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Director of Performance Excellence

Position Title: Director of Performance Excellence

Reports To: CEO or COO

Overall Purpose of this Job

This position is accountable for the development and quality of two vital and inter-related factors in a company’s sustainable success: Leadership Excellence and a solid Performance Culture. To achieve a culture of honor, innovation, and progressive profitability, this role focuses upon inspiring performance greatness in leaders, teams, and employees. This position is committed to maximizing the engagement, commitment, creativity, and satisfaction of management and staff; to unleashing each individual’s discretionary energy to surpass ordinary performance levels.

Key Responsibilities

1. Produce Leadership Excellence

• Assist CEO (and key others) in identifying current and future competencies/characteristics key for all leadership positions. Facilitate the creation of results-based job profiling and identify strategic hiring/promoting criteria.
  
• Elevate leadership excellence through personalized skill/character assessment, results-based coaching, tailored development, and close monitoring of individual successes and emerging expertise.
  
• Build leadership bench strength through the identification and grooming of high-potential candidates for immediate and/or long-term advancement.
  
• Coach selected and/or volunteered leaders who are struggling to reestablish trust, confidence, and motivation with teams, peers, and managers. (provide counsel on considered reassignment or release.)
  
• Create tailored development plans for all who have management responsibilities. Identify success criteria and measurable milestones of progress. Monitor growth. Recommend coaching or mentoring as needed.
  
• Match suitable senior management with identified mentoring candidates. Maintain expertise/character/experience database of all senior manager mentors.
  
• When advisable, work with specific leaders and his/her teams to establish a more productive alliance. Mediate conflicts/misunderstandings. Facilitate team-growth measures.
  
• Enhance strategic intelligence among the core leadership team. Facilitate future-thinking processes to consistently balance current realities with innovative business development.
  
• Provide for basic leadership development as needed (training, classes, seminars, etc.)
  
• Elevate leadership’s skill for assessing, developing and coaching employee growth.
  

2. Establish a Performance Culture

• Guide the Leadership Team in identifying a compelling company Vision, clear and actionable Mission, core behavioral Values, and company Membership Agreements to establish a culture of accountability that is created, upheld, and owned by all employees.
  
• Assist in embedding excellence as the uncontested cornerstone of the company culture.
  
• Sustain a focused awareness of the condition and dynamics of the organizational white space between departments, teams, and positions of responsibility. (This area is a notorious breeding ground for miscommunications, failed hand-offs, and uncoordinated and conflicting goals/processes/perceptions.)
  
• Keep the CEO consistently informed regarding any emerging dynamics within the organization that may cause damage or obstruct progress. Maintain keen awareness of the 30,000 foot and ground-level views.
  
• Maintain database of internal and external development resources.
  
• Provide counsel on anticipated initiatives which will impact the organization to ensure a seamless readiness in motivation, skill, and knowledge among affected employees.
  
• Continuously consult with company managers regarding personal and staff development and behavioral needs.
  
• Work with HR, marketing, communications, or others to coordinate a supportive system for sustaining company focus upon excellence as its driving strength.
  

Success Criteria/Measurements

• Sustainable culture of high performance.
  
• Consistently maturing workforce committed to professional/personal development.
  
• Increased profitability from reduced waste: time, resources, rework.
  
• Reduced cycle time on key processes.
  
• Increased innovation and appropriate risk-taking on the leading edge.
  
• Improved leadership effectiveness.
  
• Completed and updated Job Competencies (skill and character) for all leadership positions.
  
• Trust-based relationship with each leader.
  
• Reduced employee turn-over.
  
• Increased employee job satisfaction.
  
• Reduced employee absences due to sickness/stress.
  
• Reduced internal conflict and miscommunications.
  
• Respected company image and trust-based partnership with supplier and customers.
  
• Recognized as an employer of choice.
  
  

Budget Responsibility

Designated yearly budget for service to company leaders, teams, and individuals as needed. For travel, materials, supporting systems/processes, equipment, administrative assistant. (budget dependent upon organization size.)

