Staff & Faculty

STAFF

Bill Mills

Bill is the president of Executive Group, Inc. Bill is an entrepreneur and owns a successful consulting business. His clients include 3M, Pillsbury, Alliant Techsystems, AT&T Wireless, US Bancorp, Imation, Banta, Taylor Corporation, Goodrich, Carlson Companies and Lifetouch Studios.

Bill has published articles in the following publications:

• Leadership Excellence, National Association of Printers and Lithographers
• PICA Scanner, Printing Industry of the Carolinas
• Minnesota Organizational Development Network Newsletter
• ACG Network, International Association for Corporate Growth
• What's New in Sales Management
• City Business Journal

Bill is also the author of "Breakthrough: The Power of Conscious Conversation" which has won awards in both the categories of business and psychology.  Click here to read a chapter. Please contact us if you would like to purchase a copy.

In addition, Bill Mills received the Facilitator of the Year Award in 1993 from Leadership Management Inc., a national consortium of over 400 consulting firms. Bill has also been invited faculty at the University of Wisconsin, Stout; Northwestern University, Chicago; and the Carlson School of Management, Minneapolis. He appeared on the television program Good Morning, Minnesota and has presented for groups such as The National Printing Leadership Association, The MN ESOP Association, The MN Association of County Governments, The Executive Committee, Society of Human Resource Managers, ASTD and Norex. 

Bill serves on the Board of Directors for Ablenet, a firm that builds communication and access equipment for children with severe and profound disabilities. Bill has two grown children (Melissa and Justin) and is married to Lisa, the love of his life. They live in Loretto, MN with two dogs, an embarassing number cats and a "currently stable" heard of four horses.

Scott Morrow

Scott is a Peer Group facilitator for Executive Group.  Scott brings not only an extensive business background, but also a genuine desire to help others achieve their goals.  During his more than 30 years of operating management experience, Scott has:

• Provided strategic planning and insight to management teams in large corporate environments.
• Successfully transitioned from the corporate world to a small, privately held business. This unusual move was the start of Scott's respect for and appreciation of the entrepreneurial environment.
• Led a family held manufacturing business in its growth from sales of $8 million to $55 million over 15 years and eventually formulated a highly successful exit event for the shareholders.
• Served as Interim CEO/COO in several businesses during the past 5 years.
• Acquired and sold businesses.
• Built and led highly motivated management teams.
• Re-engineered sales and service organizations.

Scott is a respected leader who combines financial and strategic disciplines to help businesses manage change, optimize productivity and ultimately build sustained value. He is a leader who values collaboration and adaptability as critical components of a fearless culture.   Scott has a long history of being able to sort through complex situations, see the path and move the team to align and refocus to meet the needs of the client and the business. 

Lisa Mills

Lisa's background includes experience in the insurance, securities and financial industries. She brings a great attention to detail and customer care to Executive Group members. Lisa is also a published poet, an avid gardener and an animal lover of the highest order. She is a voracious reader and in another life would be a Jungian Analyst... if she could keep her horses.

 

FACULTY

Robert J. Krausert

Bob has worked in numerous companies over the past 10 years, focusing primarily on cycle time improvements in order fulfillment, product design and in the value chain, to yield cash flow increases, inventory decreases and customer satisfaction increases.

Bob has published several articles in various journals, has three books in process (a Lean/TOC Implementation and training series) and has trained over 3000 people in lean concepts, constraints management and supply chain management over the last five years. In addition, Bob is a featured speaker and trainer for the "Lean Certification" series at the manufacturer's Alliance and has taught classes on Supply Chain Management at St. Thomas University.

Bob graduated with Distinction from the University of Minnesota with a BSB in accounting. He has also passed the CPA and CIA (Certified Internal Auditor) exams. Bob lives in Eden Prairie with his wife and three children and is an avid runner and cyclist. He enjoys traveling, reading, playing the piano, playing soccer and doing things with his family.

Gary Jader

Gary Jader is an adjunct instructor at the University of St. Thomas, where he teaches New Products Management, and at Augsburg College, where he teaches Marketing. Gary's consulting company, Ideas on the Wall, focuses on generating breakthrough ideas and building powerful teams to get those ideas to market. Prior to consulting and teaching, Gary has more than 18 years of experience in sales, marketing and general management with Fortune 100 companies and 3 startup technology companies, including getting new products and businesses conceived, built, and launched.

Dr. Cheryl Leitschuh, Ed.D. 

Cheryl Leitschuh is a leadership development consultant and specializes in personal and professional success. She assists companies in achieving their key business objectives by fully capitalizing on a single line of their balance sheet - their human resources potential. She uses powerful programming, assessments and technology to harness and maximize the untapped potential of a company's human resources assets.

