Case Study: 13 shareholders united in a single vision
DBH Consulting helps Dallas-based Roach, Howard, Smith & Barton to get 13 shareholders moving toward one vision.
Roach Howard Smith & Barton (RHSB) is a 60-year-old brokerage firm in Texas. The company’s business is centered around nine specialty practices, including technology, hospitality, manufacturing, financial institutions, public entity, nonprofit and real estate. RHSB employs about 80 people in two offices in Dallas and Fort Worth.
When we began working with RHSB in 2006, the company had just completed an internal perpetuation plan by transferring 100% of the stock from the founders to 13 current shareholders. The firm also had completed several mergers during that same time frame.
Things were going well in terms of the financial and operational plan, and the executives believed they were at a good place. CEO Karen Farris notes that “very few firms of this size have managed a successful internal perpetuation, and this gave us a great deal of confidence as we looked to the future.” She thought it was time to step back and start dreaming a little about where the company was headed: “I wanted to be sure that we had a common vision. With 13 shareholders, that can be a challenge.”
One of the agency’s first issues to tackle was its name and identity. For the previous four years, after completing a merger, RHSB had been conducting business under two different names and had been at an impasse on consolidating into a single-name entity. Once the company had a strategic plan, it became clear to everyone that if the firm was to meet its goals, it needed to brand and become one entity. Because everyone had a clear and common vision of where they were headed, this was a logical step.
As a result, key stakeholders in both Dallas and Fort Worth were willing to let go of their old stances, and the company moved forward with a single identity. This seemingly simple change was in fact a significant emotional breakthrough, and foreshadowed RHSB’s success as it made its shared vision a true priority.
The strategic plan contains seven initiatives. RHSB has assigned a project team of four to six people to each initiative. This means that nearly half of the company’s employees are involved in implementing aspects of the strategic plan. Karen is seeing two big payoffs from having broad involvement: new ideas and renewed enthusiasm. The plan includes a monthly accountability session with a DBH Consulting coach where each team reports on its progress as well as any roadblocks the members have encountered. When issues arise—and they do—we work through them together.
New ideas emerge when people have a chance to engage their expertise in areas that are outside the realm of their daily jobs. For example, the strategic plan called for more recruiting—of both producers and potential merger and acquisition partners. Previously, finding new producers was the sole responsibility of the sales manager, while targeting M&A prospects was the job of upper management. Today, the company has 30-plus people on its recruiting committee, all of whom are actively involved in the recruitment of new people and partners, exponentially increasing RHSB’s universe of qualified candidates.
The renewed enthusiasm comes from a greater sense of ownership in the company. Employees at all levels feel more invested in the firm when they have the chance to weigh in on important decisions. Karen says she often hears comments from non-shareholders who are somewhat surprised that they are invited to the table to discuss critical issues and as a result feel more invested in the future of the firm.
Getting more people involved in meeting the firm’s strategic goals has had another payoff for management. The strategic teams have become a valuable resource for internal operations. For example, in the past, senior management made all of the decisions about advertising and public relations, with disagreements over the decisions sometimes erupting afterwards.
When the company formed a visibility committee to implement that part of its strategic plan, Karen put the group in charge of the entire advertising and public relations budget. She says the committee is doing a great job, and people have a different perspective about the budget and how the funds are allocated. “They have actually become better consumers, and I have one less thing on my plate.”
RHSB management plans to grow the firm by 300% in the next 10 years. Karen notes that before the strategic plan was formulated, people had a difficult time buying into that vision and believing that such growth was possible. She says, “Now that we have our blueprint in place, you can sense that the excitement and the fear that normally surround a change of this magnitude have been eliminated.”