Executive Development Associates

Jim Bolt founded Executive Development Associates (EDA) in 1982. Before EDA, Jim spent 16 years at Xerox Corporation in a series of line and staff jobs in marketing, branch management and human resources. Just before he left Xerox to start EDA, Jim was Corporate Director with world-wide responsibility for executive education, learning and development, and talent management. EDA was founded on the premise that executive development must clearly support the achievement of an organization’s strategic objectives. If it doesn’t, don’t do it. It will waste the organization’s time and money because it will have no significant impact. Jim’s 1983 Harvard Business Review Article, Tailor Executive Development to Strategy, represented a breakthrough in transitioning from education for education’s sake, to high-impact, strategic executive development. The article was one of the most requested HBR Reprints. In 1990, Jim’s book, Executive Development: A Strategy for Corporate Competitiveness was the first to chronicle how CEOs were using custom-designed executive development programs to set and achieve their strategic agenda and objectives. EDA has always been a consulting boutique providing personal, high-touch service to each client. Our belief is that our consultants should have real, hands-on, business experience. We prefer to provide our clients with consultants who have worked in major corporations to design/develop custom programs tied to the business strategy and who had to live with the results. We aspire for our consultants to be experienced in practical business experience, not just academic theory.