Cheryl addresses short-term and long-term business objectives by focusing on human talent development, conflict resolution, trust management and enhancing team performance. Cheryl's industry expertise includes banking, healthcare and manufacturing. As a frequent national speaker and television and radio personality, Cheryl speaks on an assortment of topics related to career vision, organizational leadership and enhancing human talent. She has also authored three books: Power Learning: Career Development Strategies That Work; A Structured Mentoring Process and Staying and Standing Women, and has recorded an audiotape. Career Vision: Moving Your Life From Stress To Balance. 

Cheryl is listed in Who's Who of American Women and Who's Who of Professional Women. She is also a professional member of the National Speaker's Association. She serves on the American Bar Association Law Practice Management Core Group and the AICPA Women's Initiative and Work/Life Balance Committee.

Terry Slattery

For the past twenty years, Terry Slattery has helped clients grow their margins exponentially. He has trained thousands of companies to increase their top-line revenue while decreasing their selling costs. He has provided services to companies in more than 100 industries, from home-based enterprises to Fortune 100 companies.  He is the creator of "Wimp Junction," a program that has taught thousands of sales people how to recognize and eliminate nonproductive sales behavior, especially during complex sales.  Terry still holds the record at IBM for opening the most accounts-even though he hasn't worked there for twenty years.

As a Sales Executive at Digital Equipment Corporation, he managed global relationships for the largest accounts, selling engineering systems, data communications, decision-support systems, and transaction processing.  When he is not helping companies grow, his interests include playing blues and jazz piano, as well as searching for the world's spiciest cuisine.

Larry Wilson

The fact is, organizations and individuals have little control over the discontinuous change that is occurring in our new world.  However, they do have control over their responses to these changing events. For the past twenty-five years Larry Wilson has helped leaders around the world start a cultural change process by having them, "Create the organization that if it existed, would put their current organization out of business." 

Larry Wilson is widely considered one of the foremost thinkers, speakers and doers in the business world today. He founded two premier companies: Wilson Learning Corporation (1965), a more than fifty-million-dollar training and research organization, and Pecos River Learning (1985), a change management and leadership development organization. These companies Larry founded have carved new territories in how we think about business, customers, and ourselves. Larry's newest venture is called Wilson Collaborative, a new business model for new thinking leaders.

Larry is not just a theorist; he is a doer and a learner. By age 29 he became the youngest lifetime member of the life insurance industry's prestigious Million-Dollar Round Table.

His passion, however, was in understanding how people in business learn, and what allows them to create both success and fulfillment. With Wilson Learning Corporation, he pioneered work in sales effectiveness, customer loyalty, business relationships, and strategic thinking.  He sold this company to Wiley publishing in 1982.

His continual exploration of individual and corporate courage and creativity led directly, in 1985, to his founding Pecos River Learning. He gathered leading thinkers and facilitators in the areas of human motivation, creativity, change management, and culture change to create totally unique ways of helping individuals and teams face the uncertain future by discovering and releasing their full potential and thus perform at their very best.  In 1995 Aon Corporation purchased Pecos River.

In the year 2000 Larry was motivated by Charlie Eitel, his former client, to work with him for the third time to turn around a company. This time to assist newly appointed CEO Charlie to turn around Simmons Mattress Company from a $500 million organization to a $1, 300, 000 company and do it in less than four years. Ask Charlie how that happened and he says it was through the people. Ask how he did that and he says through The Great Game of Life, which is the formal name of the cultural change process of the Wilson Collaborative.

Today, having flunked retirement twice, Larry's back in the board rooms of those leaders who are ready, willing and able to "Change Their Game" by collaborating with Larry and his powerful and experienced associates to manifest their good companies into great companies as a result of becoming great leaders themselves. 

As an author, his writings are world-renowned. In 1984, he co-authored the best seller The One-Minute Sales Person that sold over one million copies. His other best-selling books include: Changing the Game: The New Way to Sell and Stop Selling, Start Partnering. His last book, Play to Win! Choosing Growth Over Fear in Work and Life, was selected Best Business Book for 1999 by ForeWord magazine as well as winning the prestigious Benjamin Franklin Award for Best Business Book for 1999. He is a Senior Fellow at the College of Education & Human Development, University of Minnesota.  In May of 2005 Northland College granted Larry an honorary PhD in Business.

Grant McLennan

30 years experience in:

• Understanding customer needs and focusing businesses to differentiate themselves through market segmentation
• Aligning the employee culture and systems to provide new or revised offerings
• Creating new business models to serve customers in a more profitable way to dominate the target market
• uiding leadership teams to listening to (especially) good customers (often sorting out bad customers) and actively marketing to the best targets-perhaps into new areas.

