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"Corporate culture determines if your strategies, initiatives and mergers will succeed or fail. All organizations have cultures. The only question is, does it shape you or do you shape it?"
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Larry E. Senn

Chairman

Larry is a pioneer in the field of corporate culture. He founded Senn Delaney (originally called Senn-Delaney Leadership Consulting Group) in 1978 with a specific mission: to assist CEOs and senior executives in creating high-performance teams and winning cultures. Today it is the oldest, most experienced organizational culture-shaping firm in the world.

His 1970 doctoral dissertation, Organizational Character as a Tool in the Analysis of Business Organizations, was the first field study of corporate culture in America. Based on his principal finding that “organizations become shadows of their leaders,” he created the consulting firm to work with CEO teams and organizations top to bottom to create the behaviors needed to enhance business results.

His vision and leadership for 30 years has helped Senn Delaney become an international firm that is widely recognized as the leading authority and practitioner in the field of culture shaping.

In addition to his role as chairman, Larry actively works with clients on culture-shaping initiatives. He also guides Senn Delaney's product development team to continually improve offerings and services to enhance all aspects of the Senn Delaney culture-shaping methodology.

Larry has led culture-shaping engagements for the leaders of organizations, including dozens of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, state governors, members of a U.S. president's cabinet, deans of business schools and the presidents of major universities. He has extensive experience working with top leaders in a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, retailing, insurance, financial services, consumer products, energy, and health care. Larry is an accomplished consultant, business advisor, group facilitator, author and CEO coach.

Prior to founding Senn Delaney, Larry ran his own retail business in college, was senior engineer in the aerospace industry and a faculty member at University of Southern California and University of California Los Angeles where he taught leadership. He was also an assistant coach of UCLA's championship gymnastics team.

In 1968, he founded the first Senn Delaney company, which specialized in retail business process improvement and customer service. In 1992, he sold it to focus solely on CEO-level culture shaping with the Senn-Delaney Leadership Consulting Group.

Larry was a finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year in Southern California. He and his wife Bernadette are active joggers and fitness enthusiasts and he is a triathlete. They have five children, three grown, one in the business school at USC and one still at home. Born and raised in the mid-west, he now resides in Sunset Beach, California.


Published books
  • Winning Teams – Winning Cultures, 2nd edition 2010
  • The Human Operating System – An Owners Manual, 5th edition 2010
  • The Secret of a Winning Culture, 1999
  • In The Eye of the Storm – Reengineering Corporate Culture, 1996
  • 21st Century Leadership: Dialogues with 100 Top Leaders, 1993

Published thought papers and articles
  • The Team at the Top Is it really a team? — The 8 Characteristics of a High-Performance Team
  • The Cultural Aspects of Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Aligning Strategy, Structure and Culture
  • The last frontier: Maximizing organizatoinal synergies
  • Now is the time for leaders to check the shadows they cast
  • The CEO's most important job: Aligning strategy, structure and culture
  • The CEO as Chief Culture Officer

Education
University of California, Los Angeles
B.S., Engineering, M.B.A., Management

University of Southern California
Doctorate in Management, Organizational Behavior