Boulder, CO — For 35 years managers and executives have turned to The Booth Company (TBC), www.boothco.com, to become better leaders. Headquartered in Boulder since its founding by Dr. Daniel J. Booth Ed.D, TBC currently serves leaders throughout the world in many of their own languages. This is a long way from its beginning in 1972 as a one-person university-town consultancy.
The idea behind The Booth Company has always been to improve organizational performance by raising the competence of leaders and managers. To TBC, this always required moving from the traditional top-down command structure to participative management. It also entailed a revolutionary change to traditional accountability whereby managers would also be accountable to their teams.
In the mid-70’s, Dr. Booth became convinced that upward feedback, especially as applied worldwide by TBC’s client, IBM, had the potential for creating these cultural shifts in other organizations. Dr. Booth immediately began designing questionnaires and trying them out on regional organizations, such as Adolph Coors and the Denver Water Department.
Simultaneously in Connecticut, Dr. Clark L. Wilson (often acknowledged as the “father of 360 feedback”) released the first of his multi-rater instruments and was testing them at DuPont and Pitney Bowes. When Dr. Booth read the professional reviews of Wilson’s instruments and Wilson learned of Booth’s ability to find users, they formed a partnership with Wilson as scientist and The Booth Company as marketer until the companies merged in 1999.
Today, TBC’s commitment to developing leadership talent through quality feedback programs continues with comprehensive assessment solutions. When asked about the relevance of 360’s in today’s workforce Dr. Booth replied, “In the increasingly competitive and global marketplace of today, it’s not surprising that 360s are as relevant as ever. What hasn’t changed in 35 years is the need for people to learn and master leadership, management and teaming skills. Other constants are the requirements that we stay customer focused and on the cutting edge of knowledge and tools. These, combined with the opportunity to work with high integrity clients, keep me more enthusiastic than ever.”