Reflections on My First 30 Days Inside PCA
by Bob DiStefano, Chief Operations Officer, Performance Consulting Associates
It has been a month since I exited retirement and joined PCA as the Chief Operations Officer. I must say I am excited, energized and happy working here, and I already know it was a good decision. I would like share some of my early impressions as a PCA “inside man.”
- PCA has very deep-rooted customer relationships
- PCA uses a streamlined approach to performance improvement based on deep intellectual property
- PCA has achieved sustainable results by focusing on people and knowledge transfer
- PCA’s business model supports a culture focused on quality of life by allowing individuals to take on the amount of work with which they are comfortable
Forty-five years of continuously profitable service to an illustrious list of industrial clients is remarkable.
Most PCA clients have been with us for many years, and in more than a few cases, decades. Dick has an amazing network of close friends in various industries that he has cultivated and nurtured over long periods of time, better than anyone I’ve ever encountered. Many PCA clients come to be clients as a result of an executive relationship that Dick has developed with someone he met in a previous account. As these professionals move during their careers, Dick follows them and stays connected. Since he has been at it for so long, many of these friends have become top executives in client industrial companies, carrying enormous influence in various divisional and plant-level decisions about bringing in consultants. I have already witnessed numerous of these top executives – some of the busiest men and women in the country – dropping everything when Dick calls. They trust him and consider him a peer and a trusted business advisor. It is remarkable to watch. Dick, in his modest way, takes all of this for granted and thinks everybody operates this way. This is among several facets of PCA that give me great confidence in our future.
Other standout achievements include the company’s delivery capability and its industry-specific playbooks which serve as advanced starting points for all initiatives, regardless of industry, and regardless of which consultant is assigned. These vertical playbooks are substantial and impressive intellectual property.
Importantly, the company has enjoyed a reputation for attracting the best, most talented and highly experienced senior consultants in the industry, bar none. Recently, we’ve added some of the best consultants that worked for me at MRG. Interestingly, I think many were looking for a lifestyle company and a place to, in essence, cap off their careers by sharing what they’ve learned over many successful years in industry, while at the same time having some fun in the process. I’ve now had the opportunity to see some of these senior consultants in action with clients and I am impressed, to say the least. This team of professionals, coupled with the intellectual property and Dick’s network, are foundational and represent advantages in the marketplace; ones we intend to nurture, continue, and build upon.
Notably, the PCA delivery model focuses on knowledge transfer and change management. The company’s philosophy holds that changes to our clients’ work processes are required to produce lower cost and higher uptime and MUST be owned by the leadership team and the employees of the client company. It is of no sustainable benefit for the consultants to know the most effective work processes if the company is not willing to implement them. In order for the culture to change and old habits to be supplanted with best practices, PCA concentrates on transferring our knowledge to the client, coaching and mentoring until the new habits take hold, and then quietly exiting, having contributed to the necessary transformation, but not essential to its survival. This facet of the company is admirable and has resulted in strong trust relationships with the clients. They know that we are not singularly interested in maximizing our revenue by prolonging projects or overstaying our welcome. Instead, we seek to optimize client satisfaction by delivering sustainable improvements that provide near-term and long-term returns on investment. In the long run we believe we make more revenue with this model because we are trusted to have the clients’ best interests at heart, and as a result we are reengaged at other plants or in different processes. We favor, and enjoy, long-term relationships with our clients; not projects that are unnecessarily longer term than they need to be.
As we anticipate entry to the post-COVID era, I am sensing an urge to return to normalcy. The vaccines ultimately will be delivered to the vast majority of citizens, giving confidence to companies in reopening their plants to visitors. There’s a feeling of pent-up demand after a dormant year. Many companies can’t wait any longer to attack problems that have been tolerated during the pandemic; now they have to be addressed. Client engagement and activity are palpably higher recently, according to Dick and others at PCA. I have been involved in dozens of video conferences with clients that are restarting projects halted in March of 2020. Many clients who were sitting on PCA assessment reports with solid business cases for recommended gap closure projects, have reengaged in launching those initiatives. While we don’t expect full normalcy to return until mid-year with more widespread distribution of vaccines, there are many things we can do, and are doing today, even under the current travel restrictions.
The PCA office was essentially closed most of 2020 due to the decline in manufacturing activity but some clients continued to engage us and we, of necessity, invented new ways of conducting some of our services remotely. This remote work kept PCA profitable and allowed us time to carefully consider our services and investigate new and improved ways of delivery. While we had some skepticism about the effectiveness of remote work, we carefully chose which activities to attempt remotely, and we built additional intellectual property to make the remote processes efficient and effective. In retrospect, it seems we chose wisely because those remote activities turned out to be very effective. In fact, we are incorporating those remote activities into our standards going forward, and our clients are encouraged that we’ve figured out how to adjust and adapt in certain areas without losing quality or effectiveness.
Make no mistake, much or our work has to take place on-site and we will be spending the first half of 2021 gearing up to serve that pent-up demand. We intend to continue the strong PCA legacy and model of services, and to grow into some new areas of delivery that make sense in terms of helping our clients achieve even better results by keeping our promises to our clients and delivering high quality, effective, financially justified projects, on time and under budget.
I’m thrilled to be a part of this remarkable team!