Prior to founding The Commonwealth Practice, I worked in the information systems arena for 25 years. That included work first at Hennepin County, then at Target Stores, and finally at 3M Company ending in July of 2002.

In the last ten years, I have moved away from the technological side to the organizational development side. That is, I've been working with the organizational side of building systems rather than actually doing the hands-on building. This largely resulted from the discovery at that point that the problem lay not with the software and the computers and the programming languages but rather with the people using those tools. The move essentially was a shift from designing systems to designing the people that design the systems. That work has included staff development, competency modeling, workforce management ... a variety of topics in that realm.

For the better part of five years, my work focused on leadership development in two divisions of 3M Company: the information technology group, focused on mid-level managers; and the research-and-development group, focused on de facto leaders in a large cross-disciplinary technology exchange group. I was part of a team that had the chance to work with eight-to-twelve people at a time, totaling about 45 people in the first group, then 65 in the second group.

I am certified to use virtually all of the Lominger Ltd. suite of tools, including Career Architect, Organization Architect, Recruiting Architect, VOICES 360-feedback, and more.

I received a Master of Arts Degree in the field of Organizational Leadership from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN.

I teach a few courses at Hamline University (St. Paul, MN) in the Graduate School of Education (for administrators, for teachers, and for teachers moving into the administration ranks as principals and/or directors of special education).

Until March of 2002, I had the pleasure and challenge of serving for six years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Tasks Unlimited, a Minneapolis-based non-profit working on behalf of clients in recovery from mental illness and traumatic brain injury.   After leaving that board, I joined the board of another non-profit, Family Networks, which works primarily with children with mental illness.  I now have the challenge of serving as the Chair of that Board.

My wife Judy and I met in high school, got married in college, and have been married for thirty-some years.  We have two daughters, both living in Minneapolis.  One work in a hospital laboratory, and the other works as a reference attorney for a large publishing company.

Click here for a more formal, printable resumé.

Send a note to me directly at mbayers@TheCommonwealthPractice.com

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Last modified: Monday April 26, 2010.