Case Studies

Real organizations. Real alignment. Real results.

Transforming a 125-Year-Old Manufacturer from Friction to Flow

The Challenge

When Michael Lowe stepped into the CEO role at AB&I Foundry, a 125-year-old manufacturing company in Oakland, California, the organization was in distress. Union employees were threatening a walkout. Tension between the foundry floor and office staff was escalating. Executive leaders were fragmented, reactive, and misaligned. Operational performance was declining—downtime had increased, safety incidents were rising, and quality had deteriorated.

The company had shifted from a legacy of people-centered leadership to a rigid, profit-first culture. Trust had eroded. Engagement was low. The “us vs. them” mindset was pervasive.

The Intervention

The transformation began with a focused executive DeepAlignment™ retreat involving seven senior leaders. Through structured facilitation, truth-telling, and accountability work, the executive team confronted their own leadership gaps, communication breakdowns, and cultural blind spots.

For the first time, the team aligned around:

Shared responsibility for culture
Clear behavioral standards
Collective ownership of performance

Over the next 18 months, ten additional DeepAlignment™ sessions were conducted across departments, engaging approximately 250 employees. Cultural alignment reached critical mass.

The organization then convened 25 cross-functional leaders to define a Compelling Future, reframing the company’s identity from transactional manufacturing to purpose-driven impact:

From “We build pipe”
To “We create clean and safe communities for families to thrive.”

Leadership development, coaching, communication training, and collaborative planning practices were implemented to reinforce the shift.

The Results

Within three years, AB&I Foundry achieved measurable, sustained impact:

11% increase in EBITDA
Seven consecutive best financial years in the company’s 125-year history
40% improvement in Employee Net Promoter Score
6% reduction in safety incidents
Significant reductions in downtime
Increased cross-functional collaboration and execution speed

Beyond metrics, pride, ownership, and trust were restored. Team meetings became collaborative. Planning processes became inclusive. Recruiting and onboarding improved.

The Outcome

By aligning leadership behavior, restoring human connection, and activating collective intelligence, AB&I moved from cultural friction to operational flow. Under Michael Lowe’s leadership, the company did not merely recover. It achieved the strongest sustained performance in its 125-year history.

Rebuilding Culture to Unlock Performance

The Challenge

When Mark Willett assumed leadership of Hydrant & Water Works Manufacturer, a 140-year-old industrial organization, the company was weighed down by years of cultural fragmentation.

Deep silos and entrenched “us vs. them” dynamics had taken hold across departments. Communication was guarded, trust was low, and collaboration was limited. Employees largely operated from a transactional mindset, focused on completing tasks rather than contributing to a shared outcome.

This environment created significant operational drag. Coordination across functions was inconsistent, problem-solving was reactive, and overall performance suffered from persistent “frictional loss.” Disengagement had become the norm, limiting both accountability and innovation.

The Intervention

The turning point began with aligning the leadership team. Through a facilitated DeepAlignment™ and Compelling Future, leaders engaged in candid dialogue to address misalignment, rebuild trust, and establish a unified direction.

This work clarified three critical shifts:

Leadership as a collective responsibility, not individual authority
Culture as a driver of performance, not a byproduct
Accountability rooted in shared outcomes, not functional silos

With alignment established, leaders defined a renewed organizational foundation, articulating a clear vision, mission, and values centered on stewardship, precision, and shared ownership.

From there, the transformation extended into the organization. Employees were empowered to lead over ten cross-functional initiatives aimed at reshaping how work was done, including:

Structured hiring and onboarding for cultural alignment
Skills development and performance systems tied to growth
Safety and accountability practices driven by peer ownership

These efforts created new patterns of collaboration, breaking down long-standing barriers between teams.

