LRI was founded by Eric Douglas. This is his story about the origins of LRI.
“When I started LRI, I wanted to create a different kind of consulting company – one that helps organizations achieve real, meaningful change. This was born out of my experience hiring two different types of consulting companies when I was an executive.
We’d hire them to figure out what geographic markets we should be in or what a certain set of customers wanted. The firm would do its work and generate a massive report, but there’d be no buy-in or support. In one instance, we spent over $1 million on a market report that went nowhere.
We’d hire facilitators to help us during our offsite planning meetings and ensure we had good, thorough discussions about specific topics. But after two days of talk, there would be no follow-through. In both cases, we’d spend all this money and be left where we started.
I wanted to combine the skills of expert facilitation with organizational development experience and the capacity to analyze and make recommendations so that we could guide a management team or an entire organization through a successful change management process.
We began with just one senior-level consultant – me – and a small support team. We attracted a diverse array of clients that wanted to achieve a significant change – a grocery store that wanted to expand, a utility that wanted to improve its governance, a bank that wanted a stronger leadership team. Over time, we attracted a stellar group of consultants and a stellar support team. We focused on five practice areas: strategic planning, board governance, organizational development, leadership development, and business process improvement. Now, 20 years and 300 clients later, we can happily say it all worked. And our mantra remains: facilitating real, meaningful change.”
– Eric Douglas, Senior Partner and President
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