That was a fantastic addition to our conversation. Thanks and I appreciate your input.

Come back soon and please continue to add your thoughts.

The only bad part was you just gave away a million dollar turnaround strategy

1) Survey EVERYONE in the company– top to bottom. Ask basically four questions:

1- What works?
2- What doesn’t?
3- If you could get rid of one thing, what would it be?
4- If you could do MORE of one thing, what would it be?

2) Throw out all the responses from senior management. For the most part, they’re the bozos that caused the problems in the first place.

3) Correlate and summarize the results, coming up with 3 specific recommendations– almost exclusively the result of the surveys (though not necessarily telling sr. management that’s where the ideas came from– they sometimes tend to discount the “little people.”)

4) 9 times out of 10, they’d tell me I was “brilliant,” and want to hire me to implement the recommendations. If the payoff was big enough and I felt they would REALLY follow through, I might consider it.

The moral of the story: Often, there is WISDOM in the rank and file. The solutions to most companies problems are already obvious to most folks who have to deal with it themselves day in and day out.

Smash the upper management BS-o-matic, haul that “dead moose” carcass (you know, the one nobody wants to talk about) off the conference room table, and harness the knowledge already buried in the organization.

————

Best part of the story? As you pointed out, just by listening the the “worker bees,” I made friends for life with whom I had great credibility as I worked within their own organization for change and even as we all went on to different “lives” in our careers.

That addition made this post much, much better.

I’m blessed in that I just generally like people, whether they’re ordinary, average people or super successful doesn’t matter, because they have something they know that I need to know.

Always.