Linda
Barker is a founding partner of Business Impact Associates. She helps
clients meet the challenges of change in three modes:
§ on
the organizational level, co-creating organizational transformation and
process improvement to achieve stated goals,
§ on
the team level, assisting teams in strategic execution, and
§ on
the individual level in personal transformation through developmental
coaching.
Linda believes that the people associated with the change effort have the
collective wisdom to create new solutions. Consequently, she engages all
key resources and provides expert facilitation so that their voices,
skills and wisdom combine to create new ways of expediting business
results. She guides the owners of these plans as they present them
in discussion, receive support, and implement and sustain them throughout
the organization.
Linda has worked in international and domestic private sector
corporations, consulting firms, non-profit organizations and the
government. Her collaborative facilitation services have yielded:
§
process improvement and cost savings for Cable &
Wireless America (now SAVVIS Communications), and the American
Speech-Language-Hearing Association
§
effective leadership teams at the U.S.
Department of Energy, the Washington Navy Yard and the Family Mental
Health Foundation
§
high-performing management teams at Cable &
Wireless, ICMA RC and VeriSign.
Her expertise in performance management has supported the Spiral One
roll-out of the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) within NAVSEA
and the change in competencies for Branch Chiefs at the NRC-NMSS (Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Material Safety and Security). She has
created talent development and succession planning systems at McGraw-Hill
Book Company, American Express Travel Related Services, Manor Care, Inc.
(now HCR) and the World Bank. Her skills in Executive Coaching have
supported leaders at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Deloitte Consulting, the
American Society of Microbiology, Verizon, and the World Bank.
Linda is fascinated by the discoveries of complexity
science and understands organizations as dynamic organic entities.
She looks for the natural emergence of change within her client groups and
helps leaders support these self-organizing efforts. She is a member
of the DC Fractal of the Plexus Institute and wrote “Relationships—the DNA
of Business,” a review of
Weaving
Complexity and Business: Engaging the Soul at Work
for Emerging, the Institute’s newsletter.
Linda has also conducted evaluations of the impact of change efforts.
She is an author of
Maximizing the Impact of Executive Coaching: Behavioral Change,
Organizational Outcomes and Return on Investment, The
Manchester Review, 2001, which demonstrates that
coaching returns more than a five-fold return on investment. For
Cable & Wireless, she led a study of the results of the GE Work-OutTM
process, written up in
A Telecommunications Case Study, which demonstrated an average
four-fold return in the year in which the Work-OutTM was
conducted. This study also supported a move of the Organizational
Development unit of the company from a staff role into the heart of the
business, a process which Linda has presented at conferences in a session
entitled: Victory in the War Room: How ROI saved OD.
Linda holds a Master of Arts in the Psychology of Acquiring
a Second Language and a Bachelor of Arts in Classical Languages and
Literature. She is a member of the Chesapeake Bay Organizational
Development Network, where she was a repeat presenter in April 2005,
leading a session called: From Harvest to Action: Our Role as OD
Practitioners. Linda is a certified Work-OutTM lead
facilitator. She holds a DOD Secret Clearance.
