Leading in Turbulent Times Notes for Leaders

From our blog: TDFinternational.ning.com

2009

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May you live in interesting times.

Traditional Chinese curse

Introduction We are indeed living in interesting times. Many things we thought we knew are looking doubtful or even foolish. But of one thing we are confident: interesting times demand wise and responsible leaders.

Last year, we began a weekly blog addressed to organizational leaders. In this booklet, we are reprinting some of the posts that we think are most relevant to our current economic turmoil.

Among us, we’ve had many decades of experience as organizational managers, executives, and consultants. We think we’ve learned some things, and we hope that what we’ve learned can help you in your responsibilities. You’ll hear different voices in these pieces, but saying words we all support.

If you’re interested in what we are saying, you can ask us to add you to our weekly email list to receive our continuing work. Or join us at our blog site and join the conversation about these important issues:

Email: info@TDFinternational.net

Blog site: www.TDFinternational.ning.com

Web site: www.TDFinternational.net

Let us know what you think.

Jerry Klarsfeld Bill Roberts

Dan Mahoney David Farr

©2009, TDF International. All rights reserved. TDF® is a registered trademark.

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Contents 1. Introduction 2. Contents 3. Hard facts about the soft side of change 4. Our current storm 5. What is ‘adult supervision’? 6. Leading and managing fear 7. How new is new? 8. Change and loss 9. What should not change? 10. Machiavelli for today 11. Endings and beginnings 12. Transitions 13. Radical acceptance 14. From entitlement to earning 15. Cultural evolution 16. Is your culture healthy? 17. Reality and hope 18. Three key words 19. Leaders as teachers 20. Taking care of yourself 21. Who is TDF International? 22. Who contributed to this booklet?

We change, whether we like it or not Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Hard facts about the soft side of change

Change is the mantra of the new century, chanted to justify every action and chanted to explain every failure. We must change, we proclaim; they won’t change, we complain. Our organizations and our lives change willy-nilly when we’re not looking, but whenever we intentionally try to change them, we face disappointment.

The rise of change-talk since the early 1980’s reflects two facts, that change is accelerating, driven largely by technology and demography, and that we are not very good at it.

So what’s wrong? We’ve forgotten that change is human, that people carry out changes, people are subjected to changes, and people live with the consequences. The forces driving change may be impersonal, but change is always human.

And the organizational price of change can be high. We can lose loyalty, commitment, and valuable people. We can lose productivity as we get distracted. We can focus on our internal issues more than upon our customers. People who see themselves victimized strike back as best they can. The prices are high.

Change doesn’t belong to the experts. While there are technical problems in change, change itself is not a technical problem. Change is a human problem.

We need “soft skills” as well as “hard skills” to change our organizations. We need to deal with the human and political issues as well as the machinery and the numbers. We need to create both urgency and hope, to sell persistently, to communicate consistently, and to listen patiently. We need to grasp the fears and hopes of those around us. These are tasks we can master. They are human tasks, and most of us, after all, even in the organizational world, are human.

We need leadership.

Manage processes, but lead people.

John Kotter

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Our current storm

There are many kinds of “change.” Some changes we initiate, some we don’t. Some we control, some we don’t. Some we desire, some we don’t. Some are constructive, some are destructive. What all changes share, however, is the need for leadership.

Much of our theory and rhetoric around organizational change focuses on innovation – the kinds of change we initiate to improve the products and services we deliver to our markets. And innovation is always important.

But right now, the bigger problem is the tsunami of changes swamping many organizations, overwhelming their capacity to manage. We used to encourage leaders to sail their organizational ships to new ports, or at least try out new navigational equipment. Now the problem is that the ship is foundering in a storm.

This is the turbulence we live in. Turbulence is change, but unlike innovation, it is not change that we choose and it is not change we control. The current collapse of the credit markets is the most obvious example, but there are many others. These changes don’t come from our plans, they come from our nightmares. Here we feel like targets, not agents, out of control, confused, and frightened. That – in larger and smaller forms – is the challenge to leaders right now.

So, how does leading in turbulent times differ from leading innovation? Here’s our short answer: turbulence demands adult supervision. We need to put on our grown-up faces. Grown-up leadership isn’t important for start-ups; it usually gets in the way. This is different. Look around your team; who has put on their grown-up faces? We’re not suggesting that any of us are irresponsible or immature. Well, perhaps some of us. We’re suggesting that we need to shift how we lead.

