Organization Transformation Case Study:

Getting Behind Barriers to Getting Things Done

The Challenge

• A new sales division leader was soon to be joining the hotel after the departure of a popular director of sales and marketing, who had just left.
• The location of this hotel was sub-optimal, making the role of the sales team very difficult.
• The team was deflated and lacked faith in the hotel to perform or follow through on sales promises, and doubted leadership’s support to make any changes.
• The competitive set was beating the hotel and performance was lackluster overall.

The Solution

1. Asked employees through an anonymous, online survey about the current work environment, including barriers that got in the way of getting things done, and what their ideal workplace looked like.
2. Facilitated a half-day session with the team to clarify and expand on the common issues that came out of the survey.
3. Created an action plan to resolve the issues and guided the team to determine priorities.
4. Developed a Blueprint for Success (an action plan) in order of priority with timelines and accountabilities.
5. Presented a recap and the plan to senior management for their implementation.

The Impact

One year later, we checked in with the leader to discuss a follow-up survey to measure the impact of the new leader and to see if morale had improved. The first question was to determine how much of the action plan had been implemented. The leader admitted that other priorities took over and none of the Blueprint was completed.

The result was that 80 percent of the team had left the organization within the previous year to join the competition. This meant a loss of top talent, gaps in service, and costs for recruitment and training of new employees.