Linda L. Brennan

As a business coach and trainer, Linda Brennan works with professional services providers with revenue responsibility, to grow profitably without working themselves to death.

Her next book, "The Purgatory of Waste," is forthcoming from Austin MacCauley in 2021. This humorous story is an allegory about applying lean principles and Six Sigma practices to services.

Earlier in her career, Dr. Brennan was a professor of management at Mercer University in Macon. Her teaching portfolio included graduate and undergraduate courses in operations management, leadership, international business and strategy. She conducted research and consulted in the areas of technology impact assessment, process and project management, and instructional effectiveness.

She first started teaching operations management to MBA students in1995. Despite trying many different textbooks and reading packets over the years, she was unable to find a book that her students and she thought was useful, much less interesting. The texts inevitably cover an overly broad range of topics, and present superficial versions of management science techniques that students are unlikely to remember (much less use) in the workplace. What is needed for most managers is an enduring framework by which to evaluate operations, identify opportunities to improve them, implement changes, and measure outcomes. Her first book was intended to address that void. Her strategic management titles also reflected this philosophy.

Her research reflects this intent to inform the practice of management. Brennan has been published in scholarly and practitioner-oriented journals such as International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management, Engineering Management Journal, The Journal of Management in Engineering, IEEE Technology and Society, and Corporate Governance. Working with colleagues at Mercer, she has developed and published a portfolio of teaching cases in the Journal of Cases in Information Technology, the Journal of Critical Incidents, and the IMA Case Journal. Her two previous books, Computer-Mediated Relationships and Trust: Organizational and Managerial Implications and The Social, Ethical, and Policy Implications of Information Systems, were co-edited with Dr. Victoria Johnson and published by IGI Global.

Dr. Brennan’s prior work experience includes management positions at The Quaker Oats Company and marketing and systems engineering experience with the IBM Corporation. As a consultant, she applies her extensive experience in the management of knowledge work and information technologies to help individuals and teams to manage change and achieve organizational performance. Typical projects include performance measurement and improvement, project planning and control, process design and implementation, and strategic planning. She has consulted with a wide variety of organizations, including Fortune 100 companies, professional services firms, and many not-for-profit organizations.

She has been a licensed professional engineer and a certified Six Sigma Black Belt. Brennan received her Ph.D. in industrial engineering from Northwestern University, her MBA in policy studies from the University of Chicago, and her B.I.E. in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

She lives on the Chicago North Shore with her husband, a crazy dog, and their spunky cat.