Executive Coaching Helps Business Unit Achieve Dramatic Turnaround in Sales, Cost and Profitability

The Situation

A business unit of a major oil company brought in a new senior leader to improve operations. After a fundamental shift in market conditions, this organization had difficulty meeting its targets and had recently implemented a 20 percent reduction in force. In addition, the parent organization had just announced changes that created significant uncertainty for employees. The unit’s leaders sought help to keep their employees’ “heads in the game” during the changes, while simultaneously improving the business performance of the organization. Specific improvements were targeted in controlling expenses and increasing sales in high-value market segments.

The Solution

CLG’s executive coaching process helped the executive team identify and accept accountability for both results and leadership behaviors. CLG provided leadership development and coaching for the top 20 leaders of the company. The coaching focused on creating high-performance leadership behaviors to keep key people focused through the distraction of the change process and drive operating performance improvements. Leaders learned to set clear expectations, hold people accountable for their commitments, and provide frequent positive and constructive feedback. In particular, they built an effective accountability management system around balanced scorecards, which were put into place immediately prior to the development and coaching.

The Results

CLG’s intervention resulted in reduced annual expenses, achieving a $2 million cost savings in the first year, and producing record top-line sales and profitability. One region turned around its profitability from $0 profit to $2.5 million in a single year. One of the product lines reduced per unit costs by 30%, resulting in savings of $1.2 million per year. In addition, there was significant improvement in collaboration between sales, operations, and marketing team members. The process was successfully transferred so that the senior leader continued to facilitate the use of their new coaching action plans for improving performance long after CLG’s active consulting support was completed.