Klapper Brian - The Q-Loop: The Art & Science of Lasting Corporate Change

Praise for

The Q-Loop and Brian Klapper

The Q-Loop is the rare how to book that provides a step-by-step action plan for achieving transformational change. In my 30 years working with Six Sigma, ISO, and Kaizen, Ive never seen anything as effective at driving operational efficiency as the work pioneered by Brian Klapper. In addition, because of his work with us, our customer service scores and employee satisfaction are rising. We are far from finished but what I will have in the end is a culture of process improvement and an organization that is much more scalable and operationally efficient.

David Castellani, CEO, New York Life Retirement Plan Services

This book takes the change bull by the hornsit gets directly at what management needs to do to tee up and implement productive change, rather than announce yet another change program.

Ian MacMillan, PhD, the Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; Director, Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, Wharton Graduate School of Business

Brian Klapper weaves together two seemingly unrelated disciplines, the hard science of operational transformation with the art of behavioral change, to create a breakthrough approach to corporate transformation. The Q-Loop is an innovators guide to accelerating transformational change and more importantly, making it stick. If you are involved with any aspect of business transformation, you will read it, reference it, and use it as a daily companion.

Tom Kelly, CEO, Silpada Designs

The Q-Loop combines two critical elements for achieving real resultsa practical methodology rather than a bunch of theory, and a unique approach to accelerate implementation. Change is hard and the Q-Loop model helped us meet our aggressive goals.

Dave Benson, CIO, Progress Software

Weve employed the Q-Loop for roughly three years now and can honestly say that it has positively contributed to our culture of change by enabling ownership and accountability to be better distributed throughout our organization. The approach has also generated a consistent series of relatively quick wins, which has directly translated into dramatic bottom-line results. This has reinforced our vision and motivated participation in the next project and the one after that. The Q-Loop provides an effective vehicle upon which to embark on a journey that demands patience, candor, and endurance.

Drew Lawton, senior managing director, New York Life Investments, LLC

The Q-Loop treats the management of organizational change in a new and powerful way. It concentrates on the often overlooked requirement for vitalizing the organization to see the need for the change and to become enthusiastic about the future offered by it.

David J. BenDaniel, PhD, Don and Margi Berens Professor of Entrepreneurship; Professor of Management, Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University

If you are in a leadership role in any organization, The Q-Loop is a must-read to drive your business and team to cultivate a strong culture of creativity and adaptability. More than just great guidance and insights, the book is presented in a very user-friendly, interactive style that enables you to immediately apply Q-Loops valuable concepts into your organization a start down the road toward a successful and lasting positive transformation. As a bonus, its also thoroughly enjoyable and fun to read!

Janet Tsai Dargan, EVP, Strategy and Operations, Sony Pictures Television

A must-read for anyone interested in delivering enterprise-wide change. The Q-Loop is a unique yet highly pragmatic approach for crafting solutions that are actionable, achievable, and sustainable. We have used the approach in our portfolio companies with great success.

Neal Pomroy, partner and managing director, DLJ Merchant Banking

First published by Bibliomotion, Inc.

33 Manchester Road

Brookline, MA 02446

Tel: 617-934-2427

www.bibliomotion.com

Copyright 2013 by Brian Klapper

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Klapper, Brian.
The Q-loop : the art and science of lasting corporate change / Brian Klapper.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-937134-52-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-937134-53-2 (ebook : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-937134-54-9 (enhanced ebook : alk. paper)
1. Organizational change. 2. Employee motivation. 3. Leadership. I. Title.
HD58.8.K564 2013
658.4'06dc23
2012050832

For my family

Contents

Foreword

Another book on corporate change? I cant deny that question ran through my thoughts when Brian Klapper, founder of The Klapper Institute, told me he was authoring a book on the topic, called The Q-Loop . It didnt take more than a second, though, to remember whom I was talking toand to realize why this book would be so different from the rest. Thats because Brian is unique. And so is his Q-Loop approach. In fact, its positively revolutionary.

As former senior vice president and CFO of The Hartfords Wealth Management business and former Senior Managing Director and CFO at New York Life Investment Management, I experienced first-hand the way the Q-Loop delivers rapid-fire, permanent results. At The Hartford, we had tried a variety of other approaches, but when Brian entered the scene, everything changed. His expertise, passion, and distinctive approach inspired real transformation like we had never experienced. When I began work at New York Life, I had no question about whether Brian could help.

By that time, Brian had developed his one-of-a-kind Corporate Lab, designed by him along with visionaries from the MIT Media Lab. The Corporate Labtwo exciting, intense, and unbelievably rewarding daysgot all of the participants to view our company and our approach to solving problems quite differently. He essentially provided us with a new set of lenses with which to view our business. Within days of The Corporate Lab, using the skills we learned, we kicked off an aggressive mandate involving a series of challenges that had eluded us for far too long. Because the ideas came from our associates, and not from an external consultant, the implementation spread like wildfire throughout the organization. Right away, we kicked off two more high-profile projects.

Our management team then wanted Brian to run more Labs, launching new projects. Each one was more successful than the last. In the end, the company took over and we were able to run the Lab ourselves as many times as we needed it. ROI for these expensesmultiples of what we paid. And it all seemed so shockingly simple!

Brians methodology is unique. By engaging team members on a project from the outset, the team is immediately vested in meetingand in most cases exceedingtargeted results. Using the Q-Loops proven methodology with the expertise and buy-in from the teams, we were able to deliver truly outstanding results that were sustainable and that added tremendous value to our organization.

Simply put, the Q-Loop results in a grassroots mindset shift to embrace and execute high-level strategy. It creates cross-department alignment and pull for a transformation agenda. The reason the Q-Loop works is because ideas come from the experts within the company, not from outside consultants. Whirlwind results then create a desire to do more projects. Each time, we saw real results in under 30 daysnot months or years.

Whats amazing is how closely and accurately this book captures Brians ability to get to the heart of the matterfast. Prior to reading the book, I was skeptical that Brian could ever capture the depth and complexity of the Corporate Lab and the entire Q-Loop experience. He did it! This book truly reproduces the transformational process of the Q-Loop. With practical advice, lots of interesting facts, and actionable, hands-on methods, not only is this book the most helpful Ive read on the topic, its a darn captivating read from first page to last.

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