Resume targeting a specific role, that of the Chief Culture Officer, in a new, engaging format.

1. Robert A. (Bob) Ross
Résumé

2. 2
YOUR CHIEF CULTURE OFFICER CAN TRULY SUPERCHARGE YOUR
COMPANY
​ Cast properly, the role of the Chief Culture Officer bridges a company’s high-level visioneering
with the way the work is actually being done and the value actually being added. This is the
conduit by which the company’s recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training and management
processes are aligned with strategy and vision.
• Is there truly “meat on the bones” of our
lofty vision statement?
• Can we draw a straight line of logic from
“we tighten this bolt only so much and no
more” to our vision statement? Does the
guy who is tightening the bolt understand
it?
• Do we look first to ensure that a
candidate has the skills down to a “T” and
hope he or she is a good fit?
• Or, do we first look for cultural fit and a
baseline skills fit, knowing we can fine-
tune a candidate’s skills?
• Have we built our training program to
support that assertion?
• Is every job or position designed to
support our overall value delivery
system?
• Have we struck the ideal balance of
wages, training, and job design to support
our vision?
• Would the ones doing the work and
adding the value agree?
• Would our customers agree?
The Chief Culture Officer asks tough questions like:

3. 3
BUT ASKING QUESTIONS IS THE EASY PART
The Chief Culture Officer must ensure alignment of words, of deeds, of ideas, of processes,
and of organizational structures.
Any grouping of ideas or things, whether
visioneering documents, teams of teams,
procedure manuals, or marketing materials,
should be logically ordered such that they
visually represent a pyramid. The org chart
is a particularly apt example. The idea at
the top of any structure should summarize
the ideas below. Similarly, ideas below
should support the bigger idea above.
When the ideas, teams, or processes
described toward the bottom of the pyramid
support the ideas above, we say that the
lower-level ideas are in alignment with the
higher level idea.
A company’s “visioneering statements”
should follow this recipe. So many experts
out there recommend distilling the company
message down to a mantra, a tag line, a
catch-phrase, or a vision statement.
However, companies tend to sanitize their
statement and wash out all the meaning to
meet some recommended word target
(typically 3-7 words). This leaves the people
not involved in creating the statement
scratching their heads.
If your company falls into this trap, it should
seek to put real “meat on the bones” by
creating a hierarchy of statements such
”vision”, “mission”, and “core values”
statements to give more color commentary
and context to the overarching catch-phrase.
The lowest-level process steps documented
in your procedure manual should not only
support the higher-level process steps, but
they should also support the higher-level
vision statement and organization structure.
A company should also design its
management systems, measurement
systems, and reward systems with clear
hierarchical structures…they must be in
alignment with and support the higher-
level vision, organizations, and processes.

4. 4
I AM THAT IDEAL CHIEF CULTURE OFFICER
​ Continuum of Business
I have driven strategy across the literal
spectrum of types of organizations:
​ Size – Fortune 50, Fortune 500, medium
(75-employees), my own print shop with
seven employees, and my own consulting
practice
​ Industry – Computer manufacturing,
lighting fixture manufacturing, printing,
electrical contract manufacturing, non-profit,
consulting
​ Function – Sales, marketing, finance,
accounting, operations
​ Process-Oriented
I help businesses design and document
processes where the work actually happens,
always with an eye toward using such
documentation for training employees.
​ The Work
I have done the work, whether mixing ink on
the shop floor, on my hands and knees
painting floors for 5S Kaizen events,
developing spreadsheets for analysis,
developing presentations for investor
relations, writing and delivering performance
reviews, developing new service offerings,
creating strategy maps and balanced
scorecards, drawing value stream maps, and
making sales calls.
​ I have managed the employees on
manufacturing floors and in office settings.
​ I have mentored the managers who
manage the employees.
​ My Own Work
I develop and deliver my own workshops on
a range of business topics including vision-
casting, leadership for the shop-floor
manager, sales systems, and presentation
skills.
​ Speaking
Organizations frequently ask me to speak at
their meetings and facilitate their training
workshops.

5. 5
Most people have not
had training in
communications, logic,
and business problem-
solving. Sometimes,
coaching people in these
areas is all that’s needed.
I MENTOR MANAGERS TO BECOME THE LEADERS WE NEED
​ While at the YMCA
I was asked to facilitate a member-
engagement program called Listen First,
whereby I trained YMCA staff in listening
skills via two half-day workshop sessions
and periodic check-ins over a three-month
window.
​ I mentored YMCA managers, even my
own direct supervisor by introducing
some of the strategy frameworks I’ve
picked up over my career to assist them in
problem-solving.
​ I mentored many YMCA youth (teenage)
staff in getting along in an adult world
and what leadership means. I learned a
thing or two from them, as well.
​ In my own leadership coaching
practice (Highland Ross)
The core focus of my practice is coaching
small business owners in leadership,
functional disciplines (sales, marketing,
operations, finance, etc.), and personal
effectiveness.
​ I have created the curriculum and all
presentation materials for a twelve-
month, twelve-topic leadership
development workshop series. This
program is targeted at businesses with at
least 10 employees and a leadership
team.
​ I have launched a quarterly planning
workshop series which gives business
owners an operations review and
strategic planning retreat which is
largely absent in the world of small
business.

