When leaders of this engineering company with production in the Philippines and engineering staff offices in China and Taiwan were once again anticipating a downturn in revenues that would lead to layoffs, some felt this repeated up and down cycle should be addressed and stopped. A six-week review and documented report by Sustained Advantage was followed by a series of meetings with the top-level operations team. What followed were organizational changes that flattened the structure and moved all day-to-day project operations into the hands of leaders who were fully active as working managers, with end result accountabilities to clients and end users.
New teams were formed and many brutal-fact discussions lead by SA consultants provided a basis for selective changes in personnel, as several people moved into different jobs that fit their capabilities to excel. Using confidence generated by the changes, new hires led to augmented development capacity and performance, anticipating an increase in capacity instead of a downturn. In an all hands meeting the new team leader announced that he had not been so positive and optimistic since he had joined the firm. Layoffs have been avoided and one most important client was turned around from considering stopping both existing and new projects to adding several very important new ones.