Case Study – Lighting The Way Forward

Our client was a long-established professional lighting company who had three parts to their business. Direct sales, product hire & events and installations.  The business had started almost as a hobby and had grown gradually over time into a reasonably profitable business with a large client-base.

The Situation

The owner and MD of the company was concerned that the business was not operating as efficiently as it could. As a result it was not as profitable as it could have been. He also wanted to be able to take a step back from the business and was willing to empower the more senior people in his company to enable this to happen.

The Brief

Our brief had multiple objectives, including to understand what aspirations the management had for the business and to identify what issues they would have to deal with to attain their goals.  In addition, the MD wanted to assess the commitment of his more senior people to the business and their potential ability to run the business.

The Journey

We used Journey Making workshops to generate their strategic plan.  These workshops involved the owner of the business and his management team.  The nature of the strategy creation process is to encourage people to express their thoughts, aspirations and opinions is a safe environment.  This was a fairly difficult process for the owner as he had a very personal and emotional connection to the business and tended to take any criticism of the business as criticism of him personally.

The workshops worked as expected with everyone contributing to the process and resulted in a great deal of information, ideas, issues and aspirations being generated.  This information was used to form the basis of a strategic plan, including the goals and objectives for organisation as well as for each department.  In addition, we identifies weaknesses in the organisation and put plans in place to rectify them.

Measuring Success

Using the information gathered in the strategy workshops we were able to create a measurement system to gauge the progress of each department in achieving their short, medium and long-term objectives.    To engage the staff in the process, we put a process in place whereby one person from each department was given responsibility for collating information relating to the key drivers for their department and reporting the results to the group on a weekly basis.  This process worked well, giving key people responsibility for their own departments and allowing everyone to get an insight into the performance of the company was a whole.

Education and Training

Some of the weaknesses in the organisation were traced back to a lack of knowledge.  In order to rectify this we introduce training for some of the staff.  This training varies from on-the-job mentoring to external training to internal training.  Project management was one of main training needs that was identified and we provided this training ourselves as we have a great deal of project management experience.

Visual Representation

Another issue that was raised during the strategy workshops was the need to improve the visual identity of the business.  They waited until some of the issues had been addressed, the changes to process and procedures and the training had been completed before undertaking a Brand Rejuvenation project.  The reason for this was that we advised them to ensure that the internal culture and expertise were strong enough to support their newly created aspirations and vision for the business.

Outcome

We worked with this client for some time, helping them to implement the strategy for their business, building a strong foundation on which to base the rejuvenation of their brand.  The new brand was created and successfully launched in their marketplace.  We also created a scheme whereby staff could invest in the company by giving them options to purchase shares in the company at a preferential rate.   The company continues to grow and has built on an already positive reputation in their marketplace.