6. 6
OFTEN, MY COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT MIGRATES TOWARD
LEADERSHIP ROLES
​ Former Board Member
I served on the oversight board of Manos de
Cristo, an Austin TX United Way agency
serving low-income people with free dental
care, ESL classes, and a thrift shop. This
was my first true volunteer experience
working with people in need.
​ Youth Soccer Coach
I coached many youth soccer teams in
Conyers GA (Rockdale Youth Soccer), and
Winston-Salem NC (Optimist and Twin City).
I earned my F-level coaching certification
working with players up to age 12.
​ Neighborhood Swim Team Manager
I led a program of 120+ community pool
swimmers. I was responsible for hiring and
mentoring the coaching staff, coordinating
communication with the parents,
coordinating volunteers throughout the
season, and organizing the season-end
celebrations.
​ Summer Swim League President
I served as president of a 10-team summer
swim league. I led efforts to codify swim
meet rules, facilitated volunteer and coach
meetings, organized the annual
championship swim meet, ordered supplies
and led the merger between our 10-team
league and a cross-town 7-team league.
​ Youth Lacrosse Coach
I coached several lacrosse teams with
Winston-Salem Lacrosse, ages 10 – 15. I
earned the Coach Education Program Level
II certification from US Lacrosse.
​ Lacrosse Club Treasurer
I served on the board of directors and as
treasurer of the local youth lacrosse
organization.
​ Local Kiwanis Club President-Elect
I am currently a member of the Twin City
Kiwanis Club, where I sit on the board of
directors and head-up efforts to visit other
clubs in our district to share best practices.
I have been named president-elect, a term I
will fill for one year, whereupon I will take on
the role of president of the club.

7. ​ The following pages
represent my work history
chronologically. I have
dedicated one page per
company, to provide much
more context than a
traditional résumé.
Work
History

8. 8
MY WORK HISTORY HAS PREPARED ME FOR THIS ROLE
Dell
Acuity Brands
Lighting
Int’l Minute
Press
Salem
Technologies
YMCA
Piedmont
Candy
Company
Highland
Ross
‘93-’01
’02-’05
’05-’10
Jan ‘11-Aug ‘11
’13-’16
Apr’16-‘Jun ‘16
‘Nov ’16-Present
Rapidly promoted through world’s #1 PC vendor, most
notably to Office of the Chairman Strategy Group and
Global Alliance Business Manager
Promoted from Sr. Analyst to
Operations Consultant
As Owner, improved lead times
from 15 to 3 days and A/R from 30
to 20 days; created operations
manual, employee recruitment and
retention system
Value Stream Manager
Sports Director, developed volunteer coach
recruiting and retention program, initiated volunteer
background check process and partnership with
Positive Coaching Alliance, led Listen First employee
workshops
Production Manager
Principal, Certified Professional Business Coach,
develop curriculum and all materials for leadership
workshops, develop all branding including website, all
sales, all admin, facilitate all coaching and workshops

9. 9
DELL COMPUTER CORPORATION: 1993 – 2001
​ Field Service Logistic Financial Analyst, 1993 - 1995. I created monthly journal
entries to adjust Dell’s warranty accrual and inventory reserves based on a forecasting
model I developed.
​ Services Marketing Manager, 1995 - 1996. Working with marketing, sales, and field
services teams, I developed service offerings to be bundled, or as upgrades to Dell’s
standard warranty.
​ Call Center Planning Manager, 1996 - 1998. I managed a team of analysts in
developing forecasts, budgets, and ad hoc analyses. I developed a capacity requirements
model for forecasting technical support call volume, service parts, and labor dispatches.
​ Office of the Chairman Strategy Consultant, 1999. Selected for a one-year
assignment, I provided analytical support to the top three executives with Dell on topics such
as competitive analyses, investor relations and services offerings.
Global Alliance Business Manager, 1999 – 2000. I built processes to ensure a
smooth outsourcing relationship between IBM’s Global Services unit and Dell’s regional
business units.
​ Worldwide Operations Strategy Consultant, 2000 – 2001. I developed business
case recommendations for worldwide supply chain optimization. I led cross-functional
teams in manufacturing site selection analyses and logistics process engineering. This
position was eliminated in 2001 due to the tech downturn.
Applied Learnings
How to create and present a compelling
business case, based on Barbara Minto’s
The Pyramid Principle and Bain &
Company’s approach
Project management, based on Project
Management Institute best practices
Six Sigma methodologies
The power and application of Operations
Research methodologies
Call center queuing theory based on
Erlang modeling
Product reliability engineering and
modeling based upon Weibull distributions
What “strategy” truly means in a corporate
context
Expert-level Excel and PowerPoint skills
Dell gave me amazing, varied experiences in field logistics, call centers, manufacturing,
administration, and corporate strategy during the exciting tech boom of the ’90s.

