See how organizations have used GuideStar’s system to create lasting cultural transformation and drive measurable business results.
Each story demonstrates the power of our comprehensive approach to building sustainable excellence.
Municipal Government Transformation
The Challenge
When a large municipality in the northwest suburbs of Chicago approached GuideStar, its leaders faced challenges common to many government organizations:
- Departments operated in silos.
- Service delivery had a “gatekeeping” rather than a “collaborative solutions” mindset.
- Leadership development throughout the enterprise was lacking.
- Constituents, especially businesses, were dissatisfied.
The municipality needed a systematic approach to cultural transformation.
Municipal leaders defined their purpose to be “The Exceptional Community,” but the design, alignment, and execution of this vision were disjointed.
Action and Collaboration
Working with local and community coalition leaders, GuideStar saw the need to communicate character and capitalism as additive rather than mutually exclusive terms.
Working with GuideStar, the municipality implemented a comprehensive program focused on strategic leadership alignment, cross-functional team development, and a solid grounding in shared vision and values.
The program embedded values-based decision-making while building partner relationships with constituents to find solutions. In doing so, the municipality was well on its way to becoming a “virtuous organization” grounded in building “webs of trust” (Forbes, 2009) based on character and virtue ethics.
GuideStar’s Results
Working with senior and operational leadership teams who learned and applied the principles and practices of Character-based Capitalism, GuideStar helped turn the municipal culture 180 degrees from being a “bureaucratic gatekeeper” to that of a hotbed for entrepreneurial development.
This resulted in constituent satisfaction and municipal growth such as:
- Gaining 122 businesses in the first year alone.
- Increasing sales revenue within the village by 20% in the first year after implementation.
- Cutting corporate vacancy rates in half the first year and continuing to where the current municipal business park occupancy rate is over 98%!
- Achieving recognition as the Best American City for establishing an international business.
For seven years, the municipality engaged GuideStar as the primary entity for 15 projects associated with the ongoing process of cultural transformation.
To this day, the leaders who participated in GuideStar’s programs have continued to help grow and attract new business for the municipality, securing its economic future as well as its reputation as “The Exceptional Community.”
International Importing Company Transformation
The Challenge
Leaders of a small family-owned international importing company in eastern Illinois were committed to creating “a great company.” Still, they faced the significant challenge of losing the CEO to an impending retirement. He had founded and led the company for 27 years.
The company had been organized in a functional arrangement, typical for a small business, and it did not have the design or plan to sustain the company in the future.
The structure failed to “connect the dots” between the functions that deliver value to its diverse customer segments.
Outside of the CEO and Executive Vice President, the company’s leadership team had not been clearly defined and engaged to guide the company’s development.
Leadership Goals
GuideStar was engaged to help leaders throughout the company accomplish several key elements of the transformation needed for sustainable performance:
- Engage leaders throughout the company to create the right culture for collaboration and teamwork, as well as ongoing education and mental growth for all employees.
- Guide the company through major changes to align core processes and deliver significant value to its customer segments.
- Align the culture with Core Values and Organizational Purpose to provide everyone in the company a clear “line of sight” from their daily actions and efforts to a purpose bigger than themselves.
- Create a Transformation Plan to become a High-Reliability Learning Organization in which all employees strive toward ongoing performance excellence and make competitors irrelevant.
Action and Collaboration
Executive and operational leaders of the company engaged in a dynamic, iterative Leadership Development process designed to:
- Strengthen the company’s culture by aligning everyone on a Transcendent Purpose
- Revise and reinforce Shared Core Values to guide behaviors and practices for delivering more excellent value
- Define artifacts through which employees identify with the company and convey the company’s values to others
Employees created Success Stories related to the Core Values and worked on Action Teams to codify the lessons learned throughout this process.
GuideStar’s Results
The true impact of GuideStar’s engagement was measured by what participants gained from their involvement:
- 100% agree they clearly understand the differences between leadership and management.
- Nearly 100% agree that the program has helped them become better leaders.
- The participants strongly believe their involvement in an Action Team was valuable in helping to transform their company’s culture.
- Success Stories created by participants are now applied in onboarding and ongoing development sessions.
This company is continually building an “internal university” through which everyone is discovering exciting ways to grow, learn, advance, and excel in what they do best.
Create Your Success Story!
These examples represent just two organizations that have achieved sustainable transformation, the core of the GuideStar system.
Each started with specific challenges but achieved lasting results through systematically implementing our proven culture transformation methodology.
Ready to create your own success story? [Contact Us] to learn how GuideStar can help transform your clients’ organizations.