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LEADERSHIP
BY DESIGN
By PAM DROOG
Roger Fritz is not a fortuneteller, but he can help people change
the course of their future.
Fritz is founder and president of Leadership By Design, a unique
consulting firm that provides executive coaching and leadership
development for individuals, organizations and communities. That
means he uses words like design, facilitate, impact, optimize and
process a lot. But behind the words are Fritz’ passion for his work
and genuine curiosity about how humans interact.
Fritz’ interest in such matters started after he earned a bachelor’s
degree in economics and a master’s degree in design at the University
of Missouri–Columbia. He taught at Columbia College, moved into
college administration and planning, and in 1979 became assistant
to the president of the college. In that position he coordinated
the college’s strategic and long-range planning process.
“That’s when all kinds of things related to planning, development
and design started to become common themes for me,” Fritz says.
“I began to see that industrial design processes and planning processes
were very similar.”
In 1981, Fritz left Columbia College and joined HOK in St. Louis,
first as a planning and development consultant for major corporations
and government facilities, then as vice president for interior architecture.
“All of that work again was a combination of planning, development
and design,” he says.
Fritz remained at HOK more than four years, and then joined URS,
a civil engineering and planning firm, as division president in
its Cleveland office. However, in 1987, circumstances forced Fritz
to make a decision about his own future. The time was “now or never”
to move back to St. Louis and open Leadership By Design.
“Very quickly, local businesses and civic institutions embraced
our approach to planning and development work,” Fritz says. “What
set us apart was our ability to deal quite effectively with people
issues and with more complex organizational and process issues,
and put those into the context of the marketplace or the community.”
Among the firm’s earliest clients were the St. Louis Science Center,
Edison Brothers, The Greater St. Louis Economic Development Council,
Monsanto, Bi-State Development and the RCGA. Leadership By Design
also works with municipalities to help city and community leaders
align their thinking about the future of the area.
However, most of the firm’s clients are located outside the region,
throughout the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom. “We mainly work
with Fortune 500 companies, helping them coordinate the strategic
intent of the business with the organizational culture, and dealing
with the leadership challenge that brings about,” Fritz says.
ROGER
FRITZ, president, Leadership By Design |
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Typically, Fritz and his staff consult with senior executives to
help them work through the challenges of restructuring, mergers
and acquisitions, going public or getting sold.
At the basis of it all are Fritz’ well-known principles of The Aspiring
Mind™, which help professionals and managers improve their leadership
effectiveness within their careers and through the organizations
and communities they serve. “I developed this model about three
years after the firm began, when certain principles and patterns
kept appearing,” Fritz says. “We use The Aspiring Mind™ in
most of our work as a tool to help people see themselves more clearly,
to see the future more clearly in terms of what they try to create,
and to help people come together with a collective will and heart
about what they want to create.”
Fritz heads a staff of 12, including two in Kansas City. On a typical
day, he answers e-mails at 7 a.m. and arrives at the office by 8
a.m. The rest of the day he meets with individuals he’s coaching,
or meets with the staff regarding client work. “Actually, most of
the time I’m heading to the airport,” he says. “I’m in two or three
different cities a week,” Fritz says, adding he enjoys the pace.
He’s an active member of the World Futures Society, the Organizational
Development Network, the Association for Psychological Type and
the American Society for Quality. He works closely with Future
Shock author Alvin Toffler’s think tank, the Institute for Alternative
Futures.
As for the future of Leadership By Design, Fritz and his staff are
working on adapting their executive coaching format for an electronic
environment, experimenting with web-based seminars and self-directed
programs and developing a public seminar format. They’re also finalizing
“On Course Leadership,” a program that combines “the inner game
of golf and the inner game of leadership,” Fritz explains.
When he’s not contemplating the future, Fritz is focused on the
present, including improving his golf game, reading 30 or more books
at any given time and watching movies, “even bad ones,” noting he’d
be a film director if he weren’t a management consultant.
This RCGA Leadership Circle member says he’s been deeply immersed
in efforts to create regional change for a number of years. “Personally,
I’d love to see a regional community that can do a much better job
of being able to work together within all sectors,” he says. “The
potential that exists within the region is significantly underutilized,
but we have a social habit in which we divide and conquer instead
of collaborate, combine and leverage. I really hope someday we can
get past that.”
Pam Droog is a frequent contributor to St. Louis Commerce Magazine.
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