The most important decisions revolve around the selection and attraction of the right customers, the best ways to serve them and galvanizing the organization to serve them with enthusiasm.  Significant successes with Fortune 500 companies (Group Director of Marketing) and private enterprises (President and CEO roles) in a variety of markets in creating new opportunities and rejuvenating mature/declining businesses. MBA University of Michigan.  Available to act in consulting, coaching and interim CEO capacities to energize results for your business.  Contact: 651-2069232 or grant2504_1@yahoo.com

Patricia Darke

Patricia Darke, President of Darke & Associates is trained in over 140 business tools and has expertise in multiple assessment tools and Management Consulting.  She is a licensed provider of Profiles International Selection, Coaching and Succession Planning tools. Using these tools and her expertise, Patty has helped companies grow their people and their business around the country.  Her experience includes different industries and Executive Management positions within these various industries.

Patty has hired, trained and developed teams with a proven track record of success both regionally and nationally. This "hands on" experience combined with the technical knowledge of tools gives a deep value to the organizations she works with.  Her education was at the College of St. Benedict and the University of Minnesota.  Her further education has been with Praendex, Mindshop and Profiles International.  Patty has won National Sales Broker of the Year Honors for various companies during her tenure in this industry. She volunteers, sits on a non-profit board and is an AKC registered dog show judge.

Peter Coleman

Peter Coleman, President of Coleman Business Solutions, LLC, has been helping business owners achieve their highest goals for over 35 years. His past corporate positions have been as Vice President and General Manager in Retail, Distribution and Manufacturing Operations, Administration, Finance, and Human Resources for several Midwest companies at the $10-$100 million sales level. Since 2003 he has run Coleman Business Solutions, a business advisory service dedicated to "changing your business for the better". As an Accredited Associate of the Institute for Independent Business, he has access to the problem-solving ideas of thousands of accredited business advisors worldwide, to bring expert advice and hands-on guidance to enterprises large and small. His "practical ideas that work" have helped many small business owners and leaders achieve their dreams and visions for their companies and themselves.

Peter is a Navy veteran, a graduate of Loyola University, Chicago, and lives with his wife, 8 horses, 4 dogs and an embarrassing number of cats on a hobby farm near Montrose. His interests include horse riding, music, reading and golf. Peter has been a Minnesota resident for almost 30 years, and hopes one day to finally be considered a real Minnesotan.

Bill Murray

William (Bill) J. Murray began his business career with fifteen years of success in sales, customer service management and sales management. It was this experience that inspired him to train others in those successful techniques. That led him to Wilson Learning Midwest, an agency for one of the world's largest training organizations. There for another fifteen years, he trained managers, salespeople, customer service personnel and staff of hundreds of companies in all sorts of businesses. He discovered his purpose in life which was to help people take personal responsibility for their lives and their work, "to unleash the eagle within", which resulted in co-founding Eagle Learning Center in 1993. At that time, he sought additional education in order to also help people in their personal lives.

His experience as a marriage and family counselor since then has given him the opportunity to counsel many in personal as well as professional problems. An article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune called "Creating the New You" documented some of this personal counseling. Now, he brings over 40 years of experience to help professionals make practical enhancements to their jobs and discover the courage to give their work and lives the best shot that they can give.

Helping managers manage and leaders lead has been a strong focus of Bill's work with organizations. His strategic planning guidance and team building techniques have helped companies such as Best Buy, U.S. Link, 3M, Edina Real Estate, Comark of Canada, Land O' Lakes, Inc., Buffets Inc., The Luxottica Group, the State of Minnesota Department of Economic Development, Pace Analytical and a long list of medical organizations. Bill's work with leadership groups has had positive results like increasing sales, quality and customer satisfaction. He is currently working on a book entitled, "Brush Strokes, The Art of Leadership", that describes the attributes and skills of true leaders. A great deal of his focus for the last ten years has been developing organizational-wide learning processes to help leaders in companies inspire commitment in their people to customer satisfaction through continuous improvement, total quality management, and increased innovation. This involves moving the entire organization towards a more positive culture resulting in increased sales, increased profits and financial health. His book, "ReFocused On The Customer", grew out of this work.

