Our History
In 1976, David E. Morrison, M.D., founded Morrison Associates in Topeka, Kansas. A medical firm, Morrison Associates leveraged the power of medicine’s objective approach to problems, emphasizing prevention. A psychiatrist, Dr. Morrison appreciated the challenges of personal change and systemic issues impeding the effectiveness of people. The resulting mission of Morrison Associates: To help senior leaders to be as mentally healthy as possible.
Dr. Morrison’s first focus was on reconciling the competing needs of work, family, and self, developing a suite of services and novel solutions to address these conflicting priorities.
Changing With Business in the 1980s and 1990s
In 1978, Morrison Associates moved to the Chicago area. We also moved to the national stage, acknowledged by Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal as a unique and beneficial resource to organizations. We complemented our medical expertise with MBA insight. Our consultants were engaged to help clients deal with such painful transitions of the day as downsizing, hostile takeovers, and technological displacement of workers. Presentations on stress, prejudice, and change preceded many of these subjects’ cottage industries.
Our client base, senior executives, became anxious about the pace of change and its impact on them, families, and associates. They wanted help, a need driving development of our Executive Consultation, a service becoming the cornerstone of support for the leader. 3,000 leaders have been through this developmental process. Their feedback encouraged us to continue offering ongoing leadership consultation and to expand our services with team building, a 360 tool, and work on vision and values.
Morrison Associates Today
Morrison Associates continues to anticipate the needs of leaders with new services. Two recent innovations:
- A breakdown of key factors to master in Performance Conversations;
- A Profile of Successful CEOs.
These will help organizations to become more effective with emotionally competent leadership, driving organization achievement through Turning Resistance into Motivation into Performance.