The New Division That Couldn’t
I was serving as an executive coach and doing leadership training for the general manager and several executive managers in a 20 million dollar privately owned company. Executive coaching is a client driven agenda process. In other words, you work on what you are assigned to work on by the person you are coaching (the coachee) and/or the economic buyer that hires the coach. The confidentiality of the coachee must always be maintained under any and all circumstances.
After having served as an executive coach for two company executives I was then hired by the president to find out why they were losing money in two of their three divisions. Serving as a consultant I was able to the root of the problems.Until the owner hired me as a consultant I had no idea they had started a new division that was losing money. The guy that headed up the new division had a two year non-compete agreement with his previous employer. Until the non-compete expired, he was counting on getting leads from the sales manager of the other two divisions.
This sales manager was busy chasing his tail by reviewing every little proposal in the organization and was not focused on developing new clients or the new division. He seemed to be more concerned about his son’s soccer team than in developing his sales team. Therefore, the division was losing money hand over fist with no immediate fix that would not require continued major financing by the owner. The overhead was about as low as it could get and the general sales team was not experienced in the service provided by the new division. The startup of this division was handled improperly from the beginning. The division was closed.
Initial savings: $250,000. The president commented to me, “I should have brought you in two years ago.”