Daniel F. Dooley rocks the boat at MorrisAnderson, stays afloat
MorrisAnderson was a mess and it was largely going to be up to Daniel F. Dooley to fix the dysfunctional turnaround consulting firm.
“Historically, the firm had never had one clear leader,” Dooley says. “It was fractionalized into various geographical segments that didn’t collaborate with one another. A cynic would say they competed with one another.”
One of Dooley’s challenges was that while the then 25-employee firm was having problems, it was still profitable. So there wasn’t a lot of motivation to make big changes to a firm that many didn’t even think was broken.
“We hadn’t adapted to what was going on in our marketplace,” Dooley says. “The people we were competing with were much more professional and much more advanced in marketing and in their ability to convey what they did.”
Dooley needed to shake things up. So he led the way to removing three of the firm’s seven owners from power.
“We terminated two, and one we demoted, and he hung on for a couple years and then left of his own volition,” says Dooley, the firm’s principal and CEO. “We had to change out the management group to some degree and then the second thing we had to do was clearly unite behind one clear leader.”
Dooley was going to be that leader. And he was going to have to take drastic action to get everyone’s attention that change was needed. It wouldn’t work if he tried to tiptoe around the moves.
