Dan Ciampa's career began with deep involvement in the foundations of culture change and participation in some of its most formative efforts. In the years that followed, he continually made it more practical and actionable. He spent 25 years immersed in operations management and technical problem solving, continually making those techniques which were designed for efficiency more effective and longer lasting by adding ways to change attitudes & behavior. Throughout his long career, he has concentrated on the people who take on the responsibility to lead during times of change.
Trained at NTL Institute, he first applied organization & management development principles as managing director of a social service agency and as a community organizer; then as a consultant to government agencies and non-governmental organizations and as director of programs to match university & corporate resources to place high-tech manufacturing plants in inner cities. He worked with or for people who had helped create organization & management development and culture diagnosis. As part of a pioneering organization research & development firm (Sterling Institute/McBer & Co), he implemented these approaches in management & economic development projects in the United States and in developing countries.
In 1972, he joined one of the oldest and most highly-regarded manufacturing engineering research, software, and consulting companies (Rath & Strong, Inc.). It was a time when “organization culture” was an unknown concept by most corporate leaders and when operational improvement techniques were mired in old assumptions about what constituted a successful company. As the era of globalization began, Rath & Strong was the first group of operations experts to realize that existing ways of improving companies, some of which it had invented decades before, were not enough.
While a trendsetter in cost effectiveness, information systems, and quality & reliability engineering, it set out to redefine its technical problem-solving techniques by merging with them a new organization culture/leadership practice. Dan developed the first successful approach that bridged both of these forms of advice, directing its application and refinement as it helped hundreds of companies over the next 25 years.
During this period, Dan learned Japanese manufacturing techniques (from two long-time friends of the firm: Edwards Demming & Joe Juran)…and also strategy implementation (from another: Bruce Henderson, founder of the Boston Consulting Group). In the late 1970s, he created one of the first total quality approaches in America and in 1981 oversaw the development of one the first just-in-time practices (precursors of today’s versions of six sigma and of the collection of techniques known as lean enterprise).
In the early 1980s, Dan participated in the early stages of manufacturing automation (through work with clients and as chairman of the Automation Forum) and also in the transition of the computer industry from closed, vertical development to an open-systems strategy. He directed the firm’s manufacturing strategy, industrial engineering, quality & reliability, organization culture, and leadership practices.
He also became an Associate of the British Institute of Management, represented the firm with the Japanese Management Association, and was an adjudicating judge of the American Arbitration Association.
Because his company spearheaded new operational techniques and processes, Dan saw firsthand the effects of different leadership styles as CEOs and senior managers tried to adjust to new competitive realities and new technologies. Because the pace of improvement often accelerated during the transition from one leader to a new one, Dan commissioned research on first-term political leaders, particularly US Presidents, and military leaders during times of intense change. This interest in the leader’s role in directing change and shaping a new organizational culture has informed Dan’s career, including his own 12 years as a CEO. He became Chairman & CEO of Rath & Strong in the mid-1980s. In 1994, he hired his successor and in 1996 turned the firm over to him.
He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard’s Graduate School of Business & Kennedy School of Government, Duke’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate Business School, Boston College, & Boston University.
Upon leaving his company, Dan joined four not-for-profit boards (including National Public Radio and a National Cancer Institute research center) and two corporate boards (an industrial manufacturer and a reinsurance company). In the summer of 2001, he became special adviser to the Office of the Secretary of the United States Treasury. Since mid-2002, he has been an adviser to new or in-place chairmen & CEOs leading their organizations through periods of fundamental change and to boards of directors managing CEO successions.
Dan’s experience in shaping and implementing operations improvements combined with his expertise in organization culture and leadership during times of change give him a unique perspective on the demands facing leaders challenged with improving or sustaining performance. He has firsthand experience with the effects of various leadership styles on the cultures necessary for financial success and has himself gone through the changes he helps others navigate.
Through the years, his wise counsel and practical strategies have helped people in top spots become more effective leaders and to use new technology & operational techniques to improve both the cultures and the performance of their organizations.
