Case study

Improving net profit margin by 32.7% over two years.

gskinner, a digital agency that had enjoyed more than a decade of stable growth and profitability, found itself facing a troubling trend of declining profitability year over year. This trend not only had a negative impact on team morale, but shook confidence in the company’s leadership and raised concerns about the long-term financial viability of the business.

Team interviews revealed a lack of alignment among senior leaders about the cause of declining financial health and what steps would be taken to reverse the trend. The company was also missing essential data, systems, and processes to effectively diagnose, prioritize focus, align stakeholders, and coordinate action across teams to correct problematic areas within the business.

Within a few months, we started turning the business trajectory around and set it on a course to grow profitability by 32% over two years.

*Work was completed while I was Head of Design at gskinner

The company

gskinner

gskinner is a boutique digital agency that specializes in helping tech companies, with a global customer base such as Microsoft and Google, showcase their emerging technologies by designing and developing digital apps and experiences for their brand partners and developer ecosystems.

Small business 6-20 people Annual revenue $1m to $5m Market B2B Business Model Service Growth phase Declining

Chris was instrumental for change in the senior team and strategy.

Lanny McNie

Outcomes

Year 1 Profit margin +17.7% Lead

Beginning with problem diagnosis, goal setting, and strategy. I worked with leadership to implement multiple initiatives and projects that prioritized the biggest bottleneck limiting company cashflow and revenue potential.

Year 2 Profit margin +15.0% Guide

In year two, we shifted focus towards delegating ownership and accountability of business improvements to individual area owners, allowing me to step away from leading, planning, and overseeing every initiative.

Transformation Profit margin +32.7% Step away

We saw consistent improvements in profitability, thanks to the sustained efforts of senior leaders and their teams. This allowed leadership to spend more time diagnosing problems, developing strategy, and supporting the team.

We established a company-wide purpose, mission, and set of values, and weaved them into our hiring, onboarding, performance management, and service delivery.
We cultivated stronger organizational leadership through coaching and mentorship of the Head of Operations and Technical Director.
We implemented leadership and management frameworks that aligned long-term strategic planning with short-term tactical initiatives, effectively coordinating efforts across multiple teams.
We improved operational observability, monitoring, and communication transparency across the company in financial forecasting and project performance.
We enabled the organization to tackle major obstacles and barriers together, breaking down silos while improving cohesion and autonomy of decision-making across teams and levels.
We developed a multi-year focus roadmap designed to eliminate key bottlenecks by prioritizing limiting factors impacting company health and performance.
We designed enhancements to our internal tooling to improve operational effectiveness, including improvements to data capture, accuracy, reporting, and transparency.
We improved everyone’s total compensation.

Services

Coaching Cross-functional leadership, coaching, and mentorship

Together with the Head of Operations and the Technical Director, I worked to cultivate their leadership skillsets and build confidence. We established cross-functional systems and rituals to enable effective collaboration in strategic planning, departmental alignment and support, while improving team engagement, collaboration, and overall performance.

Workshops Strategic planning, problem exploration, and solution finding

As part of the focus roadmap, we designed and implemented a series of workshops and tooling to review, enhance, and coordinate cross-functional initiatives over annual, quarterly, and monthly timescales. The workshops I designed allowed us to explore unique challenges and guide leaders and their teams to develop effective solutions and action plans to overcome specific obstacles.

Consulting Systems, programs, process, and culture

We analyzed the root causes of poor profitability across the company and improved operational observability, designing systems, programs, rituals, and routines while establishing realistic benchmarks, goals, and targets that enabled proactive decision-making, monitoring, and management of risk while fostering a culture of accountability, trust, and support.

Design Tooling design and optimization

Working with team stakeholders, we enhanced the value of time tracking, estimation, resourcing, and project management tooling by exploring the needs of stakeholders and iterating to create and enhance operational effectiveness, data transparency, decision making, and integrate with existing and new standard operating procedures.

Working together

When Chris creates a vision, it is for the company. His visions embody change and the risks that go with it. He puts in the work every day to make them come true.

Matthew Willox

He challenges the status quo when it makes sense!

Trevor Dunn

His leadership makes working with him easy.

Yoon Lee

Leadership as a whole has started to work more closely together to achieve goals.

Christopher Kohanik

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Let’s cultivate leaders in your organization

I'm most proud of developing the leadership capabilities of individuals within the organization, helping them define their practice, build their confidence, and guide them on their journey towards greater success, growth, and job satisfaction, resulting in significantly better outcomes for themselves, their teams, and the business.

If you’re looking for similar outcomes, I’d like to learn more about how I can support your goals and help you and your teams navigate your challenges.

An image of Chris Caldwell in a hero pose in a cyberpunk environment that was generated by AI.