My friend Bob applied the Universal Elevation principles when he joined a company that wasn’t doing well. The company was not meeting its financial goals and was losing customers. Their products were of increasingly poor quality, and they were falling behind the competition in terms of functionality and technology. The top executives were removed by the parent company, and Bob was brought in to help turn the company around.
Bob conducted a detailed assessment of the company to see how it was truly doing. He discovered the things it did well, where it was failing, and everything in between. Bob could see that it suffered from standard thinking. The different departments were fighting with each other about everything. Each one thought they were the most important department in the company. Each department worked to make the others look bad while concealing their own faults. They were fighting over limited resources.
Of course, the reality was that every department had major performance gaps and needed to focus on how they could improve themselves. If the employees didn’t turn things around immediately, the company was going to go out of business, and then they would all be out of a job.
Bob met with each employee to understand their view of the company. He gathered their ideas on how they thought the company could do better, and he took inventory of their skills, interests, and knowledge gaps. He asked them about their career and life goals. He reorganized the company so each employee could deliver higher value. He sent employees to training so they could have a bigger impact. He formed a new strategic group with a representative from each department. Their purpose was to speak about challenges, issues, and strategies. Their goal was to find solutions where everyone could win.
Bob then met with the other stakeholders, including the parent company, customers, partners, and suppliers. He asked them for their feedback on what the company did well and how it could do better. He set up quarterly meetings where they could discuss issues and provide their requests for future functionality. He created a three-year strategic plan based on everyone’s input that met their highest priority needs.
Every stakeholder, including the new strategic group, was able to submit requests for functionality to be included in the next product release. Everyone was treated equally. Each stakeholder was allocated a fair number of development hours for which they could submit a prioritized list of work they wanted done.
Bob created a new company culture, mission, vision, and values. The new company culture required everyone to treat each other equally and with respect. They were all one team, and they needed to work with each other. The new mission was to deliver products on time with the best functionality and the highest quality. The new vision was to become the vendor of choice for customers needing a similar system. The new values were placed into the acronym I VOTE, which stood for Innovation, Value, Ownership, Truth, and Excellence.
Bob held a company meeting where he drew a line in the sand. What happened in the past stayed in the past. Everyone was forgiven, and they all had a clean slate. He told everyone what was expected of them moving forward. He went over the new culture, mission, vision, and values. He talked about the strategy, the reorganization, the new strategic group, and the scorecard that would track their daily progress on key metrics. He talked about the principles of Universal Elevation. He laid out what the new incentives, rewards, and consequences were. He told everyone that he was going to be holding them accountable, and that they also needed to hold themselves accountable.
Bob held team-building events. Each team was composed of one member from each department. He assigned a problem to each team to solve. As they worked together, they became more aware of how they could better utilize each other’s strengths to solve the problem. They realized they could achieve much better results when they helped each other and worked together as one team.
As a result, the company transformed itself in a fairly short period of time. Bob’s results were quite amazing, but they weren’t unique. He applied Universal Elevation to his next company and a nonprofit sports team, all with similar results.
Author's Note: this is an anonymous success story. Bob is not his real name and the picture is just a stock image.