Preface

Leading today’s organizations is both exciting and complex.
While accountability for success ultimately lies with the leader, the full weight of the business should not weigh solely on his or her shoulders.  Nearly all business strategies require a team of people applying their best thinking to complex challenges.

 

For more than 25 years, I have been consulting to executives, and their teams, helping them to develop new products, execute competitive strategies, and resolve differences as they pursue their goals.



Approach

I provide expertise and experience to teams that are:

    • Newly forming
    • Undergoing a change in leadership or membership
    • Facing challenges in their collaboration as they execute complex strategies

Client engagements typically follow a similar path:

    • Data collection to identify and define problems
    • Consultation with the client team to explore the implications of the findings
    • Develop viable business strategies while avoiding unwanted byproducts
    • Capture learning so that problems do not repeat themselves

While many problems within teams have common themes, each team has its own unique culture and set of businesses challenges. Therefore, my approach is not packaged or formulaic.

Consulting Services

Organization & Team Assessments

The best solutions begin with well-defined problems. Whether addressing a flaw in organizational structure, mediating a conflict between team members, or correcting misfires during strategy implementation, the problem-solving process must begin with gathering useful and accurate information that clearly defines the issues at hand.  A thorough assessment involving interviews with key players and stakeholders is the starting place for nearly all my consultations.

Strategy & Planning Sessions

Strategy development can be riddled with inefficient explorations and dead-end ideas. In some instances, teams can become too ambitious, attempting to do too much with too few resources. Other times debate is prematurely smothered by political winds blowing in one direction versus another. My work with teams around strategy development is aimed at creating the conditions for open debate and structured planning that will result in a clear course of action.

Team Development

Conflict among team members is inevitable. Clarifying a team’s purpose, specifying individual roles, and negotiating interdependencies among key players are foundational requirements for coalescing team efforts and reducing conflict.  I work with teams to examine how real work gets done, or as the case may be, how effective collaboration breaks down. My off-site meetings are typically focused on the team’s actual business challenges, so that team building is not just an opportunity to “retreat”, but also to advance business results.

Conflict Mediation

Occasionally conflicts reach a point where neither party can find its way out.  Introducing an unencumbered mediator can often provide a different perspective and create additional alternatives. My goal in mediation is to help those in conflict create viable options to recalcitrant positions.

Distribution & Sales Force Development

Growing and sustaining a successful sales force is critical to most businesses. I have designed a wide range of sales training programs, helped implement performance and accountability systems, and presented papers to leading financial service organizations on the topic of distribution development, especially within the independent contractor model.

Client Testimonials

Left Right

“The most valuable attribute that Bruce brings to each client engagement is something very, very rare indeed. He brings absolute integrity and honesty. He tells you what he believes and what he sees, uncut, unvarnished, and unpoliticized. He tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.”

Bill Beckley
Retired Executive Vice President, Agencies
Northwestern Mutual

“In my 23 years as a human resources professional, Bruce is easily one of the very top organizational consultants with whom I’ve come in contact. He approaches situations with wisdom and objectivity, bringing a perspective that might be lacking by executives who are driven by emotion or other competing personal priorities. . . .Executives tell me they always walk away having learned something from Bruce.”

Amy Fardella
Senior Vice President
Director of Human Resources
The Marmaxx Group
(a division of The TJX Cos.)

“Bruce’s influence has continually forced me to grow personally and professionally and has allowed me and my firm to stay in continual growth mode. . . . I consider Bruce’s involvement with our leadership team one of the best gifts I can give them. Interestingly enough, they themselves feel the same way.”

John W. McTigue, CLU
Managing Partner
The McTigue Financial Group

“For the last 12 years [Bruce] has been intimately involved in our entire strategic planning process. His insight, credibility, and experience have proved to be extremely valuable to Florence Savings Bank. Bruce has done a phenomenal job working with our board of directors as a facilitator for our strategic planning meetings. He also has worked closely with our senior management team to create a positive team environment.”

John Heaps President
CEO
Florence Savings Bank

“The debt of gratitude that WMI owes to Bruce is incalculable. The work he completed with our organization has had a profound effect on how we interact as a team.” “On one level Bruce can be viewed as a facilitator, but in reality he is much more than that. I consider him to be an enabler, someone who uses his tremendous insight into how organizations work to enable a team to find solutions for themselves.”

Michael MacMillan
Former President
Winners Merchants International L.P.

“Unlike other consultants we have engaged, Bruce never imposes a formula or a model. The process and solutions are unique to each group and situation. Bruce works with us “in the moment” to address our problems, intently listening, drawing out staff, and generating ideas. One of the many gifts Bruce has given us over the years is truth. In a most constructive way, he never shies away from putting the toughest issues on the table so we can resolve them with each other. He is a remarkably perceptive person, and on many occasions, he has spontaneously led us to insights, building on the ideas of staff and offering those “ah ha” moments and breakthrough, which have taken our way of working to another level of effectiveness and good spirit. . . . Bruce is superb in this work and it shows in the steady energy, dedication and professionalism he brings to every dimension of the consulting relationship.”

Cheryl Vince Whitman
Former Senior Vice President
Director, Health and Human Development Programs
Education Development Center

“Having worked with several organization consulting providers at world class, global enterprises, I have found Bruce to be the best in his business. His ability to quickly get to the heart of an issue, raise it effectively, and help guide leaders in developing mitigating strategies is invaluable. Bruce’s intellect, character, communication skills and sense of humor has made him one of my most trusted advisors.”

Kathy Lane
CIO at several world class companies

Client Projects

My work spans a broad range of industries, representing diverse assignments and many types of organizations. My clients include Fortune 500 companies as well as closely held businesses and nonprofit organizations. Below is a sampling of work I have undertaken.

Financial Services

I currently consult with a prominent financial services company regarding the growth of their distribution system. This work includes consultation with home office executives on translating distribution strategy into field implementation with leaders of metropolitan offices throughout the United States. An important focus of this work has been the growth of individual offices in key markets as well as managing the introduction of product diversification within the sales force.

Retail Apparel

I have worked on many projects with an international retailer. In consultation to the company’s corporate human resource function, merchant organizations, and field/store operations, my work has included organization assessments, organization redesign, and team building with executives and their functional teams.

Banking

For the past decade, I have been consulting to the executive team and board of trustees of a mutual savings bank. This work has included ongoing board development, strategic planning projects, executive team development, and organization assessments.

Professional Service Firms

I facilitated discussions between two boutique consulting firms that resulted in their merger. In addition, I continued to work with the management committee of the newly formed firm to define roles and responsibilities and plan a strategy for the firm’s expansion into new markets.  Currently, the firm has offices in Cambridge, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and London.

Manufacturing

I have worked on a number of different projects for a client who develops and manufactures imaging products. These include role clarification and strategy development with product development teams, team building with plant managers and their manufacturing teams, and coordination between product development functions and manufacturing organizations.

Contact

Bruce M. Albert
68 Leonard Street
Belmont, MA 02478
(617) 484-6168
bruce@brucealbert.com