3. Engineered Woods

This chapter tells the story of how Engineered Woods transformed itself from a commodity business to a specialty products business, and how all aspects of the organization became aligned when the whole system learned to successfully pursue a new business strategy. The chapter shows how leaders in Engineered Woods recognized the need for a new strategy, and learned to develop, manufacture and market new specialty products. Key to success was the way they addressed the misalignments that occurred at each step in this process. After bringing out a first innovative product, Engineered Woods learned as an organization how to sustain success by changing leadership, culture, systems, structures, measures, rewards, incentives, and practices for learning and knowledge sharing.