Case Studies
Harris Kern has helped the world’s premiere companies and organizations improve performance by focusing on developing self-discipline, EQ, and leadership skills.
For over 25 years I have personally trained the leaders of some of the best companies in the world. Each engagement produces higher-performing teams that now have the discipline to get the work done faster and cheaper. My life’s work is to bring all the rigorous business lessons I’ve learned to the next organization that suffers from unmotivated employees, missed forecasts, and workforce turnover.
Client List
| Advanced Information Services (Bangkok) Agway (New York) America West (Phoenix) Astro (Malaysia) Bell Atlantic (New York) Cablevision (Long Island) CalTrans (Sacramento) Arbinet (Pennslvania) Chello Broadband (Netherlands) Chrysler Corp. (Detroit) Cincinnati Bell Information Systems (Cincinnati) CNF (Portland) Conde Nast Publications, Inc. (New York) Dell (Austin) Division of Criminal Justice Services(New York) Dutchtone (Netherlands) Emery Worldwide (Portland) Experian (Texas) FannieMae (Washington D.C.) Ford (Detroit) Fox Studios (Los Angeles) Home Shopping Network (Florida) Hong Kong Telecom Hong Kong International Terminal(HIT) Instinet (New York) Internet Shopping Network (Sunnyvale) JPL (Pasadena, CA.) Kaiser (Los Angeles) Kodak (Rochester) Level (3) Communications (Denver) Litton Guidance and Control Systems (Woodland Hills) Los Angeles Times Martin County Florida NWQ (Los Angeles) Primavera (Philadelphia) |
SONY Pictures (Los Angeles) Universal Studios (Los Angeles) N2K (New York) News Limited (Sydney) New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Nielsen Media Research (Tampa) Nike (Portland) Panama Canal Commission (Panama) Philippine Airlines (Philippines) Random House (New York) Raytheon Missiles (Tucson) Readers Digest (New York) Singapore Press Holdings Sky Broadcasting (London) Sony Electronics (New Jersey) Sony Music (New York) Standard & Poor’s (New York) State of North Carolina SunAmerica (Los Angeles) Teleport Communications Group (New Jersey) Texas Instruments (Dallas) The Guardian (London) The Jockey Club (Hong Kong) The Weather Channel (Atlanta) Time Inc. (New York) Time Warner Inc. (New York) TransAmerica Corp. (Los Angeles) Twentieth Century Insurance (Los Angeles) Unihealth (Los Angeles) Warner Brothers (Los Angeles) Warner Elektra Atlantic (Los Angeles) Xerox (Argentina) Xerox (Brazil) Xerox (Rochester) Media Interactive (Singapore) DNA Search (Los Angeles) HACTL (Hong Kong) Tai Fook (Hong Kong) |
Case Studies
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Small recruiting firm – Company size = 10
Problems/challenges:
- Only 2 out of 10 employees were effectively managing their resources (time and energy)
- Employees lacked a sense of urgency (9-5 mentality)
- Lack of focus
- Company was barely breaking even
- Employee earnings were solely based on commission
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Facilitated a workshop to design the appropriate strategy and develop a roadmap (establish milestones and assigned accountability)
- Evaluated each recruiter
- Developed a growth program based on improving employee self-discipline skills (focus, time management, sense of urgency, motivation, goal management, etc.)
- Performance mentored staff to improve efficiency
- Worked with sales manager to make her a superstar – her output grew by 40%
Results:
- Overall productivity increased by 25%
- Instilled discipline throughout the organization – improved company earnings
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Government Agency, IT staff size = 30
Problems/challenges:
- Mainframe staff resistant to change – business as usual attitude
- IT Department looked upon as nothing more than a fix-it shop by the business – reactive support
- Bureaucratic
- Distrust among staff
- Staff performing at minimum level
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Completed a high-level organization evaluation
- Completed staff performance assessment
- Facilitated presentation to IT staff on how to build a competitive IT organization
- Facilitated strategy workshop to design a plan to resolve the issues that were highlighted in the assessment
- Acquire buy-in throughout the organization
- Restructured the organization to provide a higher level of service based on input from the workshop
- Initiated staff performance mentoring in self-discipline (specifically time management and instilling a sense of urgency)
- Improved leadership skills for management
- Designed and implemented key processes (Release Management, Problem Management, and SLA’s)
Results:
- CIO was able to execute new vision/strategy
- Staff was more productive
- After a 2 year period IT was acknowledged by the business as a partner in technology decisions
- Implemented key system management processes
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Large transportation company, IT staff size = 150
Problems/challenges:
- The IT organization was not working effectively as a team
- IT was not cost-effective
- The business was going through a culture change. Company had no competition until now
- The business and the IT staff had no sense of urgency
- The mentality in IT was reactive in nature
- HUGE communication barriers between Applications Development and Operations
- Poor customer service
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Completed an IT assessment to determine most critical issues
- Facilitated a workshop (with key individual contributors and management) to design a new IT strategy. The goal was to resolve the numerous issues and challenges in IT
- Implemented recommendations from the Workshop
- Facilitated an interactive presentation for management and key staff on best practices and what it takes to build a ‘world-class’ organization
- Facilitated quarterly organization mini-workshops (checkups) to address new organization related challenges – being proactive before they become major issues
- Implemented a self-discipline mentoring program to increase staff productivity
- Facilitated individual performance mentoring programs for key IT staff that had not fully met expectations – ‘change’ needed to happen quickly for the entire organization to be successful
- Facilitated corporate-wide presentations (sponsored by HR and the CEO) on the subject of discipline to help people become more productive and adapt to a changing business climate
- Redesigned the organization structure
- Highlighted new functions
- Developed job descriptions
- Designed a Production Acceptance process
Results:
- IT was better aligned with business requirements
- Improved teamwork throughout the organization
- Implemented the processes to Integrate Applications Development and Infrastructure organizations
- Improved the productivity of several key staff
- Transformed IT to become more customer-service oriented
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Large financial institution, IT staff size = 85
Problems/challenges:
- Unstable computing environment
- Negative perception of IT – not bringing value to the business
- According to executive management –> financial analysts were not very productive with the technology
- Data Center was more of a computer room (unorganized, dirty, cabls everywhere, no procedures, etc.)
