LRI History

LRI was founded by Eric Douglas. This is his story about the origins of LRI.

Sacramento Facilitation“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.

One type was the big-name consulting company.

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.

The second type of consultant we’d hire was a facilitator.

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.

When I founded LRI, my vision was to combine these two skill sets.

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 planningboard governance, organizational developmentleadership 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

 

Escape Technology

During the summer of 2015 we began a strategic planning process with LRI. This was our first attempt at an encompassing five-year plan. I was amazed by how quickly the consultants at LRI assimilated our culture, processes, and critical priorities. They expertly pushed us through the conversations we needed to have – some of them not easy. I’m happy to report we are extremely pleased with the result. We completed the project on time – and on budget. I highly recommend LRI for future engagements.

California State Board of Equalization

We used LRI to assist our agency with an employee assessment survey this summer. LRI was very accommodating and easy to work with. BOE is very happy to be a client and will use LRI’s expertise again.

HSBC Bank

Eric Douglas has accomplished what many in his profession have not: he’s mastered the ability to under-engineer the highly complex organizational change process. By simplifying the process and employing an intimate and open approach, he’s earned the trust and respect of our entire executive team. His success in identifying, distilling, and simplifying issues allows him to provide our team with a sophisticated, yet pragmatic array of easy-to-access tools that are tailored to our needs and that we’re able to put to work right away.

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