Ken Burton describes the Manatee County Tax Collector journey on using the software to drive consistent process throughout their organization.

In the mid 2000’s, my Senior Team and I were looking for a “scorecard software system.”  While attending the Florida Sterling Conference (affiliated with the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award), we learned about Competitive Solutions (CSI). What CSI presented was a more robust opportunity that would include all of our staff with a much needed meeting structure to streamline our operation and drive accountability.  While we were not really sure what we were getting ourselves into, in August 2007 when we started our journey. 

The onsite training was invaluable.  Although painful, in a good way, it forced the Senior Team to take corrective actions on perceived personality conflicts so that we would be unified in this fresh start.  We also changed our “open to the public” time from 8:30 to 9 a.m. to ensure there were 30 minutes dedicated to daily enhanced training and a Friday morning front line staff meeting.  Our office-wide introductory training was completed in January 2008.

PBL (now Visuant®) has since become the backbone of our organization.  It has allowed us to become more agile and systematic.  Our 13 weekly staff meetings are clearly defined, integrated, have set expectations, use the same agenda, and use metrics to drive engagement and accountability.  Every employee knows whether the organization is winning or losing on what is most important.  Communication that was once our biggest weakness has become our strongest strength. 

Over the years, it is easy to forget how far we have progressed as an organization and to take PBL for granted.  It is so much a part of our culture that I just assume everyone else outside the office operates the same way.  Not true.  All it takes is attending a meeting, and at some point the lack of structure, processes and accountability will kick in; and I am thankful we chose Competitive Solutions. – Ken Burton, Manatee County Tax Collector

Some would ask how is it possible to change a culture with software? Well let me explain how this works utilizing Visuant^®.  

My name is Bryan Farley and I am a Technical Supervisor for 3M Greenville Film Plant. 3M Greenville began their journey with Shane Yount in Process Based Leadership about the time I started here. Within 6 months or so we were asked to pilot the PBL Scorecard / predecessor to Visuant^®. Having been in Operations Management in my previous job I understood the importance of having good communications, daily meeting rhythm, and action registers to help drive the business. Except I had not seen a system like PBL Scorecard before, where there was one central repository for all our scorecards and action items! Not only was it one central location for all actions, but now they could be linked directly to metrics and owners.

So off we go here in Grenville as we pilot this PBL Scorecard application applying it to our Daily Management Meetings and After-Action Reviews for capturing the majority metrics & actions done here!  It didn’t take long before we realized that our action item cycle time had improved by 97% and metrics were moving in the direction I like to say is “Directionally Correct”.  The Clarity that we were adding to the actions and ownership made Accountability more Visual to say the least!

Our Trial Period was ending as Visuant^® was launch commercially to the public so by this point we were “All In” as our local Clemson Tigers Coach Dabo Swinney would say! The changes we received in the new Visuant^® version made managing our scorecards, dashboards, meetings, projects, & actions much easier.  Our Site Manger, Andrea Dubbs, has led us to expanding our initial scope to now use Visuant^® for all management meetings and touching all levels of the organization. The deeper we have driven within the organization the more momentum we have gained! 

That’s were the Culture Change comes in! With the expansion of the software outside the leadership teams, it has enabled us to ask better questions and coach each level of the organization based on our overall performance.  In a sense Visuant has been the “Enabler of Behaviors”.  We can have better discussions now to help drive the business forward, and our results demonstrate this success. 

Visuant^® provides the backbone (data) that helps set the stage to live out PBL (Process Based Leadership) to its fullest extent! 

This has been such a success here at 3M Greenville SC, that we are launching Visuant^® to the rest of the Film Division under Kevin Kuck, and Layland Watsons Leadership. It is extremely exciting for me to help with this launch to the rest of our 3M Partners!