Mitchell

Jack Farnan
SVP, Human Resources
Mitchell International, Inc.
San Diego, California

“We have a new CEO and new ownership group, and we were just completing a year focusing the senior management team on external matters. As a management team we thought it prudent to challenge ourselves around these key questions: 1) Is the culture we have the culture we need for the future? 2) Are our values still a fit for who we are and who we would like to become? I knew that Michael Brainard was the only facilitator to help us to wrestle with these questions, and that if we did not leverage Michael, then the conversation could get muddled and there could be no clear implementation that would result from the conversation.

Michael and I had worked on goal setting and goal cascading in the past. While the OGTM process is still a part of Mitchell International five years later, what stands out most is Michael’s ability to facilitate a senior group. Michael, our CEO, and I collaborated on the agenda and Michael interviewed us prior to our session. During our session Michael was able to get us all to a common point of understanding of culture, the interaction of culture and performance, and the importance of values in the development of a new culture. We had many action-able strategies to validate and drive the values through our management practices and talent systems. Michael is unique among Management Consultants in his depth and breadth of expertise on organizational issues. Michael’s facilitation skills and pragmatism have brought about positive culture change for Mitchell International.”

Borland

Tom Triolo
Vice President, Human Resources – 2009

“At Borland Software we were attempting to do a great deal, as our resources became increasingly limited. It became important to bring our executives to together to re-visit strategic goals as we could not possibly operate “as usual”.

Michael met with our team to challenge us to think about our goals in a disciplined way, around value accretive activities that were to be prioritized objectively. Michael led us through a series of facilitated meetings to establish the highest level goals around operational efficiency, operating margin, employee commitment, and market position / customer intimacy. Michael then worked with Erik Prusch, our CEO and our team to develop a goal cascading methodology that we were able time implement globally within 60 days from establishing our goals at the highest level. The Performance Scorecarding method (OGTM) was unbelievably simple and efficient, as well, the individual goals and metrics were able to set in Success Factors and every single manager and above had goals set that were directly descended from the executive scorecard. An un-planned benefit was that we conducted team goal setting meetings and teams were able to collaborate about goals and metrics we have seen a great deal more clarity and openness in resource sharing and teaming.

This OGTM / Performance Scorecarding method is the single greatest innovation in goal setting I have ever seen. It is amazing and I will bring it with me as a competence, thanks Michael.”