About

Crisp Strategies Inc. and my speeches, writing, coaching and consulting aim to encourage people to consciously try out and improve five key skills that help everyone (and their organizations) succeed faster and better and enjoy life more.

I do this by speaking (as well as coaching and consulting) about innovations and trends that are developing in human resources and leadership: better people skills, better organizations!

Organizations are truly beginning to see that effective people practices can help them triple (or more) results and balance, with initial improvements immediately and sizable gains within 18 to 36 months.

Check out our client list and what they have said here.

Video and audio clips of presentations, interviews and more with Dave are here.

The skills are those of great leaders who form the key ingredient to make organizations great places to work and more than triple results.

The startling fact is these skills are quite easy to develop and extremely powerful in use, but many people nevertheless miss in one or two areas, which seriously hampers results and limits careers. These ought to be so basic they’re promoted everywhere, from schools to universities to workplaces, but sadly they’re not, at least not today.

Of course it’s appropriate to ask how I arrived at this conclusion. I held leadership roles in seven industries including heading Human Resources for a national Top 20 company in retail with 70,000 staff for 14 years. That required developing programs for and coaching 4500 managers and executives and being able to see what worked and didn’t in closely matched situations - in effect a huge laboratory for someone who studied psychology at university.

You can find my resume and typical bio at these links: Resume and Bio.

After more than 30 years successfully adapting to various leadership roles in seven industries and seeing how powerful this set of skills could be in all of them I resolved to promote their use as widely as possible. The ultimate dream is a better world, created by happier, more successful people, powering far more effective organizations. Given the problems we face, it can’t come too soon.

People can become essentially anything they want. “Want” is a key word and knowing what you want can be challenging, but how to get there is clear. The skills to succeed are the same needed to learn, adapt and lead effectively, whether it is leading just yourself, a team or even an entire organization. And great leadership makes organizations great provided they are supported by some reasonable practices - a culture of fairness, respect and balance… HR practices.

I decided to focus on being a speaker, coach and consultant in Human Resources, Leadership and personal success strategies because these are so closely related, have greater impact than any other aspect of strategy, yet are so often overlooked or taken for granted.

The great debate about the value of Human Resources in organizations has been settled though many still don’t know it. Hundreds of studies confirm that effective HR and the leadership that creates it multiply result 3 to 20 times the average in any industry - yes, the average.

How far you can improve individually and organizationally seems limitless. That is to say no matter how successful you become there is always more available. Most organizations I’ve worked in would have been thrilled with a 5% or 10% increase annually, while the studies show most could have improved 100% in a couple of years and as much as 1000% to 2000% in 10 or 20. We simply think too small and short term and fail to understand what it takes to achieve such results. Not so Toyota, Southwest Air or my former direct competitor, Walmart. They build in the power of human ingenuity at every level, in every job, on every team throughout their organizations and it shows up in continually, year after year improvements in results. Is there an upper limit? Perhaps. We don’t know what it might be though because every year such companies find ways to continue to grow and prosper.

So, How Do You Go About Creating Outstanding Success?
Aiming for both Balance AND Results together is the key to highly effective leadership and strategy for both organization and personal success. My goal is to show how easy the ‘how to’ can be, having learned by coaching hundreds of leaders to be more successful and better managers as well as to ramp up organizational performance.

If you’re dying to know the five skills, I’ll mention them here, but encourage you to read more on this site and elsewhere because they sound so routine it’s hard to believe they can be all you need. Here they are: be positive, be honest, be strategic (by combining the first two into a balanced strategy to push toward goals you choose in ways that benefit everyone - no one left behind!), be consistent (build habits or “skills” which are just habits with lots of practice) and keep these elements in balance, another word for common sense, judgment or coordination.

You can, in fact, help people develop judgment as you can with all these skills. More importantly you can show them how to develop it on their own. Show several thousand people… that’s powerful!

In my bio I mention I led teams in seven intense careers, learning to succeed, yet keep balanced and help others do so as well. Before starting a speaking and consulting business in 2002 I headed HR (Human Resources) for 70,000 people at a national retail chain for 14 of my 17 years there. Ultimately staff voted it a “best company to work for” three years in a row despite more than 110 re-organizations and mergers during that time (almost one a month).

My speeches about balance AND results flow from practical experience, with practical examples, exactly what it takes to get there step by step. During several years I led the company’s eCommerce Internet start-up in addition to my HR duties, which entailed producing catalogues in multiple languages for client companies as well and setting up new operations in 5 Asian and two North American countries in ten months.

The experience of training, coaching and creating programs for hundreds of leaders who daily face the challenges of leading in challenging circumstances (retail isn’t noted for its high margins) meant learning to get the key messages across fast and powerfully. It’s ideal background for someone specializing in these topics.

Today I enjoy keeping up with changing options in HR via membership in several think-tank type organizations in the field, notably Strategic Capability Network (where I’m a key “thought leader” to use their terminology) and their international parent the HR Planning Society.

With lots of experience, some of it generating some very interesting and sometimes funny stories, I now speak (and coach or consult) mostly about Trends in HR, what the future holds for people’s contributions in organizations and various sub-topics within that:

Trends in Human Resources for the 21st Century

Reach Dave at:
Toronto: 647-227-2646 or Click to email Dave Crisp