Dan’s brand of advice & counsel has been forged through several career phases, but three major themes have remained consistent in his activities, research, and counsel:
- CEO & senior leadership transition
- Continuous operations improvement
- Organization culture change
To summarize …
1960s
- Trained in organization development philosophy and the management development programs that formed the core of culture change as it has been practiced over the last 40 years.
- Applied them in poverty & economic development programs as social worker, community organizer, and advisor to government & non-governmental organizations.
- Participated in and applied research on leadership during times of change in new business startups, community action agencies, and the military.
1970s
- Trained in manufacturing (in particular, manufacturing engineering, production technology, quality & reliability engineering, distribution, and product development) at the leading operations research/software/consulting firm that had invented many of the common traditional operations approaches.
- Created first successful merger of organization culture change with operations improvement, the necessary combination for continuous process improvement.
- Created firm’s leadership & manufacturing strategy practices.
- Learned Japanese manufacturing techniques in mid-1970s and became a leader in converting American industry to become more flexible, lean, innovative, customer focused, and consistently high quality.
- Created one of the first total quality models followed by one of the first just-in-time services in America (the precursors to today’s versions of six sigma & lean enterprise programs).
- His first book published on implementing new strategies.
1980s
- Became Chairman & CEO, changed strategy & directed company growth into new markets. Changed culture to increase innovation and focus on consistently superior implementation of improvement efforts.
- Through government & private companies, led pioneering programs in automation, systems integration, and open systems strategies.
- Oversaw creation of early supply-chain management programs.
- Research on capabilities of leaders during times of dramatic change.
- Created a unifying framework for company-wide excellence…combining best approaches from organization & culture change, company strategy, operations improvement, and leadership.
- Wrote one of the first books on leading company-wide operational & organization improvement.
1990s
- Began pioneering work on impact of leadership transition on innovation, operational effectiveness, and culture change.
- Managed own transition … hired successor and worked with him for 18 months. Then, Dan left firm after 25 years, 12 as Chairman & CEO.
- Became senior adviser to leaders managing organizations through times of significant change … served as a director on seven boards.
- Introduced first model for CEO transition in third book.
Since 2000
- Adviser to the senior leaders of only several organizations at a time … in particular, those preparing for or in new positions with a change mandate or in-place leaders of high-performing organizations who have decided fundamental changes are necessary to extend financial success.
- Codified first framework for leaders to effectively take advice in fourth book.
