Mike

Mike Neiss

US Leadership Consultant

A client once told him, “We hire you because you are the only consultant that was honest enough to tell us our baby was ugly.” Even when the speech is figurative, Mike has a reputation for straight talk—earned in his career in operations management at United Parcel Service, and in OD at CMS Energy and Rochester Products Division of General Motors. Since then, his firsthand experience of working with outspoken and innovative thought leaders such as W. Edwards Deming, Chip Bell, Jim Kouzes, and Tom Peters has only encouraged him!

Mike’s consulting practice spans 20 years and has included:

  • DaimlerChrysler/UAW partnership efforts to improve quality
  • Vehicle launches at DaimlerChrysler and Ford
  • Partnering in one of the first experiential learning centers for executive teams
  • Designing and implementing leadership bench strength efforts at Herman Miller
  • Performance improvement efforts at several federal agencies including the intelligence community, the Navy, GSA, and Department of the Treasury
  • Mergers and acquisitions work in the reinsurance industry
  • Executive coaching to help emperors discover new clothes
  • Branding efforts at Heineken and NavAir

Helping internal staff think and act like professional service firms. 
His business commitment, in a sentence, is “the endless pursuit of trying to blend humanity with profitability.”

Mike also loves to teach leadership using golf as a metaphor; he has a passion for photography (especially digital); and he is involved in Blue Star Music Camps (“where kids rock”). At home he’s on the speed dial for the Humane Society, because his pet animals are, in his words, “charity cases.”