Examples

Where the problem becomes visible isn't necessarily where it originates.

A strategy problem may turn out to be a capacity problem. An execution problem may begin with decisions that don't hold. A leadership problem may be created by conditions that keep pulling leaders back into the work.

The examples below show what happened when we stopped treating the visible problem as the whole problem and started looking at what was actually creating it.

What looked like the problem was the place to start looking, not necessarily the thing to fix.

Leaders Are Working Hard, but Not Together

Re-aligning Leadership Across an 800-Person State Agency

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Result

Three consecutive years of growth across five key performance metrics
Employees re-engaged in the work of the organization
Leadership operating as a coordinated decision-making group rather than competing units

Situation

A multi-billion-dollar, 800+ employee state agency struggled to sustain adoption of lean principles and practices despite two years of effort.

What Was Happening

The leadership team was not operating as a coordinated decision-making unit. Decisions were repeatedly debated, conflicts moved through the senior leader, and competition across organizational boundaries persisted.

The effects traveled downward. Directors became reluctant to act across boundaries because they did not want to appear disloyal to their vertical leader.

Decisions were being made, but the organization kept having to make them again.

What Changed

Clarified shared direction and expectations
Used facilitated dialogue to surface assumptions, reduce triangulation, and build trust
Shifted decision ownership from a single arbiter to the leadership team
Established how decisions would be made, held, and reinforced
Made performance visible so decisions and tradeoffs could be sustained

Key Lesson

Decisions only hold when leaders operate as a coordinated unit and reinforce them over time.

Too Many Priorities, Not Enough Progress

From Competing Demands to Clear Strategic Direction

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Result

Change-order cycle time dropped from 78 days to 5 hours
Transitioned to a mobile, technology-enabled workforce of 100 employees
Services delivered faster and more consistently

Situation

An executive leading a $2B operation delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in projects annually faced a changing marketplace, shifting customer expectations, outdated processes, and an unfocused service portfolio.

What Was Happening

The need to modernize was clear, but new demands kept being added without clear choices about what the organization would stop doing.

The organization was trying to carry both the work it had accumulated and the work its future required.

Capacity was being spread across too many competing demands.

What Changed

Made an explicit choice to move away from high-effort, low-dollar work
Created a path to transition that work to a third-party provider
Built the capability to take on more capital-intensive projects
Changed decision making to support faster, more distributed execution
Realigned structure, roles, technology, and workspace around the new direction

Key Lesson

Greater taxpayer value required a choice: move away from high-effort, low-dollar work and toward capital-intensive projects. Then the organization had to be reshaped to make that choice possible.

What We're Delivering Doesn't Match What's Needed

Leading Through Chaos During the Hurricane Katrina Response

American Red Cross

Result

Shelter operations stabilized despite extreme uncertainty, improving the experience for thousands of displaced residents
Hundreds of volunteers coordinated effectively across shifts and functions
Residents received more consistent access to food, information, and support services

Situation

Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of residents across the Gulf Coast, creating urgent demand for large-scale shelter operations.

Within a two-week period, I was deployed to two separate operations:

supporting a 1,400-person shelter for displaced residents
coordinating operations for 300 volunteer responders on a military base as part of a multi-agency relief effort

What Was Happening

Approximately 80% of volunteers had never supported a major disaster response.

As a result:

roles and expectations were unclear
shift transitions were inconsistent
task competency varied widely

For displaced residents, this showed up as:

inconsistent access to services
confusion around where to go and what to expect
uneven quality of care across shifts

The operation was functioning, but residents and volunteers were absorbing the cost of that inconsistency.

What Changed

Established clear roles and decision authority so volunteers could respond consistently to resident needs
Re-centered operations around the needs of displaced residents
Introduced simple, repeatable processes for intake, feeding, mental health, and information flow
Made key information visible to improve coordination across shifts

Key Lesson

When roles are clear and work is structured, people can deliver a consistent experience, even under pressure.

Delivering Results Takes Too Much Effort

Stabilizing Execution Across a $4.4B Capital Construction Program

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Result

Within 13 months, operational visibility improved, enabling leaders to stabilize execution across a $4.4B capital program delivering hundreds of millions of dollars annually
Leaders could see constraints, remove bottlenecks, and restore confidence in project delivery

Situation

A statewide public works capital construction program totaling approximately $4.4B, and delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in projects annually, was operating at full capacity. Long cycle times, an overextended workforce, declining quality, and dissatisfied customers were becoming increasingly difficult to address because the organization had little capacity available to improve the work itself.

What Was Happening

Years of modernization efforts, combined with disruption from COVID, left the workforce overextended.

At the same time:

customer expectations continued to increase
budget constraints tightened
workforce capacity steadily declined

The organization was still delivering, but people were absorbing the strain required to keep it delivering.

Work moved unevenly, bottlenecks persisted, and teams relied on workarounds to keep things moving.

But the extent of the problem was difficult to see because leaders lacked a clear, shared view of the work, the constraints, and where capacity was being consumed.

What Changed

Built a data-driven case to secure additional investment and capacity to relieve system constraints
Made work visible across the program so leaders could see projects, constraints, and bottlenecks in one place, including issues that had previously gone unseen
Introduced simple tools to increase transparency and rebuild trust with key clients
Established a regular operating rhythm focused on reviewing performance and learning, not just reporting
Created a structured onboarding approach to bring new employees into the system more quickly

Key Lesson

The result wasn't the whole story. The program was delivering, but people were compensating for constraints the organization could not clearly see. Making those constraints visible gave leaders something they could act on.

Schedule a Conversation

case-studies

Examples in Practice

What Leaders Say

These reflections come from leaders who experienced that work firsthand.

“Rob was a trusted confidant who helped me define my own leadership values and style, craft a strategic direction for my team, and navigate the challenges of new leadership and shifting workplace relationships.”

Colby C.

Executive Director, PA Governor's Office of Performance Through Excellence

“Rob is very good at helping the leaders he works with to explore their blind spots and confront the sometimes-uncomfortable challenges that we must overcome on our way to being better leaders of change. He brings plenty of tools to bear on the problem, but there are no cookie-cutters or recipes involved. Rob is just damn insightful and fearless.”

Curt T.

Secretary, PA Department of General Services

“He is able to sort through complicated issues and distill them into solvable components, moving towards clarity and simplicity.”

Mary F.

Executive Director, PA State Ethics Commission

Organizations I've Worked With

My experience spans ten Pennsylvania state agencies, dozens of municipal governments, regional authorities, nonprofit organizations, and private-sector companies operating under significant complexity and pressure.

The situations were different. The industries were different. The symptoms were different.

The underlying patterns were often the same.

Public Sector:

State and Regional Government