Walter J. “Walt” Humann (MIT ‘59) has had two simultaneously successful careers in Dallas. One is in business, and the other is in public service. He heads his own firm, WJH Corporation, and has held top management positions in several corporations as well as serving on both corporate and non-profit boards.
In his public service career, Mr. Humann has the quiet tenacity and perceptive vision to develop private/public partnerships to address pressing urban problems. He has spearheaded significant community improvements in the areas of transportation—reconstruction of North Central Expressway, and creation and implementation of DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit)—education, community and race relations, government reorganization, and urban planning, design and beautification. He has applied his considerable skills and finesse to develop consensus on complex transportation issues among groups with diverse opinions.
Walt Humann has received numerous civic awards, including the prestigious Linz Award in 1997 for his leadership in bringing North Central Expressway and DART to fruition.
For over 30 years, Mr. Humann has had an ongoing, positive influence on the quality of life in Dallas and North Texas by facilitating improvements in the transportation infrastructure.
Mr. Humann spoke on the qualities of leadership and emphasized the important of becoming involved locally to make things happen. He graced us with stories where leadership succeeded, as in the implementation of the DART rail system and the Jubilee Park community outreach, as well as the failures like the unsuccessful bid for Dallas to attract the new Cowboys stadium to Fair Park.
The second portion of the session was lead by Pete DeLisle and was an interactive discussion in to the spectrum of 'Cognitive Climates' that companies organize themselves into and the 'Organizational Fit' each employee feels comfortable with. The theory, developed by Michael Kirton, a renowned British psychologist, is intended provides managers with a useful tools to investigate business cycles, product cycles, and more importantly, the rise and fall of both established and new entrepreneurial companies.
Team collaboration and the reduction of conflict figure largely in any person’s life. To have an efficient team you need the people within it to expend the greatest effort on the problems in hand - rather than spending a great amount of time & effort on problems raised in collaborating.
Each of us participated in answering questions on the KAI (Kirton Adaption–Innovation) inventory questionnaire which gave us a score from 32-160. The lower on the scale you were the more "Adaptive Creative" you were, the higher on the scale the more "Innovative Creative" you were. The test emphasizes that neither side of the spectrum is better, there is no wrong or right place, but in particular situations, different degrees of adaptation or innovation can be judged to be more appropriate.
Between two people with differing style preferences, 0-10 point difference is considered the 'same' style, 11-20 point difference is considered of 'similar' style, and 20 or more point difference a signifier of a 'different' style which can also be referred to as a Cognitive Gap.
Those who do not fall at the extremes of the scale, but float in the middle, are considered "bridgers" and are useful members of teams that included adaptives and innovatives because they can alleviate managerial tensions between the two extremes.
