Time to Market Reduced by Six Months and Increased Revenues by Improving Cross-Functional Team Performance
A high tech firm in the semiconductor industry needed to improve its product roll out process because it was missing the market window too often. Their competitors were ahead of them and they were falling behind and failing.
Before
The attempted solutions before calling in Steven Feinberg, Inc.: In the product development process they tried to include everything everyone wanted, and kept getting scope creep in their projects. Tough decisions were always deferred. Diverse views were acknowledged which seemed appropriate and was consistent with the organization culture. These were really smart technical people, but they didn’t know how to resolve conflicting points of view. Each thought they knew what reality was and what could be; yet no effective action was taken to break the logjam. Even though they called meetings to improve the process and had been doing so for over a year, they could never have the meeting in the meeting. Lots of conversations occurred before and after meetings, but much time was wasted in group meeting.
After
Steven Feinberg worked with several of the VP’s and the cross-functional teams that were going in different directions. I helped the leaders influence and leverage the action to produce a positive momentum, accelerated the resolution of conflicts and establishing a high performance process. They were surprised that their diversity of opinions were actually preventing them from creating the solution they had intended. Everyone finally agreed that they needed an ‘agreed upon method’ to make progress. We designed a collaborative process that enabled them to discuss the controversial issues in the meeting and reach resolution. The approach resulted in a 6-month reduction in time to market on products. Windows of opportunity were no longer closing on them. Conservative estimates of millions of dollars were added to the bottom line.