You cannot believe how many times I have wanted to use those words (above) when talking to a company.  As an author and successful strategic consultant for 30 years, I came to the realization that some companies are designed to fail.  The problem is, it is nearly impossible to get their leaders to understand the need to change.

The biggest mistake most leaders make is to substitute downsizing for good strategy.  Rarely, is downsizing the appropriate strategy and there is research that affirms that point.  In most cases, downsizing may stop the profit deterioration, but almost always, fails to correct the root cause of the problem.

In my new book, The Invisible Wall, (www.TheInvisibleWall.com) I spend a lot of time explaining just how easy it is for companies to become frozen bureaucracies.  Sadly, it’s extremely difficult for the leaders who created the bureaucracy to fix it.  Research reveals that as companies age, their level of creativity and entrepreneurial behavior approaches zero.

I recently heard a supposed change expert talk about his firm’s research and how the only real data they had after 15 years of work is that…the problem always starts at the top.  Well…duh!  He also noted that the solution starts at the top.

I talk a lot about humility when I work with leaders.  Sometimes my words fall on deaf ears.  But every once in a while, someone listens.  When leaders become humble listeners it becomes possible to help their company…and to create a company that is designed to succeed!

Section I.

How America’s Top Performing Companies Operate

What if you could look inside America’s top performing companies to see how they operate.  If you could, you would discover that they are completely different from their lower performing counterparts.  They operate around a different set of rules, and those rules are what set them apart.

In The Invisible Wall, the reader is led through a story about two different companies.  One is a low performing company that is in serious trouble, the other is a creative, growing organization that seems to have no limits.  The reality behind the stories is years of consulting and research.  In fact, what the reader really gets is the insights gained from personal interviews with the CEO’s and senior executives of America’s top performing companies.

What if you could look inside America’s top performing companies?  You can.  As you read The Invisible Wall, you understand how Southwest Airlines, Agilent Technology, Costco and Kingston Technology to name a few operate.  You will witness firsthand the techniques that they use to make sure that the “invisible walls” of bureaucracy and ego never materialize.

Section II.

Aligning an Organization for Maximum Performance

How do you get an entire company to align around the same strategy and operating principles?  It’s not an easy task.  More often than not, what senior executives tell their people is a far cry from what they really end up doing.

Assuming that they can figure out the correct strategic alignment, most companies have no understanding of what it really takes to execute strategy.  And, after all, execution really is the name of the game.

In The Invisible Wall, the reader is exposed to the drama that surrounds execution and failure.  What you will discover is that great companies, the ones that sustain long term profitability, operate around a set of “performance values” by which everyone in the company is measured.  In The Invisible Wall, you will gain a clear insight into how performance values can change the ability of your company to successfully execute strategy.  Most importantly, you might consider buying a copy of The Invisible Wall for every member of your organization…it was designed to help every member of your team to understand their role in achieving organizational excellence.

Section III.

100% to 300% Higher ROI

If you would like to understand why companies that are in strategic alignment (the right strategy and the right organization for the emerging competition), the research that validates our approach to strategic alignment can be found at www.TheInvisibleWall.com.

In 1993, a doctoral student who had studied 15 San Diego banks decided to go back and see how they had fared in the 4 years since his study.  8 of the banks were out of strategic alignment at the time of the study, and 7 were in strategic alignment.  When he re-visited the banks, the 8 banks (out of alignment) no longer existed.  The 7 aligned banks were still doing well.

What you will discover is that the principles revealed in The Invisible Wall not only make sense, but the foundation of the approach is research validated.  Ask yourself this question: Can anyone else make that claim?

Section IV.

Best Practices for What?

We have all heard a lot about “best practices” but most of us have never heard an explanation about why a “best practice” from one company will necessarily help a company in an entirely different competitive situation.  The research clearly reveals one thing about “best practices”, and here we will quote:

“Different success behaviors are needed at

different levels of environmental turbulence.”

In other words, what works at one level of industry competitiveness will not necessarily work at another.  That means when competitive forces drive change, the company that wins will be the one that figures out how to match the new reality.

In The Invisible Wall, the reader will discover a user friendly story about companies.  At the same time, the reader will come to understand how practices (strategy and capabilities) must be changed if the firm is to align with the new context.  And yes, the research does reveal that firms that align have return-on-investment of 100% to 300% higher than firms that are misaligned.

The program includes a number of auxiliary hypotheses which illuminate various aspects of Strategic Behavior by Environment Serving Organizations.  This auxiliary research made it possible to broaden the scope of the inquiry, which led to the fomulation of The Paradigmic Theory of Success Behaviors by Environment Serving Organizations.

Implications for research on Environment Serving Organizations and for the practice of management are presented.

The file may take a brief period to download: http://www.theinvisiblewall.com/EmpiricalProofofaParadigmaticTheory.pdf

Link to Contact Page: http://www.theinvisiblewall.com/contact-us/

Presented are the analysis of two assessments exclusively offered by the Dallas Strategy Group, the LSI or the Leadership Style Index, and the ISI or the Interpersonal Style Index.

The top right panel presents a detail summary of the composite scores and the bottom panel presents each characteristic or metric in more granular detail for each assessment.  The third panel on the bottem presents a radar chart with the summary of that assessment for easy reference.

For more information about the dashboards, administration, and services, please see our Contact Page

Instructions: Select any of the tabs at the top, Company_A, etc… and the two external forces, Marketing Turbulence and Innovation Turbulence are displayed.

The internal components of the organization are then displayed as measured by internal transactional assessments, analyzed and presented by the Dallas Strategy Group.  This dashboard is one of a suite of dashboards available.  Please refer to the LSI/ISI dashboard on this site for an additional example.

Please select the Company title at the top of the dashboard for an at a glance view of company performance and corporate culture for that company.  For illustrative purposes, multiple companys have been included in this dashboard but each company may also represent a division of a single organization for a multi-division or product enterprise.

In traditional companies, there is a continual drift toward maintaining “chain of command” a hierarchical relationships.  At exceptional companies, the goal is to destroy traditional bureaucracies in the interest of their people and their customers.

A lot of people talk about the “Inverted Structure”…you know, the one where the customers are at the top, and then the “people” (those who serve the customer) are equally important.  Of course, in the Inverted Structure, the executives make sure that their position is at the bottom: They view themselves as the least important people in the company…and their job is to make sure that their subordinates are treated exceptionally well…and that they serve as resources to make sure that their people have what they need to create the exceptional customer experience.

The Invisible Wall:  It’s a story.  What you will discover is how incredibly different the top companies are from those that are bound by bureaucracy…and just happen to be the bottom feeders in their industry.  What you will discover is that leadership is the difference from top to bottom…and it is equally true that leadership in an empowered organization may be bottom to top.

Another challenge relates to what most people call “corporate strategy.”  While a company may “get it right” when it comes to competitor marketing and innovation (i.e. strategy), they usually ignore the role that leadership, CEO, culture, and a lot of other factors play when it comes to organizational success.

In The Invisible Wall, the reader is presented two companies: One that is frozen by a stifling bureaucracy, and another that has discovered the power of an empowered team.  As Dr. Seuss put it “When you know where things are out of whack, then you know how to get them back in whack.”

In The Invisible Wall, the reader is challenged to consider his or her organization and how their company resembles one of the two companies.  As both companies discover in the book, the real challenge is to sustain success.  And that, is the challenge that all companies face.