Brandon Partners, headquartered in the redwoods that lay just over San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in Mill Valley, provides corporate and public sector training, assessment and learning tools, instructor certification, keynote presentations, executive coaching, and applied behavioral sciences consulting to enhance performance and organizational results. The firm’s distinctive marketplace specialty is for learning solutions that cultivate the competencies of Organizational/Political Savvy and Interpersonal Savvy.
We believe that the interpersonal dimension of organizational influence is vital (See our Straight Talk book and workshops), but ignores the equally important, and typically ignored strategic dimension of influence –– astuteness and skills for navigating and mastering four P’s: organizational Politics, Power dynamics, the role of Perception in how decisions are made in companies, and issues around the Promotion of one’s ideas, results, and accomplishments. Through direct delivery and our strategic alliances with other training companies around the world, we spread the increasingly vital leadership competency of Organizational Savvy.
Firm History
In 1998, our founder Rick Brandon, a thirty-year veteran in interpersonal communication skills development, jumped when asked by a Fortune 10 bank client for a political savvy program aimed at managers at career turns. The population was technically skilled but “lacked senior level organizational savvy and upper level image and impact.”
Dr. Brandon funneled data from 20 years of derailment coaching with 1,300 executives who were either overly political or under-political into a cutting edge workshop on ethical organizational politics. The course became the bank’s “most popular leadership program,” and has since been taught for scores of blue-chip clients across a range of industries: financial services, health care, technology, biotech, utilities, manufacturing, service, retail, insurance, government, and higher education.
Soon, several clients urged Brandon to write Survival of the Savvy (Free Press, 2004), noting that too little material existed in the marketplace on this important competency. This straight-talking and practical book quickly made the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, was called “the definitive book on political savvy” by Robert Eichinger, founder of the Lominger Career Architect, and earned endorsements by thought leaders Ken Blanchard, Marshall Goldsmith, Harvey MacKay, and many CEO’s. It was Book of the Month for the Institute for Management Studies, Fast Company magazine, and Forbes CEO.com, & was reviewed in Harvard Business Review, Library Journal, Business Book Reviews, Executive Book Summaries, and many articles. The book’s core model is regularly presented at The Conference Board, American Society of Training and Development, the Institute for Management Studies (18 cities in 2005, the most requested program) and many companies’ Leadership Forums.
Partial Client List
ADP
Affinion
Agilent
Agility
American Express
Anheuser-Busch
Apple Computers
Applera
Autodesk
Avon
Baxter
Becton Dickenson
Best Buy
BNSF Railway
Booz Allen Hamilton
BT Commercial
Cadence Design Systems
Carquest
Centocor (Johnson & Johnson)
Cisco
Chubb & Sons
Coca-Cola Con EdisonConstellation Gas
Credit Suisse
CVS/Caremark
Deloitte Touche
Depository Trust Clearing Corp.
Deutsche Bank
Discover Financial Services
Disney
Drake University
Electronic Arts
FedEx Kinkos
Firemen’s Fund Fortune 5 Bank (two)
Gap Inc.
Genentech
General Electric
Goldman Sachs
Hertz Corporation
Hilton Hotels Hospital Corporation of America
HSBC (UK)
Inhale Therapeutic Systems
Institute for Management Studies
Johnson Controls KFC
Lockheed Martin Mary Kay
McKesson Corporation
Microsoft (Germany)
MGM Grand
Mind Leaders
Molecular Devices Corporation
Paraxel
Pepsico
Pfizer
Qualcom
Quadramed
Reckitt Benckiser
Riverside County Government
Satyam (India)
Shell Oil
Society of Actuaries
Société Générale
Sprint
Starbucks
Sun Life Financial
Texas Instruments
TD Bank
T Rowe Price
Tyco Healthcare
UBS
US Department of Agriculture
Wellpoint/Blue Cross
United States Navy
United Technologies
Visiting Nurses Services
Young Presidents Organization YUM
About Our Founder
Rick Brandon, PhD, is founder and president of the globally respected Brandon Partners, offering workshops on interpersonal and political savvy. His courses are taught worldwide in scores of Fortune 500 corporations as well as in many government agencies, healthcare organizations, and educational institutions.
Brandon coauthored the Wall Street Journal bestseller Survival of the Savvy: High-Integrity Political Tactics for Career and Company Success, which won book of the month for Fast Company, Forbes, CEO.com, and the Institute for Management Studies (IMS). He is a distinguished faculty member for the Institute, and spent a year presenting in 20 cities around the world as its most requested speaker. He has taught at the graduate and undergraduate level for four colleges and universities and has been a guest speaker at many more. He is married with two adult children and lives in Mill Valley, CA.
Our Strategic Partners
Brandon Partners is proud of our learning partnerships with a number of Affiliate Consultant training firms. most of which license our intellectual property courseware for use with their own clients. These resellers of Organizational Savvy or Straight Talk for Accountability and Results have been certified to deliver these programs, and/or hire Dr. Rick Brandon to present.
AthenaOnline created the concept of enterprise microlearning in 1999. Today Athena leads the way with its expert-driven MyQuickCoach platform that contains over 2,700 bite-sized video lessons with authorities like Rick Brandon, Marshall Goldsmith, Beverly Kaye and 160 other authors, speakers and consultants.
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Elevating employee engagement…
And interpersonal excellence through skill-based, practice-driven training and coaching.