flow dialogue, which caused employees to feel heard and respected. 

The Leadership Council identified Mentorship Coaching as their next Collective Objective. Specifically, they wanted to make advancement criteria clear and open to everyone in the firm so people knew what they needed to do to move up. They also made it a priority to mentor every employee who wanted it. Leaders formed circle of 7 teams so every employee was mentored by someone they admired and trusted. The mentor team leads also served as accountability partners to employees, helping them commit to do the work necessary to advance their careers. No one in the organization turned down the opportunity to work with a trusted mentor.

The Client Results

The results to this client were game-changing. Within one year, their EBITDA grew by 100%. Morale improved dramatically as employer net promoter scores (willingness of existing employees to promote their employer) improved substantially. Team conflicts decreased significantly as problem-solving and camaraderie increased. Even through a global pandemic, employees remained loyal.

Most importantly, clients began to notice the difference, telling the COO and CTO about what they were experiencing. Client satisfaction, which would have been negatively impacted by fee increases, was actually positively impacted without it costing clients an additional dollar.