Posts from our blog

1. 2009
Leading in
Turbulent Times
Notes for Leaders
From our blog: TDFinternational.ning.com

2. 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.
1

3. 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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4. 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
3

5. 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
4

6. 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
5

7. 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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8. 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.
7

9. 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.
.
“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
8

10. 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.
9

11. 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.
10

12. 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
11

13. 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 quot;Neutral
Zonequot;: 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. quot;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 quot;neutral zonequot; 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 quot;new beginningquot; 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.
12

14. 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?
13

15. 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.
14

16. 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.
15

17. 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
16

18. 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
17

19. 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.
WHAT?
HOW?
WHY?
18

20. 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
19

21. 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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22. 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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23. 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.
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