Implement the strategy
When it came time to start redirecting Odyssey’s efforts, Kleimann and his team were so eager to get started that they jumped the gun a bit.
“We made the mistake that most companies would make and that was we wanted to do everything today,” he says.
Instead of mapping out, say, the top 10 tasks and going after maybe two at a time, each director took the things they were responsible for and took off simultaneously. That worked well for a couple of weeks but most of the projects involved shared resources, like IT or accounting, where changes needed to be made to systems and processes. With such demand placed on a few key departments, it created a tangled mess, so Kleimann and his team had to take a big step backward and re-evaluate what to prioritize within the priorities.
“The first part of detangling that web was to reset expectations internally,” he says. “Everybody wanted theirs done first. … Much like they would in a sporting event where there was a tie, they may look at the number of possessions or some other criteria, so we had to go back and objectively figure out which ones were most important and least important.”
They looked at each idea’s original ranking, and while some directors weren’t thrilled about where their project fell on the spectrum, nobody could argue because they had created the criteria and ranked them together.
With a new game plan, they then had to find a way to measure it all.
“Figure out what’s manageable,” he says. “Put together a project plan that takes into consideration the resources you can deploy at any given time, and then have a process for measuring those results. This is just pure project management.”
Kleimann used Microsoft’s SharePoint so his employees could collaborate internally and communicate details. Kleimann wanted to know the status of each project, measured the same way, any changes to the estimated completion time and any changes to the stakeholders involved in making it happen, and he wanted this information each Friday at 4 o’clock in the afternoon.
After organizing the process more, Odyssey took off, and today the company’s plan is paying off. Revenue has grown from $302 million in 2000 to $440 million last year. But the benefits aren’t just financial. Odyssey has been ranked by outsourcing experts as No. 1 in its space the last two years, and clients are now sticking around because Odyssey finally has the capabilities to handle them.
“We’ve built a model today that’s cradle to grave,” he says. “We don’t have a scenario today that we have a client that’s facing growth that puts them outside our capabilities.”
While Kleimann is excited about Odyssey’s success, he says that success is often the biggest challenge to future success, so as people catch up with what he does, he’ll have to find new ways to be relevant to his clients.
“We said, ‘This is the area we want to go. Do we want to sit here and compete with 600, 700, 800 [Professional Employer Organizations], or would we rather go the blue ocean strategy? Do we want to go out to our own blue ocean?’” Kleimann says. “That’s what we chose to do. Much like the book says, there are some following, and I’m sure the water will start to churn and get a little bloody where we are, and we’ll continue to find that blue water.”
How to reach: Odyssey One Source Inc., (866) 508-7361 or www.odysseyonesource.com