10. 10
ACUITY BRANDS (LITHONIA LIGHTING): 2002 – 2005
Strategic Enterprise Development Senior Analyst, 2002-
2004. In this role, I provided analytical support to Acuity’s Lighting
Group executive leadership team. I partnered with each business
unit to create their Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecards. I
performed ad hoc financial and operations analyses. Through
developing and presenting one such business case, I identified $17
million in manufacturing cost reduction by moving an acquired
product line to a low-cost work center.
Director, Operations Strategy, Jan – Feb 2005. During this
short-lived tenure, I managed the portfolio of the manufacturing
organization’s Kaizen events and developed tools to assist the
Kaizen event teams. This office was disbanded shortly after its
inception due to cost pressures exacerbated by a commercial
construction downturn.
Applied Learnings
Lean Manufacturing principles
Six Sigma methodologies, which became more
structured since my time with Dell
How to create Strategy Maps and Balanced
Scorecards, based on tools, research, and workshops
developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton
How to create a compelling Value Proposition and
Value Delivery System, based on engagements with
Michael Lanning of The DPV Group
Starting as an analyst supporting the Executive Leadership Team on a range of corporate
strategy and manufacturing initiatives, I was selected to join to the manufacturing
organization’s Lean Implementation Office.

11. 11
INTERNATIONAL MINUTE PRESS: 2005 – 2010
As owner of a franchise quick print shop, I led all aspects of our value delivery system, including
lead generation, order fulfillment, cash collection, and developing customer loyalty.
After I had been caught up in another
reduction-in-force, this time with Lithonia
Lighting, my wife and I decided to move
closer to my parents in North Carolina and
to purchase a business. I had previous
experience in a large commercial print shop
after college, and had fond memories of the
craft.
We bought an existing quick print shop,
which was branded International Minute
Press.
We quickly realized we bought a lot of
problems which were not uncovered in the
discovery process. While we learned much
about small business ownership, and had a
wonderful time serving our clients and
taking care of our employees, we just could
not overcome these initial problems.
In the meantime, and prior to the tough
decision to close the doors, I made
improvements spanning our entire value
delivery system.
Through working with our paper vendors, we
received paper orders daily instead of using
the previous owners’ system of placing
batched paper orders. This simple change
reduced our customer-experienced lead
time from fifteen to three days.
By re-designing the franchisor’s
recommended field sales system, I reduced
the volume of unsolicited quotes which, in
turn freed up considerable time for our quote
specialist. By so doing, our quote
conversion rate improved by a factor of
seven.
Our print shop had many customers on
credit terms (net 30, etc.), but did not have a
good way of managing its receivables. I
created a tiered credit terms policy, with only
the most credit-worthy customers getting net
30 terms, while many clients were extended
much less generous terms. I bolstered this
initiative with scripting for our employees
and signage for walk-in customers. Finally, I
tweaked our collections system and follow-
up system. All of these changes reduced
our receivables days outstanding from
thirty to twenty days.

12. 12
SALEM TECHNOLOGIES: Jan – Aug 2011
Salem Technologies is a small, privately-
held contract manufacturer mostly
supporting the automotive and defense
industries.
As Value Stream Manager, I developed
and implemented solutions to stabilize the
manufacturing operations. Many of the
problems stemmed from attempting to use
QuickBooks as its inventory management
system. Lacking true inventory visibility,
parts shortages were only discovered once
a job had been nearly completely set up on
the printed circuit board “pick-and-place”
machines. Thus began a vicious cycle
whereby the owner of the company himself
would make note of the shortage to place
the order later in the day. Inevitably, the
owner forgot to place the order in time to
meet the vendor’s shipping cutoff time.
Parts were then delayed by not one, but two
days.
Meanwhile, the shop floor technicians set
up another job using many of the same
parts from the previous job. The part in
question would be received a few days later,
the job would be set up (again) only to
discover they were out of yet another part.
This cycle repeated itself continuously. So,
my job was to essentially save the owner of
the company from himself.
In creating many of these shop floor
solutions, I drew heavily upon Lean
Manufacturing principles.
I implemented a work ticket system, a
Plan for Every Part database to govern
the inventory management (optimal
stocking levels, re-order points, reorder
quantities, etc.), a purchased parts
“supermarket” which worked with the Plan
for Every Part, and built a procedures
manual for recurring jobs.
Unfortunately but not surprisingly, I did not
get to see the true impact upon the
operations of these changes because the
company hit a financial crisis and terminated
all but the most senior employees, including
myself.
As Value Stream Manager, my role was to stabilize the manufacturing shop floor by
introducing Lean Manufacturing principles to the company.
Applied Learnings
Lean Manufacturing principles including
value stream mapping, mistake-proofing,
creating flow, standard work, 5S, kanban,
and quick changeovers

