John Canfield

John Canfield is an experienced business executive and coach who has successfully implemented planning, improvement, and innovation processes in a wide variety of teams, organizations, industries, and cultures.

John has twenty-five years of experience speaking to a wide variety of audiences, from large conventions to executive board rooms. John has spoken to more than one thousand audiences around the world.

His clients include AT&T, Citibank, Deloitte & Touché, First USA, General Motors, Merck, and Underwriters Lab and thousands of participants of his many seminars and keynote speeches presented in North and South America, Europe, and Asia.

John speaks with a sense of purpose and a sense of humor. Audiences enjoy John's ability to read his audience, adjust the mood, raise the energy level, deliver a message, and end with a story to think about for weeks to come

John is an instructor and consultant for Advanced Practical Thinking Training, The American Management Association, The Canadian Management Center, The American Supplier Institute, The Forum Corporation, General Electric Financial Services (Six Sigma Black Belt instructor), GOAL/QPC (Creative Thinking Skills), Grand Rapids Community College (creativity and innovation) International Quality and Productivity Center (Collaboration Skills) Leadership Strategies (Core Facilitator), Lean Enterprise Institute (leading Lean and Six Sigma improvement teams), Grand Rapids' Right Place Program, Marcus Evans, and the Singapore Institute of Management.

John's four part Good Thinking Series (available on Amazon) presents solid strategies and tools to improve an organization's performance by deliberately supporting more effective thinking with all leaders and employees. Topics include collaboration skills, problem solving, creative thinking skills, strategic planning, and scenario planning.

John has earned a B.S. in Mechanical & Industrial Engineering from the University of Minnesota and a B.A. in Political Science and Psychology from Williams College. Prior to 1990 John was a Senior Engineering Manager for Intel Corporation and later Director of Corporate Quality and Design Research for Herman Miller.

Build Leadership Skills Company Wide: Planning, Improvement, and Innovation

John's Good Thinking Curriculum (available on Amazon) is based on the fundamental strategy that improving thinking skills is the key driver to improving business performance. Thinking and intelligence are different. Intelligence is innate capability, and thinking is how you use it. As a skill it is improvable. What differentiates great and not-so-great companies is how they think, and how they help all their leaders and employees learn to think more effectively.

John's Good Thinking topics listed below are all about thinking, and learning to think more effectively and creatively, to solve problems, create new alternatives, and improve your company's performance.

Videos: www.goodthinkingseries.com/in-action.html and www.youtube.com/canfieldgoodthinking

Lead Topic: Collaboration Skills

The vast majority of work worldwide takes place in meetings. People assembling in small and large groups. Like meetings or not, meetings are not likely to go away.

We need meetings. The primary purpose of meetings is to make decisions. And nothing gets done unless decisions get made.

But a decision without support has no impact. John's approach to collaboration builds both great decisions AND great buy-in.

In a structured collaborative meeting participants use specific tools and techniques to guide their thinking, to help them generate better ideas, better decisions and buy-in, and better results.

The tools are fundamentally great questions. The tools do not tell people what to think, but how.

Considering that people support what they create , this approach and its tools, the questions, support both collaboration goals by considering a wide variety of ideas in a very interactive way.

As teams answer the questions, they generate ideas that drive better decisions and better buy in.

This presentation introduces and practices truly collaborative processes with truly collaborative tools.

Collaboration Application Topics:

PLANNING

Leading Change: This topic introduces a sequence of exercises using effective techniques to help you learn about and practice more productive ways to think about, and decide about, change and improvements This topic will help you feel and act more comfortably about change, help you handle change in a positive and productive way, and help you generate attractive alternatives about any change that comes your way.

Strategic Planning: Learn to create an operational planning document that guides company leaders and employees, and improve the executive team's ability to identify, prioritize, and assign opportunities, and contribute to improved company performance.

Scenario Planning: Consider Alternative Futures: The value of this technique comes from the deep dialogue that the different scenario stories provoke. The alternate views generate new insights about a company and their future. Thinking this way helps prepare the contributors to notice and consider emerging ideas before others even perceive any change.

IMPROVEMENT

Process Improvement: This topic's strategy is to help work teams build and practice an effective problem solving methodology. Many organizations unknowingly spend 10-30 % of their revenues generating waste. Learn to improve processes throughout your organization by learning to identify and replace sources of waste with new value-added steps.

Effective Meetings: The primary results of meetings are decisions and buy-in. Good meetings actively promote making good decisions AND good buy-in. Good decisions are the basis of successful business. This topic is based on the fundamental idea that good results can only come from good processes. Good processes require an agreed-upon sequence of steps, ground rules, and meaningful feedback. Building and following an effective meeting process require skills which can be taught and developed.

Leadership & Management Team Development: This presentation provides a management team the opportunity to discuss how they would prefer to work together to achieve company goals. Taking full advantage of the "people support what they create" principle, these meetings are customized to help your team make the specific improvements that will help you now, and in the near and long term future. Each meeting is a very hands-on interactive series of exercises resulting in an assessment of a team's current situation, their goals, and a plan and schedule to bridge the gaps.

