Norton Lilly case

Norton Lilly International: Written Case Norton Lilly is an international shipping agency. They have 37 regional offices, which provided service to ships in 70 ports located in North America, Caribbean, Pacific, and the Middle East. Their services consist of booking freight for export, clearing inbound cargo with U.S. customs, fueling vessels, restocking vessels with supplies and provisions, and arranging cargo-handling services. The company started way back in 1841, 150 years ago to this case’s time period, starting with John Norton. In 1907, the company expanded to include the Lilly family. In 1925, the company expanded to become international, with the opening of a Norton Lilly office in Panama. In 2010, Norton Lilly is the market share leader. 1 Norton Lilly has been successful as a company for their entire 150 years of existence. This is an achievement by itself. Most companies are not continually successful for more than a decade, with economies, struggle to compete, technology advancements, and leadership/ownership. The one thing that stands out about Norton Lilly is the overpowering emphasis on having successful leadership in the company. When Norton Lilly slowed and had a $2.6 million net loss in 2006, they looked at what had been successful, and because of outside acquisitions of agencies, a lack of focus on bottom-line performance, and a poor focus on operational performance, they began a turnaround. Starting with good leaders, Norton Lilly used an executive board of 9 to spread a new, focused strategy of overall performance, and utilized these committee members as the leaders for their regions. Norton Lilly, however, has some downfalls. Because of the new emphasis of a “balanced scorecard” and “KPI”, the performance needed to be tracked, and with there being over 37 regional offices and 70 ports, interference was prevalent. Tracking performance is one achievement, but utilizing the information and using it to improve future performance is