Compensation

Salaried position with bonus potential. Full medical benefits, 401k, 3 weeks vacation plus holidays and personal/sick leave.

Karen Wright Qualifications

1. Knowledge, Skills, Talents

• Education in adult education and deep understanding of human behavioral and psychology.
  
• Certifications in learning curriculum development and assessment.
  
• Certifications in top training vendor programs including FranklinCovey and Blanchard; train-the-trainer certifications.
  
• Consummate verbal and written communicator.
  
• Skilled in Microsoft software, Publisher, FrontPage, internet research.
  
• Certified in self/group/306° assessment instruments including Myers Brings and PDI Profilor.
  
• Experienced in conflict resolution and innovative problem solving.
  Professional Experience
  
• 10 years as leadership trainer/coach in multi-location Fortune 500 corporation.
  
• 9 years as business owner and independent performance consultant to leaders in for-profit corporations, not-for-profit organizations, US government agencies, professional associations.
  
• 12 years as personal and professional development and leadership coach.
  
• 14 years as professional transformational speaker/presenter.
  
• 10 years as writer/publisher of personal development online newsletter.
  
• Published author of 5 books and countless articles on personal and professional development.
  
• Voice talent, audio recording editing. Graphic Design skill.
  
• Created, developed and led implementation of several corporate-wide performance initiatives.
  
• 2 years as professional facilitator for FranklinCovey organization in public programs.
  
• Author of dozens of learning programs.
  

2. Personal Characteristics

• Dedicated to continuous growth and personal excellence. Avid reader.
  
• Systems’ Thinker able to spot inter-causal dynamics and identify systemic solutions.
  
• High energy, possibility-focused, results-oriented, self-motivated.
  
• Innovative risk taker, responsible owner, collaborative team player.
  
• Impeccable integrity, professional, respectful.
  
• Intuitive insight into human motivation and resistance.
  
• Able to work under pressure, balancing conflicting demands and tight deadlines.
  
• Protects confidentiality, earns trust and respect from all levels of company.
  

The Trainer

"Karen is a passionate and vigorous advocate for positive corporate culture and individual empowerment. Her creative, thoughtful solutions and boundless energy help individuals shine and boosts the effectiveness of her internal clients. Karen has the unique ability to stay with tough problems and challenging situations until they're productively solved."

~ Devon Scheef, Training Manager, Experian North America

"Karen is professional, bright, positive and real.

She generates great audience participation and questions."

~ Lynnanne Lewis, International Association of Administrative Professionals.

"Karen has an uncanny way of seeing and knowing exactly what is happening inside and between people, multiplied by a gentle yet strong way of working with them incoming to a more profound expression of who they are."

~ John Scherer, founder Scherer Leadership Center, Intl.

"I have had the pleasure of attending many workshops led by Karen over the last 10 years.I have always found her to be full of insight and her presentations to be stimulating,

highly engaging, and right on the money!"

~ S. Reiman, Global Credit Union

"Karen is an engaging facilitator with deep and creative insight.

She has great empathy and passion that conveys well to her participants.

I am amazed at her energy and her accomplishments!"

~ Alice Wilmarth, FranklinCovey

I'm blessed to receive such wonderful recommendations from previous managers, colleagues, and students alike. It has always been my passion to assist others in achieving their own level of greatness - as I aspire to myself.

I learned long ago, fresh out of college, as I taught middle school children, that learning happens when the student chooses and is ready. Because of that I spend significant time getting to know those I instruct before hand and build the learning program as a hands-on experience.

I also recognize the most difficult part of any learning is the migration to usable knowledge and expertise, so I pay particular attention to reinforcement and follow up for learning events. Change does not happen in the classroom; it happens in the day to day choices made back at work. Having the support of the individual's manager and congruity of their surroundings is vital.

