Meri Aaron Walker helps individuals and workgroups assess and leverage their portfolios of natural human strengths and align them for greater success in the rapidly changing, global information economy.

As the founder of Between the Lines , an Austin-based consultancy, Meri has provided strategic business planning , management metrics and performance improvement services , including executive coaching , to business and organizational leaders since 1991. For over 25 years - throughout the tumultuous emergence of the global information economy - Meri has focused on helping leaders connect deeply with their constituents and stay connected.

On the one hand, Meri has an international track record of helping business owners and managers align their human resources with the business goals - so that everyone gets more of what they want more of.

On the other hand, because she has operated for almost 30 years herself as a micro-business owner, Meri knows firsthand what independent workers need to generate sustained success for themselves.

It is Meri's ability to view "work" from both sides of the table that gives her SuccessMetrics, Teams That Work, and Job Modeling consultative products their power and efficacy. She has a 360-degree view of the needs and demands of human capital management in the continuously changing 21st century global workplace.

Internationally, Meri is recognized as an expert at forging and facilitating strategically focused high-performance teams. Her flagship course in Inclusive Communication was a featured offering of The Crossings Business Institute in December 2003. In 2001, she and two colleagues published a business leadership handbook, Teamwork is an Individual Skill , through the widely respected business publisher Berrett Koehler. She has taught at the University of Texas and St. Edward's University and trained executive groups in the Fortune 500.

Meri is a certified PDP® consultant. She earned her BA in English from the University of Georgia and her MA in Communication from the University of Texas at Austin . Like Betty Sue Flowers and her long-time teacher and mentor, Coleman Barks, Meri brings a poet's sensibility to her observation of critical detail and pattern in the affairs of business and organizational management.

Since 2001, Meri has focused her consulting practice on working with truly generative leaders to clarify organizational goals, strategies and performance objectives for mission-critical teams as the fastest route to consistent, demonstrable results in the post 9/11 economic turbulence.

During this time, she evolved the Teams That Work process as a simple, data-driven approach to assessing bottom-line behavioral needs on mission-critical teams and yoking them to the business drivers. The Teams That Work approach strengthens individual effectiveness and performance while expanding the intelligence of a whole team and - at the same time - improving organizational hiring, compensation, and performance management practices. The approach has proven very successful at growing technical and project managers - who lack human resource management training - yet hold accountability for developing and delivering critical information products and services with diverse teams.

During this time, she also researched and refined her approach to Job Modeling in order to provide employers and hiring managers with hard data about the critical behavioral requirements of new and changing positions. 

Meri Aaron Walker,
Between the Lines
8760A Research Blvd , #312
Austin , TX 78758
meri@btlines.com
(512) 491-0027

What Some Clients Say About Our Work

Meri is one of the most passionate and completely congruent consultants I've ever met. She is a rarity among consultants because she really wants to make sure you 'get it.' This really sets her apart. She knows how to build a deep rapport with clients and gives great feedback. Her materials are immaculate and she is a fanatic about follow-through.

We've worked with her on a number of programs at International SEMATECH. She quickly won over even our group of very analytical engineers with her ability to strike a wonderful balance between the data and business issues and the touchy-feely people issues.

- J. Michael Bown, Senior Performance Consultant
International SEMATECH

When I talk with Meri Walker, I come up with new ideas. At least two or three new ideas in every conversation! Meri helped me get my partnering values on paper, which has had a tremendous, long-term effect on our organization, spurring our partners to partner well. The generative effects have been exponential.

She's an expert at how people communicate. She stimulates new perspectives and different ways of looking, different ways of holding things. This has been extremely valuable to my partners and me. She's helped us obtain clarity and vision and articulate the right strategic directions for our companies.

- Jim Hoover, Venture Capitalist and Managing Partner
IDM Partners, Inc.

Meri has the ability to affect change in people at a deep level. She helps us see and understand how what we are doing in the workplace affects our success. Especially top leaders and Type A drivers: she helps them understand the price of their practices.

Her tools help people who value data find their starting point. She teaches true and deep listening without judgment and encourages empathy. The real meaning of walking a mile in another person's shoes. Her Inclusive CommunicationT methodology knits people's intra- and inter-personal communication into one piece.

The ROI? Loyalty, innovation and creative thinking from people you never dreamed could be innovative and the ability to catch mistakes earlier and correct them on a dime -- instead of down the road after a big loss.

- Barbara Miller, Communication and Leadership Consultant
Barbara B. Miller Communication

We were having difficulties in a critical area with hiring people that fit and then forming a cohesive team that worked together well. Meri helped us tighten up our job specs, brought in some metrics, helped us evaluate existing employees and model some new jobs we needed to add. Then she helped us hire the right types of people to fill the positions and got them in synch with some team-building and communication work.

The result : people have a much-improved understanding of each other. They're getting much more done with a lot less trauma than before. Her help has been of great value.

- Jim Oliver, General Manager
Texas Windstorm Insurance Association

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