Johnson & Johnson Medical asked us to assist them to unify four disparate business groups with separate customer focus and separate sales teams; increase commitment and performance across the board; and shift the priority given to speed of reaction by their management. A number of business opportunities had been missed due to the thoroughness with which work was being done. They did not, however, wish to compromise on the high quality standards which lay behind this thorough approach.

We tackled this by proposing the creation of a vision for their business which would capture all the qualities sought; help a choice between different strategic priorities; and increase the teamwork and commitment level of their key managers. A project was completed, which resulted in the alignment of their senior team behind the Vision: “Passion, Pride, Pace and Partnership”. This captured such values as management enthusiasm, quality standards, speed of response to customer needs and method of working with customers. The M.D. of the company later stated that “business performance improved significantly following the introduction of the Vision and elicited tremendous enthusiasm from the business units”.

A major international company had a challenge. A number of key senior managers believed the company had a need to increase radically the priority it was giving to cost management. These managers perceived cost management to be a weakness, set amidst many corporate strengths. Many other managers in the group believed cost management was a corporate strength. Some of the latter group produced regular cost comparisons with competitors, showing our client company to be a cost leader in its industry, in many sectors.

We were asked to address this challenge. A number of objective competitor analysis studies in different industry sectors revealed that, far from being a cost leader, the company was lagging well behind the true cost leaders in several important sectors. The analyses which had shown cost leadership were based too heavily on internal data, and were flawed.

We also carried out a study of the company’s performance on a wide range of manufacturing critical success factors, comparing the relative strengths and weaknesses of its own sites around the world with each other and with leading international companies and competitors. The inter-site comparison showed many sites lagging far behind the excellence of the leaders. The competitor comparison could only be completed by the minority of managers inside the company who had first-hand experience of outside companies. This informed minority had a very different view of the relative strengths and weaknesses from the popular view.

These two processes, followed by a number of presentations to senior management, contributed to a major shift in the company’s recognition of the work which needed to be done in cost management. Armed with a sound basis on which to act, and with enormous commitment, a completely new culture of cost management was created. Productivity was doubled over the following few years, and the company became respected in its industry for its cost management strength.

Back to top

Back to Case Studies