“I work with industry and professional organizations and their members to solve skills gaps and adapt to a rapidly changing competitive environment.”
Regardless of the industry, when you boil things down there are really only four key metrics: Safety, Quality, Productivity, and Cost. And the key driver for those metrics is competency. The competency of front line workers and the competency of leaders throughout the organization.
Jeff is a Certified Management Consultant who specializes in strategic workforce and organizational development and their impact on performance. Since 1988, he’s been focused on driving operational excellence through developing competent organizations.
He is deeply committed to apprenticeship and mentoring as the means for developing competency, and has been vigorous in his support for skills development in general, and skilled people in particular. Because of that focus, people often assume that he has a skilled trades background (which isn’t the case, at least not directly), and the next question that’s usually asked is “So why does he do this?”
In his own words: “My father came to Canada from England in 1953 with £100 in his pocket, a cardboard suitcase and a toolbox. He was a tin-basher, and worked most of his career fabricating restaurant fixtures and cabinetry from stainless steel. I didn’t inherit my Dad’s hands, but I did inherit his heart and his mind. My focus on helping industry develop real-world skills is my tribute to him and the thousands of others who built this country while at the same time building a good life for themselves and their families.”
The most important lesson from Jeff’s first career as an officer in the Canadian military was that if you looked after the front-line people, they’d look after you. That’s been front of mind since he co-founded Griffiths Sheppard Consulting Group in 2002 – the most critical people are the ones on the front line, creating value for customers. Continuously reskilling and upskilling the workforce is now more important than ever, and he was delighted to join forces with a great team of expert colleagues to create WorkForce Strategies International – a new brand, but the same tight focus on finding practical solutions to address skills gaps and drive productivity and competitiveness.
Creating competency-based, ‘deliberately developmental’ learning organizations is what Jeff does. Click here to get in touch, and let’s start growing your business by growing your people.