Bill's work with salespeople includes training them in direct call selling, telephone selling, and account management. He has helped companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Caterpillar, AT&T, MTS Systems, United HealthCare, United Properties, Edina Real Estate, Rexton, Protection Mutual Insurance, UFE Corporation, Pace Analytical, Iconoculture, Receivables Control and the Trane Co., among others. His training for the Minnesota Timberwolves helped them sell more initial season tickets than any other NBA franchise as reported in Sports, Inc. magazine. He has personally trained over 1200 salespeople for The Luxottica Group, the world's largest manufacturer of eyewear, who have honored him with a plaque that says, "You have touched our hearts and minds forever." His book, "Selling with Style", was the basis of that training. Bill's customer service seminars have had positive results for companies such as ITT Life Insurance, Chrysler, IBM, Rexton, Valspar, Sterling Electric Construction, Kraus-Anderson Construction, the Holiday Companies, Tapemark, many banks and credit unions and tens of medical organizations. He has authored "Delivering Eagle Service", which not only helps customer service people treat the customer with superior service, but also helps everyone in the organization treat internal customers with respect and work stress-free.

Bill attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Minnesota, majoring in speech and business. He is a certified psychologist from the Alfred Adler Institute masters program and a faculty member of the Lawlor Institute.

Dave Hueller

David (Dave) C. Hueller partnered with William (Bill) J. Murray to form Eagle Learning Center in 1993. Together they bring over 55 years of experience to the design and delivery of interactive, small group learning processes.

Since earning his B.A. from Hamline University in 1971, Dave Hueller has spent over 29 years selling, designing, and implementing performance improvement systems based on contemporary adult learning principles. His work represents an integration of his experience selling medical products, teaching communication skills in inner city schools, and helping organizations increase the on-the-job performance of their people.

In 1989, Dave began action research into the business issue of how to build a service culture. The result of that research was a methodology formalized in 1993 as Eagle Learning Center's ReFOCUSED ON THE CUSTOMER culture change process. Since 1993, over 75 organizations have implemented that process as part of their strategy to make customer focus a reality in their business practices.

Dave's long term relationships with clients such as United HealthCare, Coborn's, Crystal Cabinet Makers, St. Jude Medical, Ultra Machine Company, Inc., Best Buy Co., Buffets, Inc., Minnesota Gastroenterology, Regis Corporation, International Paper Company, College of St. Benedicts/St. Johns University, Sterling Technology, Wirsbo Company, and The Luxottica Group reflect his practical insight into the relationship between business results and learning.

Dave's classroom work has included designing and facilitating sessions for executive and crossfunctional teams to help them develop a shared vision, to rethink how they make decisions, and to take personal responsibility for working together more cooperatively. He has assisted salespeople's efforts to look at their customers and markets differently. He has facilitated dramatic shifts in corporate culture by working with leaders--formal and informal--in their efforts to set up organization-wide communication about customer focus.

Dave Hueller and Eagle Learning Center are committed to developing innovative responses to the need for increasing sales, retaining and growing customers, and managing people through change.

Anna Maravelas

Anna (Ahna) Maravelas is a respected author and consultant with 25 years of experience, and international clientele in conflict resolution and leadership development. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota and her techniques have been used across the US, Europe and S. Africa, in Fortune 500 companies, universities, banks, prisons, hospitals, law firms and police departments. Readers on Amazon.com rate her top-selling book a five-star "must read." Her work has appeared in more than 35 publications including the New York Times, HR Magazine, Men's Health, Harvard Managament Update, Oprah Magazine, Forbes.com and the American Bar Association Journal. 

Sue Lindgren Hawkes

Sue is the founder and CEO of YESS! - Your Extraordinary Success Strategies, Inc. (www.sayyess.com), a world-class coaching and training organization offering customized programs and coaching certification. A Certified Management Effectiveness Coach, Lindgren is a best selling author, an internationally-recognized seminar leader, speaker and entrepreneur who specializes in the domains of communication, leadership and organizational effectiveness. She facilitates three Women Presidents Organization chapters, working with C-level executives.

She has spoken for the American Society of Training and Development national conference, the National Association of Remodelers, Women in Food Service,  Allied Executives, the Executive Alliance, Eli Lilly Leadership Conference, the Society of Human Resource Professionals, and many others. Sue leads seminars in the U.S., Mexico, England, Canada and Africa. She has worked with Best Buy, Xcel Energy, Starkey Laboratories, Fallon Worldwide, Green Mill Restaurants, Pawn America, St. Jude Medical, Allied Executives, deBeer Law, Premium Waters and Eli Lilly just to name a few. Sue is regularly featured in radio, television and print, appearing on KARE 11's Today show, the Pat Miles show, KARE 11's Sunrise show and in Women's Business Minnesota magazine. Lindgren helped create, and appeared in a movie, "The Answer," which debuted in 2007. Sue has received numerous awards including the Exemplary Woman of the Community, WomenVenture's Unsung Hero award, SBA's Midwest Regional 2007 Women in Business Champion of the Year and was one of the 2007 Top 25 Women to Watch in Minnesota business.