Assess: to create a plan for a solution or improvement, we work with clients to understand where they are—the current state. Assessments can take many forms: from formalized tools to interviews and process analyses, including decision-making processes and structures. The assessment phase is also where the client builds preliminary support for the entire initiative or improvement, gathering input from key internal customers and stakeholders. Define and frame the issue: Usually a “presenting problem” or issue is not the actual issue. Once the assessment is complete, the client often needs to reframe the issue into a clear statement, break it into its parts, gather and analyze additional data and formulate ideas for defining the parameters of the project and key metrics, as well as the solution that follows.

Situation analysis: This involves creating a clear vision of what a solution may look like, conducting a detailed gap analysis between the current and future states, identifying pain points, prioritizing the situation based on data analysis. Cause analysis may be part of this step if the improvement is needed in an existing process. Sometimes an issue is partly due to having no process in place, and cause analysis may not be possible. Design solution options: Based on earlier analyses, we help the client develop possible solutions, test them, synthesize them, and work toward a “best” solution or path forward. People throughout the organization continue to be a resource for ideas. People will help implement what they help create. Define a roadmap: Any solution takes an organization from where it is to where it wants to be. We help the client by collaborating, teaching, and working alongside of them to create a detailed transition plan, including how to gain and maintain support for the change. Often changes in feedback, accountability, or performance systems are needed to support the change, and planning for those items are included in this step.

Implementation: In this step the client follows the transition plan. Important aspects of this step are: Monitoring the plan as it’s implemented to verify if it is working. Conducting reviews, audits, and process checks. Keeping channels open with internal customers and stakeholders. Generating and implementing ideas for continuous improvement.

Situation: A glass manufacturing site was experiencing a very high number of safety incidents. The site had the worst safety record in the entire organization. The corporate safety executive group asked us to design and implement an employee-owned safety program. Because of the high rate of incidents, the organization opted for a “rapid improvement” approach. Process: First, we conducted an assessment by observing processes and practices and by interviewing most of the employees at the site to gather input related to safety and the organizational climate. We then shared the data, assessment results, and our recommendations with location and corporate management. We facilitated the development of a master plan that would reduce incidents, improve compliance, and increase employee ownership. Through subsequent months, we guided the organization through implementation. Results: The location cut safety incidents of all types by more than 75% in the first 6 months, while implementing an employee-based safety program.

Situation: A large international generics pharmaceutical organization had received a $65 Million grant from Dupont to create a startup organization for innovative pharmaceuticals. Process: We assessed the current generic pharmaceutical company to determine the capabilities of the organization for growth, resources, and potential for shared services. We worked with executive leadership of the startup, along with key executives from the generic company, to create the strategic plan for the innovative subsidiary, as well as structure, processes, staffing, and growth plans for the new company. The organization created was very flat, organized by therapeutic area rather than a typical vertical-silo organizational structure. Results: Within its first year, the pharmaceutical company grew to a $165 Million company. We designed and implemented an innovative, responsive organizational structure for startup, growth, and lasting results.

Do you have the tools to achieve your vision?

Linchpin Business Advisors is an advisory firm with deep expertise in helping organizations align business strategy with structure, company culture, and operational excellence. We help clients drive growth and value creation, not with typical consulting services but by working alongside clients to guide them to develop frameworks for long term results and operational excellence.

Trusted Advisors. Sound Judgment. Practical Guidance for Complex Business Challenges.

Linchpin Business Advisors LLC uses a practical, common sense approach to help clients across many industries turn business strategy into reality. We are known for our ability to make change less complicated, more transparent, and easier to sustain than other consultancies. Our clients experience rapid and enduring improvement in organizational design and alignment, change management, operational excellence, and leadership and team development.

Services

We help clients through services in four main areas:

Organizational Design: Aligning strategy, structure, and culture.

Strategic planning
Innovative organizational structures
Planning and implementing high performance teams
Organizational alignment
Morale Improvement/turnover reduction
Organizational culture and climate assessment
Designing and implementing leadership pipeline to meet the demands of the future

Business growth strategy and tools

Business Growth planning
Business growth process design and tools
Cross functional alignments for business growth

Operational excellence

Business and manufacturing process improvement
Focused improvement

Developing people

Team and Leader Development, Coaching, and Training
Leadership Competencies and skills
Leading high performing teams
Coaching for results
Operating in teams, team member responsibilities and skills

Our Approach

We help high-profile companies across the globe transform their organizations to get better at what they do. We believe that improvement does not have to be overly complex. We team with our clients, working transparently and logically to craft solutions and frameworks that will allow them to achieve excellence while constructing a path forward so they can be as independent from us as soon as they wish. Here’s how we do it.