13. 13
THE YMCA OF NORTHWEST NC: 2012 - 2016
I was widely regarded as a thought leader, not just within youth sports, but across the
association.
In this role, I introduced the YMCA to
concepts I called the Practice Night
Experience and the Game Day
Experience. We implemented many simple
procedures and systems aimed at improving
these experiences for the players, their
parents, and the volunteer coaches.
I was responsible for coach recruiting,
player registrations, assigning players to
teams, assigning practice nights, creating
game schedules, and recruiting part-time
employees to manage practice nights and
officiate games.
I had spent evenings with the YMCA working
as a swim coach while maintaining a full-
time job search. In 2013, that experience
led me to join the YMCA full-time as the
Sports Director of their largest branch.
As Sports Director, I led the overall
management for youth sports programming
with 2,000+ youth participants, 250+
volunteer coaches, and 40+ part-time and
seasonal staff. I had full P&L responsibility
for these programs, and autonomously
managed toward key profitability, growth,
participant retention and other customer
satisfaction metrics.
Applied Learnings
Group facilitation and training in both
small and large group settings
Coaching and teaching employees
I was asked to lead branch initiatives
related to child safety and member
engagement. Regarding member
engagement, I was asked to lead an
initiative called Listen First, whereby I led
workshops to help YMCA employees with
active listening skills so that they can better
engage with the YMCA’s customers
(members).
I was ultimately recruited away from the
YMCA by a volunteer coach who was the
Human Resources manager with a
manufacturing company.

14. 14
PIEDMONT CANDY COMPANY: May – June, 2016
The move to Piedmont Candy Company was undoubtedly the worst mistake of my
professional career.
As mentioned in the previous slide, I was recruited away from my role with the YMCA to
become Piedmont Candy Company’s Production Manager.
On the surface, the move had everything I would have looked for; a chance to get back into
manufacturing in a meaningful role at nearly twice the salary.
As it turned out, I was completely mis-cast for the job the company really wanted me to do,
which was to serve as a second-level machine repair technician. If a machine operator
had an equipment failure or jam and could not solve the problem himself, I was expected
to be able to repair the machine. It was also made very clear to me that the management
of the company was not interested in my ideas.
I left the company of my own accord in good standing a short two months after quitting my
YMCA job.

15. 15
HIGHLAND ROSS: 2016 - PRESENT
I have launched my own leadership development practice, working with business owners
and managers to become the leaders their companies need.
I quickly regretted my decision to leave the
YMCA for Piedmont Candy and left the
company two months later with nothing
lined up.
I had been introduced to the concept of
Business Coaching more than ten years
prior, and had always been attracted to the
idea of helping small business owners who
are stuck in some aspect of their
businesses. I took this opportunity to
pursue this passion. I completed my
certification to become a professional
business coach in November, 2016, and
launched Highland Ross.
I have developed all aspects of the brand of
Highland Ross, starting with a logo design. I
have created, through paid graphic
designers, all brand literature including The
Highland Ross Way, flyers, and a website,
highlandross.com.
All business development activities rest
squarely on my shoulders. I attend select
networking and chamber events and am a
member of the Twin City Kiwanis Club.
I have developed the curriculum and all
training materials for a leadership workshop
series targeted at small business owners. I
have also developed the workshop
materials for a quarterly planning retreat.
I create, either from scratch, or drawing
heavily upon my work experience various
templates, tools, and “frameworks” for my
coaching clients. I have developed an
extensive library of such tools.
Highland Ross Brings
Substance To Leadership by:
§ Instilling fundamental leadership
principles into your first-level
management ranks (line managers, group
leaders, your people charged with leading
the people where the work is actually
being done, where the value is actually
being added.)
§ Teaching business fundamentals (creating
defensible value delivery systems,
developing solid business cases, creating
systems and structure)
§ Coaching leaders through their
opportunities and challenges

16. 16
EDUCATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION
MBA, Vanderbilt University, Owen Graduate School of
Management, 1993
BS, Auburn University, Business Administration, 1989
robtaross@gmail.com
www.highlandross.com
336-671-7640
linkedin.com/in/bob-ross/in
facebook.com/
BobRossNotTheDangPainter/f
Lean Six Sigma Green Belt trained, NC State, 2011
Certified Professional Business Coach, Professional
Business Coach Alliance, 2016