The Results

As alignment took hold, performance began to improve in tangible ways:

2% increase in plant productivity through reduced downtime and smoother coordination
More reliable handoffs and stronger cross-functional execution
Greater consistency in leadership follow-through and goal attainment
Noticeable gains in employee engagement, ownership, and pride

The improvement in productivity reflected a deeper shift, removing internal friction and enabling people to work as a coordinated system rather than isolated units.

The Outcome

The Hydrant & Water Works Manufacturer’s transformation demonstrates that sustainable performance gains begin with cultural alignment. By unifying leadership, engaging employees in the change process, and redefining work around shared purpose, the organization moved beyond fragmentation to a more integrated and accountable way of operating.

What had once been a siloed, transactional environment evolved into a culture where people saw themselves as contributors to a larger mission, unlocking both performance and long-term resilience.

Unlocking Innovation Through Leadership Alignment

The Challenge

At a 25-year-old embedded safety technology company, strong technical expertise and a history of successful products were no longer enough to sustain market leadership. Despite deep intellectual capital, innovation had stalled. Product development lagged behind the market. Unwanted engineer turnover was high. Onboarding new talent was ineffective.

These issues were systemic. Misalignment within the executive team created friction that drained energy from innovation and redirected it toward managing internal conflict.

A lack of psychological safety, defensive leadership dynamics, and over-reliance on centralized decision-making slowed execution and eroded accountability. Even prior implementation of EOS failed, as leaders avoided difficult conversations and did not hold one another to standards.

As a result, the organization became stuck, unable to translate capability into performance, and increasingly disconnected from its core purpose: ensuring people travel safely.

The Intervention

The transformation began with a comprehensive DeepAlignment™, designed to address the root cause: leadership friction.

Through structured facilitation, open dialogue, and diagnostic assessments, leaders surfaced long-standing tensions and rebuilt trust. The intervention expanded beyond the executive team to include 25 leaders across the organization, forming a unified leadership system.

The shift focused on three core leadership capabilities:

Accountability: Moving from passive alignment to shared ownership of outcomes
Self-Regulation: Replacing defensive and reactive behaviors with intentional leadership
Ownership: Empowering leaders to act decisively, reducing dependency on centralized authority

By aligning leadership behavior and expectations, the organization released previously “trapped” energy, redirecting it toward product innovation and execution.

The Results

Within one year, the organization experienced measurable and rapid improvement:

Unwanted engineer turnover decreased from 27% to 6%
Product development shifted from stalled to market-leading innovation
A global strategic sponsor was secured, accelerating growth and credibility
Hiring and onboarding effectiveness improved, increasing retention and early success

These gains were driven by a restored connection to the company’s mission,“people travel safely”, which aligned teams and accelerated cross-functional collaboration.

The Outcome

With leadership aligned and accountability embedded, the organization transitioned from internal friction to focused execution. Innovation capacity was restored, and the company re-established itself as a market leader.

To sustain this shift, the company institutionalized its progress through an internal Online University, transforming tribal knowledge into scalable, accessible learning. This reduced onboarding friction, accelerated time-to-productivity, and supported long-term growth.

Ultimately, the case demonstrates that innovation is not limited by technical capability, but by the effectiveness of the human system behind it. When leadership alignment is achieved, performance accelerates and competitive advantage follows.

From Governance Breakdown to Scalable Impact

The Challenge

At a 25-year-old land preservation agency, a strong mission and long history masked growing internal dysfunction. Leadership structures had become misaligned, creating confusion between governance and operations. The Board increasingly intervened in day-to-day decisions, while the General Manager lagged both operationally and emotionally, leaving a vacuum in leadership.

Employee morale declined as uncertainty grew. Staff felt unsupported, decision-making slowed, and accountability weakened. At the same time, funding began to stall, reflecting a loss of external confidence in the agency’s direction.

Despite deep commitment to the mission, the organization had fallen into a “devotion gap,” focused on protecting land, but lacking the leadership systems needed to effectively lead people and scale impact.

The Intervention

The transformation began with a comprehensive 360-degree assessment, designed to surface hidden friction and clarify the root causes of stagnation.

