New Bison Group Training site in Philadelphia, PA Targets the Economic Downturn

As business transformation and intelligence needs evolve, Bison will be with them.

PHILADELPHIA, PA (July 20, 2009) – The Bison Group, the leader in military-style executive education, opened a new regional office and training facility this month in the nation’s fourth-largest urban area by population and its fourth-largest consumer media market as ranked by the Nielsen Media Research (Philadelphia proper totals more than 1.4 million and the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area of 5.8 million residents). Philadelphia is a growing market for “Leading out of the Downturn; the most important task for leaders is to re-orient the minds of the people toward a positive vision of the future,” says consultant and author Damian D. “Skipper” Pitts.

The Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area offers one of the largest concentrations of universities and colleges in the country and has become second to none at offering executive education and innovative approaches for winning over uncertainty.

The last 18 months have been the most trying in decades for business leaders. The conditions that normally make running an organization of any type – a business unit or a team rewarding is market expansion, revenue growth, rising pay, and incentives – have been absent for most, replaced by the unrelenting tasks of survival, retrenchment, and cost cutting. What should leaders do in this depressed environment? The first task of leadership, Bison argues, is to identify the default future, discuss it, and analyze it, and then go about re-imagining – and, in effect, rewriting the future. The Bison Group’s program, “The Six Levels of Leadership,” helps business leaders overcome the daunting task of facing the future, by teaching them to rewrite the future that leads to real business transformation with profitable growth. And the lessons are just as applicable to individuals.

The Bison Group, a team of U.S. Marines turned business professionals, is a leader in military-style executive education and learning services firm for business, education, government, faith-based organizations and higher learning institutions. Bison’s consultancy works to improve the clients’ business performance by redesigning how they behave, think, and train their associates using strategies from the U.S. Marine Corps. It’s the goal of Bison’s teams to implement the rigor and discipline from its training designs, instruct the global marketplace how-to increase their human capital, and increase performance and integrated talent management’s “best practices” to exceed the outcomes within the Future Picture that lie waiting around the immediate corner.

During a recent training with start-up technology firm “PropertyCentric” in Philadelphia, centered on providing custom built local search engines and online marketing strategies for the property management industry, Skipper replied to a question by stating: “some organizations are doing well, but for many, it’s a very tough and nasty battlefield. What happens when people focus on that is that their down range view gets smaller and all they can see is the immediate targets and danger. It’s like they’re a patient in the makeshift battlefield intensive care unit and they’re doing everything they can to get back to their team and unit. But, the question should and “must” be: when you come out of the battlefield ICU, how do you build a strong and healthy Future Picture for yourself and others? Leaders need to be setting in motion transformative execution strategies and principles to follow that really are about the newly emerging future that has never been seen before. What are you going to be, how are you going to act and what will you look like when this turns around? Will you still be standing?”

It was in this city that many of the ideas, and subsequent actions, gave birth to the American Revolution and American Independence, making Philadelphia a centerpiece of early American history. It was the most populous city of the young United States and served as the nation’s first capital during much of the Revolutionary War and thereafter. Following the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, it was the temporary national capital from 1790 to 1800 while Washington, DC was under construction – and, now the home for an even more radical approach to providing leadership and team building maneuvers with the Bison Group to lead out from this downturn with promising outcomes.

Bison’s industry expertise is evidenced by long-term relationships with customers including Wachovia, Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, Hilton Hotels, Universal Studios – Florida, Temple University, James Madison University, U.S. Prison Systems and the U.S. Film Industry.

The new office officially opened July 1 and features a training center and attractive meeting space. The facility is located in historic Chestnut Hill, PA – a prime community in the Northwest section of the city. Interested parties can reach the Bison Group team by contacting the office at (877) 838 – 3753.