Compass Points: Letting Go by Gary Lockwood

PaL-Tech’s goal is to provide innovative knowledge transfer through high-level project management, training, and technical support services. Toward this end, President and CEO Omar Kader and Executive Vice President Moira Kelly Lethbridge have successfully incorporated the Simplified Strategic Planning process into PaL-Tech’s operations and management culture. In 2000 PaL-Tech received the Arthur Andersen Global Best Practices Award as one of the ten most innovative companies in the Washington, D.C., area.

PaL-Tech was a small firm experiencing rapid growth when it decided to work with Simplified Strategic Planning. Concerned that the company’s growth would exceed its management team’s ability to keep pace, PaL-Tech’s leadership searched for tools to guide the firm through its growth spurt. Some of PaL-Tech’s areas of operation were overly broad and of questionable profitability, and the company needed to reassess its capabilities in relation to its market. In the competitive world of government contracting, being small gave PaL-Tech an advantage in being able to move quickly. Its depth in talent also allowed it to compete with larger (and often less experienced) firms.

To assist in its reassessment, PaL-Tech chose Center for Simplified Strategic Planning over larger firms because it provided access to senior, experienced, and hands-on executives rather than the junior staffers offered by the bigger companies who nonetheless would bill at higher rates. PaL-Tech employees immediately found themselves at home working with the SSP consultant.

SSP’s approach is based on sound principles of business development that strip away nonessential minutiae. PaLTech representatives learned rather quickly that if SSP’s suggested methods were followed, the company would grow at a rate appropriate for its size and do so with complete confidence in maintaining control of its management systems.

The most revealing experience was the development of quantitative methods to connect plans to corporate profitability. Too often, PaL-Tech would follow plans that operated effectively but not necessarily profitably. As Michael Porter, professor at Harvard Business School, teaches, strategy is about choices and trade-offs. Operations is about doing the basics well. It did not take PaL-Tech employees long to understand that simply doing things well does not necessarily mean that the right things are being done for the company.

After three years of following SSP’s format, PaL-Tech’s goals are being met. At first it looked like magic, but behind the scenes of success were hundreds of hours of decision making and resource commitments. More and more decisions led to undeniably positive results. SSP took uncertainty out of PaL-Tech’s planning process by narrowing the range of action and expectation. It was a classic exercise in streamlining choices and limiting risk.

The results have transformed PaLTech. It is much more professional in its decision making and bolder in setting ambitious but sound targets. This new, focused approach has saved money and time and led to increased growth and profit.

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