ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KAREN G. PHELAN

I started my career as a scientist in a military think-tank after graduating with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in engineering from MIT. After struggling with the moral issues involved in the defense industry, I took a job as a management consultant and spent over a decade in the industry consulting on strategy, operations, organizational development, and information technology for several large consulting firms.  During that time, I developed and taught a number of training courses to develop the problem-solving, planning and communication skills of our consultants.  In the late 1990’s, I started my own consulting practice that specialized in teaching business skills to IT (Information Technology) professionals. A few years later, I joined Pfizer to create a training department and then spent several years at Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Iris Software in a variety of management roles.  Late last year, I left Iris to start my own business again and have been both consulting and training management professionals.  I recently piloted the first of my new series of training courses, A Lazy Person’s Guide to Business Success, for a pharmaceutical company. I have based my consulting practice on more effective and easier ways to each results and you can find out more at The Business Realist.

The Business Realist site contains numerous articles on better ways to execute projects and get results in new product development, supply chain, innovation, and improvement initiatives in general. I call these Reality Checks because sometimes, as a business community, we become so immersed in the dogma of best practices, we abandon common sense. Don't embark on any improvement initiative until you take a reality check. It also contains information on my training practice and tips for developing and teaching programs.

As a training professional, I’ve discovered that the didactic mode of teaching, where an expert tells you what to do or gives you the answer, is the least effective way of communicating and learning. Lectures, in both oral and written forms, are hard to digest. Instead, creating an experience that absorbs the student or reader, especially one that appeals to the emotions and uses familiar analogies, is a more effective way to capture people’s attention and imagination.  I use these techniques in this website, plus a lot of satire, to show exactly why business is just like Monty Python.  

My complete resume is online at karengphelan.com.