Founder and President, Ideas for Action, LLC
Jean S. Frankel is an internationally known and respected management consultant, educator, facilitator and executive coach. As a founder and principal of Ideas for Action, LLC, Frankel has designed and facilitated strategic planning, governance redesign, organizational assessment, and leadership development activities for a wide variety of organizations. Her consulting experience includes work with organizations in a variety of business sectors, including professional and trade associations, academic institutions, community-based economic development organizations, and philanthropic and fraternal groups of all types and sizes.
- Frankel’s recent clients include Michigan State University, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the University of Michigan.
- Frankel is a proven strategist, with group process and analytical skills enhancing her ability to develop collaborative solutions with clients in the areas of strategic planning, governance redesign, leadership development, organizational structure, process and culture change. As an experienced consultant, Frankel has helped individuals and organizations find solutions to critical issues and challenges. Her broad experience enables her to bring a unique blend of innovative organizational and strategic solutions to her consulting assignments, which have included:
- Designing and facilitating governance and leadership development efforts focused on building the individual and team core competencies required to establish and sustain organizational success.
- Leading strategic planning initiatives designed to guide organizations in the development of comprehensive and cohesive vision and strategy through four key planning horizons, which link core ideology and envisioned future with strategic and annual business planning.
- Securing support for acceptance of significant organizational change, such as restructuring, governance redesign, strategic planning outcomes and culture change;
- Educating Boards and leadership teams to be more strategic in focus and to achieve their full potential, coaching executives at all phases of their careers to achieve personal and professional success;
Frankel is regarded as a major contributor to the unique body of knowledge of association management in membership organizations. She is co-author of three best-selling books –The Will to Govern Well, considered a classic on association governance, Building a Knowledge-Based Culture, focusing on the special dynamics of membership organizations, and her new work on leadership From Insight to Action: Six New Ways to Think, Lead and Achieve, all published by Association Management Press.
Prior to founding Ideas for Action, LLC in 1995, Frankel led large scale planning and organizational change efforts for major corporations such as American Express and AT&T. She has also had functional responsibility in strategic planning, marketing and sales, information technology, customer service, engineering, manufacturing and human resources. Frankel holds a B.A. from Muhlenberg College, did graduate work in Journalism and Mass Communications at New York University, and is a graduate of Columbia University’s Executive and Organizational Coaching Certification Program, a strategic partnership between the Columbia Business School and the Teacher’s College Executive Education Department. She is a frequent speaker on strategy and leadership at many industry conferences and symposiums.
