Background
Large, privately owned diversified grower with sales
through wholesale channels and company owned
distribution centers. The firm has been in business for
many years with a good reputation and market share.
Owners Goals:
Improve the reliable and repeatable success of the
business, develop senior management team to assist owner
and family, take advantage of more growing capacity with
increased market penetration.
Actions taken.
Over
three years, several major initiatives and actions were
taken working with the owner and staff of the firm.
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Owner’s family and Senior Management team received
training, coaching and skill building in their roles.
Meeting formats, frequency and agendas were developed to
improve reporting at their management meetings which
assisted decision making and planning at the top level
of the firm.
This group managed a company wide Quality Improvement
Initiative.
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Middle level managers and professionals with potential
were identified and an ongoing training program was
implemented including Kraft/ODA public seminars for
selected attendees. Also, a facilitator training
program was initiated to enable these individuals to
help establish and run the quality improvement program
as team leaders.
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First
level supervisors were identified and received the
facilitator training as well so that they could run the
quality improvement teams in their area. These were
predominately Hispanic supervisors and employees.
Worked with the owners to develop Spanish training
programs.
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Customized training and coaching programs were set up
for several groups of employees: customer service reps
in the office; customer service reps at the two
distribution centers, field sales personnel and plant
material delivery personnel.
Results
The
results if the Quality Improvement Program benefitted
the firm in several ways:
Employee development
Process and quality
improvement
Company image: the firm
presented the Quality Team report at the
Mid
Am trade show in Chicago
The
results of the coaching of the family and senior
managers resulted in
the owner’s goals being met for succession. |