James F. Bandrowski
Encyclopedia
James F. Bandrowski is an author, global keynote speaker, trainer, and consultant with a client roster that includes many among the most recognizable companies in the world. He authored Corporate Imagination—Plus: Five Steps to Translating Innovative Strategies into Action (Free Press/Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...

). He founded Strategic Action Associates in 1984 in Danville, California
Danville, California
The Town of Danville is located in the San Ramon Valley in Contra Costa County, California. It is one of the incorporated municipalities in California that uses "town" in its name instead of "city". The population was 42,039 in 2010. Danville is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Oakland and San...

, and is President of the company. He pioneered the theories of Leadership Amplitude, Innovation Amplitude, Intellectual Amplitude, Emotional Amplitude, Constructive Negativity, and the sine wave approach to creativity, innovation, and high performance in anything.

Career

James F. Bandrowski earned his BE in chemical engineering from Villanova University
Villanova University
Villanova University is a private university located in Radnor Township, a suburb northwest of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States...

, and went on to attain an MS in management science/industrial engineering from New Jersey Technical Institute
New Jersey Institute of Technology
New Jersey Institute of Technology is a public research university in Newark, New Jersey. It is often also referred to as Newark College of Engineering ....

, as well as an MBA from NYU. His career began with various research and engineering positions at Becton-Dickinson. He went on to serve as a management consultant with Stone & Webster Management Consultants
Stone & Webster
Stone & Webster is an American engineering services company based in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Stone & Webster was founded as an electrical testing lab and consulting firm by electrical engineers Charles Stone and Edwin Webster in 1889. It was acquired by The Shaw Group in 2000. The company...

, Senior Planner with Kaiser Industries, Director of Planning for Systron Donner, and Director of Planning for DiGiorgio Corporation
DiGiorgio Corporation
DiGiorgio corporation was a fruit-growing corporation and eventual conglomerate in the 20th century. Once a vast company, owning much of California's central valley farm land, and multi-billion dollar corporation, a massive restructuring in the 1990s limited its breadth...

. In 1984, he founded Strategic Action Associates, a global consulting firm based in Danville, California
Danville, California
The Town of Danville is located in the San Ramon Valley in Contra Costa County, California. It is one of the incorporated municipalities in California that uses "town" in its name instead of "city". The population was 42,039 in 2010. Danville is one of the wealthiest suburbs of Oakland and San...

, and serves as President of the company.

Scientific Connection of Amplitude to Leadership

In mathematics, amplitude
Amplitude
Amplitude is the magnitude of change in the oscillating variable with each oscillation within an oscillating system. For example, sound waves in air are oscillations in atmospheric pressure and their amplitudes are proportional to the change in pressure during one oscillation...

 is the measure of the height or depth of a wave, and determines the brightness of light (frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...

 determines the color), the loudness of sound (frequency determines pitch), the power of electricity (as in amperes), the force of ocean waves, and the strength and intensity of every other phenomenon in the universe.
Creativity often is described as combining previously unassociated ideas and objects into new concepts. Bandrowski’s background in scientific disciplines, study of creativity and innovation, research into psychology, work with sports performance enhancing methodologies, and his study of remarkable leaders and winning organizations, he says coalesced in his mind to arrive at his sine wave
Sine wave
The sine wave or sinusoid is a mathematical function that describes a smooth repetitive oscillation. It occurs often in pure mathematics, as well as physics, signal processing, electrical engineering and many other fields...

 approach to intelligence and innovation, and the use of the term amplitude to quantify them.

Research and Books

As an R&D and manufacturing engineer at Becton-Dickinson in the early 1970s, he was awarded two patents and published an article in the Clinical Chemistry journal about advancements in using fluorometry in measuring blood chemistry. He began researching how other scientists and other types of innovators conceived new ideas, and created new products and business concepts. Paralleling this work, he also researched how top athletes achieved remarkable levels of performance, and mentally entered “the zone” to enable them to perform at their highest levels. In 1978, he published three audio programs, one each on the mental side of tennis, golf, and skiing. The programs taught how to relax and focus, which he described as dampening “emotional amplitude,” concentrating, and employing “mental rehearsal,” or envisioning the ideal skiing technique, tennis or golf shot. The programs were sold by Psychology Today
Psychology Today
Psychology Today is a bi-monthly magazine published in the United States. It is a psychology-based magazine about relationships, health, and related topics written for a mass audience of non-psychologists. Psychology Today was founded in 1967 and features articles on such topics as love,...

magazine, and the Athletic Achievement Corporation. The tennis program received the endorsement of World Team Tennis
World TeamTennis
World TeamTennis is a coed professional tennis league played with a unique team format in the United States. Each match consists of five sets. Each set features a different configuration . Coaches, before the match, decide the order in which the sets will be played...

 in San Francisco.

