– About Aligned Influence –

Alignment Before
Effectiveness

Transforming businesses and aligning for success.

OUR MISSION

Mapping a Way Forward

Aligned Influence exists to enable professionals in their roles for the betterment of the organization, stakeholders, and their personal lives.

We believe that success starts with the heart and soul of an organization, its people.

Our mission has been channeled into providing organizations with a governance solution that equips the individuals that make up the board and executive team with the tools and direction they need to meet their business goals. Thus, bringing success to the organization and fulfillment to those involved.

We accomplish this by providing meaningful education that goes beyond governance and a model that offers a holistic approach to ensure all issues are addressed, and each role complements the other.

ORIGINS OF ALIGNED INFLUENCE

A New Governance Model Designed to Transform Organizational
Leadership

In 2011, after a 30-year career as an executive in higher education, I set out to help boards lead better and serve their respective organizations. As many have done before me, I began to utilize Carver’s Policy governance model, which I found was used most often and seemed to present all the right answers.

It did not take long, however, before I began to see shortcomings in his approach. While in many respects Carver has done a real service for board development and function, his model’s strengths are also its weaknesses. Simply solving many issues with boards, which Carver’s approach does, still doesn’t translate into organizational improvement. Addressing a part of the problem doesn’t handle the whole problem. More was needed. But what was the more?

I conveyed my struggles with policy governance in a variety of conversations with individuals who worked in for-profit and nonprofit settings. I started asking questions—basic, essential questions—about leadership, organizations, organizational structure, relational and vocational dynamics, and on the list went.

These questions led to more questions. Fortunately, in time, bit by bit, insight by insight, answers started coming—answers that often surprised me yet fit the facts so much better than the “answers” I had previously accepted.

Determined to make improvements I started to put my ideas to paper and work with a large number of boards and their organizations. By doing so I developed a new approach to organizational leadership and structure. I call this model Aligned Influence®.Using the new model, I have consulted with the boards, executives, and the staffs of numerous organizations—organizations as diverse as businesses and not-for-profits, civic governing bodies and educational institutions, churches and foundations, sports enterprises, military institutes, and law offices. I have walked them through the implementation of Aligned Influence®, and have seen how well it works. Even in organizations that were once dedicated to policy governance, my Aligned Influence® model has found new and avid advocates.

Let me do the same for you.

COMMON FRUSTRATIONS

Elevating the Frustration of Cross-Purpose Goals

Over the years, our clients have shared with us their frustrations with organizational misalignment. We’ve heard it all. If any of the scenarios below sound familiar, you are the perfect fit for Aligned Influence’s powerful 21st-century solution.

From the Board
  • I don’t know why I’m here on the board.
  • I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be doing.
  • I don’t know how I’m supposed to make the organization better.
  • I feel like I’m wasting my time.
From the Executive
  • I feel like I’m constantly defending myself before the board.
  • I feel like I’m in this work alone; It’s all up to me.
  • I feel as if the board is in my way; I can’t make any progress because the board is holding me back.
  • I’m so busy making sure the board is operating that I don’t have time to run the organization.
Overcoming Your Frustration Starts Here
OUR PEOPLE

Meet the Team

Drama, in-fighting, and communication that comes at cross-purposes does NOT have to be the norm for boards and executive leadership. Ken Schuetz is helping nonprofits, municipalities, and educational institutions across the country run like well-oiled machines based on his new approach to leadership and governance.

Ken is the CEO and founder of Aligned Influence Consulting and the creator of the Aligned Influence model. He has invested the first 30-years of his career as an executive at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he is currently teaching business philosophy and corporate governance at the Leeds School of Business. Ken has taken his expertise in organizational development and authored numerous articles and the just-published Aligned Influence®: Beyond Governance. The new book, available on Amazon and through the Aligned Influence website, documents the Aligned Influence model and proactively illustrates how boards and executive teams can apply it to their organizations. 