Methodology

1. Understand

Assess: to create a plan for a solution or improvement, we work with clients to understand where they are—the current state. Assessments can take many forms: from formalized tools to interviews and process analyses, including decision-making processes and structures. The assessment phase is also where the client builds preliminary support for the entire initiative or improvement, gathering input from key internal customers and stakeholders.
Define and frame the issue: Usually a “presenting problem” or issue is not the actual issue. Once the assessment is complete, the client often needs to reframe the issue into a clear statement, break it into its parts, gather and analyze additional data and formulate ideas for defining the parameters of the project and key metrics, as well as the solution that follows.

2. Envision

Situation analysis: This involves creating a clear vision of what a solution may look like, conducting a detailed gap analysis between the current and future states, identifying pain points, prioritizing the situation based on data analysis. Cause analysis may be part of this step if the improvement is needed in an existing process. Sometimes an issue is partly due to having no process in place, and cause analysis may not be possible.
Design solution options: Based on earlier analyses, we help the client develop possible solutions, test them, synthesize them, and work toward a “best” solution or path forward. People throughout the organization continue to be a resource for ideas. People will help implement what they help create.
Define a roadmap: Any solution takes an organization from where it is to where it wants to be. We help the client by collaborating, teaching, and working alongside of them to create a detailed transition plan, including how to gain and maintain support for the change. Often changes in feedback, accountability, or performance systems are needed to support the change, and planning for those items are included in this step.

3. Transform

Implementation: In this step the client follows the transition plan. Important aspects of this step are:
- Monitoring the plan as it’s implemented to verify if it is working.
- Conducting reviews, audits, and process checks.
- Keeping channels open with internal customers and stakeholders.
- Generating and implementing ideas for continuous improvement.

Principles for Success

We base our work on four important tenets, and we approach every engagement with these principles in mind.

Involve employees: People will help implement what they help create. Engaging stakeholders and end users is vital for any change.
Question everything: Challenge the status quo. Explore and imagine beyond current assumptions and parameters.
Think “and,” not “either/or”: Often the best solutions come not from choosing among alternatives, but rather through creatively combining alternatives.
Work collaboratively: We don’t pretend to be experts in what your organization does. You and your people know the processes, systems, and technologies the best. Instead, we collaborate with you and challenge you to design the best solutions.
Balance structure and data with intuition: Without structure and data, you cannot effectively define, analyze, or address challenges, nor can you effectively implement transformation. However, for rapid improvement, structure needs to be balanced against intuition. Putting together the best teams with the widest variety of skills and experience allows you to use intuition to increase speed, while still using a structured approach.

Results

Operational Performance Excellence

Situation: Two sites of a food manufacturing company were experiencing significant loss, mediocre quality, and high HR costs. The corporate executive group asked us to design and implement TPM continuous improvement environment.
Process: First, we conducted an assessment, interviewing employees at all levels of the hierarchy, to gather input related to organizational climate factors and reasons people were leaving. We compiled the data and shared it with Leadership and location management. We helped the organization select and train a team to spearhead the operational improvement effort. We facilitated the development of a master plan that would not only improve throughput and quality, but also employee engagement. In subsequent months, we guided the locations through the implementation.
Results: Improvements saved each site over $1M in the first year, and employee engagement increased more than five-fold.

Safety Improvement

Situation: A glass manufacturing site was experiencing a very high number of safety incidents. The site had the worst safety record in the entire organization. The corporate safety executive group asked us to design and implement an employee-owned safety program. Because of the high rate of incidents, the organization opted for a “rapid improvement” approach.
Process: First, we conducted an assessment by observing processes and practices and by interviewing most of the employees at the site to gather input related to safety and the organizational climate. We then shared the data, assessment results, and our recommendations with location and corporate management. We facilitated the development of a master plan that would reduce incidents, improve compliance, and increase employee ownership. Through subsequent months, we guided the organization through implementation.
Results: The location cut safety incidents of all types by more than 75% in the first 6 months, while implementing an employee-based safety program.

Innovative Startup

Situation: A large international generics pharmaceutical organization had received a $65 Million grant from Dupont to create a startup organization for innovative pharmaceuticals.
Process: We assessed the current generic pharmaceutical company to determine the capabilities of the organization for growth, resources, and potential for shared services. We worked with executive leadership of the startup, along with key executives from the generic company, to create the strategic plan for the innovative subsidiary, as well as structure, processes, staffing, and growth plans for the new company. The organization created was very flat, organized by therapeutic area rather than a typical vertical-silo organizational structure.
Results: Within its first year, the pharmaceutical company grew to a $165 Million company. We designed and implemented an innovative, responsive organizational structure for startup, growth, and lasting results.

