As an organizational leader, Mark Thienes spent years studying human behavior, specifically the the top and bottom performers on his team. He was curious about whether winning behavior could be taught and replicated. This curiosity led him to the discovery of Gapology. The behaviors contained within Gapology, the identification and closure of performance gaps, he found to be universally present in the winning leaders and top performers and almost completely missing in the bottom performers. This led to his first book, Gapology, which has aided tens of thousands of leaders to realize their full potential and maximize their results. These years also led him to the mapping of identity and the belief that identity is a choice.

These learnings and the process of identity mapping are detailed in his second book, entitled IMBAR, an acronym for the sequential process: Identity, Mindset, Behavior, Actions, Results. As Mark coached Gapology and IMBAR within many different sizes of organizations, from nonprofit to Fortune 25, he made another significant discovery. The people, teams, and organizations that were driven by Purpose, literally wrapped in Purpose, had much higher levels of engagement, discretionary effort, and productivity. Curiosity kicked in again. Can Purpose be developed by leaders and wrapped around a team? What happens when people without Purpose are given Purpose? Does productivity change? So curiosity, combined with years of research, led to the discovery of SPEED OF PURPOSE. Mark says that SPEED OF PURPOSE is his finest work. Built on many of the principles in Gapology and IMBAR, SPEED OF PURPOSE takes leadership and results to the next level.