After the Plan: Growth Through Seamless Execution
Once the strategic plan is developed, organizations generally ride a wave of positive energy and momentum directly into the shore of a “now what?” reality. This is the critical point where theory meets action, and seamless execution becomes the final step to achieving growth.
Doug Jaeger, CEO of Ulteig Engineers, shares more about his organization and how partnering with the Prouty Project on the implementation of a strategic plan program management system answers the “now what?” question, and is leading to overall alignment, accountability and growth.
Adrienne: What should everyone know about Ulteig?
Doug: Ulteig is a cool company full of smart and committed team members that love serving our clients. Our tagline is “We Listen. We Solve.” and it’s alive and well in everything we do.
Adrienne: What is strategic growth for Ulteig? And, in your experience, what are some typical barriers to growth?
Doug: For us, strategic growth is all about building and leveraging our potential to expand the business capability and bring unique value to our clients. Over the past few years, our strategy was focused on building a foundation of employee engagement, culture, leadership excellence and client value. With those fundamentals in place, we are well-positioned for accelerated growth.
In my experience, I have seen barriers to growth include lack of specificity in direction, lack of buy-in and belief by the team, and lack of structure, process and accountabilities for effective execution.
Adrienne: Please share more about why implementing a project management system at Ulteig has been a successful way to drive growth.
Doug: As an organization that provides best-in-class program management for our clients, we are committed to making the same investment in program management internally for key initiatives. During our last 3-year plan, we assigned a full-time project manager to guide the effective implementation of our plan, which enabled successful execution. As we launched our accelerated growth plan, we partnered with Prouty Project to build an even more robust program management model. The key elements of this model that are enabling our success are the accountability and tracking tools (charter, project plan, reports, dashboard, etc.) along with a clear governance and communication system.
Adrienne: What will be critical to Ulteig sustaining healthy growth over-time?
Doug: A continued commitment to the investments spelled out in our plan along with high engagement and alignment from our team members.
Adrienne: I would love to hear more about you and you and your leadership journey.
Doug: After spending 25 years leading energy and technical services businesses, I’ve been fortunate to serve as Ulteig’s CEO for the past four years and have truly enjoyed every moment of it. I’m a big believer that leadership is about building a coherent strategy, bringing together the right team and creating a culture of engagement, ownership and enthusiasm for effective execution, and that’s what we’ve been able to do at Ulteig.
Adrienne: Thank you Doug. We thoroughly enjoy working with you and your team on strategic planning and project management and look forward to seeing Ulteig continue to significantly and sustainably grow into the future!