Not cost-effective
- Lack of key system management processes
- Lack of a disaster recovery process
Steps taken to resolve problem:
- Completed an IT assessment to determine most critical issues
- Presented to IT staff on how to build a competitive IT organization
- Facilitated a workshop to document a roadmap to address the issues that were highlighted in the assessment
- Analyzed the job function of key financial analysts. We discovered duplication of responsibilities and extensive manual processing of critical tasks
- Designed a new strategy to focus on end-user productivity
- Designed and implemented a new Personal Productivity Services function to focus on customer productivity (desktop solutions)
- Designed and implemented a Problem Management, Change Management, and Production Acceptance process
- Assessed the job responsibilities/characteristics of every IT employee
- Facilitated the restructuring of the IT organization with 100% buy-in
Results:
- Improved reliability and availability of the computing environment
- Institutionalized new cost-effective service offerings
- Improved teamwork and communication throughout the organization
- Improved end-user productivity (financial analysts became twice as productive)
- Aligned IT with business objectives. Published a book titled Managing IT as an Investment: Partnering for Success. The CEO sponsored the development of this book
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Medium-sized media company, IT staff size = 40
Problems/challenges:
- Lack of a formal infrastructure support organization
- Lack of processes
- Poor system availability
- Poor customer satisfaction
- Staff was always in a reactive mode
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Completed a high-level assessment to determine initiatives and most critical issues
- Facilitated a workshop to document a roadmap to address the issues that were highlighted in the assessment.
- Designed a new strategy to focus on building a ‘world-class’ Infrastructure support organization
- Designed a formal Infrastructure Support organization based on a service-oriented model
- Developed new job descriptions
- Recruited infrastructure support staff
- Implemented a Service Desk function
- Implemented best practices to build a competitive IT organization (Problem Management, Change Management, Configuration Management, Release Management, etc.
Results:
- Improved infrastructure reliability and availability
- Improved service delivery
- Integrated IT with business objectives
- Established a world-class production environment
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Large movie studio, IT staff size = 110
Problems/challenges:
- CIO could not move IT team quickly enough to embrace change and execute his 3-year vision
- Ineffective Infrastructure support organization. They actually had 2 separate infrastructure organizations reporting into the CIO
- Highly political atmosphere
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Completed an IT assessment to determine initiatives (business and IT) and most critical issues
- Presented to IT staff on how to build a competitive IT organization
- Facilitated a strategy workshop
- Designed key system management processes
- Discipline mentored key staff and management to instill a sense of urgency mentality
- Coached management to improve their leadership skills
- Designed and implemented a new organization structure (with one enterprise infrastructure services organization) was implemented. There was complete buy-in (top-down and bottom-up)
Results:
- Improved teamwork
- Organization was more productive – overall performance improved by 20%
- Political barriers removed
- Improved morale
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
TV Station-South Pacific, Operations and Technology staff size = 40
Problems/challenges:
- CEO wanted to integrate Engineering Department with the Operations and Technology Department
- The average tenure for the engineers was over 20 years – most were resistant to change.
- Highly political
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Completed a high-level assessment to determine corporate goals and most critical issues
- Completed assessments of key individuals and management throughout both organizations
- Facilitated a strategy workshop to document a roadmap to resolve the issues that were highlighted in the assessment
- Coached staff to adopt change
- Designed SLA’s
- Designed a new organization structure
- Designed a formal Problem Management process
Results:
- Implemented a new organization structure integrating company Engineers under the umbrella of Operations with complete buy-in.
- CEO vision moved forward without people obstacles
- Improved overall customer service
CUSTOMER CASE STUDY:
Small financial institution – but growing rapidly, Company size = 20
Problems/challenges:
- No structure (lack of processes, procedures, policies, etc.)
- Lack of a business continuity process
- Management had poor leadership skills
- Inefficient use of time by many
- Staff was primarily in a reactive mode
Steps taken to resolve problems:
- Facilitated a workshop to design the appropriate strategy and develop a roadmap (identify and prioritize critical processes)
- Performance mentored key individuals to improve efficiency
- Coached managers to improve leadership skills
- Discipline mentored organization – focus was on time management, goal management, and sense of urgency
Results:
- Developed excellent leaders
- Productivity increased by 25%
- Implemented critical processes in a timely manner
- Designed and implemented a business continuity process
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