At the root of most of what is brilliant, innovative, and remarkable, I have observed two things often in evidence: persistent hard work coupled with pure dumb luck. Over the twenty-six years of practice, I and the team at Pilot Consulting have had our share of both, beginning with being a part of Boston University’s Executive Challenge program in the early eighties as modern-day pioneers in experiential education for improving the performance of teams. The emergence of this award-winning training method was similar to the invention of the post-it note…it was basically an accident and an interesting story.

Of course, no one’s complaining…it’s great to find yourself in the right place at the right time. We learned a lot about organizational systems, leadership and the power of cohesive cultures. We had our formative opportunities in the mid-eighties via significant involvement with the likes of General Electric (where a number of us taught and consulted from 1984 through 1995), Morgan Bank, and Walt Disney…all good-to-great companies. Through working across GE's businesses as team builders and trouble-shooters, we were present at the birth of another innovation called Workout, a remarkable business intervention. What began as a simple idea to eliminate work and bureaucracy became a monster-hit way for engaging large groups of stakeholders around truly tough business issues to produce consistently better, faster results. Given the results, we quickly adapted to leverage this great discovery, and our connection across most of GE's businesses gained us many invitations in the early nineties by companies turned-on by the then “GE Glow.” We had a lot of contact trading information and becoming involved with a lot of companies throughout this time.

Our next “luck” (i.e. where preparation meets opportunity) came from a chance meeting with IBM executives at the beginning of Lou Gerstner’s tenure as CEO on the topic of Workout. After a time, most noted for its persistence, Pilot won the bid to create and implement IBM’s version of Workout, which we successfully ran over a six-year period working across nearly all of IBM’s businesses spread across more than twenty countries. This was a remarkable time to be at this great company as “the new IBM” was formed and brought into being accompanied by loads of real-time learning in the domain of strategic execution and engagement.

Since 2003, Pilot continues to guide our clients through change…where strategy, execution, and leadership all come together to deliver results. On the education side, our work has most recently been focused on forming leadership-learning communities around ROI-based leadership development where “on the playing field” performance is measured and assessed (See McKesson Leaders Teaching Leaders). The environment of the last several years have had us playing the role as ‘deep change’ agents and implementation partners for companies in turnaround, or those seeking aggressive growth via shifts in strategic intent. We have also launched an endeavor utilizing high performance/precision driving experiences as a “vehicle” to accelerate business results…while serious, this is also extreme fun.