Organizational Restructuring

Situation: A global pharmaceutical organization was experiencing poor performance, resulting in missed submission targets. The international executive group was considering downsizing the US division of the company to leave only the bare minimum in the US required to sell and approve pharmaceutical products in the US. The year before we started working with this organization, they had submitted only one new product to the FDA, having missed their submission target by 80%.
Process: We conducted an assessment comprised of interviews and a formal survey instrument to determine opportunities for improvement. To address the challenges uncovered in the assessment, we designed and executed training for executive leadership to prepare them for the needed organizational changes. We formulated a Steering Committee to plan the new structure and to develop the big-picture strategy and parameters for the change process. We also created a cross-functional, cross-hierarchical Design Team to design the new structure, processes, tools, and technologies to support the new structure.
Results: The new structure utilized cross-functional new product development teams within a matrix organization. With the new structure, and new R&D strategy, processes, and training, the organization cut time for R&D by two thirds for a typical new product. In fewer than 8 months, the improvements in the US Division allowed the division to go from one submission to the FDA in the prior year to exceeding the business goal of 7 submissions.

Manufacturing Facility Growth Plan

Situation: A global manufacturing organization needed to respond to changing markets. A set of products had grown in demand, and the corporation determined that one of the North American plants needed to quadruple output. The company also wanted to explore launching innovative structures within the organization, such as cross-functional work teams, kaizens, and short-term temporary team structures.
Process: We assessed the current organization through interviews and a structured, written organizational assessment. Based on the assessment results, we worked with executive leadership to create a strategic plan and objectives for the “new organization.” In coordination with executives and a cross-functional planning group, we facilitated the detailed transition plan for the location redesign, including implementation steps, training, redesign of decision making, and the testing of process design through simulations and actual experimentation.
Results: The project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. The result was an organization with tripled staff and quadrupled productivity and capacity while maintaining the prior management complement of 17 managers. This project was used as a model for similar implementations throughout the company.

Business Growth Process

Situation: A global manufacturing organization had utilized a giant global consulting organization for years to develop and launch new products. Due to the high cost of the global consulting firm’s services and its unwillingness to allow the manufacturing organization to learn and implement the process independent of the consulting firm, the company asked us to create a cross-functional, customized version of the consulting firm’s business growth process. The objectives were to reduce reliance on the outside consulting firm and thereby reduce costs of subsequent new product development while also supporting the structure and management climate of the client organization.
Process: We conducted interviews to assess the current business growth strategy and structures, then researched the global consulting firm’s past work in the organization. We worked with executive leadership and pilot groups to design the new business growth process, training programs, and other support structures.
Results: This initiative resulted in millions of dollars of savings in Year One because the organization could now do independently what they had utilized a large multinational consulting firm to do in the past.

Business Development Overhaul

Situation: A New England middle-market CPA firm’s small management consulting group was experiencing typical cycles related to business development: cycling from exceptionally busy times (in which little business development was done) to times of slow business and slow growth. To avoid peaks and valleys in the business cycle, a consistent, reliable business development process needed to be put in place.
Process: We assessed the current situation using process review, analysis, and interviewing. We then collaborated with Partners and Consultants in designing a new, customized business development process in line with the organization’s culture. We then developed a master plan for process design, strategy, and implementation. To support the new structure, we facilitated the selection of new technologies. To allow for greater flexibility in project staffing, we vetted and recruited sub-contractors for projects. We coached and mentored consultants, Senior Managers, and Partners in Business Development practices and networking skills, as well as feedback and appraisal skills to reinforce the new Business Development processes and make them stick.
Results: Developed and implemented a true, cycle-proof consultative Business Development strategy and process to secure new clients and follow-on business from existing clients. One practice in a new vertical went from start up to over $1 Million in revenue in two years.

Employee Attrition and Turnover

Situation: One location in a large organization was experiencing very high turnover, annualized at over 50%. The corporate executive group asked us to design and implement a cross-functional team-based environment, as we had done in over 20 other locations. Because of the unusually high turnover, it was clear that simply implementing a team environment would not be enough. A culture change needed to be jump-started and stabilized; turnover needed to be addressed first.
Process: First, we conducted an assessment and met with all employees in small focus groups to gather input related to organizational climate factors and reasons people were leaving. We compiled the data and created a framework for generating and evaluating solutions. We then shared input with management, trained management in turnover reduction principles and tactics, and facilitated planning sessions with management to develop a specific plan for solving the problem. We then implemented the plan under budget and ahead of schedule.
Results: The location cut annualized turnover from 31% to 9% in 6 months and improvements in turnover were sustained in subsequent years. This solution received the corporate improvement award for the entire company.