Frank Wander — April 2015 Member Spotlight
Former CIO, current CEO of PeopleProductive and BRM Institute Executive Council member Frank Wander has spent plenty of time in the IT industry. When he’s not spending time with family or sampling wines in a French parlour-like setting discussing an array of topics with his friends, the social Wander keeps his relationships a top priority both in and out of the workplace.
A graduate of Stony Brook, Wander’s extensive work in IT through the years led him to create PeopleProductive in March 2014. Wander’s brainchild focuses on productivity in the workforce–aiding companies whose efficiency has come to a halt. According to Wander, by aiding employers in “understanding the human needs and factors that drive productivity in the modern workforce,” PeopleProductive is able to double or triple workplace output.
“IT is a business where teams of people across business and IT have to turn concepts into reality; that’s where all the value gets created,” Wander said.
Though these teams are supposed to work together to enable higher productivity, Wander has came away from his IT experience realizing the lack of relationships between the business side and tech side of running a successful company.
“In my line of work my main focus is one simple fact: I think caring about other people is highly productive. What inspired me ultimately is the fact that managers cared more about their computers and processors more than their people. They treated the people as parts and knew very little about them; they could basically take better care of a plant than their own people. I saw in that a problem, and an opportunity.”
As BRM Institute Executive Council member, Wander’s main role consists of lending an outside perspective to the BRM Institute and creating content to do such. Though not a BRM himself, Wander places a high value on relationships between coworkers and its direct correlation to productivity in the workplace.
“I think BRM Institute has an important mission. Business relationships are important just like all relationships are important and add value to all aspects of your life. Business-IT alignment and the relationship between the two is really what drive success. Humans are social animals and as such we need connections and a sense of belonging”
Gallup Studies on Employee Engagement show that workers who have a close friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged. These same studies offer up several solutions to the dropping rate of employee engagement in the US–which is currently only at 35% and constantly declining. According to Gallup, one of the most effective ways to aid an engaging workplace environment is to align the organization and remove systemic barriers, which is a large part of Wander’s focus at PeopleProductive.
“People with healthy relationships fosters an open and honest dialogue with one another, which helps create value for the company. It’s a much more productive way to operate.”
Wander continues to nurture positive relationships both in and out of the workplace with an active social life and quality time with his family.
By Mina Taylor,
Contributing Writer