David Friedman is the former President of RSI, an award-winning employee benefits brokerage and consulting firm in the Philadelphia area. He is a frequent guest speaker and seminar leader on organizational culture, leadership and values. A graduate of the College of William & Mary with a degree in Philosophy, Friedman currently lives in Moorestown, NJ with his wife and two college-age children.
Q: Can you please tell our readers a bit about yourself?
A: I spent twenty-seven years building and leading RSI into one of the largest independently-owned employee benefits consulting firms in the country. During that time, we won awards for just about every category of business success—from leadership to growth to quality to being a Best Place to Work. After selling the company to a large publicly-held insurance brokerage, I retired from the industry to pursue my writing and speaking interests.
Q: Who is your greatest source of inspiration?
A: Most of my ideas for writing come from my own experiences and observations. I was a philosophy major in college, and I tend to be pretty reflective and introspective. I’ve always tried to think about my experiences and then see if I can discern underlying principles that I can apply more broadly to my life. This is particularly true as it relates to management, leadership, organizational behavior, and personal achievement. I try to convey my thoughts/learnings in a way that they can be helpful for others and easy for them to apply.
Q: Tell us about your latest book. What is it about and what inspired you to write it?
A: My latest book, Fundamentally Different, is based on the many lessons I learned and, in turn, taught during my business leadership career. Over the course of that career, we created an organizational culture at RSI that was truly extraordinary; and it was one that had an enormous impact on all who experienced it. Many of our staff described it as literally “life-changing.” They literally became better people as a result of being a part of it, and they continue to feel that way to this day. Clients also had a strong sense that there was something very “different” about the way we did business. It was a big part of why they initially chose to do business with us and why they stayed with us year after year.
In fact, many of our clients were so curious about our business practices that they would ask me to share those practices with them and to speak with their management or senior leadership teams. I did this in small groups and sometimes in seminars. It was a big hit for them, and was fun and rewarding for me. Nearly every time I presented my material, several people would come up to me afterwards and ask, “So when does the book come out?” The way I organized and delivered the material just seemed to naturally lend itself to a book, and I would always assure them that I would eventually do just that.
My “retirement” from the benefits industry proved to be the impetus I needed to finally sit down to write that book, and to share my insights with a broader audience. The result, Fundamentally Different, was written and published in the spring of 2011.
Q: What is different about your book compared to other books out on the market?
A: One of the things that makes this book so unique is that it’s a business book, and yet it’s not only a business book.
As a business leadership book, it’s a compelling and thought-provoking read that reveals foundational principles for building a culture of success through organizational values. Its lessons are based on my experiences and reflections as a leader of a high-performance organization. More specifically, my book teaches leaders and organizations the eight key steps to institutionalizing their most important values, and provides lots of stories and examples to illustrate just how to do it.
