John Ferris

Overview and Strengths

John is a business executive with 39 years of experience across a broad array of positions and disciplines up to and including President and CEO. He brings to the coaching role a wealth of “in the chair” experience that spans multinational organizations with Gillette, Oral B, Braun, and Duracell, and private enterprise with Swiss Natural – health and wellness products.

He has managed complete reorganizations, organizational rebranding, taken a company to market and successful sale, as well as being elected to the Program Advisory Board for Health Canada’s Natural Health Products Directorate. During the first 30+ years of his career he managed all the core disciplines across an organization; Sales, Marketing, Planning, Training, Manufacturing, Operations, Finance, and Human Resources. Regardless of the position, John’s focus has always been on six key business principles to drive lasting organizational performance:

• Know your employees beyond their position
• Understand your customers’ needs and your organization’s capabilities
• React to the “root cause”, not the “symptoms” of your business issues.
• Focus the organization on evolutionary development
• Align the organization’s strategic direction and incentive plans across all departments
• Communicate, communicate, communicate

John’s coaching / consulting experience focuses on helping Presidents and CEO’s better manage their business. His experience spans 7 years in industries ranging from CPG, Utilities, Printing, Event Management, Electronics, and Art. His unique style merges consulting, coaching, and mentoring to help clients objectively look at their organizations and themselves, to target meaningful goals and bring them to life. John’s commitment is to be in the moment with his clients, as he understands that issues surface outside of planned meetings. His pledge is to make himself available to help manage the issue when the issue needs to be addressed. He is very aware of the fine line between perception and reality in the workplace, and how small adjustments in behaviour can have significant impact on workplace engagement and motivation.