From the NY Times article by ELAINE GLUSAC:

Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain

WHEN Leslie Marquard, an executive coach, holds strategy sessions for consulting firms or university administrators, she ushers her buttoned-up clientele into rooms full of Pogo sticks, ethnic art, hammocks, vintage furniture and a pillow “harem.”

“They are surprised and also endeared by it,” said Ms. Marquard, a co-founder of Marble Leadership Partners in Chicago. The “it” she referred to is Catalyst Ranch, an independent alternative meeting space in a former sausage factory near the Loop in Chicago. “They’ll say, ‘That table looks just like one I grew up with.’ It subconsciously releases the mind.”

CASUAL ZONES Teach for America, a nonprofit, at the Catalyst Ranch meeting space in Chicago;

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Managing Director Leslie Marquard will speak on Monday, April 21, and Tuesday, April 22.  This is her fourth year serving the CMB track participants as a thought leader and executive coach.

Bill Marquard commented on the format, strategy, and focus of Tesco’s U.S. retail stroe concept, Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Markets.

Click here for the article.

Click here to hear the interview.

Bill Marquard will speak to 1,200 people over three days in Guatemala. His speech, entitled “Choose or Lose: Making Smart Choices in a Wal-Mart World” is based on the key lessons on his book, Wal-Smart: What it Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World. The speeches are sponsored by Guatemala Prospera, an organization devoted to bringing values-based and principles-based leadership to Guatemala.

Click here to learn more about Guatemala Prospera.

Bill Marquard, author of Wal-Smart: What it Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World, will be the keynote speaker at Retailing Today’s 30th Annual SPARC, Supplier Performance Awards by Retail Category luncheon in Chicago on September 20, 2007.

In a recent review of Wal-Smart: What it Really Takes to Profit in a Wal-Mart World, in the Boston Globe, noted author Charles Fishman recommended Wal-Smart:
“There’s no excuse for not understanding what’s going to happen to you and your business as you step into the Wal-Mart arena,” said Charles Fishman, author of “The Wal-Mart Effect,” a study of how Wal-Mart’s drive for low prices has transformed the world economy.

“That’s why you read a book like this,” Fishman said of Wal-Smart.

Click here to read the entire review.

How does the rest of the retail world win against Wal-Mart? What can Wal-Mart teach other companies—and individuals—about analysis and competition? For thinkers of every stripe, a new book by business author Bill Marquard assembles the analysis and principles of how to go up against Goliaths.

Click here to read the entire interview at TheHighCalling.org.

Marquard maintains that Scott “inherited” baggage including a market multiple that “got well ahead” of the stock and the company’s growth. However, the consultant says Scott has presided over a resurgence of the firm’s former “productivity loop” and “strong process organization” — which has helped reverse the six-year downward trend in Wal-Mart’s overall-sales growth rate, lifting it to 11.7% from 9.5%. But he cautions investors and C-level executives alike: Scott must maintain focused on “returning to those roots” to sustain today’s good news.

Click Here to read the full CNBC article and watch interview.

Marquard…knows his subject intimately and describes the controversial retail goliath with admirable neutrality, bringing together the conclusions of various research studies on relevant topics-wage and expansion policies, for instance-rather than praising or condemning Wal-Mart’s polarizing business practices himself.

Publisher’s Weekly, January 8, 2007

Click HERE to read the full review.