Meet Dr. Jim
Jim has over 35 years experience as a strategic planner in the public and private sectors, is a best-selling author and specialist in influence psychology, former professor of International Law, labour relations mediator and a change agent with an enviable track record of accomplishments. He has held high-profile engagements as a public sector dispute conciliator, hospital ombudsman and provincial supervisor of a large urban school board. His career achievements include executive posts in academe, consulting services and the international marketing communications industry.
Having spent four decades as an educator and businessman, and having provided his counsel to over 600 organizations, Jim is convinced that surviving and thriving in today’s rapidly changing competitive landscape requires a different way of thinking, operational naiveté and the ability to reframe problems into opportunities. In short, they require a transformational thinker. He has demonstrated his uncanny ability to simplify complex problems, reconfigure resources, engage people and design business strategies for the new world order – the one we have never witnessed before but the one in which we now live and work.
Jim is often called upon to provide advice on such vexing organizational issues as ensuring the existing corporate culture and senior team are equipped to respond to the challenges of the innovation economy, the compelling dictates of increasing complexity, vicious volatility and chance events, and the absolute necessity of engaging and unleashing the enormous creative potential of the modern workforce. His work typically deals with issues of organizational effectiveness – ranging from changing traditional management models, streamlining decision making and aligning the executive team to facilitating dispute resolution and developing protocols for enhanced working conditions among the key stakeholder groups.
Holding a doctorate in educational theory, Jim spent 18 years as a senior academic administrator at two Ontario universities. He was managing editor of a professional journal for over a decade, served as an evaluator of new educational technologies for the federal government and has been nationally honoured for his career in the field of adult learning.
He has conducted a number of sensitive organizational performance reviews and operational audits and was instrumental in the reform of Ontario’s Community Care Access system. He has also worked for dozens of hospitals of every size on a variety of difficult issues, ranging from enhancing governance effectiveness to the mediation and/or resolution of disputes among internal constituencies.
At its inception, Jim was recruited by Dealmakers International, a worldwide consortium of negotiating experts who advise on or directly conduct business acquisition and commercial development transactions for companies in over 20 countries, to provide his counsel and represent client needs in Canada. His expertise has also been utilized in the development of training materials that support the network’s various educational activities.
Jim’s primary specialization and interests lie in the fields of organizational performance, conflict resolution, cross-cultural communications, influence psychology and the dynamics and consequences of complex change. He has conveyed his views to hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life through his seminars, books, business columns and Internet-based programs. Thousands of testimonials confirm his ability to “connect” with his students and encourage meaningful change in their lives.
Jim’s various professional development programs and courses have been formally recognized for “excellence in the design and delivery of lifelong education” and are offered to the public through professional associations across the country, as well as on a contracted in-house basis. He has designed numerous advanced-level learning programs for government, industry and professional groups. He developed the world’s first Internet training program on negotiating skills for the University of Alberta and has published three best-selling books on conflict management.
A Canadian by birth, father of four and grandfather, he now resides at his farm in the Grey Highlands of south-central Ontario where he spends his precious recreational time building his extensive gardens and tree plantations.
In 2008, Jim launched SmartLeaders.ca as a way of dialoguing with his students and others who are similarly interested in the subjects of change, innovation, conflict and leadership. The interactive features of this web site are intended to encourage new thinking on these topics. He willingly and freely offers his counsel to those perplexed by challenges they are unable to resolve. Simply Ask Dr. Jim.