Patrice Murphy

Patrice’s consulting career began more than twenty years ago amid Australia’s most industrially contentious industries. Her specialty: Helping managers and front line employees reach consensus and increase productivity in beleaguered situations. Since then, she has maintained her passion for working with clients at every level from the C-suite to the shop floor.

Since joining Schaffer Consulting in 2000, Patrice’s practice has focused on the dynamics of top-to-bottom transformation – building leadership effectiveness, creating the conditions for breakthrough performance, ensuring front line employee engagement, and developing the internal capability to drive transformation on a global scale. Patrice is an expert in rapid results project structures such as WorkOut, using these in novel ways to drive strategic execution.

At the executive level, Patrice works with senior leaders to define and execute strategies for profitability and growth. She is a fearless partner in pursuing audacious performance challenges. Patrice also works with senior executive teams to help them drive radical shifts in their organization. She designs and facilitates executive meetings, creates leadership development programs that deliver strategic results, and coaches executive teams and individuals.

In recent years, Patrice has been increasingly focused on enabling radical new business innovation, particularly among major organizations that face a competency trap. Unleashing internal capacity to invent new businesses and drive growth is her current passion.

Patrice has led in-house and B-School programs on leadership development, performance management, and organizational change in the US, Europe, and Australia. She also leads training in Schaffer’s WorkOut methodology, the firm’s large-scale, rapid-results method for engaging employees in business turnaround and growth. She is an experienced international speaker and trainer.

Patrice’s clients include leading corporations in sectors as varied as pharmaceuticals (Merck, Bausch + Lomb, Schering-Plough), financial services (Citigroup, Lloyds, Zurich, Fannie Mae), and technology (McKesson, the MITRE Corporation).

 

She has been a guest lecturer in organizational performance and change at New York University and the University of Connecticut. Instructor in Management of Organizations at New York University Stern School of Business (1999). She is a highly rated trainer in short programs on leadership, performance improvement and innovation at clients including the United Nations, Firmenich, Merck, McKesson, Lloyds, and GE.

 

Patrice has contributed to the understanding and practice of management through both her academic research and practitioner publications. She was a contributing author of The GE WorkOut [2002]. She has co-authored chapters on WorkOut and the Rapid Results Approach in The Change Handbook [2007]. Online, she has published articles and opinion in publications including OD Seasonings, IndustryWeek.com, and Talent Management Online.

She is a member of various professional associations including:

• The Society for Human Resource Management
• The Organization Development Network
• American Australian Association
• Beta Gamma Sigma honor society for business scholars

 

Education:

 

• B.A. with Honors in Political Science, University of Melbourne
• M.B.A with Distinction, University of Melbourne
• M.L.L.R. in Labor Law and Relations, University of Sydney
• Ph.D. in Management and Organizational Behavior, New York University