© 2016 Tommy Thomas, PhD Page 1 of 3

CULTURE TRANSFORMATION STAGES

Opposite Strengths culture transformations range from a single executive coaching engagement to training and coaching thousands of people. Each follows a basic evolution as it cascades throughout an organization.

In the following story, Smith & Jones (a fictional IPA Top 100 Accounting Firm) has acquired the rights to implement Opposite Strengths culture transformations in its clients. As a result, Smith & Jones now brands itself uniquely among its peers as “the people experts.” This story is compiled from actual experiences and conveys how an ideal culture transformation unfolds for a Smith & Jones client.

Stage 1 – Executive Coaching: Tom Smith, founder and current Managing

Partner of Smith & Jones, knew that the CEO of ABC Healthcare, Bill Reynolds, had been struggling with relationship and strategy issues with his executive team. Tom listened carefully to the problems expressed by Bill and recommended that he discuss these problems with Charlie Baker, a Smith & Jones director and Opposite Strengths Certified Coach. Bill was intrigued and agreed.

Bill and Charlie hit it off. Bill accepted Tom’s proposal for an individual Opposite Strengths online subscription and included Charlie’s personally coaching Bill for six months. Charlie and Bill met in person for one hour every two weeks with Bill contacting Charlie by phone and email as needed in between scheduled coaching meetings.

Bill was impressed with the language and effectiveness of Opposite Strengths and the work by Charlie.

Stage 2 – The Executive Retreat: Based on his experience with Charlie and

Opposite Strengths, Bill approached Tom about holding an executive retreat to teach the Opposite Strengths language to all 12 executive team members.

Tom explained to Bill the business results he could expect from the executive retreat in terms of increased executive team effectiveness and relationships. In particular one of the executive team members, Sharon Nelson, was considering an offer of employment from a competitor primarily because of the executive team’s internal relationship conflicts. Losing this team member would incur at least $300,000 in voluntary turnover expenses – the executive search fee alone would be $150,000.

Bill accepted Tom’s proposal for an executive retreat. The proposal included Opposite Strengths online subscriptions for the executive team, a one-day Opposite Strengths Seminar facilitated by Charlie (also an Opposite Strengths Master Certified Facilitator) for the 12 executive team members, and one hour of individual alignment coaching for each of the team members afterwards – also by Charlie.

Sharon became a loyal team member as the cohesiveness of the executive team increased. Bill was pleased with the results – both in the increase in the team’s productivity and the retention of Sharon.

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Stage 3 – The Small Pilot Program: The executive team was struggling with the problem of voluntary turnover. ABC was average for a U.S. healthcare system with 20% voluntary turnover, and they knew voluntary turnover was expensive. They had experienced Opposite Strengths make them a more effective team. They began to see that Opposite Strengths could be a long-term strategic initiative to create a feeling of community within ABC and thus drive down the voluntary turnover rate.

Tom proposed a pilot program for a group of 1,000 employees representing 5% of the 20,000-employee population. The program consisted of Opposite Strengths online subscriptions for 1,000 people plus 25 Opposite Strengths Seminars each co-facilitated by Linda Butler (a Smith & Jones director and Opposite Strengths Master Certified Facilitator) and Charlie. Seminars were held at the rate of one per week with 40 employees attending each seminar. Bill accepted Tom’s proposal.

Because the evaluation of this six-month small pilot program showed high satisfaction among employees with the experience of the seminar and a strong trend in reduction of voluntary turnover from 20% to 19.6%, the executive team decided to move to the next stage of culture transformation – the large pilot program.

Stage 4 – The Large Pilot Program: The executive team chose to train an

additional 15% of their population or 3,000 employees in Opposite Strengths for two reasons: 1) Tom showed Bill that reaching critical mass was important for the momentum of full-scale culture transformation to take hold, and critical mass was achieved when 11-20% of the population has learned the Opposite Strengths language, and 2) Bill took Tom’s suggestion that this 15% of the population needed to be recruited from across all levels and departments of the organization so as to seed the Opposite Strengths language throughout the organization.

Bill accepted Tom’s proposal for a two-part program. In the first part, ABC received Opposite Strengths online subscriptions for 3,000

people. In addition, Linda and Charlie trained eight ABC employees to be Opposite Strengths Certified Facilitators. The significant result of this first part was that ABC could now sponsor its own Opposite Strengths Seminars independently of Smith & Jones since eight ABC employees were now Opposite Strengths Certified Facilitators.

In the second part, these eight employees – all Certified Facilitators – then facilitated 75 Opposite Strengths Seminars (with two facilitators per seminar) at the rate of two seminars per week with 40 employees attending each seminar.

Because the evaluation of this nine-month large pilot program showed high satisfaction among employees with the experience of the seminar and a strong trend in reduction of voluntary turnover from 19.6% to 18.4%, ABC decided to move to the next stage of culture transformation – the full-scale transformation.

Stage 5 – The Full-scale Transformation: Based on the results of the large

pilot program, Bill accepted Tom’s proposal for Opposite Strengths online subscriptions for training the remaining 80% of their population – 16,000 employees. ABC sponsored five Opposite Strengths Seminars per week with 40 participants per seminar resulting in 200 employees trained each week over 80 weeks.

The evaluation of the project showed that the voluntary turnover rate dropped from 18.4% to 12%. Not only did ABC save a tremendous amount of money but ABC also became known as “the” healthcare system to work for in their marketplace. The ABC executive team (especially Bill) was extremely pleased with the results.

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SUMMARY

This example of a culture transformation illustrates the general structure of a culture transformation for a relatively large organization. However, not all culture transformations will have all these stages, and some will have one or more stages within stages (e.g. there could be two small pilot programs). Sometimes stages will be skipped. Each culture transformation has its unique features. In order to guide a client through a culture transformation, the partner in charge must remain flexible to the needs and pace of the client while remaining faithful to the vision of the structure as described here in order to achieve maximum effective results.

For a financial analysis of the revenue that flowed to Smith & Jones from the

ABC culture transformation, please contact me for the paper Culture Transformation Stages Revenue Analysis.

Tommy Thomas, PhD, Chief Executive Officer Opposite Strengths Licensing LLC

Cell: +1.512.327.2656

Email: Tommy@OppositeStrengths.com LinkedIn: www.LinkedIn.com/in/DrTommyThomas

Web: www.OppositeStrengths.com