So, how does leading in turbulent times differ

from leading innovation? Here’s our short

answer: turbulence demands adult supervision

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What is ‘Adult Supervision’?

We’re using the term ‘adult supervision’ with some humor, but we think you know what we mean. We’re talking about the people who take responsibility for both themselves and others, who stay calm and focused, and who help others stay calm and focused. People who focus on reality – and not on their own fears and losses – and who focus on actions that will make things better.

Let’s make a list:

Adults accept responsibility for themselves and for others. This last part is crucial. Adults do not shout, “You’re on your own!” This may be the hardest part of being an adult.

Adults accept that change happens and there is no way back. You can only go forward into the unknown.

Adults accept that their control is limited, but that there is no use worrying about that. They choose to focus on what they can do. They don’t focus on blame – they focus on action.

Adults accept that dangers must be faced. Pretending that everything is okay or will soon be okay is dangerous fantasy.

Adults understand that fear is inevitable, but that fear quite easily becomes the greatest problem. They work to stay calm and stay focused.

Adults know that others are looking to them and depending on them.

Adults offer realistic hope – the possibility that action is possible and fear doesn’t need to win.

This is the kind of leadership that we need.

Does it sound insulting for us to talk about “adults” and “responsibility”? A critical part of your responsibility is to know your people, and adults are what your people need now. It is what we all look for in a storm.

Now let’s start with our need to manage fear and our capacity for perspective.

Management is doing things right;

Leadership is doing the right things.

Peter Drucker

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Leading and managing fear

A few years ago, one of us was a passenger on a small plane in South Africa, sitting next to the pilot as he flew us through a storm. The thunderstorm and winds were raging and evoked elemental fear even in an experienced flyer. What we learned was to watch the pilot. He seemed calm and he seemed to know what he was doing. That made all the difference and our fear subsided.

So, what are some lessons to help each of us manage our own fears and that of our followers? Well, the primary lesson is that your people need you to be that pilot – calm and looking like you know what you’re doing. Imagine how the story would have gone if the pilot had looked frightened and uncertain.

So how to do that? Pretending and denying don’t do the job. 1. Explicitly face your own fears. Name them and anticipate the

worse consequences. Then get real. Are monsters or barbarian hoards attacking; is there food on the table tonight; are your loved ones safe? In other words, is there need to be hysterical or doomed?

2. Confront the reality of your organizational situation, yet never lose faith. What action is possible? What action will help?

3. Now, focus on your followers. Acknowledge their fears and allow them to feel heard. That’s part of the reality and you need to acknowledge the reality in order to act effectively within it.

4. Remember that you have likely had more time to deal with the changing realities than your followers. Don’t expect them to be in the same place you are.

Then continue flying the plane in the storm giving them the confidence this craft will land and it will land safely. We’ll have more to say in the following pages.

“Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence. If you’re in control,

they’re in control.” Tom Landry

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How new is new?

In addressing change, don’t lose perspective. In the midst of accelerated change, the temptation is to get either hysterical or utopian. Mass media encourages the first and politicians the latter. Historians do neither. Historians seek perspective, and so should we.

Change always disappoints the dramatists. Things rarely are as bad as we fear and never as good as we hope. It helps to look out from our office doors to see if there are either monsters of destruction or angels heralding the arrival of the Kingdom. Probably everything is much like it was a few days ago. When you get home look up and down your street. Not much has changed, right? At this point, there is enough to eat, adequate shelter and clothing. In short, vaccinate yourself so that you will not get hysterical or utopian.

There is no such thing as radical change when individuals or organizations struggle to adapt to new circumstances. Even in the midst of the bloodiest revolutions, their leaders always have to deal with old thinking and habituated behavior. Change is nearly always incremental at every level of the human enterprise.

When change is cooking in an organization, it is critical to carry forward the best of its history as the stabilizer of the organization --- and only change those things that survival dictates.

There is no Old Order and New Order except in the pickled brains of the alarmist and the visionary. It’s always an amalgam of both and it does not lend itself to polarities as a way of thinking.

The past is gone; the future is not yet here. What do I do in the present?

Practice perspective. Perspective calms.

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Change and loss

The key to understanding our human response to change is to understand the importance of loss.

People are wired to be more sensitive to possible loss than to possible gain. There’s a large body of research here – much of it on stock market behavior. As we approach changes, we are more sensitive to what we might lose than what we might gain. We might lose a sense of security, we might lose colleagues we value, and we might lose our sense of competency – knowing what we’re doing.