I have conducted training classes and experiences in customer service, sales, management, problem solving, change management, conflict resolution, innovation, visioning, managing upward, team performance, communications, performance feedback, goal setting, and much more. The core thread is building trust in relationships, personal integrity, and an integrated approach to change.

Training & Development Certifications

1. FranklinCovey: 2000 Facilitator of the Year Award
- Focus: Achieving Your Highest Priorities; Focus for Outlook Users
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: single-day and three-day versions
- Leadership Foundations: a Workshop for Emerging Leaders- Presentation Advantage

2. Achieve Global (formerly Zinger-Miller)
- Master Certified in all AG programs

3. Ken Blanchard Companies
- Situational Leadership II

4. Richard Change & Associates
- Step by Step Problem Solving

5. The Forum
- Exceptional Sales Performance
- Face 2 Face Selling Skills

6. Impaq
- Agreements for Excellence

7. Impact
- Influence: Performance Problem Solving for Peers

8. Management Paradigms
- Transitions to Leadership


Curriculum Design Certifications

1. Darryl Sink & Associates
- Course Development and Assessment

2. Langevin
- Learning Needs Analysis and Instructional Design


Assessment Certifications

1. Personnel Decisions, Inc.: Profilor

2. Lominger: Leadership Architect Suite

3. Blanchard: Leadership Action Profile

4. Management Paradigm: Survey of Leadership Practices


Personal Authorship

1. The Leader Within: Influencing and Leadership Skills for Non-Management

2. The Extra Mile: Exceptional Customer Service

3. The Aligned Goal Management Process Initiative

4. On-the-Job Development Process Initiative

5. Competency Profiling Process Initiative

6. Leadership Development Process Initiative

7. The Choice Weekend Retreat for Women

In addition to the above, from 2000 to 2009 I have created dozens of customized programs to meet my clients' needs. A common thread through them all was a focus upon creativity, problem solving, innovation, and change. My natural talent is in helping people move beyond limiting perspectives and discover new ways of perceiving, choosing, living.

The Coach

“World-class athletes know it. So do opera divas. Winners in nearly every profession know that without the right coach, they won’t perform at their peak. And now a select number of businesspeople know it too.”

~ Claire Tristram, Fast Company 2000

Coaching accelerates and magnifies efforts and results. I look for what isn’t obvious...a simpler way to reach a goal, a false perception that is limiting your options, or a self-defeating behavior that is blocking your maximum achievement. In professional and personal lives we all reach a point where we’re doing the best we know how. Coaching gives you a chance to catapult beyond what you already know.

· Coaching is not cheer leading; it is supporting your accountability.
· Coaching is not friendship; it is a serious partnership lasered on your success.
· Coaching is not dictating; it is guiding you out of your comfort zone toward needed changes.

Coaching is an investment in your future. It is finding within yourself greater possibilities waiting to be released. It is clarifying your vision and creating plans to achieve them. It is discovering new ways of managing you in your life. It creates momentum and immediate results.

“I’ve never see anyone better at cutting through complicated issues
and getting to the core of solution.
You’ve saved me time and money.
One of the best investments I’ve ever made.”
~ Bob Beardsley

Experience Counts

Nineteen years of assisting leaders of both large and small organizations develop, implement, and achieve their core initiatives has equipped me to recognize subtle signs of unused capacity—blind spots in leadership effectiveness —and ineffectual plans.

I provide an objective perspective, free of personal agendas or politics, that credibly raises unspoken questions and plainly points out erosive conflicts. Until unspoken issues are acknowledged little progress can be made. As an outsider, I can safely play this role and keep attention focused on what needs to be done.

I coach individuals or teams to higher productivity.
Coaching is the fastest and most effective method for accelerating leadership effectiveness and team collaboration.

I’m not afraid of the tough situations, resistant individuals, or lofty goals. Yet, I recognize the need for, and can foster, strong partnerships. It is my position that I win when you win. That is the sole focus of my work.

