Andrew Bennett
Expert on Building Inspiring Organizations

Former personal assistant to Ross Perot and student of W. Edwards Deming, consultant and business leader Andrew Bennett presents inspiration as a critical strategy for achievement. Sharing stories from his own life – a life of contrast between great personal loss and impressive achievement – Andrew weaves together a compelling case about the need for inspiration in our work.

Andrew founded Bennett Performance Group in 1997 to work with leaders building inspiration into the fabric of organizations in order to achieve critical goals like growth, innovation, and profitability. For over 20 years he has been working in, and studying, organizational cultures at Abbott Laboratories, The City of Detroit Health Department, The Deming Institute, Ford Motor Company, Host Marriott, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, and Sun Microsystems, to name a few. He’s learned that most organizations spend their time on daily operations, neglecting the powerful force of inspiration.

During his years at EDS, Andrew was selected at age 28 to manage expansion into Australia. During this assignment his team grew annual revenue by 1300% from $5 million to $65 million over two years without adding resources. He did this by creating a new business model based on a partnership of risk and reward-sharing with his client. He returned to the US to teach this paradigm-busting model to hundreds of managers. During this time Andrew attended New York University where he studied quality management and systems thinking under W. Edwards Deming.

After working inside corporate structures for 10 years Andrew experienced a personal wake-up call as he struggled to reconcile financial success with success as measured by feeling that the work we do has meaning – that our work matters. He had observed many people over the years wrestling with the same questions. As he worked to find answers, Andrew learned about the close relationship between financial success and inspiration. He realized that these two drivers are not mutually exclusive. In fact, financial success and inspiration support each other in a virtuous cycle.

There are major differences between motivation and inspiration. While motivation is required at times when we need a kick in the pants, inspiration is about building enduring, positive energy into your organization’s culture, connecting the hearts and minds of customers, employees, suppliers, and communities, and creating compelling reasons for working with your organization.

Achieving a shift in performance as the result of one presentation is a pretty tall order, yet the organizations Andrew works with regularly report notable changes after he speaks. That’s because he has been presenting for over 35 years. Andrew began presenting at age seven as a magician, and today, as a member of London’s prestigious Magic Circle, he uses world-class magic as a metaphor for the principles he teaches and to punctuate and energize his presentations. In high school Andrew was Michigan State Champion in public speaking in 1977 and 1979. In 1992 he was awarded the EDS Great Communicator Award for being the best business speaker within the 70,000-person company. He is gifted when it comes to developing trust and rapport, enabling audience members to relax, have fun, and open up to new ways of thinking and acting.