mike sproul

Master Trainer: Six Thinking Hats, Lateral Thinking

Certified Trainer:  Direct Attention Thinking Tools (DATT)

R.M. (Mike) Sproul is a west Texas native and honors graduate (BBA) from Angelo State University.  He later attended graduate school at Texas Tech University before joining Otis Engineering Corporation, a division of Halliburton Company in 1974.  During his twenty years with Otis/Halliburton, Mike held managment positions as well as executive positions as vice president of marketing and product development.

During that time he handled a broad range of responsibilities and experienced a wide variety of cultures. Having traveled to 25 countries and conducted training in more than 15 of those countries, he has a global perspective that few U.S.-based trainers/consultants have.

In the early 80's Mike helped pioneer the use of cross-functional engineering and product management teams.  His extensive work in this area led him to recognize the critical need for focused, simple, and effective team-based collaborative and creative thinking methods.  Also during that time he helped launch and implement a highly successful quality (process) improvement initiative.  This work further strengthened his belief that deliverate creative and collaborative thinking skills were needed to leverage individual and team capabilities.  Mike recently authored an article for Quality Progress (publication of ASQC) that clearly defines the need for deliberate creative thinking methods in process improvement.

Mike holds seven U.S. patents and five foreign patents.  As tangible evidence of his belief in the team enviroment, on each of those patents at least one other person is listed as a coinventor.  After becoming vice president of product development at Halliburton, he began to search for serious and systematic ways to help personnel be more innovative and more effective, especially in the team environment.  His search brought him to the work of Dr. Edward de Bono. He tried it and it worked.

In early 1994 Mike left Halliburton to start his own business, Corporate Creativity Associates, focused on training and consulting in the field of organizational innovation. He met with Dr. de Bono and was certified through APTT as one of the first independent instructors/consultants in the de Bono courses. Since that time he has been teaching creative and collaborative thinking skills to a broad range of organizations such as IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Schlumberger, and the U.S. Armed Forces. In addition to conducting direct training and consulting, he also works with organizations to plan and directly facilitate problem-solving, strategy, and new concept/idea generation sessions. In early 1998 he was selected to be part of an elite group to receive advanced facilitation accreditation training by Dr. de Bono. Only 12 were chosen for this accreditation from among a group of over 500 certified de Bono trainers around the world.

When not consulting or training with leading organizations, Mike ranches in Schliecher County in west Texas.  This "other" part of his life helps him maintain his results-oriented perspective.  He has an unwavering belief that simply doing the same things better is no longer enough to ensure success or even survival in today's rapidly changing business world.  Organizations must learn to systematically generate and develop altogether new ways of doing things.  This requires more than encouragement and exhortation by management.  It takes specific skill training.  Providing world-class training, consulting, and facilitation in those skills is Mike's commitment.