Paul Gustavson

Paul is a leading organizational design architect specializing in strategy making, the design of high performance work systems, change management and knowledge management. In the early 70's, he began an in-depth study of high performance teams and the systemic design of high commitment work systems.

Since 1992, Paul has served as a Marriott School of Management's MOB Advisory Board member and as its Chair for 8 years. In April, 1999, he received the Marriott School of Management's William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award for his contribution in the field of change management, strategy, organization design, and knowledge management. In 1999, he was selected as a member of Work in America's National Advisory Council focusing on identifying best practices in creating and sustaining high-performance teams and work cultures.

Prior to establishing OPD, Inc. in 1984 Paul held management and internal consulting positions for Standard Oil of Indiana, Zilog and Cygnet Technologies Inc. in the energy and high technology industries. He has more than twenty-five years of organization design consulting experience both as an internal and an external consultant.

Since founding OPD, Inc. in 1984, Paul's consulting experience has included work in the area of strategy, organization design, knowledge management, team development and change management at a number of companies, including American Express, Advanta, American Transtech, Amoco, AT&T Capital Corp., Amerada Hess, BP, BHP of Australia, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cherokee Nation, Colgate Palmolive, Deere Financial Services, Exxon, GE. InTek, Pennzoil, Pitney Bowes, National Semiconductor, Veterans Administration and Zilog. Paul has worked nationally and internationally in a number of industries, including automotive, steel, oil, chemicals, electronics, financial services, leasing, aerospace, transportation and government. Paul specializes in helping clients to align strategically with key factors in their environment and aligning the design choices an organization makes with culture necessary to achieve the desired outcomes of that organization.

Over the years, Paul has been privileged to work with clients who have been recognized nationally for innovative organizational design. The Veteran's Administration, for example, was the first winner of the Al Gore Hammer Award for reinventing government and a recent recipient of the prestigious PILLAR award. Colgate's Hill's Pet Nutrition facility in Richmond, Indiana has won many national awards as a start-up plant for innovative work design. Several of Paul's clients, including I/N Tek, American Transtech, the Geon Company, AT&T Credit Corp., and Veterans Administration have been featured on Work in America's national tour of outstanding organizations. The work at Amerada Hess received the 2000 Computerworld Smithsonian Award "A Search for New Heroes".

Paul's work has been featured in several periodicals, including Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and Fortune magazine. Paul's work has also been featured in Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline; Hammer & Champy's Reengineering the Corporation, Hammer's Beyond Reengineering, Champy's Reengineering Management, Robert Mile's Corporate Comeback, Donald Davis' Managing Technological Innovation, Butera and Thurman's Automation and Work Design, Katzenbach & Smith's The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach's Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of your Employees, Ned Herrmann's The Whole Brain Business Book and Wenger, McDermott and Snyder's Cultivating Communities of Practice. The Fast Company Magazine, October 1999 Issue, featured an article titled, "Engines of Democracy" about GE's highest performing jet engine plant of which Paul was involved in its initial design work. The Government Executive July 2002 featured in its cover story article Paul's award winning work with Stew Liff in "You can manage your way out, it not just the system its you". The IEE Engineering Management April 2003 magazine featured Paul's work with ZiLOG in significantly reducing their product development cycle time by 40% year after year in the article "Product Development as a Competitive Advantage".

Paul holds a Master of Organizational Behavior from Brigham Young University Marriott School of Management.