Leading Teams: Learn to initiate and support your organization's improvement teams. This topic provides an overview of how to prepare your Leadership and Guidance Team, identify and prioritize your improvement team projects, prepare your improvement teams for their first and following meetings, use storyboards and quality improvement tools, identify and deal with team development issues, and monitor, support, and reward improvement teams.

INNOVATION

Creative Thinking Skills: While there are many myths about creativity (creative people are always artists, or nerds, or not like you and me, etc.) a modern understanding of creativity recognizes techniques are available to assist anyone who knows how to use them. These techniques do not need to depend on a chance occurrence. These techniques can be used at will whenever individuals or teams recognize they need more ideas.

Making Practical Use of Dr. de Bono's Six Thinking Hats: This topic helps individuals practice how to break out of their 'thinking ruts' using techniques found in Dr. Edward de Bono's landmark book, Six Thinking Hats. This is an excellent technique to suspend judgment while considering all of the aspects of an alternative before making a decision.

Leading Innovation Teams: This presentation introduces a series of strategic and tactical tasks for an innovation project leader. Topics include: Systems, Strategies, and Processes, Prerequisite mindsets, and Innovation Teams - What Do They Do and How Do They Do it. The presentation ends with a consideration of your next 90 days leading your innovation initiative.

Leading an Innovative Organization: This presentation is intended for senior leaders who are or will be leading an organization that embraces innovation: The Innovation imperative - The problem - The guaranteed innovation system - Priority - Innovation platoons - Problem orientation - Platforms - Payback metrics - What to do tomorrow morning and every morning thereafter.

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS

* Bank of America - Senior Vice President Quality & Productivity:

Excellent presentation, wonderful insights, references to many theories and leaders in the field. Really enjoyed and learned from this session.

* Boeing - Chief Procurement Agent:

Very valuable insights in addressing and resolving conflict.

* Fidelity Investments - Vice President of Quality Implementation:

Speaker was very engaging and enthusiastic. Provided practical information that I will use at work and home.

* Forum Corporation - Vice President:

John was a very effective speaker with an astute sense of timing. He had a hands-on approach to learning and linked concepts to experience by using perceptive and concrete examples. He was well organized and creative. His energy and humor are very contagious. He's great to be around. My overall assessment is that John is among the best.

* Hewlett Packard - Project Manager:

Concept of thinking about conflict as a source/symptom of waste is powerful. Tool box of countermeasure techniques very useful.

* IBM - Project Manager:

Enjoyed presenter's job experience and background. Excellent, very hands on good group interaction.

* Spectrum Health - Manager, Learning Systems:

John Canfield brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our organization. He has delivered training sessions, change management workshops, and consulted on team performance. John is able to identify the tools and facilitation techniques which are ideally suited to the task at hand. His easy, self-effacing style creates a safe environment and engages participants. John's commitment to delivering quality products and his thorough nature make him a valuable business partner.

* SAF Holland Group - President Powered Vehicle Group:

John Canfield has been a valued contributor for the Holland Group for over 10 years - always rated at the top of the scale for presentation, content, and value to the employee. John Canfield would be a positive addition to any company's efforts in improving the effectiveness of their employees.

* DeLoitte & Touché - Senior Leaders

• I enjoyed John's personal stories and knowledge. He was a good speaker.
• John Canfield was a great speaker. He was knowledgeable about the topics and very good at cutting out/modifying topics to be more useful.
• John Canfield was great. He provided a lot of real life examples that were very applicable.
• John did a great job. Great personal expression and stories to add to presentations.
• John Canfield was by far the best speaker I've had so far.
• John is easily the best speaker I have had at D&T. He is very well prepared.. He is filled with numerous examples from which to illustrate his point. He should be used as much as possible.

* First Data Corporation - Employee Teams

• friendly, joke telling, atmosphere was fun * very easy to understand
• very upbeat and knowledgeable on the subject
• very open, good examples, very helpful
• John is energetic and kept the presentation focused while encouraging participation
• very professional and fun
• very well delivered
• energetic, makes it fun

* Marcus Evans - Senior Leaders - Jakarta, Singapore, Manila, Kuala Lumpur

• John gave a very impactful, sharp presentation
• Truly enlightening, insightful, and provocative
• Funny but credible, organized as well
• respects others ideas

* Mellon Bank - Team of Senior Leaders - Boston

• John is obviously well read on change management and business philosophies.
• A very talented and effective presentation.
• Excellent presentation of the material and involving all participants
• A very good speaker who kept our interest.
• I wish all our presenters had his style and energy

* Prudential Financial - Senior Leaders

• speaker was easy to listen to
• made the day go fast
• great job
• speaker was knowledgeable and brought in timely examples
• speaker was great
• speaker enthusiasm excellent