About
What is Sterling Insights all about?
For leadership teams and boards of directors
who have the intention to be more effective,
we help them imagine the future
and decide how to be sustainably successful
no matter what shows up.Unlike generic business consultants or single-issue subject matter experts, our services raise understanding of the big picture so that client visions, plans, and decisions integrate business, social, and environmental considerations.
We use proven processes that get breakthrough results:
Future Scenario Development
Sustainability Assessment
Strategic Design Sessions (Visioning, Strategic Planning, and Sustainability Balanced Scorecard)
Change Management
Leadership Development
Team Building
You too can begin making real progress toward economic, social, and environmental performance improvements.Call 619-659-1234 or Email: Joe@SterlingInsights.com or Rita@SterlingInsights.com
At your service: Experience, Knowledge, and Heart
The Sterlings bring over 35 years combined strategic planning and organization development wisdom to their domestic and international work. Corporate, government, and community clients have taken advantage of the Sterlings’ spectrum of strategic improvement tools, methods and wisdom.
Corporate, municipal and non-profit clients have engaged Sterling Insights services for strategic planning, organization development and graphic facilitation since 1992. Client testimonials say it best. Our international executive facilitation experience brings global perspective to our local projects.
Eileen Clift joined the staff of Sterling Insights in January of 2007 as Public Relations Manager. Eileen’s career in the professional services industry along with her years in sales helps Sterling Insights reach out to clients in need of our services. Eileen is also engaged in in-depth research for the San Diego Regional Vision Project as well as the San Diego Region Simulation Game. Both of these projects are a part of Sterling Insight’s major effort to improve sustainability in the San Diego Region.
For capacity, Sterling Insights uses a provider network aligned by the Sterling’s “Free Agent Ecosystem” ethics and collaboration tools. Joe and Rita Sterling lead Sterling Insights, Inc. from their ranch near San Diego. The property includes a collaboration space for 30 participants surrounded by 13 acres (~ 5 hectares) of continuously changing sustainability demonstrations.
In response to the 2003 San Diego wildfires that destroyed 400,000 acres (including most of the Sterling’s neighborhood - 91 structures destroyed, 51 of 100 families displaced), Joe and Rita founded Friends of Peutz Valley, Inc., a not-for-profit corporation, to assist their community to recover and rebuild. In the months after the fire, the Sterling’s home and property was the relief center for their valley. Read “A Year of Reflections on Leadership, Community and Fire” to learn more about their experience.
The Sterlings are recognized for community leadership and heart. Accolades have come from the United States Congress; California State Senate; California State Assembly; and County of San Diego. The Sterling’s have been given the Alpine Chamber of Commerce - Humanitarian Award, and the KGTV Channel 10 - Leadership Award.
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Joe Sterling
President
Joe has 15 years experience facilitating groups of 10 to 1000 participants to accelerate their progress toward organizational goals and sustainable success. He leads the strategic planning engagements for Sterling Insights.
Joe’s approach to moving clients toward their goals is a unique synthesis of traditions, practices and cutting edge methodologies. Prominent among these are complexity and systems modeling, experiential learning, scenario planning, balanced scorecard, and collaborative large group interventions.
His work has been influenced by the writings of Keys van der Heijden, Christopher Alexander, Geoffrey Moore, Kevin Kelly, Ishak Adizes, Drs. Dave Norton and Bob Kaplan, Matt & Gail Taylor, R. Buckminster Fuller, Malcolm Gladwell, Bill Mollison, Peter Senge, and others.
In part, Joe’s efficacy in strategy design and facilitation comes from a special ability to synthesize group dialogues, as they happen, into crisp visual graphics capturing the essence of the interaction. The images increase dialogue, insight and memory. Over 100 corporate, municipal and military leaders have utilized Joe for his considerable skill enabling them to move forward faster.
In the capacity of graphic facilitator and multi-client program designer, Joe contributed to the Center for Business Innovation (CBI), an Ernst & Young think tank in Cambridge, MA, from 1997 through 2000. Application of complexity theory to business issues was the centerpiece of the work for the CBI. From 1999 to 2003, Joe contributed to the IBM think tank, Institute for Business Value.
Two effects of serving so many leaders and pioneering authors: 1) an up to date appreciation for business and technology trends; and 2) Joe has observed and or guided in the last 10 years more executive level decision making moments than many consultants see in a lifetime. These translate into sensitivity to nuance in executive relationships and better guidance during strategic planning.
Joe’s formal education includes a bachelor’s degree in humanistic psychology, and master practitioner and trainer certificates in Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
In addition to serving corporate clients, Joe has worked with many not-for-profit groups including facilitating strategic planning work for the boards of the MIT Enterprise Forum (San Diego); Society for Human Resource Management; Global Energy Network Institute; and the San Diego-Tijuana Border Initiative.
For relaxation and exercise Joe enjoys working on the many sustainability projects around the Sterling’s ranch including tending their fruit and nut trees; riding horses with his wife, Rita; volunteering in various community and economic development activities around the region, CA; and playing the ancient strategy game of Go.
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Rita L. Sterling
Principal
Rita infuses Sterling Insights with over 20 years of Organization Development experience. She has served in the financial services, manufacturing, and technology sectors primarily in large corporate organizations like Great American Bank, Rohr/B.F. Goodrich, and Solar Turbines Inc. She was instrumental in the design and implementation of change management strategies yielding high performance in these organizations.
Rita developed and delivered organization fitness assessments, focused consulting in change management, leadership and team development, performance management program development, conflict management, process improvement, and communication
skills training.
Her last internal position was Global Leader for Change Management at Solar Turbines (headquartered in San Diego with plants in the US, Europe, and Asia). In that capacity she represented the organization development vantage point in the firm’s Enterprise Resource Planning programs.
Rita holds an MBA degree with a marketing emphasis, a Certificate in Change Management from National Training Labs, and completed the advanced training in Change Management from Implementation Management Associates. She has been on the Board of Directors for both the American Society for Training & Development (San Diego) and the San Diego Organization Development Network.
Currently Rita manages the operation of the Sterling Insights business and sustainability demonstration site. For recreation and expression, Rita is expanding her artistic photography practice focused on “Capturing the Architecture of Nature”.
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