Frank Watson, PhD, has provided consulting services in executive development, organizational effectiveness, and strategic management since 1980. He is recognized for his insights and expertise in leadership, strategy formulation, and leading change in a variety of business environments. Major clients include MCI, Westinghouse, RCA, GE, and the Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs, CO).

In the area of executive development, Frank uses various methodologies to impact the leadership style of emerging and senior leaders "from the inside out," including freefall parachuting, high-speed diving, rock and mountain climbing, and other outdoor adventures. His objective is to assist in developing leaders who have meaningful and measurable attributes and attitudes to be powerful, caring, high-performance executives by internalizing those attributes and changes beyond the cognitive level.

In addition to facilitating workshops, Frank is a frequent keynote speaker. As a noted lecturer, he serves as an adjunct professor in doctoral and master's programs for various universities in Business Administration and Human Resource Development. He develops custom programs and consults on such areas as leadership development, executive coaching and mentoring, leading organizational change, and organizational effectiveness.

Frank recently retired from the Air Force Reserve holding the highest rank possible-Major General. His previous assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, where he developed management policy and led program integration efforts with an acquisition budget of $45 billion. His last assignment was to the Commander, Air Force Space Command, where he focused on increasing organizational capabilities of the 39,000-person organization, as well as the effective utilization of the reserve forces. He carries a top-secret clearance.

Prior to becoming an independent consultant/trainer, Frank gained experience as a program manager, project manager, staff and software engineer, as well as an entrepreneur in various business ventures and activities. He has served on seven Boards of Directors, received four national awards/recognitions, and has been a member or held positions in nine professional or service organizations.

Dr. Watson has consulted with numerous organizations, including: RCA, GE, MCI, Bank of America, Lockheed Martin, Hughes Aerospace, Boeing Aerospace, Westinghouse, Excel Corp., Republic of West Germany, University of Colorado, USAF-Europe, Army Material Command-Europe/Far East, and Trammel Crow.

Sample Projects

Organizational Effectiveness. Frank places most projects into a strategic perspective to insure issues are resolved in a proper context and to avoid a "band-aid" or less than optimal solution. His goal is to increase the overall effectiveness of an organization. In this context, Dr. Watson led a team effort to restructure and revitalize the effectiveness of a 7,000-person workforce by first developing the strategic focus and then the leadership attributes of the 200-person headquarters staff. Using multiple sessions over a six-month period, he focused the staff on "creating the future" versus just "correcting the problems." This involved clarifying purpose and direction, creating meaningful goals and measurable objectives, and finally, developing effective strategies and policy. Knowing that this newly developed focus would result in superior performance only if there was effective leadership, he then worked to develop the leadership attributes and capabilities using intense seminars and several experiential activities.
The results were dramatic-the staff reorganized itself into a more systems-oriented structure; the cost-effectiveness of the operation was increased; the willingness to accept and even create change was notably increased; and morale was greatly improved. Most significant was the confidence and competence of the leadership who felt they had "come into their own" in their ability to create an effective organization.

Strategy Formulation. Using the concept of Key Success Factors, Dr. Watson led the senior management team in clarifying and defining the organization's strengths, core competencies, and competitive advantages-and specifically, assessing the capabilities and capacity of the employees. The effort then focused on matching and aligning those strengths with the key success factors in the competitive environment to form highly relevant strategies, and plans were implemented to develop strengths. In subsequent interventions, policy was developed to "hold the course" and to increase and guide discretionary decision-making at the lowest appropriate levels, thus allowing rapid responsiveness to changing requirements and conditions.
The outcome of this effort was the implementation of a highly-effective strategy that over the next three years allowed the organization to increase its market position and expand its market share by more than 8% per year. By identifying key strengths, the organization began to sharply focus resource allocations to directly impact effectiveness and the bottom line.

Developing Effective Leaders. The focus of this consulting effort was to increase the effectiveness of creating leaders. Dr. Watson's objective was to create meaningful and measurable attributes and attitudes that would result in powerful, but caring, high-performance executives. Three premises were used: (1) Leadership training and education are important-but not sufficient to create effective leaders; (2) background and past experience are necessary for selected key leadership positions-but also not sufficient to create a successful executive; and (3) the character attributes at the core of the individual are crucial in creating highly effective leaders and teams willing to risk and lead in uncertain environments. At issue was the leadership ability of highly promotable individuals that had excelled technically and were thought to have considerable executive potential but were proving to be ineffective leaders. By creating powerful risk-adventure experiences and facilitated interventions, powerful change processes were created and metaphors internalized to help individuals make changes from the inside out. Using a leading-edge assessment instrument developed by Dr. Watson, changes were measured and used as feedback to reinforce the internalization of character and leadership attributes.
The results in leadership development were dramatic. On average, his techniques produced a 20% change in critical attributes along with a significant increase in individuals' leadership potential and abilities. The metaphors created were powerful internal compasses used to guide thinking and behavior. Senior leaders saw significant increases in the effectiveness of managers as reflected in the periodic performance reports and in the results of 360-degree feedback instruments.