Founding Member
Kurt Wright, Member
Kurt Wright is founder and President of Clear Purpose Management, Inc. an international consulting firm. He has coached leaders from some of the most respected companies in the U.S., Canada, South America and Europe. His work grew out of his life working to understand what each of us is like at our very best. With his typical thoroughness, he now shares these finding through his consulting services and his book, "Breaking the Rules."
If you ever wanted to know how visionaries, peak performers and high performance teams think, you would do well to seek out Mr. Wright who has built a distinguished, 38-year career by focusing on the driving question, “What are we like when we’re at our very best, and how can we increase the frequency of that?”
As is typical of his many insights, he noticed early on that visionary thinkers and three-year-old children ask exactly the same kind of questions and exhibit exactly the same kind of energy. Hmmm, he thought, there must be a cause-and-effect relationship at work here!
In 1985, the chairman and founder of FedEx, Fred Smith, became so intrigued with Wright’s grasp of the visionary thought process that he invited him to come to Memphis and introduce it to his management team. During the exercise, Smith remarked, “This is the first time in my life I have ever had anyone describe to me the exact thought process I used to build this company.” At least three members of that team have gone on to establish distinguished careers as visionary leaders in their own right.
Among Wright’s most important discoveries is that while our logical brain seems to reject nearly every “what’s-right” question it receives, those same questions are almost universally effective at engaging our intuitive brain. In addition, every time our intuitive brain produces a new insight it energizes our entire system. He also notes that “what’s wrong” questions do the opposite. They engage the logical mind while depleting the energy reserves of everyone involved.
In Chapter 1 of his book, “Breaking the Rules,” Wright describes a software development project he was involved in with Unisys, where they saved $45 million when he enabled a team of 400 software engineers to shift their style of inquiry from “what’s-wrong” to “what’s-right.”