Craft a new vision
Historically, Kleinfelder had followed a geographic expansion
strategy, and the firm’s previous leaders had drawn a line in the
sand at the Mississippi River in creating the firm’s eastern boundary. About 75 percent of the firm’s business came from California
and now clients needed global coverage. In addition, acquisition
had been the primary method for driving growth, but the transactions left the firm with a patchwork of fiefdoms, where each local
manager selected his or her office’s area of specialization primarily based upon their own technical strengths and passion.
To build consensus among the firm’s employee owners about
steering in a new direction, Salontai turned to a strategic planning
process. He says setting a new direction through strategic planning is most effective when leaders coax and persuade people to
change, rather than demand compliance. While the notion of using
a business plan as a change agent may not be original, Kleinfelder’s
business plan structure is unique. The written plan outlines the
firm’s growth strategies over a five-year period on a single sheet of
paper that contains only three goals, with each one defined by four
strategies. Salontai insists that the plan’s brevity forces everyone
on the team to decide what’s really important as they built consensus about the firm’s direction.
“The value of a short plan is that every word matters,” Salontai says.
“The goals support the core values and the long-term vision, and
everyone in the organization gets a copy. Because it’s brief and easy to
understand, it’s easy for our leaders to drive the plan throughout the
entire organization.”
A survey of 150 employee owners, who represented the top 10
percent of the company’s leaders, provided input about the
changes that were necessary for growth. A 17-member planning
committee sifted through the feedback and created the plan. One
of Salontai’s key strategies was creating a planning committee
composed of diverse, emotionally neutral people who could take
an unbiased look into the future when crafting their recommendations.
“The committee came from all areas of the company, such as
human resources and accounting and across the various geographic and market sectors,” Salontai says. “I avoided people who would
dominate the conversations or sway the planning process toward
their own vested interests.”
The original plan dovetailed with Salontai’s vision of a reinvented firm, narrowly focusing on fewer vertical market segments that
would be universally supported by all the firm’s offices. To create
a sense of urgency about the need for change, Salontai continually reminded the committee that the firm faced two options: It
could move forward and become an industry consolidator or
remain behind and be part of the consolidation.
While the planning process created some initial consensus about
the need for change, convincing a group of professionals who are
also owners isn’t easy, and Salontai says that when he initially
floated the idea of narrowing the firm’s focus to fewer market segments, some of the firm’s 12 senior leaders were not on board with
the idea. So his next tactic involved winning over a group of key
influencers to help spread the word and bring along the balance of
the staff.
“I have a sounding board that’s composed of roughly 12 champions who are principal owners in the firm,” Salontai says. “I worked
on convincing a few of them at a time and they, in turn, convinced
their direct reports that this was the right strategy. It’s like using a
phone tree to build consensus. It’s natural that people gravitate
toward certain key influencers; I just won them over so they could
help me drive the change.”
