Who is applying core disciplines for collaborative leadership:

A remarkable and diverse collection of executives have hired us to help them apply the core disciplines of collaborative management. Every engagement has been different. These days, more than half of our engagements focus on the Internet.

Some clients want to be taught while others want to be coached. Some clients want an active partner to implement change collaboratively.

Wherever maximizing return on invested capital (extreme ROI) is important, executives can rely on Executive IQ Company for the how-to of collaborative leadership.

ACT Home Health Network

A small respiratory company and a local pharmacy partnered to launch a new business model for serving the home health care industry. We helped them create a single phone number for hospital discharge planners to order all necessary home health care products and service for any location on Long Island.

We facilitated weekly meetings with partners, providers, payers and regulators to create a much needed solution to a serious and costly problem. Today, provider networks are the norm; but, then they were just an idea waiting to be implemented.

We helped them develop documentation for private placement funding and created business architecture for the new business processes to support this model.

AcuSport Corporation

This leading distributor of guns and ammunition had launched an Internet business and wanted to assess their opportunity for growth. They hired me to collaborate with senior management to document their business model and to prepare an opportunity assessment.

We reviewed their experience and facilitated meetings with key executives. These sessions were informed by the work of independent industry consultants and secondary industry information. We prepared a formal business model, including value chain and contribution maps, and then reviewed it with the president and head of marketing.

The opportunity assessment identified a new and substantial opportunity for their investment. They continue to develop the implications of this opportunity and are testing market response.

ADR Respiratory Care

Once we documented the business model and revealed the economics of this business they were positioned to get funding from a national bank. This enabled them to achieve the maximum internally sustainable rate of growth.

Exceeding their plan, they grew too fast, creating a cash flow crisis. A second engagement included workout negotiations with their bank and development of a merger plan to bring them to the economies of scale proper for their industry.

With this sound footing they acquired the assets of two other companies and then sold themselves to a large hospital corporation. The CEO (our client) was retained after each merger and also was retained by the hospital corporation who eventually bought the merged company.

The American Lung Association

The ALA was wrestling with the effects of new accounting requirements that required all charities to clearly separate fund-raising efforts from service delivery operations. This forced a new organizational design and opened the door to redefine missions and disciplines in areas like smoking cessation.

Meanwhile, corporations were becoming more self-interested in their donations and wanted more direct benefit from their contributions. New services aimed at corporations were developed and a new business model was developed to provide services to corporations.

We facilitated off-site retreats for management and staff and developed business cases for new delivery of services.

Cook Medical Inc - Medical Devices

Cook Medical's product innovation lifecycle is critical to their success. Stay ahead of the competition or die; that is the competitive reality of their industry.

Executives wanted to learn how they could better manage their product development portfolio. Together we completed an opportunity assessment for the application of portfolio analysis, management and governance for product innovation.

A second engagement took them to the next stage of defining and actual framework for their largest strategic business unit.

Continental Airlines

With occupational safety clinics at four US hubs and with thousands of employees moving through those hubs daily, the opportunity existed to provide personal health care conveniently and at wholesale prices.

That required a new healthcare delivery model (business model) which meant changing a highly regulated and entrenched healthcare industry. We needed clear documentation and explicit protocols.

The case for this model was justified on three bases; it was good for costs, good for patients and good for health care providers. It also enabled larger and more adept emergency facilities. Lastly, we collaborated with them to develop the office processes and information flows for the new model.

Design Forum

This top-tier designer of retail space wanted to combine the Internet with the bricks and mortar of retail experience for a major national client.

Facilitating an intensive marketing retreat with their client, we made sense of a mound of market research and historical data.

We built an economic model for their industry for Internet retial. They gained the insight needed to integrate their business models and to embrace new products and prices for the Internet.

Edgewater Community Mental Health

The CEO of one of the largest community mental health organizations in America needed to improve performance of service personnel. I was asked to lead the development of performance management reports (scorecards) to augment the management reports from existing systems.

Good healthcare professionals bristle at pure efficiency mandates; but, they respond positively if enabled to achieve more for their clients. That was our initial supposition and it proved to be completely true.

Active scorecards - not possible with transaction-based systems - were implemented revealing in real-time the appointment loads, cancellations and no-show histories. Staff spontaneously took advantage of the opportunity to be more effective by booking their time more intelligently. It was a wonderful experience.

