CSX / Tropicana Case Study
The
Organizational Application of Subtle Energy Work
to
Produce Rapid, Measurable,
Sustainable Performance Improvement
Medium Term Consulting Project: 4 to 6 months -- accelerated culture change
Background: Jonathan Rosen has recently expanded his tool-kit to address one of the critical needs of today's business environment -- the ability to implement new initiatives and embrace new success behaviors much more rapidly than ever before.
Ordinarily, new initiatives and success behaviors have to be implemented by employees while they continue to provide goods and services to their customers -- and this often requires such an increased amount of energy and awareness that even the most willing people wind up pushed into burnout.
Access to enhanced energy and awareness is clearly a key success factor in the current business environment.
While our scientific culture has long understood and applied the benefits of coherent energy states, e.g., lasers and superconductors, we have not yet been successful in systematically applying those principles in the arena of human interaction and large organizations. Subtle energy work provides such an application.
A meditation teacher for over 25 years, Jonathan has spent about half his time in India since 1998, working with Swami Kaleshwar and other masters of subtle energy from the ancient vedic tradition of India. The result has been the development of organizational applications of subtle energy management techniques. These techniques enable people to recapture energy that's become stuck in old behavior and awareness patterns that are no longer productive.
Jonathan and his colleague, Bob foxworthy, have demonstrated that rapid culture change linked to measurable and sustainable performance improvement is not only possible, but financially attractive as well. The greatest success lies in combining these energy techniques with a strong focus on measurement which correlates the practice of new success behaviors with rate of innovation and improved bottom-line performance.
A Case in Point -- Tropicana & CSX Railroad
Recent projects with Tropicana Orange Juice and CSX Railroad have produced rapid, dramatic, measurable bottom-line performance improvement and culture change in highly traditional corporate environments.
For 30 years, the relationship between the two companies was strained, distrustful, and adversarial -- which translated into CSX's on-time delivery rate for getting Tropicana's juice from Florida to the New Jersey distribution center of 53%. This put Tropicana at a huge competitive disadvantage, and their only viable delivery alternative was trucking, at nearly 3 times the cost of rail delivery.
Numerous attempts had been made over this 30-year relationship to improve the collaboration and communication between the companies. Unfortunately, the negative behavior patterns persisted, and over time hardened into a negative work environment characterized by poor performance, mutual disatisfaction, and continuous fire-fighting antics.
Using our integrated art & science approach to rapid, measurable performance improvement and culture change, we contracted to turn the situation around in 4 months. After 1 month of discovery and preparation, a kick-off was held, which included about 20 key personnel from each company, ranging from rail yard employees to vice presidents.
TransFormance Theatre was used to rapidly establish shared understanding of the current operating environment on both the cognitive and emotional levels, and to facilitate genuine acknowledgement of the cost to each company.
The solutions had long been fairly obvious, as were the success behaviors that would be needed to implement the solutions -- so why was success in implementation so elusive?
From the energy point of view, we determined that the flow of energy as expressed in the expectations, communications, behaviors and processes of people in both companies had become stuck in a repetitive, negative pattern that kept reproducing and confirming itself.
Using some specifically tailored subtle energy transformation techniques learned from Swami Kaleshwar and the Indian Vedic tradition, we did one 20-minute group process that was designed to neutralize the old negative energy pattern. In this process, energy that had been used to maintain the vicious cycle was recaptured and made available to support the adoption of new behaviors to produce new outcomes.
The result was that the very next day, people started to embrace the new behaviors they had been unable to do for 30 years.
Various organizational development tools were in place to reinforce the new behaviors, and rigorous measurement was used to track the progress in a way that linked directly to bottom line results. Within 2 months, the on-time delivery rate jumped from 53% to 100%, has remained at close to that level for the 2 years that have passed since the completion of our intervention in March, 1999, with the exception of hurricane weeks.
The new work & communication processes results were infused into the self-talk of both companies, by broadcasting a steady stream of the numbers (success measures) and the stories behind the numbers. Throughout this process, the details of how a new culture of mutual appreciation and collaboration was replacing the old culture of blame and mistrust rapidly circulated and took hold in both organizations.
By the fourth month of the intervention, the project had generated an audited, annualized saving of over $1 million to both companies which in itself constituted a 250% return on the cost of the program.
The CEOs of both companies visited the program teams and were literally moved to tears by hearing the authentic stories of partnership and mutual caring that had replaced the old stories of mutual disdain, blame and failure. In a very practical and results-focused way, understanding, accountability and mutual appreciation were becoming dominant in the work environment.
A spirit of "your success is my success" became the modus operandi of the partnership -- a true win/win situation. The 20-minute energy transformation process was repeated at the 4-month project completion celebration, and the results have been sustained and enhanced in the ensuing months since the project was completed.
The CSX/Tropicana win/win partnership has been independently acknowledged in two awards given to them by the Rail Suppliers Association, and Innovation University.