ABOUT 6SENSE
Our mission is to help leaders build increased self-awareness, leverage emotional intelligence, and improve communication skills. By developing these competencies, leaders can better motivate and inspire team members, leading to increased productivity and overall financial success. Our goal is to help leaders to reach their full Leadership 3.0 potential and reap the benefits of having highly motivated, productive teams.
WHO'S DRIVING?
The Founder and driver of 6sense consulting ("sixsense consulting" for the sake of email and the web) is Alan Macpherson. A seasoned executive with more than 25 years of experience building successful teams in both Canada and the US, working at the top leadership level with leading brands such as L-Acoustics, Yamaha and Steinberg.
Alan has been tasked with challenges common across all major markets, like supply disruptions, employee morale issues, team-building to meet strategic goals, entering into new markets etc. He thinks that business leadership should take the time to view approaches from a 30,000' level, where clear communication and objective setting can motivate and inspire teams -- a must-do for all companies to succeed in today's business world.
Leadership that attracts, retains, and inspires the best people will help companies to thrive in all the classic metrics. Sales and profitability growth is really just a happy byproduct of getting leadership right.
ALAN MACPHERSON'S BIO
Founder and Creator of Leadership 3.0
Born and raised in Toronto Canada, Alan felt the siren call of music in his pre-teen days. Obsessed with guitar and singing, he convinced his parents to give him an acoustic guitar for his 13th birthday, and shortly after that, his path was clear -- music was going to be a driving force for the rest of his life. However, it soon became clear that "adjacency to music" was more of an appropriate goal when he realized that playing music full-time was too risky (especially for someone who likes to eat!).
Young Alan had a career plan: after 5 years working up to management at a local music store in Toronto, he would get to know the wholesale, distribution and manufacturing world, and then leverage this 10 years of knowledge to open his own retail operation. At first things went to plan, and almost 5 years to the day after starting at the music store, Alan was hired by Yamaha Canada (a wholly owned subsidiary of the industry's largest manufacturer and distributor of musical and professional audio product). But even the best laid plans can require adjustment, and after 5 years at Yamaha Canada it was clear that his goal to end up owning his own retail operation was in doubt. Yamaha's commitment to quality and its leadership position in the musical instrument/pro audio industries kept Alan challenged and fulfilled, and he abandoned the idea of leaving.
At Yamaha he rose to the attention of Yamaha's Global Leadership Program team, and after graduating from this MBA style program, he became the first of this cohort to be tasked with an international leadership position. Alan and his family moved to Southern California to take over the company's recently acquired Steinberg recording software brand for the US market in 2008. After creating Steinberg's team from the ground up, and driving 81% sales growth in 5 years, Yamaha asked him to take on the underperforming Professional Audio & Combo Division (PAC) in 2013. The PAC Division functioned like a distribution company within Yamaha, and represented a large swath of instruments and professional audio products. After applying the principles of what was to become Leadership 3.0 to this new role, the division achieved its financial targets for the first time in many years. PAC had great people and product before Alan took over, but lacked effective direction and hands-on inspiration. It was in this role that the codification of what was to become Leadership 3.0 became clearer to him.
Shortly after turning PAC around, in 2015 Alan was chosen to create a new, all-encompassing Professional Audio Division from 3 hitherto independent entities: Commercial Audio Division; PAC's Pro Audio Department; and Steinberg's Recording focused Department. The 4 year journey proved to be another successful venture and the company benefitted from creating a Professional Audio juggernaut -- the resulting sales and profit growth was impressive.
In 2019 Yamaha Corporation of America promoted Alan again, this time to lead all of the product divisions for the US market in the brand new Integrated Marketing group. In this new VP role, Alan had P&L responsibility for nearly all of the company's profit centers and was happily ensconced in the wildly varying markets now under his leadership: Home Audio/HiFi, Professional Audio, Band & Orchestral, Drum, Guitars, Piano & Keyboards.
Autumn 2019 would present Alan with an interesting career move --the opportunity to lead a company. Alan knew L-Acoustics as a worthy competitor and the market leading rival to the smaller Yamaha-owned speaker brand NEXO. After a lengthy cycle of interviewing, he started in the new role at L-Acoustics as CEO of the Americas just as the world realized that it was in a global pandemic. The next 3.5 years would prove to be the ultimate test for Leadership 3.0.
L-Acoustics, Inc. in Westlake Village CA, not only weathered the pandemic well, but emerged from it in 2021 in an even stronger position. Rather than decimating the team as many competitors did, Alan and the global CEOs of the company devised ways to find cost savings and avoid cutting critical positions. The financial results coming out of the pandemic were spectacular -- L-Acoustics grew dramatically in 2022 and into 2023, more than doubling the best pre-crisis results for the Americas.
Alan chose to step down from the L-Acoustics Americas CEO role in the summer of 2023 -- adhering to the old musical adage "leave on a high note" -- and moved back to the Toronto area, to reunite with his daughters who chose to go to University there, support his wife's teaching and Psychotherapy career, and allow him time to incubate and grow 6sense consulting.