Former personal assistant to Ross Perot and student of W. Edwards Deming, consultant and business leader Andrew Bennett presents inspiration as a critical strategy for achievement. Sharing stories from his own life – a life of contrast between great personal loss and impressive achievement – Andrew weaves together a compelling case about the need for inspiration in our work.

Andrew founded Bennett Performance Group in 1997 to work with leaders building inspiration into the fabric of organizations in order to achieve critical goals like growth, innovation, and profitability. For over 20 years he has been working in, and studying, organizational cultures at Abbott Laboratories, The City of Detroit Health Department, The Deming Institute, Ford Motor Company, Host Marriott, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems, to name a few. He’s learned that most organizations spend their time on daily operations, neglecting the powerful force of inspiration.

During his years at EDS, Andrew was selected at age 28 to manage expansion into Australia. During this assignment his team grew annual revenue by 1300% from $5 million to $65 million over two years without adding resources. He did this by creating a new business model based on a partnership of risk and reward-sharing with his client. He returned to the US to teach this paradigm-busting model to hundreds of managers. During this time Andrew attended New York University where he studied quality management and systems thinking under W. Edwards Deming.

After working inside corporate structures for 10 years Andrew experienced a personal wake-up call as he struggled to reconcile financial success with success as measured by feeling that the work we do has meaning – that our work matters. He had observed many people over the years wrestling with the same questions. As he worked to find answers, Andrew learned about the close relationship between financial success and inspiration. He realized that these two drivers are not mutually exclusive. In fact, financial success and inspiration support each other in a virtuous cycle.

Andrew left EDS and established the consulting practice of a Pacific Northwest training organization. During this time he was able to study thousands of people in well-known organizations and their ability to take responsibility in relationship to the culture they worked within. Andrew is a champion for the spirit of humanity – working to build organizations that honor the sacredness of human beings.

In the fall of 2001 Andrew began “The Search for Courageous Leaders,” a project to identify leaders who are redefining what success means for 21st century business and society. He and Carol Anderson have been interviewing Courageous Leaders who are building organizations that serve deep human needs while healing the environment, caring for communities, and promoting economic democracy – and becoming financially successful as a result. They will share their interviews eventually in a book entitled The Search for Courageous Leaders.

Andrew received his Bachelor’s degree in Communication Arts and Sciences from Michigan State University and pursued postgraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin and New York University. He is a board member of Habitat for Humanity of Huron Valley and actively involved in the University of Michigan Depression Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he lives with his wife Julie.