“You’ve helped more than you’ll ever know. I knew what I needed to accomplish,
but I was getting lost in where to start and how to keep myself motivated.
I’m making more progress than I ever expected.
Thanks, it was just what I needed!.”
~ Sharon Murphy

The Process

Your coaching plan will be custom designed to fit your particular needs and it will be constantly reevaluated for modifications. It may include any or all of the following elements.

The Map: Finding Focus
Step one is determining exactly what your intentions and needs are in the coaching relationship. How I can best assist you in achieving your desired results.

The Destination: Clarifying the Vision
The power of a clear vision, a clear destination, cannot be overestimated. Vision provides motivation and confirmation of your progress.

The Route: Creating a Plan
The most under-used tool to achieving goals is a detailed plan. It’s possible to achieve good results by accident, but not likely. It’s impossible to reach your top performance without a clear, specific plan.

The Vehicle: Assessing Your Strengths
Your strengths get you to where you want to be. Are you using your strengths to your best purpose? Are you overestimating a strength? Are you overusing a strength? An overused strength becomes a weakness.

The Potholes: Revealing Blind Spots
Not knowing what you don’t know can hurt you. It’s natural to have blind spots in perception. It’s sabotage to not know that and not seek to recognize and overcome them.

Milestones: Tracking Your Progress
How will you know where you are in relation to your plan? We’ll identify what measures and indicators are most useful in tracking your progress.

Refueling: Celebrating Your Wins
Momentum brings natural motivation, but it’s important to acknowledge how far you’ve come to keep performance high.

Mutual Accountability

My Role

· Confidential Listener: I never reveal to anyone who my clients are or what they say.

· Objective Questioner: I follow my intuition and address areas that you may be unconsciously

avoiding.

· Supportive Challenger: All of us, at one time or another, are our own worst enemies. I’ll help

you be honest with yourself and take accountability for beliefs and actions that are standing in

your way.

· Avid Cheerleader: Personal change is not easy, it helps to have someone who knows what

you’ve been through.

· Honest Mirror: I aim to honestly reflect back to you what I experience of you. My goal is to

disclose blind spots that are unconsciously restricting your progress.

· Active Collaborator: Moving from knowledge to action is where change happens. I’ll help you

create plans for change and partner with you in assessing your progress.

Your Role

· Commitment: Your commitment to change and growth are the single most critical element in the

success of our work. You have to want this passionately.

· Respect for our time: Be on time, be ready, focus your attention on the best use of our time.

· Honesty: I’m not someone you need to impress or hide things from. Your success is all I’m

concerned with and your complete honesty will help us know where we are and where to go next.

· Accountability: Do what you say you’re going to do and own up if you drop the ball. That’s all it

takes to get back to integrity and move on.

· Feedback: Help me help you best. Let me know what’s working and not working for you in our

partnership. My role is to be what you need me to be to achieve your goals.

The Entrepreneur

I founded Wright Minded in 2000 to accelerate business success and individual performance. My business grew from word-of-mouth, direct recommendation, and repeat engagements. In the past eight years I have served hundreds of small, medium, and large businesses that range from for-profit to non-profit to government agencies.

Although each job was highly customized, each contained a common request: "How do we engage our workforce at a deeper and more committed level?" My clients, usually CEOs or Execs, were focused on bottom-line business results, but I knew that the only way to impact that impersonal statistic was to first reach the minds and hearts of the workforce that made that bottom-line a reality. Change always begins at the individual human level.

My job was to have each individual ask themselves honestly what was holding them back from extraordinary performance. What I most often found was that it was a combination of two factors:
1. Personal belief in limitation
2. Lack of leadership belief in excellence

Performance was not usually a skill, knowledge or systems issue...it was a perception issue. So, I created an situation, at the start of my work with clients, that would give them a first-hand, in-the-moment experience of facing their limiting perceptions and beliefs. A few well-chosen and unique optical illusions proved beyond doubt that we are all victims of Perceptual Myopia - the habitual tendency to perceive situations and others through the lens of personal beliefs. We all do it! And we do it unknowingly...which leads to all kinds of conflicts, misunderstandings, and business losses.

