Dorrier Underwood

I am so used to looking at life as a mechanistic process, that the notion of life as “a complex adaptive system” requires me to give up thinking my usual way. It’s not that I find complex adaptive systems hard to understand or even illogical. I just notice that, left to my own automatic devices, I can be counted on to regard phenomena of all kinds in a linear, mechanistic fashion, whether or not the phenomenon in question is living or inert. Most of what we care about is in the realm of life (family, social systems, stock market) rather than the realm of machines (bridges, levers and dials).   We all went to college for levers and dials—even me, in the College of Education. As a student teacher in a classroom with 25 college-track seniors who just wanted the formula for getting A’s in English and were quite peeved I didn’t provide it, I was on my own when Miss Mallory, my supervising teacher, was out sick the last day of school. I had graded their compositions, and one...

Dorrier Underwood Certified as Women's Business Enterprise  Charlotte, NC – August 15, 2012 – The Women’s Business Enterprise National Council has granted certification as a Women’s Business Enterprise to Dorrier Underwood, a Charlotte-based management consulting firm that specializes in organizational consulting and executive development.  “We pursued certification,” said Nancy Dorrier, president and co-founder of the firm, “because our clients asked us to. Many of the largest, most successful, forward-thinking corporations in the world are committed to doing business with Women Business Enterprises because of what it creates in the world.” By including women-owned businesses among their vendors, corporations and government agencies demonstrate their commitment to fostering diversity and the continued development of their supplier/vendor diversity programs. “Being certified gives us another way to partner with businesses that share our commitment to ha...

Nancy Dorrier talks about Strategy as a Verb from Dorrier Underwood on Vimeo .

Conversations for Action from Dorrier Underwood on Vimeo .

"You’re going to need a plate with that." He never would’ve said that, never gotten that far, if I hadn’t decided to turn things around. It was at the Qdoba Mexican food place in the Newark Airport food court. Not a garden spot by any means, just the place Nancy and I were stuck last Wednesday night. We weren’t stuck yet, didn’t know our flight would be cancelled and we’d end up driving 35 miles to Princeton at one a.m. to the nearest hotel room, didn’t know our rental car would be a red Toyota Corolla whose trunk smelled like dead fish. So I was spry and observant and I saw the whole thing. The woman at the front of the line took a while to make up her mind, and then while her taco was being constructed, it happened. A piece of meat touched the counter and the one making the taco put it back into the taco. You put it in there. What? A piece of meat. It touched the counter and you put it in there. The server looked incredulous, her face denying it. But the young...

In my younger and more vulnerable years I always though 245 was fat. I was in college and had gained all of the freshman 15 and then some. I had been 197 as a sophomore and was 230 in high school which was big. I had been on a diet since I was 10 years old when Dr. Brown told my mom no more carrots they have too much sugar, since doc brown I have been on rice, no rice, potatoes, steak, shakes, veggie juice and even did a stint on the diet called the crazy diet where you ate one food all day, from watermelon to cabbage. What I have finally decided is that I know it all. I don’t need more information. It really is a function of math, calories in – calories burned = surplus or deficit. I need a deficit of 24 more pounds. So I could really say exactly how many calories and how much exercise would get me there. I might be off a bit because of the newest science, but I can tell you, I don’t have a plan for the peanut butter cracker afternoon binging. I think the peanut butter crac...