Business Recapitalization

An organization was interested in recapitalizing its resources to meet new business opportunities and to keep the organization ahead of the competition. They needed to develop a $350 million recapitalization plan and wanted feedback on how ready the organization was to accept and implement major change.

Some interesting observations were made about this group. The team working on this project had found the organization’s internal design team to be very committed to their work, very well organized in how they functioned, and looking forward to getting the results of the assessment. This was a group taking a proactive stance to use Creative Problem Solving and the SOQ to move their organization ahead of the competition.

The SOQ was administered to 35 people within this business line. A cross-functional group of participants, including staff support, technicians, scientists and secretaries, completed the questionnaires. The questionnaires were sent to CPSB for scoring and analysis.

The results of this SOQ application were presented to participants during a three-day Creative Problem Solving (CPS) application program. This program was designed to help the group develop a specific plan for recapitalization. The SOQ results were integrated within the program to help the participants understand the readiness of their organization to accept the changes they were planning. 

The SOQ findings were provided in the form of individual, sub-group and total group. Overall the climate scores indicated a very positive working environment. This suggested that the environment was ready to accept creativity and change. 

Implementation of Change Resulting from the Program 

Scores on the SOQ and the observations about the internal leadership team made at the front end of this project suggested that the climate was open and accepting of change. This suggestion was strongly supported through further observations made of the group. For example, key leadership people were very positive and supportive of the work being done during the program. They also opened the program up to invite people from outside the business line to share their ideas for how to reorganize the business.

Environments with positive climate scores should also be quick to accept change. In this case the results of the SOQ and CPS interventions were powerful enough to lead to the redesign of a new facility under construction. Some of the participants actually left the sessions early, chartered the corporate jet and went to the new facility to assure that the building under construction would accommodate the new process they just designed! 

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