Getting Adversaries to Agree
The challenge:
The transportation company had not been able to agree on a certain safety standard for two years. Without it they were out of business.
The strategy:
Learn the WHO-DO Method and introduce it to their engineers. The WHO-DO Method eliminates the arguing and replaces it with a conscious effort to discover the flaws in the best idea, and then uses creativity to eliminate those flaws.
The result:
After two years of failure the team agreed on a safety standard in one hour.
Fourfold Increase with Less People
The challenge:
Double the size of a marketing company in one year after laying off 10% of the people.
The strategy:
The people working together in a completely different way. As one person finished their portion of the work, they would hand it off to the next person who had the next appropriate core nature.
The result:
Instead of stopping at 15 million which would’ve doubled the size, the company created revenue of $29.7 million. They did so at a 48% profit margin.
Gaining Team Buy-In
The challenge:
A national packaged-goods marketer needed to come up with a new product quickly to disrupt a competitor’s test of an innovative product. The R&D team wouldn’t even commit to a schedule for the new product.
The strategy:
Give the WHO-DO assessment to the R&D team. We found that every one of them had the core nature of a Shaker. This meant they were all in love with original ideas, and that’s why they refused to come up with a parity product that only copied the competition.
The result:
After showing the Shakers that there were other ways to think about this project, they all rallied around the idea of temporarily playing defense against the competitor. This allowed them to come up with a parity product, as long as they could work on a more innovative product in the long-term. In 30 minutes they had all bought in to a schedule.
Twice the Work, 1/5 of the Time
The challenge:
A telecommunications company had failed to deliver on all their promises in their last client agreement. This time, the customer demanded they spell out in the agreement how they will repair each item if they don’t deliver as promised. The last agreement had taken three weeks to negotiate. This time, they worried that it would run six to ten weeks.
The strategy:
Identify the core work natures of all people on both sides, including their lawyers. Run the WHO-DO Method on each deal point, and make the lawyers leave the meeting when they were not needed.
The result:
They negotiated a win-win deal in three days. That is 1/5 the time of the previous deal, and 1/10 the time they expected for the new negotiation, or a 900% productivity increase.
Revolutionize Work One Letter at a Time
The challenge:
A sales group for a TV station had to write follow up letters to prospects after meetings. They procrastinated and complained.
The strategy:
Divide and conquer. The team had nine Shakers and one Maker. It took each of them an hour to write, edit and send their communication. The Shakers took 10 minutes to think of what to say and write the letter, but 50 minutes to edit the letter and do all the send-out details. The Maker did all the editing and send out details in 10 minutes, but took 50 minutes to think of what to say and write the letter.
The result:
Eight of the Shakers wrote their own letter. One of the Shakers wrote her own letter, and also wrote the Maker’s letter. The Maker then did all the details to send out all ten letters. This meant that the nine Shakers spent a total of 100 minutes on writing the ten letters, and the Maker spent 100 minutes on the details of sending out all ten letters. This reduced the total time spent on ten letters from 600 minutes to 100 minutes.