Yesterday's teleclass was very helpful in continuing ways to use the SBI model.  Here's a recap of a situation where SBI helped me arrive at a more optimal outcome to a long-standing, thorny issue for our entire organization.

Situation - Our company has not been committed to process and clear definition of roles/responsibilities for development of new products and services, especially in terms of putting our sales/front line productivity and customer preferences as the priority targets, who in turn will drive desired financial outcomes (vs. primary focus on what we've done in past, being regulatory compliant, etc.)

Behavior - Marketing has been tasked to drive results and manage products, yet no process or roles/deliverables were established across the multiple teams who have to be involved to deliver the product/services.  So, all launches went with assumption we were ready to launch across the board including front line.

Impact - After a year of working on a new product release, just before we were to launch in the marketplace, our front line took firm stand they were not ready to drive sales for this product as they had not been properly staffed, trained and experienced with the ordering/processing steps.

I listened to our front line (both my reports and outside my team) and together with other cross functional team leaders we took unpopular role of providing feedback and challenging our entire Exec Team to have an open mind on the joint POV to delay the launch.

Despite our exec team being disappointed launch was delayed and surprised front line was not ready, they valued our move toward organizational cohesiveness and owning the entire process and outcomes together.

We are now finalizing a development and launch plan process which we will be approved by all parties and ensure we have joint buy in to all phases and aspects of our product/services development, launch and implementation plan before we commit to a launch date, driven by our joint cross functional team vs. the exec team alone.

Todd Townsend
972-333-0276