K. Blickenstaff
Chairman and CEO
Biosite Diagnostics, Inc., San Diego, California

“We realized that we just weren’t reaching the goals our team set out to attain. We were struggling to improve our sales and marketing management team’s skills and sales ability. Brainard Strategy recommended a series of assessments and interviews for our key talent. Once through the assessment he advised our executive team on ways to “map” our talent relative to our needs. We began to revise our hiring process as a means to find similar types of “smart” people whom we were always able to attract, but now we were better able to assess for “fit” with real data. We also were able to rightly move some key people into key roles and each and every person in our marketing and sales organization were given developmental feedback by our managers in a way that enabled open and “real” conversations about contribution and value. We then took our team through sales training and personal development planning activities based on the collective assessment information. Because of Brainard Strategy, our team is back on track.”

K. Blickenstaff
Chairman and CEO
Biosite Diagnostics, Inc., San Diego, California

“We had experienced less than optimal business results in 2006 and some management team conflict that was out of the ordinary, and my feeling was that our management structure and management team functioning may have been less than what it had been in the recent past. I asked Michael for his thoughts on an approach and his expertise in initiating an objective assessment of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats if we did not change our course of action. Michael’s approach was based on solid theory, his questioning style and data collection techniques enabled people to be open, and enabled us to get a very thorough assessment that was then easy to convert to pragmatic action. The organizational and management plan of action was easy to understand and prioritized in such a way that many members of our senior management team could easily agree with and work toward.”