Whether facing a persistent problem or an exciting opportunity, our beliefs color our perception of what is and isn't possible. And we believe that this perception is the truth. My job was to show them that perception, like behavior, is a choice that can be changed. When perceptions change, life changes.

For 300+ people to get involved and engaged in an activity for 2 hours stays a lot to the credibility of the speaker. Karen absolutely hit a home run for this event and we’re really pleased to have had the opportunity to have her.”
~ Tammy Redmon, Division of Washington State DSHS.

Wright Minded also provided key notes, workshops, and meeting facilitation for clients' yearly conferences, retreats, or professional organization event. These engagements ranged from Board of Directors' strategic meeting facilitation to several hundred person audiences. In all cases, high pre-event involvement with the client ensured a relevant and inspiring outcome.

This is a partial list of clients I've served in the past eight years:

Washington Department of Transportation

Oregon Department of Transportation
Department of Social and Health Services

Group Health Cooperative
Leadership Spokane

Spokane Valley Chamber of Commerce
Billings Chamber of Commerce

Gonzaga University
Eastern Washington University

Whitworth College
Spokane Community Colleges

Numerica Credit Union
International Trade Alliance

American Cancer Society
Spokane Convention/Visitors Bureau

Spokane Fair & Expo Center
US Federal Bankruptcy Court

Inland Northwest Blood Center
Sacred Heart Women’s Show

Associated Builders/Contractors
US Attorney General

Professional Credit Union Women Assoc.
Flying J Truck Stops

Toastmasters International

The Innovator

We are each born with certain innate talents that, if consciously employed, can bring us to remarkable achievements and personal fulfillment. I've been accused my whole life of never being satisfied. I'm always poking and prodding and looking for a different way to see or do something. It's in my nature to explore and innovate. I love the undefined space of possibility...the gap between what is and what could be. In this place and moment of uncertainty, everything is possible. For me, that's an aphrodisiac.

But, I've also learned another lesson about innovation. It's only real if you take action on it; otherwise it's just minds' play. I can't tell you how many inventions I've conceived and thought, "This is so cool, I know this would be valuable to others." And then I did nothing with the idea. Sure enough, within months, the idea was a reality out in the world. Someone else didn't hesitate when the thought visited them - they took action. And that's the difference between fantasy and results. Action.

Over the course of my life and career in inspiring others to reach for their personal stars, I've created numerous programs, products, and services to feed that end. I find that most of us just need a reminder and the reality of a higher form of life experience comes that much closer. So, I look for the form of the reminder that will help most.

I have no illusions that I'm the source of another's enlightenment - they each pull from their own inherent wisdom. But, I can provide a stimulus for that wisdom to become conscious. For this purpose I've created inspirational card decks (Sprouts), guided meditations, eBooks, printed booklets, and have published The Sequoia Seed: Remembering the Truth of Who You Are. All these personal growth tools can be found at www.wrightminded.com/products.html.

Beyond physical tools that encourage discovery, I love the process of brainstorming and creating something from nothing. It's unfortunate that most brainstorming sessions I've been part of in business unknowingly limit the outcome by following a process that forces competition among the creative ideas shared. Typically, the early part of brainstorming is governed by the rule: no idea is impossible. But, once the idea stream runs dry, the picking and choosing begins. Good ideas are thrown out because, on the surface, they appear to be less reasonable than other ideas. Soon, all that creative brainstorming is whittled down to a measly pittance of options - most of which are far from inspiring. You can feel the energy in the room drop dramatically when the selection begins.

Instead, I encourage that no idea is eliminated at all. That instead of making individual ideas compete head-to-head against one another, we weave them together to create even more robust and exceptional ideas. Take part of one and combine it with another. Highlight the fantastic and minimize the mundane. This is the best part of brainstorming - the part most every facilitated process misses. The real "creative" process. This is where magic happens - to the results AND to the people involved. No one's idea is toss out like a rotten sack of potatoes. Rather, they become the resources for the next level of innovation and imagination.