Fort Collins Chamber of Commerce

The director wanted to deepen the experience that business owners had with the Chamber. We were hired to implement business owner programs that went beyond networking to actual problem-solving.

I developed and delivered on-going workshops (one year in length) for small business groups where non-competitive business owners could collaborate to develop their individual businesses by utilizing case analysis, business modeling and scorecards. The groups met weekly and attendance was excellent.

Though small compared to networking events, these workshops were intensely positive experiences, just as the director had hoped. Several business owners sought more assistance and became clients themselves, hiring me to work directly with their executive leadership teams. That was an unexpected but pleasant outcome.

Fujitsu Corporation

This global provider of enterprise infrastructure solutions engaged me on two occasions, each lasting a year.

The first engagement helped their regional executives deploy a portfolio management solution to a Fortune 500 client. It grew to include a business case improvement program which I was selected by their client to lead.

The second engagement was to deploy a new business model for selling Internet applications in the post dot-com era. One exciting solution was Internet-based collaboration for publication of business scorecards for the CEO of US West Telecommunications.

The Greenbook Appraisal Guide

The owner of a collectible prints company wanted to launch a new business that provided estate appraisers with current market values for all collectible items. He hired us to facilitate implementation of a business model that would enable appraisers to produce formal appraisals on desktop computers.

We tested aspects of the business model and determined the market potential for this product before launching a working prototype on their behalf. After proving the concept we moved everything into their operations and trained their people on its use.

We also collaborated to produce business cases that justified bank financing for the computer technology and system development. The business was a success.

Group W Broadcasting - Westinghouse Inc

This was an extraordinary engagement. Over an eighteen month period we took an idea for combining direct mail marketing with radio broadcasting and turned it into a business with a handsome return on investment.

We took the concept of turning listeners into sponsors by charging them for membership in a listener club that provided goods and services provided by businesses launching products or testing product developments.

Westinghouse executives participated in facilitated sessions to define a new business model for this venture and asked us to stay and manage the rollout. We launched in Pittsburgh and Chicago with different value propositions to test response and went from there.

KDKA Radio - Pittsburgh, PA

The general manager of this powerhouse radio station was ordered by ownership to create an adjunct business that generated revenue directly from listeners. The FCC had deregulated the industry making this permissible.

We were hired to facilitate the development of a business model that the local implementers and the corporate owners could both support. With that done we were hired to one year engagement to lead implementation of the new model.

We hired local sales and management personnel and trained them to take charge as we test marketed and then implemented the model. The new business returned a handsome ROI and was sold to a print advertising company 18 months later by the corporate owner.

Liberty Medical Supply

The founder and president of this division had just sold the company to a publicly traded company that infused massive amounts of capital and commensurate expectations for rapid growth. He hired me to scale his business model rapidly. Soon we were adding a thousand new patients per day.

I became interim VP of operations and chose three executives to divide my responsibilities and take over when I left. The challenge was to re-orient people from the culture of acute health care to one more suitable to disease state management for sufferers of chronic disease.

Together, we separated service personnel from the sales center and increased their educational level, empowering them to resolve problems and retain patients. In all we reorganized all seven departments including billing, collections, call-center services, medical records, purchasing, fulfillment and insurance verification.

LILCO - Long Island Lighting Company

The CEO of LILCO wanted his middle managers to collaborate more effectively. So we raised the financial IQ of 35 middle managers who received college credits from the State University of New York.

I developed two courses - one on marketing and one on capital budgeting - and delivered them on-site at their executive training facility. Their director of training was very impressed, writing that I was the "best of their teachers."

Each executive collaborated with their peers to complete a full business case related to their area of expertise.

Medibank

The CEO of Australia's largest private insurance company toured America to learn about e-commerce. I was hired to prepare and deliver a 2 day emersion course presenting the business models in use in America.

I facilitated sessions with Australian and American experts in order to bridge the gap between the industry conditions in America and those in Australia. This sort of collaborative business modeling is very powerful.

I was asked to extend my stay and to meet with the CEO individually to further integrate the American business models with opportunities in Australian. We ate great sushi in San Francisco and immersed ourselves in business modeling.

MicroStrategy - Strategy.com Web Portal

At the height of the dot-com era, this provider of sophisticated business intelligence disciplines made a substantial investment in a web portal to provide companies like Ameritrade and the Wall Street Journal with on-line portfolio management for individual investors.

We led a team to develop and prove a business model that exploited the power of the Internet using best of breed technology. That technology appeared in Super Bowl commercials that year.

