Tom Finn is an organization development consultant and leadership trainer. He helps organizations become more productive, collaborative, and fulfilling.

Mr. Finn consults to companies and agencies that:

  • want to build a thriving culture or work environment
  • are setting a new direction or reorganizing
  • are trying to cope with market change or competitive demands
  • want to change a history of adversarial relations or negativity
  • are looking to develop effective managers, change agents, and facilitators
  • want to build successful teams
  • want to unite remote regions, sites, or departments in a common commitment.

Mr. Finn consults in the following areas: organizational system change, team building, managing cross-cultural diversity, and coaching managers. He trains people in leadership, conflict management, and training of trainers/facilitators.

Tom began his own practice in organization consulting in 1991. He consulted for eight years for Westinghouse Electric Corporation and for Macro International of Silver Spring, MD.

Mr. Finn's approach is to use awareness of whole systems to help individuals, teams, and organizations develop themselves or solve complex dilemmas. In essence, his method is a business application of "think globally, act locally", developing this mindset at all levels.The approach is to broaden thinking and action so that all employees use big picture information to connect to each other and the mission of the organization in a positive fashion.

Mr. Finn is a member of NTL Institute, one of the leading professional groups in the field of organization development. He has run a business from startup to sale of the company. His educational background includes the following:

  • A.B., International Relations, Brown University, Providence, RI.
  • M.S., International Business/Health Care, Georgetown University, Washington, DC.
  • Certificate in Spanish Language, University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain.

Tom has professional training in several areas:
He was trained by NTL Institute in an 18-month program covering organizational systems theory, group dynamics, and training and consultation skills.
Certified instructor for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and for the Management Feedback System (MFS), software that provides employee feedback to managers.
He has just completed a two-year program for advanced personal growth work with Alexandra Merrill & John, Joyce, and Wendy Weir.

Professional Experience:
Work of Tom Finn on Specific Projects

Organizational Change

Mr. Finn co-led an organizational change effort for the management and staff of a retirement community. He and a partner devised a program to improve diversity management, race relations, and general management/employee effectiveness. The effort included focus groups, targeted training in three phases (awareness-raising, skill-building, and planning), and a coaching phase to address significant departmental issues. Management reports greater cross-department cooperation and a focus on the organization's issues as a whole; ability to deal with diversity issues when they arise; and successful progress in avoiding potential legal problems.

Mr. Finn helped four organizations coordinate plans and national strategies in La Paz, Bolivia. In Spanish, he used the "Future Search" approach to align multiple actors in a common direction.

Mr. Finn co-facilitated a change effort in a multi-agency project. The work involved coordinating a vast inventory involving computer problems, management team issues, and user- specialist problems. The project gained a new customer service focus, with users more central to the process. Mr. Finn and his partner also improved the leadership team's skills. He used data gathering, team building, training/coaching, and large group problem solving/planning sessions.

Leadership Training.
Mr. Finn has trained, in Spanish, all management levels of the Education Ministry, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Managers are learning how to empower lower levels as the Ministry revolutionizes its educational approach to meet 21st Century demands. Mr. Finn has designed the courses and trained managers and facilitators in Managing Change Amidst Chaos. His focus is to help management lead large system change; in this case, the province is the size of the country of France. Most recently, he trained, for two weeks, top managers in the Ministry of Labor in the area of Developing High Performance Organizations.

Mr. Finn co-trained/designed a two-week leadership course for the US Navy. The course was deemed the best leadership course offered worldwide by the Navy Personnel Command.
Managing Diversity.

Mr. Finn has consulted and trained in the area of Managing Diversity for several large companies (from telephone companies to motorcycles, banks to oil companies), a day care center, non-profits, the US Navy, and city government. He assesses, trains, and coaches clients on using diversity as a positive advantage. He has also trained trainers in the area of cultural diversity, and written and spoken publicly on the issue of white men and diversity.

Team Building.
Mr. Finn has conducted @ 50 sessions for improving team effectiveness. Topic areas include reorganization, team strategic planning, resolving conflict, and product or service planning including process improvement.

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