Interview: Maurice Dutrisac - The Inglis Case: The Complete Restructuring of a Company Using Requisite Organization Methods

I was fortunate to work with Dr. Elliot Jakes and Dr. Stephen Clement on a project for English Limited, which was a large appliance company in Canada that was bought by Whirlpool. English was having all sorts of issues, quality issues. Sales were diminishing. They had a lot of dealers, small dealers, but the power retailers were taking over, and English was not strong in that area. So we were given an ultimatum by Whirlpool to become number one in Canada. And surpass Camco, which at that time... G Campco, and at that time G Campco was $150,000,000 in sales ahead of English. So we put in a full Requisite Organization program where every function was restructured. Every person for every new function was looked upon, whether they had the cognitive capability to do that job. So as a result of this restructuring, for the first time in the history of English, every job was filled by an individual who could work at that level. And then we saw the power, the magic. Once we did that and we had the right strategy, we were able to steal $150,000,000 of sales from our competitors. And within two years, we grew by over 30%, actually restructured as well while we were doing that, which is amazing. Because many CEOs, because of the downturn... And presence that I talked to, they're saying, well, even if I have better people, my sales went down by 20 or 40%. The market's not there. But that's totally wrong. If you have the right people... Right organization, the right leadership practices, they'll find that business. It may not be in the market segment you're in now, but good people will do some magical things. And that's what Requisite organization can do for you. Going back, a great book by Jim Collins, Good to Great. He says if you have good people on the bus, you can do some outstanding things. So in a lot of ways, the Requisite program and the Jim Collins Good to Great program work together hand in hand.