In just six months - working 12 hour days - we deployed a working prototype that pushed the envelope beyond what any competitors had done. Just before the bubble burst, the market capitalization of MicroStrategy had soared beyond that of some fortune 500 corporations.

NCR Corporation and Teradata Division

The dot-com boom was in full swing and NCR clients were streaming to The Web. I was hired to lead the highest profile engagement in the company.

The largest business intelligence initiatives in the world run on Teradata solutions; but, these were not meant to respond to queries in real-time. Dot-com business models would require an "active" data warehouse and our mission was to help our client respond.

I led a multi-million dollar engagement to build a working prototype and to prove the concept of managing click-stream transactions with real-time triggers and alerts on a flexible, scalable platform. This grueling engagement was stressful, but successful.

North Shore Nursery, Tree and Landscaping

The founder of the largest tree service on Long Island wanted to maximize his value and transition the company to the next generation of management. During the next eight years we collaborated to help them do just that.

The vision behind this company was a different business model from that of any competitor. This is always hard to sustain because executives and employees look at - and spontaneously mimic - competitors in the name of being competitive.

We collaborated to develop the business model into visual maps and then developed custom systems to sustain the competitive advantages. Eventually the founder retired and confidently handed the keys to the next generation.

Paragon Media Research

The new president of this national market research company struggled to change their business model to exploit the Internet. Clients increasingly expected access via the Internet to market research results and wanted to manipulate data from their desktop computers.

We were hired to rescue the company from the disaster of its failed attempts to publish data electronically. They had made good technology choices, but failed to implement them correctly because they needed a clear business model to drive changes. We first brought in experts to get things working again and then coached the two senior executives to clarify their business model.

Collaborating with all the employees we developed business cases for new processes to exploit the new technology and collaborated with their clients to define expectations based on competitive offers. This engagement brought their operations to a new level of performance that had previously eluded them.

Qwest Communications and US West

The CIO wanted better disciplines for allocation of billions of dollars across competing business cases. We were asked to implement portfolio management for capital improvements and I served on-site for 8 months.

A second engagement focused on the development of better business cases. Later, a third engagement had me training a hundred directors in portfolio management and business case analysis. The training was done on site and in line, meaning we collaborated with them to do their jobs, helping them learn as they went.

Then later I was brought back for a fourth engagement to improve the enterprise business scorecard provided monthly to the CEO. Riding the light was a wonderful ride for us.

Stony Brook University and Medical Center

The president of the university and medical center, now science advisor to the president of the United States, wanted to form a more collaborative administrative team. I facilitated a dozen off-site retreats - 6 hours to 3 days in length - for the senior leaders of the university.

We defined the high level business model of the university and for the medical center. The president, provost and deans participated in discussions ranging from consensus to conflict. But, the members valued the exercises, learning the value of knowing where and how strongly they disagreed with their colleagues.

We also developed a portfolio view of major initiatives in order to define budget priorities in the face of state-mandated funding caps. The president got to observe his team in collaboration and to coach them as they took risks.

Susquehanna Radio Division

The CEO and CFO of this large, private company wanted better collaboration with executive leaders of their radio division. They hired me to facilitate development of business models and scorecards for each property in their national group.

We integrated these into division-level strategic plans. Along the way business cases were developed for collateral business ventures.

Two Fortune 500 competitors offered to license one of the new business models for use in their markets. That was a remarkable commendation.

Washington Mutual Savings and Loan - WAMU.com

The chairman of this national savings and loan wanted to close the gap with WellsFargo.com. He tasked marketing with development of business models that would integrate Internet and retail banking. We came in to facilitate the development of this new approach to banking.

Pilot retail stores were opened that emphasized self service. These were intended to facilitate the move from retail to Internet banking without losing customers to competitive web portals.

I was asked to review the market research and coach marketing on the development from pure retail to robust Internet. That review lasted three days and helped re-orient their approach to the customer, overcoming the separate silos the bank had formed around Internet and retail clients.

Whole Health Management

The owner/CEO of this company has a vision that elevates occupational health clinics to become wellness centers while earning a positive ROI for their owners. This required a radically new delivery (business) model.

Collaborating with client companies required explicit measures of performance for both occupational and wellness programs. Separating costs and benefits clearly was a critical challenge.

We also collaborated with clinical and medical directors to define new processes and systems to implement and monitor this new model.