The Strategic Inflection Point

There are moments that decide the future of a business for decades to come. One of those occurred to my client, Du Pont, in 2003. I had been working with Kevlar, the jewel in their crown, at their Maydown facility in Derry for five years. Kevlar is one of those products that has such outstanding benefits that it almost sells itself. Stronger than steel, a string of the fibre can pull a caravan. Hardly any bullet- and stab-proof jackets anywhere in the world are manufactured by anyone else but Kevlar.

But when Kevlar's sister plant in Derry, Invista, was sold by Du Pont in 2003, I was asked to help the senior team at Invista to manage the transition. Invista makes another popular fibre, Lycra, the polymer used to make so many yoga pants, and is responsible for MAMILs the world over. Invista were acquired by Koch Industries for $4.4 billion. Charles Koch had built what was then the largest privately-owned company in the world. Mining, oil and ranching were at Koch's original core. They had bought Georgia Pacific's paper businessfor $1 billion the year before.

We sat in the room and thought about what was about to happen. A comfortable filial relationship, built over the years, was gone. To be replaced by the unknown. The little we knew of Koch was intimidating. Their first act on acquisition was to cancel all credit, all trust-based budgetary discretion. All bets were off. They were to put everyone through Market Based Management, the proprietary system that Koch used to glue all their acquired businesses together.

The prospects for Invista were daunting. What it came down to that day was the single question: what could they as a leadership group put their faith in as they entered a transformative phase? The answer: their people. The Derry workforce was as good as any in the world. On that would they build their future.

Within 5 years the Derry site was best-in-class in Koch. People wanted to visit to see how they did it. ‘Industrial tourism’ became a bugbear, as their people had to become tour guides and instructors.

That day in the conference room when they faced down their fear and nailed their colours to the mast… their people… was a Strategic Inflection Point.