All change means loss. We lose something in every change. It’s not change that we resist – it’s the losses. So what are you afraid of losing? What are your people afraid of losing?

For yourself and for your people, you need to sort through these fears, separating what is real and what is not. Many of our fears are not real, and we need to free ourselves from them. But some of them are real, and we need to accept that and prepare. In both cases, we need a dose of reality.

What have your people lost? What are they afraid of losing? Ask them. You cannot lead effectively if you do not know your people’s fears – and hopes

The point is to move toward hope, toward possible gains, but first we have to be honest about our fears. In the end, hope is the answer to fear, but only if it accepts the reality of the fear.

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“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of

their people in their time.”

John Kenneth Galbraith

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What should not change?

The idea of change has achieved cult status. Airport bookstores are stocked to the ceiling with books proclaiming that your organization needs to change, that you need to reinvent your business, and while you’re at it, you should get a new haircut. Consultants – including us – have made fine livings preaching the gospel of change. Managers at every level have learned to profess their willingness to change directions without pause and to change the tires on moving buses.

But change is a false idol. The business of business is not change; it is delivering products and services to the market at a profit, serving the customers, the stockholders, and the employees.

Large-scale change programs are disruptive. They shift the focus of the organization from building products and serving customers to the internal operations of the organization. To the degree that any organization is focused on its internal processes, that organization is dysfunctional.

Sometimes this is necessary. You have probably noticed that when you are ill, you become self-absorbed and your energies are devoted to getting better, not to accomplishing your usual tasks. Large-scale change is like that.

Your business requires a stable platform.

One key question that every leader needs to ask is “what should not change?” Most

organizations would be better served by stability programs than by change programs.

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Machiavelli for today

“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more uncertain of success nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution, and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new ones.”

The Prince, AD 1513

Why do people cling to the past? One reason is simply that they know how it works – they know the rules, how to succeed, and where they fit. That’s a lot to give up

The challenge is creating stakeholders in the new order and neutralizing or eliminating those holding onto the old way. But how? Well, you either change the people, or you change the people.

The key factor is time. Building collaboration and broad support demands time; it is an educational process. You need time to change people, but it’s the best way, because it also builds belief and commitment. Teaching is one of the undervalued leadership skills. But it’s what adults have always done, isn’t it?

If there is no time – if the urgency is too high – then your path is going to be more painful. You are going to have to change people. You’ll have to identify the people who will fight to stay in the past, and you’ll have to remove them or isolate them. This is the hard way, and this is why it’s always best to act early.

Building commitment and buy-in requires time. Don’t expect commitment if you haven’t

invested the time. If you haven’t got the time… harder choices face you.

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Endings and beginnings

What can the great film Casablanca teach us about turbulence and change? It can teach us that we must say goodbye before we can say hello.

If you have not seen Casablanca, stop immediately, get the DVD, and watch it. This film is famed for its ending – for Rick sending Ilsa away with Victor and then walking off into the fog with Louis to join the French Resistance, saying the great final line, “Louis, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

Through most of the movie, Rick was stuck, trapped. He’d had his heart broken and was trapped in his own bitterness. Not until he finally said goodbye to the past, goodbye to Ilsa, could he move toward the future and say hello to new possibilities.

Rick’s nightclub was populated by people in transition, people who had had their old lives ended by the extraordinary storm of the Second World War. And the choices they faced were between hope and despair, between a future that does not yet exist and a past that no longer exists. But the great lesson is that until we can acknowledge that the past is past – until we can say goodbye – we cannot move ahead.

Bill Bridges, in his wonderful book Transitions, describes the human response to change as moving through these three steps - letting go, uncertainty and confusion, and new beginnings. We must start by letting go – and this is a challenge to leaders. How do we help people let go? We become frustrated and impatient when people cling to the past, but how can we help them?

You must help them identify what they are losing, and accept that the past is over; the future has begun.

Beginnings depend on endings. William Bridges

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Transitions

Saying goodbye to the past does not create the future. It only makes that creation possible.

Between the past and the future lies that frightening period when you have let go of one trapeze, but you have not caught the next one. You are in mid-air. This is Bridge’s “neutral zone.”

The key revelation in this is recognizing and accepting the "Neutral Zone": a seemingly unproductive time-out when we feel disconnected from people and things in the past and emotionally unconnected to the present. Yet the Neutral Zone is really a time of reorientation.