I've seen over and over, groups who'd hoped for a baby step forward in improvement make a quantum leap into a totally different level of business potential. What it does to the human spirit is amazing! People get involved personally. Diversity of thought is golden. Petty differences and fear-based bickering is left in the dust of a whirlwind of possibilities.

Today's business climate demands that we seek and expect more than incremental improvements in business processes and growth. We're talking exponential expectations. The global competition demands excellence. Does this describe your company? It could - without investing another dime. The capacity lies within the workforce you now have. The trick is accessing that discretionary drive and fully engaging what you already have: the world's most magnificent creative force - the human mind.

The Person

From 1995 until 2000 I lived aboard a sailboat in southern California. When I bought the boat I asked friend to help me name her. I wanted a name that reflected my spirit and being. Of all the names submitted, Seeker rang with crystal clarity. I have been an insatiable seeker my entire life and it shows no signs of waning. I'm an explorer at heart and my most fascinating subject is the immense capacity of the human spirit.

In my quest to find truth in my own life, I've found myself surrounded by those walking the same path. Sometime they lead; sometimes I do. The quickness of our step is not important. We are not in competition. We are all heading to the same destination: why are we hear? And with each revelation of recognition, we all glow more brightly.

About the same time I lived aboard Seeker I turned the page in a magazine and found this quote, "The real voyage of discover consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." ~ Marcel Proust. It wrapped my heart like a childhood binkie. It described my life before and hence. New Eyes - the way to truth and enlightenment.

Every book I read, every seminar I attend, virtually every conversation I have explores the wonder of humanity's capacity for greatness. This stark truth, back dropped against the even more stark reality of the mess we've created, engages my mind in endless questions. What I know without doubt is that we are capable of far greater than this. We've gotten distracted by what is expedient and glamorous. But, truth is patient and we are eager to reconnect.

This is a magnificent time in humanity's history. Such astounding achievements. Such devastating failures. It truly is the "best of times and the worst of times." But, with all the economic and political turmoil; with the pain of inhumanity and the disparity of ideologies, we are at the brink of a shift that will shake us to our very souls. A shift that will strip us of what is robbing us of our lives and deliver us to a necessary step in our own evolution. We are almost unable to cope with what is and that, for me, is the sign that a paradigm is about to shift.

The Baby Boomer generation is a glut of humanity that has changed every social more' it's touched. Sheer numbers force this change of perception and reality. Every seven seconds a Baby Boomer turns 50. And, it seems, the world is entering a mass midlife crisis. In an effort to finally find some level of personal fulfillment, this mass of humanity is asking for more than money and fame. They want relevance. They want meaning. They want personal connection to a deeper experience of life. Religion or spirituality. They are seekers.

I believe that my role here is to help shepherd that search. I've dedicated my life to discovery of what is unseen, but real. If we, as a planet, are to evolve into a peaceful accord, it will begin with finding peace in our personal lives first. "Be the change you wish to see in the world, " M. Gandhi. Change begins within before it is ever seen without.

I fill myself in nature. It connects me to a deeper meaning of life. I feel primitive and real in untouched forest lands. One of many species weaving this tapestry of life. I can breathe and be...and stop thinking. It's intoxicating.

I'm single and it appears that I may be for the rest of my life. I don't find that depressing. I have a good life and I enjoy the solitude that allows me to continue my explorations. But, I do feel that there are lessons of partnership that would serve me that only a life partner can bring. We'll see if that fate is mine.

I live in the Pacific Northwest - truly God's country. Washington state is a geologic wonder. From coastal rain forests to the snow-capped Cascade Mountains to the wheat fields and orchards mid-state and the Grand Canyon in miniature to the east. This state has every terrain you could hope for. This is the place of my birth and the place of my return after eighteen years absence. I'm home.