Building a Company That's Ready to Grow
- The Resultants
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
At The Resultants, we know that taking a founder-built company to the next level requires more than hard work. It requires a shift in focus, from operational survival to intentional strategy.
When Evan Schiebout stepped into the CEO role at Delta ModTech, the company had all the ingredients for continued success: deep expertise, a strong culture, loyal customers, and 200 dedicated employees. What they needed was a system to channel all of that into focused, strategic growth.
Over the past three years, Business Advisor Chad Haldeman and Client Account Manager Chris Fort have worked alongside Evan and his leadership team, helping them build a custom operating system designed specifically for Delta ModTech.
We'll let Evan tell you more.
The Backstory: Wild Entrepreneurism
My dad was the founder. He started Delta ModTech in 1977. He was a wild entrepreneur, and for the longest time, he would go to our salespeople and ask, "What do we sell?” The answer was “Wind!” It was focused on asking the best questions and listening to customers’ needs. We then would sell and design solutions. That philosophy carried us for a long time, and the wind drew us to the web converting niche where we have become industry experts and specialists,
As an OEM (original equipment manufacturer), we design and build custom web converting equipment. The web converting process starts with a roll of paper, plastic, or metal, and converts it into a product.
Every solution is customized to our customers’ needs by using proven solutions to reduce our customers’ risk. We begin by learning our customer’s process, which can often require manual assembly– and we design a higher speed, higher precision, and higher volume solutions.
But as we grew, we knew we had to evolve. Our board put it well: the culture that your dad built allowed you to do some amazing things, but what got you here isn't going to get you there.
The Challenges: Operational Focus and the Daily Whirlwind
We were a founder-led company that lived and breathed customer-centric servant leadership.
We had a highly committed and experienced leadership team that wore many hats in the day-to-day operations having grown up in the organization. Through the Board’s guidance we realized we need to shift our focus away from day-to-day operational things to long term strategic thinking.
We relied on tribal knowledge. And if you rely on tribal knowledge, you rely on one individual, and you're not scalable. We had to modify our go-to-market strategy. We had to systemize our organization based on that knowledge, and we had to hold ourselves accountable as a Leadership Team to our goals and actions. While we did quarterly and annual planning, it was oftentimes not followed through on.
There's a classic analogy about filling a jar. If you put the big rocks in first, then the pebbles, then the sand, then the water, everything fits. But if you start by filling it with water and sand, there's no room left for the rocks.
We were a company that filled our days with water and sand. The day-to-day whirlwind, the firefighting, the urgent stuff. Occasionally we got a pebble in there. But we need to focus on the rocks, and the big strategic things that were going to move us forward.
The Solution: Delta Operating System
Our board recommended The Resultants, and from the beginning, the approach felt different. We weren't handed a generic framework and told to follow step one, step two, step three. Instead, we worked with Chad to build something custom. We call it the Delta Operating System, and it’s designed for who we are and where we're headed.
Building Our Foundation
We started with the tactical but critical work: taking our values, which we all had in our heads, and putting them to pen and paper. We simplified our mission down to our core why: serving people while solving problems. Servant leadership was always core to my father and the Leadership team, and quickly became one of our identified core values, and that clarity shaped everything that followed.
From there, we were able to clearly identify the company's roles and needs. That's a hard thing to do when everyone's wearing so many hats, but we sat down and asked, "What are the most important areas for us to focus on?"
Then we assigned the right people to the right seats. From there, the team became clear, dedicated, and focused.
A True Partner in the Room
Chad has become a functioning member of our leadership team. He's not like a consultant who would come in, tell you everything that's wrong, and say, "Now fix it."
Instead, because he spent so much time with us and got to know our leadership team, he could be part of helping us find the best solution. He's got sharp elbows, and he needs to pull them out sometimes. That happens when you're transitioning from an operationally focused company to one that's working on strategy.
He helped us develop our organizational structure and needs that lead us to hiring seven managers over an 18-month period to build the leadership capacity we needed. He also assisted in the evaluation of some of our key hires and internal leaders.
One of the things I appreciated about The Resultants’ engagement model is that we didn't have to treat it like working with an attorney where you pull out your checkbook every time you meet. Some weeks we needed heavier involvement, other weeks less. It was always focused on what was needed right now. Chad became a close and trusted advisor and advocate (our “Little Helper”).
From Selling Wind to Market Leadership
All of our work with The Resultants brought something critical to light: we needed to stop being generalists and start owning our markets. Through a focused market segmentation initiative, we are reestablishing ourselves as a recognized expert in web converting and material handling for healthcare and industrial manufacturers.
Our goal is to work as a true partner by learning our customers’ processes so we can enable efficiency gains, higher precision, and mutual success.
Our work with Resultants helped create alignment within our leadership team and a new strategic focus. As a result, this is happening now with a higher level of intentionality.
The Outcomes: Equipped to Grow
When we used to hit rapid stints of growth, we were in survival and firefighting mode. Now we're equipped to take that growth on. We have a focused leadership team that is built and ready to move in positive ways when opportunities come.
Working with The Resultants gave our individual strong leaders the tools to grow personally and professionally. They didn't do the work for us but enabled the hard work to happen.
We're getting the most out of our annual and quarterly meetings now, and we have actions that come out of them that are making real results.
We've learned to hold each other accountable, including the team holding me accountable. Because we are all aligned around our most important goals, we have created milestones that lay out the necessary steps to achieve those goals.
And through that accountability, we've built a lot more trust as a team.
“The Resultants didn't do the work for us, but they enabled the hard work to happen. We now have a leadership team that's focused, aligned, and holding each other accountable. We have a real strategy. We have follow-through. And we've gone from a company that reacted well during survival phases to one that’s better equipped and ready to take it on. We've truly felt like we've had a partner from the beginning, and I can't overstate how valuable that's been.” — Evan Schiebout, CEO, Delta ModTech
Take Your Business to the Next Level
Our team of experienced professionals at The Resultants brings a diverse range of skills and expertise to the table, allowing us to provide tailored solutions that address each client's unique situation.
Interested in talking to a Business Advisor about how you can take your business to the next level? Contact us today to book a complimentary Growth Consultation.