How many times out of the wasteland endings have we ended up in a better place? E.g. "If I had not been fired from ‘x’, I never would have ended up here”; the ended romance that led you to a happier place; the financial crisis that led to the reinvention of your Company or work group.

It is enlightening to just realize and accept this "neutral zone" as not a period of finality, but rather as a period of transition. I will not be lost forever. It is up to me to look for external signs and internal signals of what my "new beginning" will be. It is painful but also allows me to be the most creative.

Transitions are confusing times, but they are also opportunities to try new ways of operating.

Leaders must find these opportunities.

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Radical acceptance

Leadership requires difficult judgments: who can help the organization now and how can they best contribute? And who cannot help the organization now?

TDF talks about the “radical acceptance of ourselves” and the “radical acceptance of others”. We are who we are. We need to know our strengths and base our leadership upon them. And we must know our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, so that we can manage them and not let them damage ourselves or others.

Use this concept as a lens when looking at your people. Are they using their strengths? Are they managing their weaknesses? How does this affect our organization? Does she have the talents, the skills, and the character to get the job done? Is she in the right seat on the bus; should she ever be on the bus?

Make your assessment and be truthful with yourself about the gaps you see between the job that needs to be done and the strengths of the individual in that role. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to put people into a position where they can succeed. If the gap is too large, it’s best for you (and for that individual) to act quickly. As the old saying goes, “You can’t teach a pig to sing. It annoys the pig and it doesn’t work!”

In business, it’s about execution-getting the job done and having the right people in the right seats. Don’t avoid making tough choices about who should be on the bus.

As leaders, we have to judge our people

honestly, particularly in turbulent times. How can they best contribute?

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From entitlement to earning

It’s not uncommon to encounter employees who feel that they are “entitled”. It happens in certain work environments more than others (e.g., government or union-based positions), but the potential for this to happen is widespread. But in a storm, this attitude is disastrous. You can’t allow it.

One technique that is very effective is a forced staff assessment based on key behaviors, skills and traits that have been deemed essential for success in that operation, a “calibration” if you will. Done effectively, it points quickly to the potential and shortcomings of each individual. The outcome is to determine what is developmental and what is “bottom quartile behavior” that needs to be removed. Others see quickly what behaviors are being rewarded and who is being let go. There is no room for entitlement here.

Another tool is fear. Fear is a tremendous motivator that a leader should never hesitate to use in the right circumstances. I’m not talking about walking around with a big stick banging on desks. Rather, it is utilizing current events to drive home the point that entitlement will not exist here.

Examples include leveraging impending layoffs due to economic situations, even if they do not affect your direct team. Show them what is happening, and up the urgency by stating what is required to keep your business unit and you in the game, which employees the company will keep and why; certainly not those who are just running-in-place.

Or, since an employee who is being let go because of poor performance is usually very evident to their peers, make those actions and the reasons that those people are no longer around apparent to your team. It doesn’t need to be a direct threat for them to understand that they will need to modify their own behavior in order to maintain their position.

As a leader, how do you move someone from a position of “entitled” to one of “earning”? In a storm, no one can just be a passenger.

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Cultural evolution Executives love to announce that they are going to “change the culture.” But the accumulated lessons of the past are not to be discarded lightly or whimsically. Cultures do change, of course, but they change gradually and in response to new and compelling experiences that drive needed changes, not mere words.

Culture is the most powerful force aligning and organizing the organization. Culture achieves this alignment largely by shaping employees’ and leaders’ perceptions of opportunities, risks, fears and hopes that drive the organization: Who are our customers; why we are successful; who are our real competitors; how we are different; what changes threaten us; and what are the possibilities we can seize.

Every leader must recognize the limits of his or her ability to reshape the organization’s culture. New slogans, taglines, or mission statements cannot outweigh decades of experience and learning. But culture is not the enemy of change; it is simply the enemy of unnecessary change. What a leader can do is support a healthy culture that continues to learn.

Successful organizations have widely varying cultures, just as successful people have varying characteristics. There’s not one best way to succeed, but there are predictable ways to fail. The hallmark of a healthy culture is that it learns from experience and adapts to a changing world. Unhealthy cultures act on denial and fantasy, and in the end, that always fails.

A culture that is alive and learning will thrive. It will change what needs to be changed, but it will only change what needs to be changed. In our drive to respond to every urgency, we often lose track of what is most important, and this is where your culture will support you by reminding you of what is most important and what must not change.

The hallmark of a healthy culture is that it learns from experience and adapts to a

changing world.

