Bob Chartier - Biography

Bob Chartier is a federal public servant working in partnership with the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs and The National Managers Community Council. He teleworks from his home in Calgary and spends most of his time on the road working with public servants from all departments. His passion is building learning organizations and promote a leadership culture that recognizes leadership at all levels. His work has been recognized both inside government with the Head of the Public Service Award in 2000 and outside government where he has been invited to be part of the faculty of the Royal Roads University Personal Leadership in the Public Sector program.

As a former plumber Bob brings a practical common sense approach to organizational change. He authored "Tools for Leadership and Learning" a utilitarian guide to building learning organizations. This guide is now promoted across the federal public service as a starting point for dialogue around building learning organization culture. He coauthored Facile... a guide for managers and practitioners with Sylvie Lapointe. He published Bureaucratically Incorrect...letters to a young public servant and is presently writing a publication on storytelling and another book on new approaches to old practices.

He targets the bad meetings; the ubiquitous committees and the self help workshops as prime targets ready for new tools. To that end he has pioneered the use of such utilitarian tools as the Standup, the Workout, the Team Charter, Open Space and the Courtyard Café and helped to modify and make them fit the public sector.

Bob's specialties include conducting management seminars on Leading Learning organizations; he offers training programs for practitioners and guest speaking. He uses humor, storytelling and practical experience as the basis for his presentations. Leonard Cohen wrote a song in which he laments… "they sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within...". Bob brings energy and enthusiasm to the world of organizational change as he continues to ask that old question, "Can you make change from the inside?" He remains convinced that we can do so and must.