Honored
Leader: Linda Dunkel, President and CEO
Company Name: Interaction Associates, Inc.
Location: Cambridge, Mass.
Nature of Business: Consulting
Founded: 1969
Revenue: $10.6 million
Growth Rate (2005): 2 percent
Number of Employees: 45
Average Tenure: 5 years
When Linda Dunkel assumed leadership of this 37-year-old consulting firm in 2002, it was a well-established innovator of collaborative performance solutions with a diverse range of Fortune 100 clients. The company also faced a daunting challenge: The burst of the dot-com bubble and the impact of 9/11 had created revenue problems for the firm. Dunkel led Interaction Associates to collaborate together to reimagine the business and implement a strategy that has increased its profits more than 480 percent. Under her stewardship, the 55-person firm migrated from a limited partnership to a 100 percent employee-owned business. Dunkel's focus is on strengthening collaboration among competing interests and fostering maximum appropriate involvement of stakeholders in decision making. She runs the organization as a "high involvement – high engagement" organization. Through regular, firm-wide "Quality of Work Life" surveys, Dunkel monitors how well the firm is serving its employees as well as its clients, and makes necessary adjustments to ensure excellence.
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