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Is your culture healthy?

How do we judge the health of a culture? There are three central characteristics:

Is your organization focused on the world or on itself?

Does your organization encourage dissent and diverse voices?

Does your organization systematically draw out the lessons of both successes and failures?

These are all essentials of learning – actively seeking information and trying to understand it.

Let’s start with external focus. Unhealthy cultures – whether from fear or arrogance – buffer themselves from the world, acting as if they have nothing to learn from competitors or customers. But your opportunities and your risks lie in the constantly moving world outside your walls. Healthy cultures actively engage their worlds. It is never a good sign when the only people talking to customers are the lowest paid people in the organization.

Dissent is also essential. Good leaders surround themselves with people who show that they can think and will say what they think. We need people to push us outside our comfortable boxes. Everybody claims to do this, but it is hard. Groupthink, conformity, and getting along are much easier.

Reflecting on successes and failures is even more difficult. Experience is useless if you don’t learn from it, but there’s never enough time to learn. Not long ago, after successful merger integration, we tried to get the key participants to figure out why it went so well, since the track record for M&A’s is pretty discouraging. But of course there was no time – there’s always something new to do. But bouncing like a pinball from event to event is not leadership.

There can be no excuses for continued denial and fantasy.

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one

most responsive to change

Charles Darwin

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Reality and hope

Fear is an important part of our equipment, an important adaptation that drives some of our best and most valuable actions. Or it can be consuming, immobilizing, and destructive. The difference lies in whether we focus on the fear itself or on the actions that the fear calls us to perform, on whether we focus inwardly on this horrible feeling or outwardly on performing.

The two key words here are reality and hope.

Reality. Since fear is part of your reality, acknowledge it, but also look at it carefully. Some of it is real, but some of it is fantasy. Start sorting the real from the fantastic. Many of our fears are like a child’s monsters under the bed. There are real monsters, but they’re probably not under your bed. Of course, you have to look to know that. Test the reality. Learn what is real and what is not. This is the first act of courage fear requires: look at the reality.

Hope. But courage also needs hope, which is why we need encouragement. This comes from knowing there are things we can do; we are not helpless. Action is possible. You have confronted troubles before and you have mastered them. You can do it again. You’ve looked at the reality and you know what needs to be done. You aren’t helpless. The reality and the hope go together. We need hope to confront hard realities. And we need the realities to guide our hope into useful action.

And you are a leader. You encourage others to deal with their fears, to test the realities, to sort reality from fantasy, to identify sensible courses of action, to see where they can change the fearful realities, where they can act from hope. You do not hide harsh realities behind false hopes, but you build hopes based on a shared sense of the realities we face.

Learn from yesterday, Live for today, and

Hope for tomorrow. Albert Einstein

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Three key words

As you talk with your people about the storms of change, there are three key words that you need to use as your mantra:

What?

How?

Why? These three words are what your people want to know and need to know.

What? What is the reality we confront? What is going on? What is the brutal truth? What is often frightening, so we avoid it or downplay it so that we won’t scare our people into either immobility or flight. You need to help them sort the reality from the fantasy, just as you’ve had to do for yourself. And you have to trust them to handle reality. To help with that, you need to give them two more words – How and Why.

How? How are we going to respond? How are we going to handle this? What’s the plan and what do I need you to do? If you want to avoid immobilization or flight, you have to help people see the actions they need to take. Fear is fine, if it motivates constructive action. How gives people the constructive actions they can take.

Why? Why is this going to help? Why should I do this? Why is probably the most difficult of the words, but it is also the most important. As a rule of thumb, people want to do the right thing both for the organization and for themselves. They also want to believe that you are trying to do the right thing for the organization and for them. But they need reasons. Otherwise, they’ll simply do what they think is right – which is usually what they have always been doing. Help them understand Why you are asking what you are asking of them, Why you are taking the actions you are taking. Why does what neither What nor How can do alone: Why builds buy-in and commitment.

WHY?

HOW?

WHAT?

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Leaders as teachers

One of the finest acts of leadership we ever witnessed was done by the leader of a credit card collections unit, a former high school teacher. His unit was struggling because the company was growing rapidly and he had many new and inexperienced managers at every level. His response was to develop a one-hour teaching presentation, in which he personally walked all of his managers – in small groups – through an explanation of how the credit card business works, what happens when you slide your card through the scanner, how the company makes money, and the role of collections in the profitability of the company. Elementary stuff.

