Business Results of Insight Thinking

These are specific business results, including, where possible, the economic value of people's achievements while using Insight Thinking Methods. In many cases an insight appeared during the course of, or shortly after, a disciplined conversation; thus, Insight Thinking could honestly be said to have been the direct cause of a great result. In other cases, Insight Thinking became "embedded" in and changed the existing work and social processes. So, although the results were accomplished through an enormous amount of work - done by many people using many additional methods - we believe that Insight Thinking was an essential contributor that often initiated or identified, and always amplified, accelerated, and enhanced.

• A $3-billion, Fortune 50 subsidiary achieved a $300-million earnings increase in two years despite a declining market - the best performance in the company's history and three times what was deemed "reasonable" - and has repeated this performance for six of the last seven years.
  
• A senior executive of a $1-billion food-ingredients company resolved in 2 hours, a structural problem (with a $120-million-revenue, Asian joint-venture partner) that had consumed him for more than six months and repeatedly defied solution.
  
• In a day and a half, 10 members of the same food-ingredients company solved a strategic dilemma, with their China business model, that had thwarted multiple prior attempts over the last four years. It emerged that the "China problem" was also a hidden fatal flaw in some 40% of their global business, which was suffering increasing competitive pressure. Implementation of this solution should yield $35-$40 million of EBIT per year.
  
• After struggling for more than two years, an executive team of a $200-million-revenue, "emerging technology" business had a breakthrough in developing and aligning around a strategy, and in then gaining the endorsement and vital support of the top management. 4 years on, they are now at $500 million-revenue.
  
• An executive team of a $250-million specialties business developed and aligned around a plan to create a new business unit in a $45-billion market after having previously tried and failed for more than a year.
  
• A consumer-goods company reduced the product development process for a specific line-extension from two years to 11 months, contributing a once off profit improvement of more than $100 million for that product alone.
  
• In six hours, manufacturing executives from the same company created, evaluated, and converged on a new organizational structure for their several-thousand-person organization.
  
• The executives of a global manufacturing company completed their annual $250-million R&D budget in a single 45-minute meeting, whereas historically this had required a contentious six-month series of meetings and analyses.
  
• The management team of a unit in a global consulting firm developed both a sharply and powerfully differentiated strategy and new market position in two days.
  
• In a four-hour meeting, the leader of the "emerging technology" business unit of a Fortune 50 company enabled two executive-committee peers to have a breakthrough in understanding his unit's strategy - something they had been unable to do since its inception. They were then able to explain it to, and gain the endorsement and support of, the top 130 managers in the whole company.
  
• A five-year running conflict between two divisions, both involved in the development of the same game-changing technology, dissolved in less than two weeks as the real causes of their problems were identified.
  
• By the end of a six-week review of their strategy and associated issues, a self-declared dysfunctional management team had become friendly, collaborative, synergistic, and recommitted to that strategy. Two months later, when their parent company went through the upheaval of a new CEO (and associated across-the-board cost reductions), the team remained on course and produced their best financial performance ever.
  
• Two senior executives resolved a longstanding business and personal feud. Today, though they still disagree on many topics, the personal nature of their disagreeing has disappeared, as has the collateral damage to their subordinates and peers.
  
• Members of various executive teams have found themselves psychologically "immunized" against the difficult behaviors of their bosses. Volatile, stressful, and often disagreeable relationships became "easy" and even creative - with no specific action on their part and without the bosses' exposure to Insight Thinking. In one case counterproductive and disruptive behaviors between a CEO and his subordinates (that were widely recognized as interfering with the team's performance) spontaneously stopped in the normal course of working together.
  
• Most executives reported multiple, non-work life improvements such as the effortless resolution of long-standing, major life decisions, or step change in golf performance, both psychological and handicap.
  
• Across many of the cases there were unprecedented levels of executive-team dialogue and discussion.
  

We believe Insight Thinking holds great promise. It is powerful and yields high-quality, unusually good results that implement easily. It is quick for people to learn, easy to use, and requires minimal reinforcement. Where the methods have been used, they appear consistent with and complementary to every management system, method, and approach already in place.

Finally, the investment is low and the payback of Insight Thinking is immediate and tremendous. What is the value of having your worst, most persistent problem vanish? What is the value of increased frequency of fresh new ideas - or of that one special idea that creates a new horizon for your enterprise? What would you pay not to have made the two biggest mistakes of the past five years? What is the value of better business judgment and acumen at the executive level, particularly when leveraged throughout the entire organization? (Then multiply that by the number of your subordinates!)

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