While researching and infusing creativity and imagination into strategic planning at DiGiorgio Corporation in the early 1980s, he wrote a monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

 entitled Creative Planning Starts at the Top, published by the Presidents Association of the American Management Association
American Management Association
The American Management Association , based in New York City, is a corporate training and consulting group that provides a variety of educational and management development services to businesses, government agencies and individuals. The non-profit membership organization offers business courses in...

 in 1983. In addition to describing his five-step Creative Planning Process, he introduced his model of “The Mind of a Creative Genius,” leveraging the work of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 and Transactional Analysis
Transactional analysis
Transactional analysis, commonly known as TA to its adherents, is an integrative approach to the theory of psychology and psychotherapy. It is described as integrative because it has elements of psychoanalytic, humanist and cognitive approaches...

. He stated that productively creative people go through three steps in conceiving and refining ideas: [1] Analysis (by the ego, or adult in us); [2] Creativity (by the id, or child in us); and [3] Judgment (by the superego, or parent in us). In 1985, The American Management Association commissioned him to write a second monograph, entitled Creative Planning throughout the Organization, and distributed it to all 85,000 of its members at that time.

In the late 1980s, he continued to research how outstanding leaders and winning companies not only developed breakthrough strategies, but also how they successfully implemented them. He described this approach in his book, Corporate Imagination—Plus: Five Steps to Translating Innovative Strategies into Action, published in 1990 (Free Press /Simon & Schuster). This book presented the core of his strategic innovation model that described how creative leaders push two extremes in their thinking—to be idealistic and confident on the positive extreme, and seek deep strategic insights and root causes on the negative extreme—depicting these two thinking modes, plus implementation, as two cycles of a sine wave.
From 1990 to 2007, Bandrowski reports that while delivering hundreds of speeches and training programs, consulting for hundreds of companies, and interviewing hundreds of breakthrough leaders and innovators around the world, he conducted further extensive research into the qualities of remarkable leaders and organizations. In 2009, he introduced what he says is the “one thing” that distinguishes great leaders from good ones, identified as leadership amplitude.

Published books

  • Creative Planning Throughout the Organization (Amacon Books, 1986) ISBN 0814423191
  • Corporate Imagination Plus (Free Press, 2000) ISBN 0743205499
  • Tennis: The Mental Game (Audio Cassette) ISBN 0898111315

Leadership Amplitude and Innovation Amplitude

Bandrowski’s theory of leadership and innovation amplitude explains how outstanding leaders and organizations constructively employ extreme amplitude (both intellectual and emotional) in two directions, pushing them to the maximum as they cycle between them in a sine wave manner. This can enable them to conceive breakthrough strategies, attain competitive distinctions that fuel the success of organizations of all kinds, and occasionally develop industry-altering disruptive innovations
Disruptive technology
A disruptive technology or disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network , displacing an earlier technology there...

, as coined by Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States and is widely recognized as one of the top business schools in the world. The school offers the world's largest full-time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive...

. From 1990 to 2007, he states he presented his conclusions to over 10,000 CEOs, executives, and managers around the world, asking for their brutally honest feedback. He claims that an astonishing 99.9% of them stated they were in agreement that amplitude is what distinguishes remarkable leaders and organizations from average ones.99.9% agree amplitude distinguishes great leaders.

Metaphorical "box" is real

Bandrowsi points out that his model explains the expression “think out of the box”. He states “the box” is not just a metaphor—it is real, a low amplitude. And thinking outside the box can be both:
(1) positive, making creative leaps as in generating wild ideas (the conventional use of the term); and
(2) negative, penetrating through what he calls the ‘bottom of the box” into brutal honesty about oneself, the organization, unmet needs of customers, etc.

On the other hand, “in the box thinking” (a low amplitude) is not detrimental. On the contrary, it is crucial for successful leadership and innovation, because making decisions and promises, analyzing data, and executing to standard operating procedures should all take place in the box, in a neutral intellectual and emotional state—with little or no amplitude. Many poor decisions and broken promises result from making them with extreme positive (overly optimistic) or negative (overly pessimistic) amplitude. Bandrowski observes that many people are in the box when they should be out of it, and out of the box when they should be in it.

Works

Bandrowski, James, and Hayden Curry narrating, Improving Your Tennis Game (#20200), Improving Your Golf Game (#20201), and Improving Your Golf Game (#20202), Psychology Today Cassettes, New York, 1978.

Bandrowski, James, Creative Planning Starts at the Top, Presidents Association of the American Management Association, New York, monograph, 46 pages, 1983.

Bandrowski, James, Creative Planning throughout the Organization, American Management Association, New York, monograph, 80 pages, 1985.

Bandrowski, James F., Corporate Imagination Plus: Five Steps to Translating Innovative Strategies into Action, Free Press imprint of Simon & Schuster, New York, 1990, 313 pages.

Bandrowski, Jim, Twelve Steps to Leadership Greatness, Vistage, San Diego, website, June 2009.

Personal life

Jim Bandrowski lives in Danville, CA with his wife and twin teenage sons.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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