Case Study – Boiling the ocean when necessary

Below you will find an overview of a case where LeverSource was asked to triage and prioritize over 70 issues facing the organization.

Situation

Technology company wanting to prepare for large scale growth.

Complication

Opinions differ on where the constraints to growth exist. Each functional area blames other areas for existing issues.

Approach

Held workshop with cross section of organization. The group brainstormed possible nouns that complete the sentence: “This strategy initiative will be successful if <blank> increases/decreases/stabilizes” The group surfaced 61 unique suggestions. Using the LeverSource method each suggestion was analyzed against all other suggestions resulting in 3660 comparisons. This analysis yielded the following insights:

• 33 of the 61 suggestions were low leverage in nature
• 13 were outcomes that could not be directly influenced
• 11 were high leverage and should be started now
• 4 were strategic limitations to the growth and the stability of the organization

Leverage

Of the 4 strategic limitations, “Deal Complexity” was the central concern. This was supported by the fact that the last two large customers on-boarded brought the entire IT group to a stand still. Since management is dead set against ERP solutions, custom development using a SOA architecture was suggested.

Feedback

The executive team approved a large scale transformation initiative to upgrade the IT platform. They can now take advantage of building reusable components to speed up the on boarding process and position the organization for growth.