ABOUT US

The "Us" in Viewpoint Solutions is the principal consultant and founder, Courtney Ann Behm. Courtney began her corporate career with IBM, and held management positions in Marketing and New Product Introduction program management at Motorola/Codex, Wang Laboratories, Ungermann-Bass, Telebit, Centigram Communications and Cisco Systems. In 1999, she stepped off the beaten path to found Viewpoint Solutions, and added specialized skills in strategy development, process change, team dynamics and leadership development to her broad marketing and life cycle experience. She is currently providing full-service effectiveness consulting solutions to a wide variety of clients. Courtney is a dynamic speaker and skilled facilitator with expertise in Enneagram Leadership Styles and Neuro-Linguistics. Her creative combination of language, humor, insight and front-line experience makes her a powerful force for change in an organization. She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Performing Arts and Communication, and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, where she concentrated in Marketing and Organizational Behavior.
  
A Message from the Founder

I've always had a passion for making things work. As a young girl, I took things apart and put them back together. I seemed to know what needed to be done to fix the temperamental portable radio. I could stand and look at an unfamiliar piece of machinery and figure out why it wasn't running. My son tells me I would have made a great auto mechanic!

In my early education, I followed my interest in the creative arts, but was found as much in a technical role as in a performing one. I was restless as an actor, with only one perspective to inhabit; I preferred to be in a position to influence the entire picture, to have responsibility for all the essential elements so that everything came out smoothly. I was fascinated by the combination of precision and aesthetics that was stage lighting, and was one of the very few women allowed to take control of the immense Super Trooper spotlights high up in the lighting grid. I designed sets and excelled as a director. I was multi-discipline to the nth degree!

When I graduated with my Masters, I took a position as a multi-media show producer, guiding the development and production of sales meetings, new product introductions, and even a special exposition for the government of Venezuela! But increasingly, I felt I was on the wrong side of the table. I wanted to be one of the corporate clients who were hiring me. So I mounted a job search to change the course of my career, and snagged an interview with IBM.

I essentially talked my way into IBM, parlaying my technical theatre experience for all it was worth, putting my acting training to good use as I stated confidently that I could do anything. The Branch Manager of a sales office in Manhattan took me up on it, and before you could say "technology," I was a Systems Engineer. My friends were aghast. "You're doing what? With whom?" And I admit that I found the challenge of IBM's demanding training course on subjects about which I knew nothing... finance, computers, Assembler language, COBOL, business practices... almost too much for my confident sales pitch. I had to learn it all at once. This was the "anything" I had said I could do! But then I realized that the computer industry was not much different than a radio...I paid close attention, figured out how it worked, and then made it work for me. My business career was off and running.

After four good years at IBM, I took on another challenge, and entered Harvard's MBA program. If I had thought IBM's training program was demanding, Harvard took the concept of demanding to a whole new level. But again, I was in my element, taking in the new information and making it work for me. I remember one of my first-year professors watching me stride cheerfully into our classroom and saying, "You're having entirely too much fun here!" I considered entering the doctoral program at Harvard, but the call of the marketplace was stronger, and I resumed my marketing career, focusing on networking, communications, and, eventually, the internet. I became fascinated with the cross-functional aspect of New Product Introduction, taking on increasingly complex program management roles. It was like being a director again, as I shaped all the elements of bringing technology to market.

Viewpoint Solutions was born in 1999, when I took a deep breath and left my 23-year corporate career to pursue my long-held dream of combining my marketing and management expertise with a focus on the overall health of organizations and the people who struggled to make them successful in an increasingly fast-paced, demanding economic climate. I had been in enormously successful companies, but also in companies suffering the pain of the "3 Ds:" declining markets, diminished revenue and downsizing. I saw them all as broken machines, and I had looked at them long enough to know that organizational effectiveness was the key to their revival, and to their long-term success.

At first glance, it might seem unusual to combine strategy, leadership and team development with marketing and program management into one consulting practice. It certainly presented me with a challenge: how could I blend my business experience with my new direction in a way that made my contribution potential obvious to my clients? I spent some long nights considering whether I should focus on just strategy, or just leadership, or just marketing, or just management, or just team development and if so, which one would I choose!

But then I remembered my own experience as a manager, and my observation of the best corporate leaders I had worked with, and I realized that the job of an executive is, in fact, a mixture of all these things. There may be a functional specialty, such as marketing or finance or engineering, but there is also a need for executives to articulate and implement strategy, to manage projects and programs, to bring out the best in the people in their sphere of influence, and to keep their management team working together seamlessly and productively. Read any job description for a senior position in a company, and you'll find a requirement for all these skills and more.

So I decided that my clients needed exactly the kind of eclectic practice I was interested in developing, and that they would recognize the value of a renaissance approach to their management challenges. And I was right! I function in many respects as a general manager for my clients, looking at all elements of their organization to further their ability to succeed. This broad vision has made me a valuable ally in their effective transformation, and I've had the deeply-satisfying opportunity to support them using all my skills and talents. In the process, I have realized my dream and then some.

I encourage you to take a moment, and contact me directly for more information on how the Viewpoint Solutions approach can provide customized solutions for your management challenges. I guarantee that our conversation will return value for time well spent.

I look forward to hearing how I can assist you and your organization in being the best you can be.

Warm regards,
Courtney