Who We Are
Our Company
The year was 1971. Newly public Nordstrom honed its strategy to match its values: “We have only one goal, which is to improve customer service. We will achieve everything else if we consistently deliver on this goal.”
Sounds simple, simplistic even?  Has Nordstrom been successful?  Their enduring global reputation for raising the standard of service, their perennial acknowledgement as being an employer of choice and their above average return to shareholders are but a few key measures of the success of their service initiative. So everyone’s paying attention, right? Unfortunately, no. Unfortunately, those companies that share this commitment to service leadership are still the standouts. Unfortunately, we as the stakeholders we all are… owners, shareholders, employees, partners, suppliers – and, oh yes, customers, clients, patients guests …we are not being served, we don’t love where we work, and there is little return on our investment of time or money.
The year was 1991. We formed The Sanders Partnership to work with you and your organization to make the exception the rule – at least where you’re concerned! That’s a round-about way of saying something critically important: we are a practice dedicated to serving you in leading meaningful organizations and meaningful lives. We are in our third decade of partnering with organizations of all sizes, across industries, and around the globe. Specifically, we engage in consulting, coaching, mentoring, convening, facilitating and communicating, all in support of personal and organizational transformation.
The year is 2012…and beyond. Whether you are committed to leading a meaningful organization or a meaningful life – and ideally it’s both – this invitation is meant for you. You are being called to answer it right now. Now is the time for you and for us to be in serious communication about the issues that are most compelling.
To be leaders today, we must be leaders for a future that is relentlessly emerging, seemingly without reference to what once worked. This is as evident in the institutional failures and floundering within our first-world cultures, as in the new forms emerging from the third-world. The death knell for us is trying to get back to normal; the challenge is to co-create the new normal that can serve us in these times and provide a foundation for those who follow.
What we are experiencing is that hierarchy is in decline and decay, which means that self-responsibility must rise.  This changes the role of the leaders starting now, from care-taking to becoming builders of this self-responsibility among all stake holders. Leaders must provide access to information, if those led are going to think for themselves and have more accountability in their own lives. Leaders must become coaches, engendering more awareness and more responsibility in all we impact, as we move from the era of growth based on imposed rules into this emerging era of sustainability based on inner values.
We welcome you in joining us in service to this inevitable transition from
quantity to quality
excess to stability
teaching to learning
independence to interdependence
success to service
controlling nature to natural controls
hierarchy to responsibility
Truly, the paths to the future are not found but made; and the act of making them changes the maker as well as the direction.