Breaking the Dealership Deadlock

The Issue

Three years ago, a national student transportation giant with 12,000 buses across 25 states made its first foray into dealerships, acquiring a regional player. The plan was simple: cut costs and streamline operations. Instead, the move sparked turf wars and mounting frustration. Incentives pulled people apart rather than together. Sales reps made more by sidelining the parent company, while leaders measured success with clashing scorecards. Under one roof, two teams battled for the same resources.

Beneath the surface, a deeper rift grew. Dealership employees saw the parent company as just another demanding customer—one that paid less and always wanted more.

Our Mission

Transform a six-state dealership from an isolated subsidiary fighting its parent company into a fleet solution engine that would unlock growth across 12,000 buses and 25 states.

Our Approach

We deployed our Forces Framework to expose what three years of integration meetings couldn't. Through our three lenses:

Creativity helped us identify a hidden barrier: compensation structures that discouraged people from collaborating. One sales rep told us, "I do the same work selling to our parent company but make less money. Tell me why I should care about integration?"

Design Thinking revealed a key struggle: parent company contractors urgently needed buses for new contracts, while dealership salespeople were busy cold-calling people in other states. They were in the same company and the same building, but there was no communication between them.

Business Thinking found a problem that everyone had overlooked. The dealership's most profitable service, leasing, was being held back by the parent company's debt policies. The people asking for growth were the same ones blocking it.

We didn't deliver a strategy. We facilitated 12 brutal conversations with employees and customers, then locked leadership in a room for two days until they confronted what everyone knew but wouldn't say.

The Process

The turning point came when we mapped out six forces that were blocking success. Leaders finally recognized the invisible barriers they had been facing for years.

First co-creation breakthrough: We had both teams redesign compensation together. Not HR. Not consultants. The actual sales reps who lived with the broken system daily. They created mixed portfolio incentives that recognized network value beyond individual transaction margins.

The second breakthrough was a constraint exercise. We asked leadership to identify which of their own policies were hindering growth. When the CFO realized that leasing restrictions were costing millions in lost revenue, that was the start of real change.

Third breakthrough: The identity workshop. Instead of forcing the dealership to act like other subsidiaries, we had teams design how different business models could amplify each other. The realization that differences created value transformed three years of friction into a strategic advantage.

Expected Outcomes

This work just wrapped up, but based on our projections and expectations of the work they are doing, we see the following outcomes from this partnership: 

Financial Impact: Revenue growth through aligned incentives that recognize network value. Expansion of the artificially constrained leasing portfolio. New revenue streams from fleet consulting services. Reduced acquisition costs through coordinated procurement power.

Operational Excellence: Extended service coverage using mobile units instead of capital-intensive buildings. Faster emergency response times through strategic positioning. Standardization of parts to reduce inventory costs and improve service speed.

Cultural Transformation: Shifted mindset from competing subsidiaries to complementary capabilities. Compensation structures that reward collaboration over competition. Unified metrics that measure collective success, not departmental wins.

Market Position: Platform approach creating value for external customers and internal operations. Competitive advantage through specialized expertise rather than generic services. Strategic positioning as a fleet solution engine, not just a dealership.

The Truth

The breakthrough that changed everything was realizing that the dealership's biggest limitation, being tied to one manufacturer's buses in just six states, was actually the parent company's greatest untapped asset.

Instead of fighting limitations, they embraced them. The dealership became the parent's center of excellence, leveraging its deep manufacturer relationships to secure priority allocations and exclusive technologies. The geographic restriction? Solved through virtual coverage and strategic partnerships. The product limitation? Transformed into a specialization that commanded premium positioning.

Traditional consultants might have pushed for standardization. We demonstrated that working together in a coordinated manner is more effective than simply integrating. The dealership did not need to be like other subsidiaries; it needed to become something it could not be.

"We'd been trying to force a square peg into a round hole for three years. Copilot showed us we needed to reshape how we thought about both pieces."— Fortune 500 Transportation Executive

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