Performa Solutions
I was with Performa Solutions from February 1995 to November 2000. I had expanded my skills and knowledge of training to include the best practices of leadership development, including becoming certified in all of Lominger's Leadership Architect tools (the leadership competency model, 360-degree assessment software, corporate culture assessment, high potential assessment, team development assessment, etc.). Always seeking a new challenge I also started to study Organizational Development and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. I was also involved in a number of trade groups, which kept me very busy. I was very active with a listserv for ASTD and spoke at several national conferences. I was the newsletter editor for Houston OD Network. The Professional I/O Psych Network recognized me as a Top I/O Psychologist for my contributions to evaluating new assessments and leadership competency models.I became a very active member of the International Society for Performance Improvement, speaking at their international conferences each year. I published a popular performance improvement model and found myself training other OD practitioners how to identify the root cause of problems and then how to identify and implement the most effective solution (which was rarely training). This is when I was invited to be one of the first recipients of the new Certified Performance Technologist by ISPI.
Performa's clients hired me to design and lead organizational analysis and design, teambuilding workshops, culture/climate and employee surveys, business process re-engineering, change management strategies, performance and process improvement interventions, strategic planning offsite, performance management systems, employee and leadership development classes, high potential assessment and development plans, supervisor and manager training, mentoring and coaching programs, Lominger competency-based HR system conversions, and executive development programs. Our key client groups included hospitality (Hyatt, Woodlands Resort & Conference Center, The Houstonian, Moody Gardens, Grand Casino Coushatta), retail (Kroger, Fiesta Mart, HEB), and oil & gas and chemicals (Shell, Exxon Mobil, Williams/Transco, BP Amoco, Texaco). My favorite executive development program was a partnership with the University of Houston that was a very robust, action-learning executive MBA that worked on actual business issues during each class, the Shell Leadership Development Program or SLDP.
I was able to partner with top leadership development gurus on many projects, including university professors who encouraged me to focus my personal studies by going back to school and earning my PhD in industrial/organizational psychology. They steered me toward an affordable online program with Columbus University in Metarie, LA. Columbus got in trouble with the state just as I finished my self-paced program and doctoral thesis. A friend had just joined a Concordia College and University campus in the Caribbean and was able to get the professors there to allow me to transfer my work. I successfully defended my meta-analysis of nine major studies on critical leadership competence, but that campus had not earned accreditation. The studies and research had served their purpose and provided a richer foundation for developing and testing my theories, but because I did it only for me and because doctoral degrees often cause people to view someone in a negative light, I do not advertise the accomplishment. In 2000 I also helped Performa create a new company, Performa Consulting, which attracted the attention of a recently merged Pennzoil-Quaker State Company.
Having consulted with many larger companies, I was certainly not interested in being a cog in one of those machines, but Pennzoil-Quaker State made an offer that I could not refuse. The challenge was exciting: help this 120+ year old lubrication company become a profitable automotive consumer products company that would be attractive to a potential suitor that needed the brand-name products. As the Manager of Learning & Performance I built and managed a small corporate Organizational Development and Training team with a budget of $2.4MM. I taught my three direct reports how to assess knowledge and skill gaps, quickly design training using an agile development model, pilot and launch the training, and then measure the impact on actual performance by capturing baseline data before the class and then looking for changes that were not associated with other factors after the class. As they focused on business acumen topics (e.g. Finance for Non Financials and Project Management 101) I designed a performance management process that was aligned with the company's vision, mission, and strategies. I also developed a core competency model in partnership with the SVP of HR and the C-level executives. As we acquired each of the number one or number two automotive aftercare products companies in their class (Axius car care products, Blue Coral and Classic waxes and washes, Black Magic and Westley's tire and wheel care products, Fix-A-Flat tire sealants, Medo air fresheners, Rain-X glass treatments, Gumout, Snap, and The Outlaw maintenance chemicals, and Slick 50 engine treatments), I visited each organization and introduced the vision, mission, strategies, core competencies, and performance management program. We were able to identify exceptional talent and incorporate them into senior positions to further the parent company culture shift to a nimble consumer products company. Other key projects included helping the company introduce a formal ideation-to-production process called Stage-Gate, implementing SAP (all of SAP), and rolling out a consultative sales model called Seven Steps Selling. We reversed a long-term decline in stock price from its low of $10/share at the start of 2001 to a high of just over $15 in mid-2002. That is when Shell Oil Products US offered $22.50/share and bought the entire company.
