Success Story

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About the company
Since its founding in 1965, Wilson-Mohr, Inc. has grown to become a leading solutions provider for process control products, systems, and repair. Wilson-Mohr provides products and services to several industries, including Chemical, Oil & Gas, Petrochemical, Utility and Pulp & Paper. The company also provides solutions and products to engineering contractors and integrated suppliers that work closely in these industries.

Wilson-Mohr has over 130 employees and serves customers from 12 offices spanning a 10-state geography.

What was changing?
In the late 1980s, Wilson-Mohr’s original owners were approaching retirement and the organization was facing a time of transition. As new CEO Dennis Floro came on board, he realized that the company couldn’t be satisfied with the status quo—it needed a successful growth strategy that would serve not only its customers but also its current employees and the generations of employees to come.

Dennis notes, “We knew we’d need to make some changes going forward, but one aspect of the original company we wanted to build on was its people orientation or culture. Wilson-Mohr has always put its employees first. In simplest terms, “A company is its employees and how they own their job.”

That’s a philosophy Wilson-Mohr has worked hard to maintain. In the years since Dennis’s arrival, management has promoted employee committees and encouraged employee involvement, not only in the business of Wilson-Mohr but in volunteer and civic activities as well. The employees have responded enthusiastically. However, as the company continued to grow and expand, management realized they needed employees to be not only participants, but active partners and drivers in building the company’s culture of change.

To further complicate the changes taking place, Wilson-Mohr faced the challenge of operating in a narrow but highly changeable market. Says Dennis, “We basically provided burner and boiler control products and systems. When the market did well, and plants had money for upgrades, we did well. When their budgets struggled, we struggled.”

What did they do?
Dennis and his management team knew the company needed to diversify in order to better withstand market swings. The company has grown from $3 million in revenue in 1988 to $50 million this year, with a future goal of becoming a $100 million by 2015. The company began looking at broader opportunities to provide process controls, not just for boilers but throughout plants and in field instrumentation. In 1997, Wilson-Mohr developed a comprehensive strategic plan. Wilson-Mohr started by adding new lines of products and then in 1999 they began acquiring companies. To date Wilson-Mohr has successfully integrated five companies that have helped add to the diversification they were looking for. Wilson-Mohr now has expertise in Burners and Blowers as well as HVAC parts and Building Automation Controls.

About three years ago, the company began looking for a more formalized, structured approach to help integrate the culture of Wilson-Mohr into the new acquisitions as well as get rid of roadblocks that were preventing them from their goal of $100 million.

Drawing on its core philosophy of involving employees, the company decided to seek an outside expert to present a keynote address about change at an upcoming employee meeting. The company was set on working with a partner who had extensive experience. Notes Dennis, “It gets very lonely trying to drive change by yourself. It’s important to hear from people who have been there.” Wilson-Mohr spoke with a number of organizations, and was ultimately led to Spencer Johnson Partners (SJP). Dennis recalls, “We were impressed by the fact that SJPwas working with large, credible, high profile companies. We concluded that if this approach was good enough for those companies, it was good enough for us.”

The initial keynote address went well. Says Dennis, “The sales meeting presentation made people aware that change was happening, and that one person can’t change another person. Everybody is personally responsible for how they react to and handle change.”

Wilson-Mohr then asked for additional training, and SJP began conducting Gaining Change Skills workshops for employees and Team Tool training for company leaders. Several sessions have now been conducted, and every employee in Houston, the company’s headquarters, has completed the training.

What results have they seen?
The results have exceeded expectations. Says Dennis, “It’s been an unbelievable thing to watch. It’s always exciting to watch people come into a room with their arms all folded up, and then watch them gradually relax. By the end, we are all laughing at ourselves and identifying with others who are in the middle of the change process. People move to the realization that they really do control how they feel.

“The training really does show people how to walk through this, and because they participate in it, they own it,” Dennis continues. “If we have any regrets about the skills and process they taught us, it’s only that we didn’t meet SJP back in 1997 when we first developed our strategic plan. But now we are making up for lost time!”

Says SJP consultant Curt Garbett, “The thing Spencer Johnson Partners likes best about working with Wilson-Mohr is that their people have done it and internalized it. They are also asking for continued help, coaching and guidance because they know it will make a difference in their success.”

What’s Next?
Wilson-Mohr next plans to take the training to its Denver, Salt Lake and Phoenix branches, and additional presentations and training sessions are planned to drill further down into the change process and provide additional knowledge and tools. Says Dennis, “Our goal is that a year from now, when employees face challenges or obstacles, these skills are so ingrained in them that they go directly to the tools they’ve acquired—and that those tools become the business standard on how we deal with change.”