The impact was amazing. Even experienced managers had light bulbs go off. They saw how what they did fit into a larger picture. They understood policies and strategies that had always seemed arbitrary and annoying. And the unit began to perform better.

Psychologists talk about two kinds of knowledge maps. In the first – the point-to-point map – you know a fixed sequence of actions that you follow. You go straight for one mile, turn left, proceed for two miles, turn right, etc. The problem is that if there is construction or an accident – any kind of turmoil – you won’t know what to do. You’ll be lost. The other kind of map is a full map, so that if one road is blocked, you can take another. It may take longer, but you’re not lost. The first kind of map is fine if nothing is going to change. But something is always going to change.

Your people need to be learning. It’s the best preparation there can possibly be for change. And it’s your responsibility.

“Teaching is more than imparting knowledge; it is inspiring change. Learning is more than

absorbing facts; it is acquiring understanding.” William Arthur Ward

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Taking care of yourself

Leaders have to spend time focusing on themselves as well.

- Secure home base! Make financial security a top goal for you and for your family. A leader of a risky change effort who can easily be leveraged personally can't take the risks necessary to his role.

- Surround yourself with committed loyalists who will tell you the bad news as well as the good news. (When these folks compliment you, don't swallow it without chewing well.) These loyalists to you must be equally loyal to one another, meaning that they must be candid with each other. And you must return their loyalty as persons and as a team - especially when they come under attack from the outsiders.

- Choose people for the change team who have varied skills and styles from you and from each other. Your personal effectiveness is more important over time than your personal comfort.

- Find some friends who have been in or are currently in the same canoe with you and are not part of your organization or its relational networks. Change efforts leave casualties and scars. Minimize those for you somewhere other than overloading the family.

Spread your dependencies. If you have dependencies confined too narrowly to one source of love, to one source of information, to just one vendor et al, you are in trouble and too vulnerable. Work very hard at this -- define your dependencies on paper and take a hard-nosed look at your power and lack thereof. It is likely that where you have spread your dependencies you have increased your strength. It’s an additive not a get-rid-of strategy. Stay strong when any one of these dependencies yells bloody murder when you become less dependent. Understand them but remember not to cave in.

You’ve got to be kidding! Other than not getting involved, here are a few tips

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Who Is TDF International? TDƒ International provides practical, actionable tools and solutions that have direct, dramatic, positive and lasting impact on organizations. We work closely with each client to provide a customized mix of programs, services and tools necessary to help your organization function better than ever. Our goal is to help you create an environment that will sustain itself long after the engagement. . TDƒ’s programs give people insight into how they work together, provide a common language and foster a team mentality that recognizes individual strengths and vulnerabilities. But TDƒ goes well beyond a methodology and assessment. We become your partners, using our expertise in human behavior to move your organization more quickly and efficiently into your future. Our consultants are skilled senior personnel who know how to listen and navigate the treacherous waters of organizational dynamics. We know how to handle complex problems and complex personalities. And perhaps most importantly, we have a personal commitment to helping each client succeed.

For more information – call us at 410.551.6460 Or email us at

Info@TDFinternational.net

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Who contributed to this booklet? Jerry Klarsfeld, President, TDF International

Jerry has run his own consulting firm since 1979, focusing on organizational change, executive consulting, and pre and post-merger integration. Jerry holds a Masters Degree from St. Mary’s University and an Advanced Graduate Degree in Applied Behavioral Science from Johns Hopkins University.

Bill Roberts, Director of TDF Products Bill has worked as a consultant and trainer since leaving college teaching in 1985. Trained in clinical psychology at Purdue and Duke, Bill has worked as a psychotherapist, a professor, and a consultant. He is the co-author (with David Farr) of Finding Your Place: The TDƒ Map and other TDƒ books and materials.

Dan Mahoney, Managing Director For the last 38 years, Dan has worked in the technology and banking industries, with his last position being the Chief Research and Client Officer of Forrester Research, Inc. He has personally applied TDƒ methodologies in building effective organizations. He has a BA in Mathematics from Marist College, graduate study in Computer Science from New York University and the MBA program at Santa Clara University.

David Farr, Board Member David is the creator of TDƒ. David has spent most of his adult life as an organizational-development consultant and as a senior executive in a Fortune 500 corporation. He is the co-author of Finding Your Place: the TDƒ Map; the TDƒ Resource Book; the TDƒ Pattern Inventory, and other TDƒ products. David has degrees from Baylor and SMU.