Organization Planning & Design

Paul Gustavson President Organization Planning & Design

Paul W. Gustavson is a leading management consultant specializing in strategy and organization design, business process improvement, leadership development, the design of high performance teams and work systems, change management and knowledge management. In 1972 he was the first walk on return missionary under then new Head Coach LaVell Edwards and later in 1974 & 1975 while a MOB graduate student he served as Bill Dyer’s teaching and research assistant. In the early 70's, he began an in-depth study of high performance teams and the systemic design of high commitment work systems. In 2012, he co-authored a popular book “Running into the Wind, Bronco Mendenhall, Five Strategies for Building Successful Teams” in 2013, he co-authored “The Power of Living by Design” and in 2014 his third co-authored book “A Team of Leaders, Empowering every member to take ownership, Demonstrate Initiative and Deliver Results was voted was one of the 30 Top Business Books by Soundview Executive Business Summaries.

Paul received his Master's in Organizational Behavior in 1975 from Brigham Young University. He has served for over20 years as a member of the Marriott School of Management’s OB/HR Advisory Board and as a past 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 strategy and organization design, leadership development, knowledge management and change 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. In 2004 he received the Herrmann International Big Thinker Award for his contribution to the field of whole brain thinking.

Paul and his wife Kris Anne served two-year part time Church Service Missionaries for the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Human Resource Department from May 2007 to May 2009. Since 2009 he has continued to contribute on special projects for the Church’s Temporal Affairs Departments and the Communication Services Department. He served on President Kim Clark’s BYU Idaho President’s Advancement Council from 2007-2010. Since Bronco Mendenhall was named as BYU’s Head Football Coach in December of 2004 Paul has had the privilege of being Bronco’s strategy, organization design and change management consultant for the past nine years.

Prior to establishing Organization Planning & Design Inc. in 1984 Paul held Human Resource and Organization Development Management positions for Standard Oil of Indiana, Zilog and Cygnet Technologies Inc. in the energy and high technology industries. He has over 36 years of consulting, research and hands on experience as an internal and an external consultant as well as a Director of Human Resources. He has been involved with more than 50 start-ups, joint ventures and mergers and acquisitions during this period of time.

Since founding OPD 1984, Paul’s consulting experience has included work in the area of strategy and organization design, business process design and improvement, leadership development, knowledge management, team development and change management at a number of companies, including American Express, Advanta, Amazon, American Transtech, Amoco, Ancestry.com, AT&T, AT&T Capital Corp., Amerada Hess, APX Alarms, Blue Cross Blue Shield, BP, BHP of Australia, Discover Books, Bristol Myers Squibb, BYU Football, Cherokee Nation, Colgate Palmolive, John Deere Financial Services, Deseret Media Corporation, ebay, Exxon, GE. GKN Automotive, Hallmark, HP Financial Services, I/N Tek, LDS Church, Pennzoil, Pitney Bowes, Mars, NASA, National Semiconductor, Nu Skin, Veterans Benefit Administration, Wells Fargo, Xerox and Zilog. Paul has worked nationally and internationally in a number of industries, including automotive, athletics, steel, energy, consumer products, chemicals, direct selling, electronics, financial services, leasing, aerospace, transportation and government. Paul specializes in helping organizations develop a clear and compelling differentiating strategy. Then helps them identify and prioritize those processes necessary to deliver the their strategy. Finally he helps them align their organization's structures and various systems to the organization’s processes and strategy.

He has been the keynote speaker at numerous conferences including: American Society of Training & Developments National Conferences, OD Network’s National Conference, The Ecology of Work Conferences, U.S. Navy’s Science Technology and Engineering Conference, BYU Marriott School’s Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Conferences, BYU Management Society’s Conferences, National Conference of Organization Designers, Leadership Enrichment Series – LDS Church.

Over the years, Paul has been privileged to work with clients who have been recognized nationally for developing leadership capability and 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 over 50 books, company magazines and periodicals, including Business Week, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Deseret News, Fast Company and Fortune magazine. Paul’s work has been featured in published books by AMACOM “Seeing is Believing” by Stew Liff and Pamela Posey and “Improving the Performance of Government Employees: A Managers Guide” by Stew Liff, as well as many of the premier books in the field such as Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline Handbook; 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, Wenger, McDermott and Snyder’s Cultivating Communities of Practice and Wayne Herbertson’s The Practical Safety Guide to Zero Harm. 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”.

Please see www.organizationdesign.com for the full text articles published about his work.