BRADY CLIENT RESULTS
Client success is the only measure of a consultant's success. John Brady & Associates has been honored to work with companies of all sizes and industries to recapture initiative, regain momentum and drive success by providing them with:
Following are profiles of some of the leaders and companies that achieved their business objectives using Brady & Associates services.
ENTREPRENEURS — ARTHUR BUSHKIN - STARGAZER GROUP
"John Brady personifies our Stargazer motto of "Make it So!" He should be registered as a 'secret weapon' because of his remarkable ability to quickly assess organizations and formulate tailored solutions for clients.
CEOs often call Brady in during a crisis, and he has a talent for working with cynical, skeptical individuals that could potentially derail regaining initiative, recapturing momentum, and driving success. His forté is developing effective, high-performance teams based on good faith, fair dealing and open communications.
I've seen John in a variety of corporate settings for over twenty years and he is Yoda-like in teaching and transforming people and organizations. He knows what makes people and organizations tick, and customizes his approach to fit each situation. As a coach, his insightful guidance cuts years off of the learning curve. I still use the concepts he taught me to be a better leader. "
Arthur A. Bushkin, Chairman, Stargazer Group, LLC, & Stargazer Foundation, Inc. Mr. Bushkin is a renaissance man who was involved at the creation of what became the Internet in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he led President Carter's Privacy Initiative and was the principal U.S. representative at the OECD on information, computer, and communications policy. In the 1990s, he was President of Bell Atlantic Video Services (now Verizon). He studied and taught computer science at MIT.
FORTUNE 500 — BELL ATLANTIC-NYNEX-VERIZON
THE BELL ATLANTIC WAY — "Transforming Bell Atlantic from a 'Ma Bell' bureaucratic, monopolistic company into an efficient entrepreneurial competitor meant creating a new mind-set and culture. To begin the process, John Brady worked closely with me to develop a comprehensive plan that started with the top management team.
We christened our program The Bell Atlantic Way. It was an interactive "forum" format that facilitated open, honest dialogue about our transition. At the outset, John advised me that the change would be like 'turning a whale in a bathtub,' and it would require our senior team's commitment to be successful. He was right on both counts.
Brady personally trained and coached our senior team of 70 executives, including Bell Atlantic President Anton 'Campy' Campanella and myself. His team went on to coach our 20,000 managers, and trained our internal facilitators to deliver the Bell Atlantic Way forums to over 60,000 associates worldwide.
Not surprisingly, Bell Atlantic Way participant feedback ranked senior executive participation in the forums as the single most important factor to their success. Campy and I personally kicked off or closed each of the hundreds of management of forum sessions; holding open, frank, and often tough Q&A sessions. As we cascaded the identical process to the Associate ranks, our VPs, Directors and managers rotated in conducting over a thousand Associates forum sessions and handling Q&A, with the full support of our Union leaders.
Raymond W. Smith, Chairman and CEO, Bell Atlantic (and later Verizon), and currently Chairman of Rothschild Inc. and N.M. Rothschild & Sons Canada Limited.
NYNEX WINNING WAYS — William Ferguson, Chairman and CEO of NYNEX invited Brady to custom design forums for his company. Their program was called "Winning Ways," and NYNEX's 90,000 worldwide employees attended the sessions.
Upon retiring as Chairman, Ferguson said the most important accomplishment of his tenure was championing "Winning Ways," built upon clear values of quality, ethics and caring for the individual. He led the company-wide adoption of the program that created a new culture for successfully meeting customer requirements in increasingly competitive markets.
When NYNEX Vice Chairman Ivan Seidenberg took over as Chairman he said, "As we expand the scope of our business, we're keeping a sharp focus on our commitment to "NYNEX Winning Ways." These guiding principles, which include integrity, diversity, teamwork and accountability, define us as a team...That's the NYNEX story in a nutshell."
VERIZON — Brady coached key members of the senior management of Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, including Ivan Seidenberg, who later became Chairman and CEO of Verizon, the company that resulted from the Bell Atlantic, NYNEX and GTE merger.
The Harvard Business Review, Enterprise Magazine and other respected management publications recognized the Bell Atlantic Way and NYNEX Winning Ways as pathfinders in defining successful corporate culture transformation. Regarding the Bell Atlantic Way, the Bell Atlantic Board of Directors said "...it was nothing short of a miracle!"
All told, John Brady designed and managed the process that touched over 170,000 people in the Bell Atlantic Way and NYNEX Winning Ways, that were spread out over five continents.
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES — A.T. KEARNEY- ELECTRONIC DATA SERVICES
"John, thanks to you, A.T. Kearney and EDS has successfully taken the first real steps in our merger journey. The principles you taught us laid the foundation for us to continue to integrate our two great teams.
Most of our professionals are an analytical bunch from the best business schools, and some on our senior management team was skeptical about your interactive approach. Those concerns vanished when we saw you deftly handle 500 of our worldwide senior partners in a raucous two-day merger integration conference.
Your personal example and grace under fire demonstrated that leadership is earned person-to-person. I look forward to your continued coaching and guidance during this critical process."
