Author, Customer Strategist, Keynote/Motivational Speaker, Consultant, Coach, Guru

WHAT YOU GET

Robin brings inspiration, entertainment and thought-leading material to his enthusiastic audiences.  His humor and highly interactive delivery style is coupled with a paradigm-busting system for achieving leadership excellence.  He illustrates how strong customer focus can be easily and powerfully injected into everything from strategic direction to daily work, creating outstanding results.

Audiences love the phenomenal way Rob uses their responses to inspire, motivate and equip participants to do what they never thought possible.  Rob's memorable true stories, passion and practicality touches his audiences intellectually, emotionally and genuinely. Perhaps that is why he was recently ranked #1 of 88 speakers by an international organization. 

Rob's keynotes and programs are based on his unique custom-centered culture (C3) principles,  customized to each audience.  His most popular topics include:

• Leadership excellence
• Uncovering and satisfying the Voice of the Customer
• Business growth
• Innovation & product/service design
• Uncommon customer and employee satisfaction
• Integrating customer focus into strategic initiatives (ie, Lean, Six Sigma)
• Retaining knowledge when an organization's talent leaves

ROB'S BACKGROUND IN BRIEF

Not many business leaders and world-class speakers will tell you how much time they've spent in prison.  Rob is proud to admit that's where his career began.  Everything he knows about leadership excellence, change, personal transformation and innovative thinking started taking shape during his time in the U.S.'s largest walled prison, in its psychiatric ward. If you think your challenges are tough, think about what he witnessed. The fact he was employed there as an administrator is, perhaps, beside the point.  The reason he was there was to make a difference.  He did, and saw many examples of success in the harshest context.

The seeds of Rob's unconventional thinking were planted even earlier, with his cross-cultural life outside the U.S. and many international experiences while growing up.  He has held a wide variety of positions, including:

• Oil well laborer
• Night club entertainer
• Teacher of English as a second language
• Educational program evaluation researcher
• Sales trainer for super-computer applications
• Head of quality and productivity initiatives at a major computer firm
• Adjunct faculty at University of Minnesota and Metropolitan University
• Board member and Chair, Healthy Start Coalition of Sarasota

This unusual, non-linear career path has prompted some to claim he couldn't hold a job.  Rob is a repeat foster and adoptive parent, suggesting that he is also a slow-learner, incurable optimist or both.  

These life experiences have led to Rob's unique ability to develop and articulate alternatives to complex organizational and competitive challenges, making the solutions feel suspiciously like common sense.  He has developed and deployed powerful but easy-to-understand principles, strategies and tools to improve and measure knowledge work and customer satisfaction.  His passion and bias for dramatic and sustainable results inspires others to surpass their goals. Rob has been credited with providing his powerful methodology to many organizations.  His guidance enabled them to win international, national and regional awards for enterprises in high technology, finance, healthcare, education, government and utilities.  Awards were from organizations including:

• Baldrige National Award
• California Council for Performance Excellence
• Missouri Governor's Office
• U.S. Department of Energy
• U.S. Coast Guard
• Maryland Council for Performance Excellence
• U.S. Department of Defense

Mr. Lawton has been president of International Management Technologies, Inc. since its founding in 1985.  He is now considered an international expert in creating rapid strategic alignment between enterprise objectives and customer priorities.  He effectively challenges clients to expand their creativity and push the boundaries of what was previously thought impossible. Many of his articles and ideas are available on his website and on Google.  He is overjoyed that fans see him not just as a pretty face, but as a 21st century guru.

• "I was one of the few people in the world to study under, and spend personal time with Dr. Edwards Deming, Peter Drucker, Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby, Russell Ackoff, Tom Peters and Michael Hammer.  In comparison to those giants of the past, Mr. Lawton is clearly in a comparable position to be today's premier thinker and practitioner of quality as defined by customer satisfaction. He causes revolutionary new managerial thinking and decision-making."  Bruce E. Laviolette, Ph.D., Director of Management Systems, Naval Air Systems Command
• "I have never experienced a program with a higher return on investment of time and money.  This is also the most clear and direct method of leadership improvement and quality management I have found." Quentin Wilson, Director, Department of Revenue, Winner, 2000 Missouri State Baldrige Award (1st state agency in the country)
• "This created excitement about 'what's possible' and gave the leadership a new way to evaluate the work they and the organization do."  John Powers, Director, Eastman Kodak
• "I can assure you I will think, act, work and do things differently as a result of this session! Your 'real life' examples were excellent. Rob's enthusiasm is very contagious. I actually got energized by his energy!" I found Rob's personal examples striking both intellectually as well as psychologically. Thanks!"  Michael Fedock, Management School, University of St. Thomas
• "Excellent! [You] challenged me to make a mind shift to apply the customer-centered thinking in my work.  The emphasis on creative divergent thinking may be the key to our success in the next 10 years."   Steve McAlexander, Assistant Vice President, American Honda Motor Company
• "Robin did a fantastic job. He is very charismatic and has great stories that really drive home the message. He has a great system and it contains so many key elements of Strategic Development, Lean Six Sigma, Project Management, Change Management, etc.  I really appreciated the opportunity to be exposed to his material. It was a very enjoyable experience."   Tori Lain, Business Analyst, Mercury Marine

CLIENTS

His world-class U.S. and international clients have included organizations such as: 3M, Ford Motor Company, Motorola, Affinity Plus Federal Credit Union, General Electric, Myriad Genetics, Amanah Raya Berhad, Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, Naval Air Systems Command, American Express, Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua, Nike, American Honda, Harley-Davidson Financial Services, Owens Corning, AT&T, Honeywell, Petrobras, Blessing Hospital, Imperial Oil Resources, Raytheon, BlueCross and BlueShield, Intel, RHB Bank, California State University, John Deere, Siemens, Caterpillar, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Southern Alberta Technical Institute, City of Calgary, Mayo Clinic, Tecom Investments/Dubai, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Mercury Marine, U.S. government agencies from Alaska to Vermont, Eastman Kodak, Meteorological Service of Canada (MSC), University of Vermont, Ericsson, Microsoft, Washington Mutual, Federal Emergency Management (FEMA), Missouri Department of Revenue and Wolters Kluwer Health, Pharma Solutions.

ACADEMIC NOTES

Mr. Lawton's academic background emphasized sociology, psychology, linguistics and statistics. He earned his M.A. at Michigan State University. Mr. Lawton coined the term "customer-centered culture" (C3) with his 1993 best-selling book, Creating a Customer-Centered Culture: Leadership in Quality, Innovation and Speed (5-star rated on Amazon).  His work has been published in the U.K., Brazil, China and been referenced in many publications elsewhere. Though some who love the status quo would undoubtedly like his radical, enlightening and empowering ideas suppressed, his thoughts have still managed to appear in books by other authors on subjects such as:

• Strategy and vision
• Lean enterprise
• Six Sigma
• Culture change
• Performance improvement
• Quality management systems
• High performance in government
• Innovation and product design
• Teamwork and managing through people
• Measuring knowledge work, enterprise performance and customer satisfaction

LEADERSHIP, AWARDS & RECOGNITION

Robin has been named Guru by American Society for Quality, is listed in Who's Who in Business Leaders, and been ranked "Best Speaker" by many sponsoring organizations, including:

• Association for Manufacturing Excellence
• American Society for Quality (#1 rank of 88 speakers)
• International Standards Organization (twice)
• The Executive Committee
• Japan Management Association
• American Quality Institute
• Federal Executive Board