Ken utilizes his decades of experience as an executive in higher education, multiple years as board leadership, and an academic background in organizational communication to help organizations achieve the effectiveness that they and their communities of interest desire. Ken’s work in organizational development and leadership and his expertise as a corporate governance consultant has extended to many organizations across the United States, including for-profits and nonprofits, faith-based, and secular organizations. Ken currently resides in Longmont, Colorado.

Aligned Influence Consultants

Harold Tessendorf

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John Woods

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Jack H. Albert, Jr.

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Andy Franko

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Our Aligned Clients

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Applying Aligned Influence®, organizations can finally make big wins while encouraging healthy discourse and collaboration over destructive competitions for power and influence within.

Jennifer Hayden Epperson, EdD (organizational leadership),
author, educator, and radio professional

IF NOT NOW, WHEN?

Today is Your Chance to Improve Tomorrow

Set Up Your Free Consulation
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Harold Tessendorf

Consultant

Harold Tessendorf is an experienced executive leader, mediator and trainer who has worked in the non-profit, educational and community economic development sectors in South Africa, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Haiti and the United States of America.   Harold served as the Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity affiliates in Georgia for two decades where the Aligned Influence model allowed him to work with his Boards of Directors and staff to achieve greater affiliate effectiveness.  He has also acted as an Officer on the Boards of established, and start up, non-profits and coalitions.  Harold is the Founder of the Tessendorf Consulting Group (www.tessendorfconsulting.com) which has the goal of building resilient leaders, organizations and communities.  He has a MA in Political Science specializing in Conflict Resolution from the Nelson Mandela University (South Africa) and, a MS in International Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University (USA). When he is not working with clients, Harold teaches ethical leadership, management and social enterprise at Mercer University’s Stetson-Hatcher School of Business in Macon, GA.

John Woods

Consultant

John Woods  has spent most of his career in management for high tech companies including IBM, Storage Technology, and Reference Technology, and later leveraged his high-tech leadership experience in a private consulting practice. John serves on the board of directors for Partners in Parenting and Flatirons Habitat for Humanity in Boulder, Colorado where he also served as president of the board, interim executive director, and drove organizational transformation using the Aligned Influence model to improve the affiliate’s alignment and effectiveness. He has a MS in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from the University of Missouri.

Jack H. Albert, Jr.

Consultant

Jack H. Albert, Jr. began his career in education as a teacher in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  He has taught students from middle school to college, and has provided professional training and coaching in a variety of leadership programs and conferences.  His educational leadership roles span 40 years.  Albert holds a B.A. in History from West Virginia’s Glenville State University, a M.Ed. in counseling from James Madison University, with additional graduate work at both University of Virginia and Virginia Tech where held the position of Professional Lecturer.  Earning his doctorate in leadership from Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, Albert’s thesis research centered on board/executive conflict and governance issues surrounding executive resignation and organization dissonance.

Dr. Albert has provided administrative leadership in four independent military schools, serving as President/CEO of three of those institutions.  The tasks Albert led in his organizations included resurrecting enrollment/admissions programs, construction/renovation of facilities, faculty and board development and renewal as well as significant fund raising endeavors, directing two capital campaigns securing a total of $43m at his most recent school.  He retired from active headship in 2019. 

The Albert Education Group, LLC, created for the purpose of providing leadership coaching and training for organization executives and boards using a practical platform crafted by nearly 40 years of hands-on governance and management experience, was established by Dr. Albert.  His expertise is further solidified by his close association with Aligned Influence®, a unique and game changing governance-plus model developed and honed by a premier leader in the field, Ken Schuetz.   Albert’s “talking the walk” and the Schuetz simple and true but tested formula provide a double-edged approach hard to beat in governance-executive design and execution.  If you are needing and seeking organizational resonance, this is the formula.

Andy Franko

– Consultant –
Minga Education Group

Minga Education Group is a non-profit organization based in Colorado, passionate about helping charter schools succeed. Our primary goal is to assist schools in optimizing their education, business, human resources and financial functions. Through partnership, collaboration, and capacity building we create working and learning environments where leaders and school personnel can focus their efforts on their core mission of educating students.