Fred G. Steingraber, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, A.T. Kearney, Inc.
INTERNATIONAL — DYNO INDUSTRIERE - DYNO EXPLOSIVES GROUP
"As President of the international Dyno Explosive Group and subsidiary of Dyno Industriere A.S., headquartered in Oslo, Norway, I engaged John Brady as part of our worldwide management development and alignment process. John's insights helped us greatly to align our management team, and provide enhanced services and products to meet our customers' needs.
His U.S. expertise was very valuable in helping us reorganize and restructure our American operation Dyno Nobel and our Dyno Explosives Distributor Association. We are optimistic about the potential growth opportunities this will bring."
Knut Ø. Holli, President, Dyno Explosives Group, Dyno Industrier AS, Oslo, Norway (the worldwide leader in commercial explosives)
HOLNAM - HOLDERBANK FINANCIERE GLARIS
“Holnam is the North American operation of Switzerland's Holderbank Financiere Glaris,* and manufactures cement in plants across the U.S. As a partner in a Big Five accounting firm I was recruited to be the Chief Financial Officer at Holnam headquarters in Dundee, Michigan. Two years later, the Board appointed me President and Chief Executive Officer, and since my background wasn't in manufacturing, my transition was an "interesting" one.
Subsequent to my appointment as CEO, a deep recession caused cement construction projects to slow to a crawl, and my executive team needed some help to retrench. A business colleague recommended John Brady, who had a reputation for helping companies improve performance and unify their management.
I met John at our corporate office and we got to know each other. After listening carefully to my situation, he asked, “Have you ever worn a hard hat to work?” I answered, “No.” He said, “Come on, we need to visit your cement plant, and we're going to need hard hats. Don't tell anyone we're coming and don't wear your suit coat.”
We jumped in the car with our hard hats, rolled up our sleeves, and drove to the plant a couple of miles away. We made a courtesy call on the plant manager, and John asked if he'd assign someone to walk us through the operation. A foreman spent a couple of hours showing us the process from A-to-Z. I learned more about making cement in three hours than I had since I started working at Holnam. I discovered later that John had been a laborer in a cement plant.
I asked Brady to arrange a three-day senior management retreat. It wasn't the boring, lecture based management program I was used to, and John created an interactive, open environment where we could have a real dialogue and improve our performance. I couldn't believe how involved and committed our executives were to making the company successful during a really tough time.
I personally discovered more about my leadership style and how to improve it than in any management course I'd ever taken. John planned a national, all management meeting in St. Louis, and we spent two very intense days as a companywide team. We emerged a different company and we were well positioned to capitalize on the demand for cement as the recession subsided and became the Number One cement company in the U.S.”
Paul A. Yhouse, President , Chief Executive Officer, Holnam Inc. (Holcim US Inc.). He was a partner with Arthur Andersen & Co. prior to joining Holnam, and during his 20 years at Andersen he served in the Baltimore, Grand Rapids, Detroit, and Toledo offices and at the company's headquarters in Chicago.
*Holderbank Financiere Glaris (Holderbank) is the world's largest producer of cement products and services.
TECHNOLOGY — DATAFLEX CORPORATION - COMPUCOM SYSTEMS, INC.
“Dataflex Corporation consisted of a loose confederation of sixteen locations around the U.S., with our headquarters in New Jersey. We were a nationally recognized value added reseller of desktop computer equipment and related products. As we grew, we became one of Fortune's Top 100 Best Small Companies in America, but we found that our partners and management weren't totally aligned with our corporate strategy.
John Brady's work with New Jersey Bell executives had given him a good reputation in handing the notorious the New Jersey 'in-your-face' attitude and work with people to get positive results. I figured he'd fit in well with Dataflex since we affectionately called our rookies 'pond-scum' until they proved themselves.
I invited him to develop a program that would bring our team into alignment, and he traveled the country interviewing all of our principals and many of our employees. When he presented his findings, he told me it would be an uphill battle, but we could pull together it with the right motivation.
I asked him to facilitate our management summit, and he did so under challenging circumstances. There were some heavy hidden agendas and dicey moments. After the introductory pleasantries, the meeting turned into pretty much of a gunfight.
At one point John stopped the group and asked, “How many of you feel comfortable being here today?" About half raised their hands. "Okay," he said, "I hope we can change that. Let's start over and ask ourselves, if we started this company today, what would be different? Who would do what? Is everyone doing what they do best?”
That discussion changed the whole dynamic of the meeting. Brady's ability to channel the energy and surface and resolve internal political issues was uncanny. Once all of our cards were on the table and we were rolling, he nudged me center stage to lead the group discussion while he slowly withdrew to the sidelines. He was like a Ninja; he knew exactly when to act and when to let us run our own show.
After the summit we continued to prosper and ultimately merged with CompuCom Systems, Inc., for a healthy profit for all concerned.”
Richard C. Rose, Chief Executive Officer, Dataflex Corporation, and author of How to Make a Buck and Still Be a Decent Human Being |
