Case Studies

Case Study Strategic Planning in Education
National Research Tomsk State University (*pdf)

• Request
  The request of the university provost and international consultant was to prepare a report on written and unwritten rules of the university’s organizational culture. The university became a member of the academic excellence program, and in order to grow in international rankings, it needed transformations at all levels of organizational culture (Edgar Schein, 1988): fundamental values, written rules, and behavior & communications.

• Approach
  Hamilton Numbers diagnosed the situation with the current and preferred organizational culture with the organizational culture assessment quantitative method by Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron (OCAI) and the qualitative projective method "Metaphor.”
  Additionally, we conducted 65 semi-structured interviews with the university representatives. Finally, Hamilton Numbers constructed a SWOT-analysis matrix and discussed it with the University strategic group to approve management changes recommendations.

• Result
  In five years, Tomsk state university showed the quickest growth in the global rankings among Russian universities, rising from the 678th to 257th place due to the organizational culture transformation diagnostics and support of the university staff during the implementation phase. Ultimately, Hamilton Numbers identified the main strategic initiatives and dozens of ideas. Multiple prototypes have been designed and queued from these ideas for students, professors, and administrators' engagement.

• Additional Comment
  Hamilton Numbers' employee Natalia Gulius subsequently presented her research results at the Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia), ASEEES (Boston in 2018, San Francisco in 2019, New Orleans in 2021, and in Chicago in 2022), IAFOR (London in 2020) and Syracuse University, each of which received positive feedback. In 2019, the Russian Science Foundation awarded us research grant. Case studies based on the assessment of the seven flagship universities are now in demand by the Russian universities’ provosts (2019-2022).

Case Study Reporting Structures 

• Model Translation
  A Dental Management had their patient funnel trapped on-prem in legacy SAS SQL code and needed to upgrade and transfer it to interact with the cloud data collections. Hamilton Numbers came to the rescue and recorded the entire funnel in T-SQL and automate the process to run daily hands-free.
  Models and programs can be complicated and organizations can be stuck with using old formats as the knowledge or bandwidth is not available to upgrade; or maybe an organization wants to keep the legacy project, but just needs to move it to a new version. Hamilton Numbers will determine what a model was intended to do, how well it achieves its goal, and then design a migration plan to integrate it with your current decision support structure.
• Modeling
  How well can you model your goals and expectations. When an organization wanted to determine how many total appointments they might have, Hamilton Numbers was able to predict the actual value within 1-3%. When another organization wanted to know if a patient would show up to an appointment, Hamilton Numbers was able to determine with > 80% accuracy. Given relevant factors, which you already know, what will be your income this month, next month, or next year? Hamilton Numbers will use analytics to concisely predict numbers you need to know to run your business.

Case Study Reporting Structures: Legal Solutions

• Hamilton Numbers worked with lawyers on two separate civil rights cases in Miami Gardens, FL, to develop graphics and analytics that would assist them to counter assertions made by the defense that stop and frisk methods reduced crime in the city. In addition, Hamilton Numbers demonstrated that being African American posed a significant risk to being arrested or ticketed.

Case Study Reporting Structures: Manufacturing Solutions

• How does one measure utilization in a manufacturing environment?
  Hamilton numbers showed that if you have a time entry at a manufacturing station point, there is enough information, regardless of the number of product paths, to almost completely determine workforce utilization on the line. With some fancy SQL and probabilistic modeling, you can determine how long the product station wait is and how long the process takes. Essentially everything about the path as a product moves through the factory. Furthermore, knowing the wait time allows you to calculate and predict average station downtime.
• Manufacturing Solutions
  How much does one have to spend to measure machine activity on the floor in a facility? In 2014, A company was ready to pay 80K for a new SoC board that would measure analog sensor data and then transform and analyze the data. Hamilton Numbers figured out that the exact measurements could be achieved with an 80$ SoC with an on-board ADC, then load open-source software.

Case-study Communication Management in Gas Industry 

• Request
  In 2010, LLC Gazprom (*video) rapidly ramped up the development of gas fields in Siberia, and the company's management needed help to keep up with the changes and the growing number of employees who needed to become more familiar with the standard procedures and behavioral culture of the company. Additionally, employees with strong hard skills began to occupy management positions, but soft skills - communication, conflict management, and time management - were in their infancy.
  The Provost of our university was asked to develop an intensive (seven days) immersion workshop for new and potential Gazprom leaders on communication, conflict, and time management.
  In 2022, Gazprom, the second company in the world after the United States companies to develop and deliver gas products, celebrated its 45th anniversary, defining the status of the first gas transmission company in Russia. The company transported 40 billion cubic meters of gas for the first time.
• Approach
  Hamilton Numbers developed a system of training and handouts separately for operative managers and strategic leaders practicing real case studies, active listening skills, verbal and non-verbal signals of a communication partner and their typical work situations.
• Results
  Five standards and handouts were developed for company employees to familiarize themselves with when hiring. The week-long training has become part of the culture of adaptation of leaders with high potential in the company. A year later, 256 employees were trained. One hundred twenty-four employees were promoted.
• Additional Comment:
  LLC Gazprom is an industrial company with a clan-based, "military" type of organization. The author of the business training on communications signed an agreement on the non-disclosure of work details.

Case-study Communication Management in Nuclear Industry 

• Request
  In the summer of 2012, the State Nuclear Corporation Rosatom (*website) revised the standards of organizational communications among young employees in connection with the tragedy at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant in Japan on March 11, 2011.
  The traditional summer scientific camp for young scientists of the corporation was devoted to developing intelligent solutions in the nuclear industry, use in residential buildings, manufacture of food packaging, military technologies, and the latest scientific chemical developments. A feature of this summer camp was mixing groups of young scientists from different topics to increase communications productivity between other areas of the nuclear industry.
  The summer camp for corporate employees needed facilitators for small groups of developers.
• Approach
  Hamilton Numbers' representative used classic small group communication facilitation techniques based on an hourly guide for a five-day summer camp. Courses included me-we-I, Viennese Café, and coaching question-style discussion.
• Results
  During the seven days of the summer camp, 1200 employees in small groups of people from different areas of the Nuclear Industry could concentrate their efforts on one joint project and prepare individual and team presentations evaluated by international team experts.
  Five projects have become start-ups and a new direction in the nuclear industry. They were supported by a budget of 2.5 million rubles each.