Small Steps, Epic Announcement.

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One of Canada’s brightest business minds has just joined Spyder Works.

Jeff Holland started as a manufacturing engineer who cut his teeth at Toyota. Then Honda hired him to be a Product Launch Leader, and then he became a manufacturing problem solver and troubleshooter for McKinsey & Co., jetting around the world to rescue troubled factories. Later he led the process and innovation performance practice in Canada for Accenture, and then he joined McKinsey – AGAIN! – to specialize in Operations and Organizational Transformational Change.

And now he’s become Spyder Works’ Vice-President of Organization & Operations.

You can see our opportunity. A seasoned pro like Jeff wants to work with growth-minded clients who don’t fear the future. You understand that ongoing technological and market disruption create big opportunities for organizations with the right mindset, processes, and aligned, positive teams.

Jeff is smart, funny, personable and modest, and he really wants to help. He’s totally about achieving great outcomes for clients. So, we want to keep Jeff busy with challenging projects that require all his skills in innovation, process improvement, organizational change and leadership development.

If you’re a market leader striving to stay on top, Jeff is eager to assist. Backed by Spyder Works’ deep expertise in business strategy, innovation, intrapreneurship, marketing and customer experience, Jeff can help you get ahead and stay there.

Here’s more about Jeff:

  1. He calls himself a “recovering” engineer, because he’s a people person.
  2. He loves to play guitar and banjo, and used to play the mandolin. His secret ambition is to make guitars for a living.
  3. He really cares. Ask him about the week in April 2014 when he flew around the world and saved nearly 3000 jobs. He’d been asked to monitor a plant in China that was scheduled to be closed. Just before leaving, a colleague asked him to visit an open-pit mine in South Africa that needed to reduce costs by 30% – and expected to cut 1500 jobs. Cut a long story short: after one day at the mine, he saw that a few organizational changes could slash costs and save all those jobs. Then he spent three days assessing problems at the manufacturing plant in Guangdong. He saw that their problem wasn’t manufacturing, but an undisciplined ordering process back in North America. “It was one of the best plant sites I’d seen in 10 years,” he says. “I gathered evidence to show that the planning and scheduling people were killing the plant. We postponed its closure, and it’s still going strong today.”
  4. Jeff still likes problem-solving. Even better, he enjoys helping and transforming organizations. “I want to work with companies that are growing, and people who are growing.”
  5. What’s the secret of a good client relationship? Jeff says great relationships are built on
    trust and openness. “I like situations where I have their back and I can feel they have my back. Where we can have truthful conversations in a risk-free environment. Don’t hold back. If you tell me exactly what you think and what you’re feeling, we can get down to business and solve the problem sooner.”
  6. Jeff is a true believer in design thinking, the fuel that powers Spyder Works. “To me, design thinking means two things. 1: Focusing on all the systems in an organization that need to be understood and integrated. 2: I want to be able to design into organizations the agility to anticipate what could happen, instead of what has happened.”
    People like Jeff don’t come along every day. As our CEO, Ken Tencer says: “Jeff Holland helps us expand Spyder Works’ impact, translating high-level corporate strategy all the way to the production floor or the customer’s loading dock. His work across five continents also helps strengthen Spyder’s international footprint, which already extends across North America and to Europe.

“But he works fast, so we need lots of projects to keep him busy.”

If you have bottlenecks to clear, new strategies to carry out, or questions about the future, give Jeff a call at (506) 852-1422. Or email jholland@spyder.works. Help us put off that guitar factory as long as we can.

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