The Total Business

Two-day training
(contact Cynthia for pricing)

Business unit president —
“You have the remarkable ability to really take a birds-eye view of a business as a system and say, ‘This is what’s going on’ and have good opinions about what should be going on. You have managed to teach all of us how to do this, and do it well. You should feel good about your results.”

The Total Business is a method and set of tools for analyzing and responding to what is happening — and what could happen — in your business, marketplace, organization and people. Originally designed for senior managers to optimize their entire business process, The Total Business is useful for any organization or team(s) with an urgent need to achieve focus, collaboration and superior execution.

“… managing the company as one integrated business system.” This senior management team used The Total Business to analyze its aim and operations during a major market shift, and to align themselves personally as a leadership team. Result: The company reevaluated its overall strategy, and management committed to lead a sustained effort to achieve the full potential of the total business.

“… all employees address the executives’ questions - everyone manages something!” Each employee’s personal vision for the company was solicited and integrated to guide the human element in day-to-day business affairs and to speed up decision-making. Executives’ business concerns and analyses were shared, so all employees could go through the same learning and commitment process. Using tools from The Total Business, teams analyzed their specific business area and interface with the market and suppliers, clarified their purpose, and shared their results company-wide. A premium was placed on leveraging all information and improving things quickly. Twenty-eight key business processes were targeted and significantly improved. The better the company understood the dynamics of its system, the more effective it became as a marketplace competitor. Result: When targeted and outspent by much larger competitors, the company retained its market leadership and subsequently quintupled sales.

Vice president, sales —
“You got the whole division on the same wave length. Your book of basic business areas [how multiple teams analyzed the business, organization, customers, and market opportunity] is my bible!”

“… learning became the engine of change.” For example, one team used tools from The Total Business to decipher a major customer’s (US Dept of Defense) complex payment system as its failure-to-pay-vendors triggered a Congressional investigation. Result: Sharing their learning with DOD teams, over 30 days payment delinquency from DOD decreased from $274K to $4K, and over 90 days payment delinquency decreased from $90K to zero.

“… commitment (windhorse, esprit de corps) is our way of doing business!” A highly spirited cross-functional team used tools from The Total Business to re-conceive their company’s use and tracking of sales promotions. Result: The team significantly increased customer satisfaction and the field’s selling time by streamlining promotional codes from 1K to 100 — while simultaneously increasing sales promotion activity.

Executives and line managers, manufacturing and sales —
“You won the trust of virtually all employees.”
“This has definitely impacted the way I manage.”
“Everyone’s considering the impact their action may have on other areas.”

“…it helped that you told us it wouldn’t be easy. We got a major breakthrough.” In another case, multiple teams used The Total Business techniques to improve the entire quote-to-collect process from marketing through field operations, order entry, distribution, logistics, returns, collection and credit. They enhanced service to 42K customers in key distribution channels, streamlined 200K inbound calls, doubled sales, reduced returns, reduced distributor invoice deductions from $1M to $50K, and cut write-offs from $500K to zero. Result: These teams secured customer expansion and satisfaction, and won widespread support from other employees to collaborate for extraordinary results.

Divisional president, consumer goods —
“You are absolutely the perfect person to send into an area that is screwed up, analyze it, make a recommendation to fix it, and if necessary, fix it, too. You aren’t afraid to give answers that people might not like. And you are highly facilitative to get the change to happen. You showed us how to do it ourselves. You can go in and get the people to analyze and agree on what needs to be done. I can send you over any hill with this. You are very, very skilled at this.”