Stuart & Company

There was no real planning process. Leadership would sit around each week and shoot the breeze, but the goals never got documented and the good ideas never materialized. They’d collected years of data and content that just sat there. They knew other companies in their market were running tighter operations, and that knowledge added a quiet layer of stress, the sense that they weren’t leading a market they should have been leading. This is a Design gap: no system for setting goals, assigning problems, or deciding who solves what.

The work gave them an operating system, a venue to set weekly and quarterly goals, write them down, and actually work toward them. It got clear who needed to solve which problems and what the process behind that looked like. The jumbled mess in the back of everyone’s mind got pulled onto the table, where it could be attacked and resolved instead of just carried around.

The confusion dropped and the energy lifted. The team got a rhythm for goals, a way to work backward from an end target and set milestones, and a structure that told everyone who owned what. They describe the change as a business that’s no longer leaning on luck, and a team that finally feels on its way to leading its market.

One voice from the team: “We’re a young company, but EXM was a breath of fresh air. The energy in our business has completely shifted, now it’s almost like we’re walking on clouds.” — Blake Panepinto, Project Management, Stuart & Company

Design Pickle hit the same shiny-object problem – see how getting one system everyone could operate inside changed that.