This diagnostic work focused on three critical areas:

Governance Boundaries: Identifying where Board oversight had turned into operational interference
Leadership Presence: Assessing gaps in executive engagement and effectiveness
Trust & Alignment: Measuring cohesion across Board, leadership, and staff

The findings made one reality clear: the existing leadership model could not support the agency’s next phase. A leadership transition, paired with a Role Alignment process, redefined what was required moving forward.

The organization shifted toward a new leadership profile centered on:

Strategic vision and long-term scaling
Relational intelligence and people-centered leadership
Clear authority between governance and operations
Systems thinking to build sustainable infrastructure

This was reinforced through self-regulation training, ConsciousHiring™ practices, and the formation of structured management systems, moving the organization away from reactive decision-making toward a more intentional, learning-based culture.

The Results

As alignment took hold, the agency experienced significant and measurable growth:

Expansion from 7 to 50 employees (7x growth)
Renewed and increased funding driven by greater external confidence
Establishment of formal management structures, reducing dependency on any single leader
Improved employee engagement and organizational clarity
More effective Board governance, focused on strategy rather than operations

These outcomes reflected a fundamental shift from a stalled organization to one capable of scaling its mission with consistency and discipline.

The Outcome

By clarifying roles, strengthening leadership capability, and aligning governance with operations, the agency transformed from internal friction to coordinated execution. The organization moved beyond a personality-dependent model to a process-driven system, ensuring sustainability, succession readiness, and long-term impact.

Most importantly, the agency closed the “devotion gap,” aligning its internal leadership with the importance of its external mission. This alignment created the foundation for continued growth and the ability to protect natural resources for decades to come.

Turning Post-Merger Complexity into Cohesive Execution

The Challenge

Following years of acquisition-driven growth, a 15-year-old commercial real estate firm found itself operating as three separate organizations rather than one unified company. Each regional office maintained its own systems, workflows, and norms, creating a fragmented operating model. Leadership initially approached integration as a technical challenge, focusing on consolidating financial systems, but they overlooked the human and structural complexity underneath.

This led to widespread friction: unclear roles, inconsistent reporting, decision-making delays, and growing change fatigue within the finance team. Departments became protective of their own processes, reinforcing silos and limiting collaboration.

Instead of gaining efficiency from scale, the organization experienced increasing operational drag where complexity slowed execution and reduced the value of its growth strategy.

The Intervention

The organization shifted from a technical integration mindset to a human-centered Alignment Reset, focusing on how people worked together rather than just the systems they used.

The intervention addressed four critical areas:

Role Clarity & Governance: Defined responsibilities, decision rights, and ownership to eliminate ambiguity
Structural Alignment: Clarified who contributes to decisions versus who is accountable for them
Process Standardization: Replaced regional workflows with unified, cross-functional systems
Cultural Norms: Established clear communication protocols and shared accountability expectations

By creating consistency in how work was defined, communicated, and executed, the organization replaced uncertainty with predictability, reducing friction and enabling coordination across regions.

The Results

As alignment improved, both cultural and operational performance shifted:

Decision-making became faster and more precise, with clear ownership
Meetings evolved from reactive problem-solving to forward-looking planning
Cross-functional collaboration increased, replacing territorial behavior
The finance team transitioned from a bottleneck to a strategic driver of alignment

These changes marked a shift from fragmented execution to a more coordinated and proactive operating model.

The Outcome

With the human system aligned, the organization was able to complete its technical integration, successfully unifying financial systems and standardizing data across all regions.

Operational efficiency improved as duplication and inconsistency were eliminated, while employee engagement increased through clearer roles and reduced uncertainty. The organization also accelerated adoption of new processes, shortening the time required to realize value from future initiatives.

By prioritizing alignment over technology alone, the firm transformed post-merger complexity into a scalable, unified operating core, positioning itself for sustained growth in a competitive market.