Helping Executives Drive Company Performance

Alan Severance, Chief Customer Experience Officer at Strategia Analytics, explains how he leverages 40 years in customer service, industrial engineering and manufacturing to help Strategia’s clients manage their transformation. 

A lot of people are out there selling the idea of, “We’re going to help you transform your culture. We’ll get it all figured out for you.” How is Strategia Analytics different?

I think we’re unique because we’ve tied everything together for end-to-end execution. We use our Organizational Strategic Alignment™ (OSA) tool to measure 24 different aspects of an organization, drilling down to the attitudes, mindsets, behaviors and processes that go into making the execution of a strategy successful. With the OSA, we can bring the entire company into alignment with the strategy chosen by the executive team.

Also, we’re not one of those big consultancies that say, “Give us $10 million and we’ll show you the secret.” We say, “We want to show you how you can do this. We have some unique and powerful tools and we’ll provide guidance. Our goal is to help your people make your strategy happen.”

Then we provide our clients with a dashboard that not only tells them where their culture and alignment are right now but shows them how to get where they want to be. Then, in six months, we’ll show them how far they’ve come and help them realign if necessary so they can move forward again.

But most importantly, we guide companies through the process using their own people and help them at any level they need.

“We guide companies through the process using their own people and help them at any level they need. ”

Can you share an example?

Yes, but let me take a step back. I spent over 40 years in customer service, industrial engineering and manufacturing. That’s where I learned about dealing with people, about how they get along in a large group, and how to listen. That’s also where I met up with Miles Overholt.

At the time, the company I was with brought in engineering consultants who wanted to make some changes. They were good changes, but the consultants were running rough shod over my folks and I was getting a lot of push back whenever I tried to work with them. So I reached out to Miles and asked him to help me with the people side.

After leaving that company I started working for a former colleague. He was the plant manager for a home furnishings manufacturer, making products for a big box retailer. That was the laboratory where I did a lot of the serious Lean work that formed the basis for my two books. They’re also one of Strategia’s star clients. For the past seven years they’ve used our tools and gotten tremendous results. And they’re driving the process themselves, teaching people internally, who then teach coworkers, and so on.

Could you tell me some details about Lean?

Lean is more a philosophy than a set of techniques. It’s really come into its own in the last 15 to 18 years. It started out with the just-in-time ideas of the 1980s. At first, people treated it as an inventory fix. They didn’t want to have tons of money tied up in inventory, so they asked manufacturers to make and ship products only when they needed them.

But that morphed into a truly better look at getting things done. Lean describes what are called “eight wastes.” One of them is an excess of inventory, but most of them are people-related.  

I’ll go back to the home furnishings manufacturer as an example. You start with some wood and a pile of hardware and end up with a product that’s going right into the customer’s house. You can really see the transformation. Here we are and here’s where we’re going.

But if that product is made wrong, the customer sends it back and it has to be made again—for free. Well, that’s a waste. Or, you might make the product wrong and catch it before it ships. “Hey, we caught this before it went out wrong. Yay.” Yeah, but you still have to fix it. And so, you start working back through the process and fixing things. And it's easy for people in the factory to grasp this. It’s concrete.

“When people know they have to take care of a customer who’s right there, they develop a different attitude. And that attitude changes their mindsets and behaviors.”

Then you introduce the concept of customer. We asked 160 plant employees “Who’s your customer?” and of course they named the big box retailer. So we said, “Really? Is that who’s standing at the end of your line?” The real customer is the person you make something for. So, if you’re in the warehouse and you’re bringing a load of wood to the head of a production line, there’s your customer. The first guy in the line. So people know who their customer is, and they know what they’re responsible for. Quality has gone up and safety and productivity improved measurably, too.

You don’t use Lean to save money. You use it to make things right the first time so that your customers will help you expand your business.

Now when you start talking about efficiency, employees might think, “If they’re only going to need four people to make the product instead of five, I’m going to be out of a job.” But, no. We’re going to sell so many more products that we’re going to have to duplicate this line and you’re going to be part of the team on the second line.

That’s exactly what happened in this plant. They’re in the same building that they entered in 2008. It’s 200,000 square feet and they’ve added five product lines to the building. They could do that because they applied their Lean training and trimmed the excess space and inventory from the other lines, shortening them.

When people are thinking about what they’re doing and know they have to take care of a customer who’s right there—and not some distant homeowner or retailer—they develop a much different attitude. And that attitude changes their mindsets and behaviors.

How do you see your role in transformations?

I’m the coach and teacher. Using our tools, working with management and the employees, I help them run their own company better.

It’s so much fun doing something where you can see the results. But it’s not just saying, “We got that done.” It’s saying, “I taught some people how to do this and they were able to teach more people.” It’s about developing leaders so that as they develop, their approach cascades right through the company. When it works right, it works very well and the only way that you can sustain it to keep passing it on.

How would you describe your typical client?

They’re a CEO who’s ready to step up. He or she knows their business and their organization and their market well enough to know that they’ve got to take some steps to improve. That said, they may not know exactly what needs to be done. We can help them at any level of the process, from strategy development to measurement to working with the employees to truly align the company’s culture with its business strategy. And we give them the tools so they can do it themselves—for a lot less than $10 million!

“It’s so much fun doing something where you can see the results. It’s not just saying, ‘We got that done.’ It’s saying, ‘I taught some people how to do this and they were able to teach more people.’”