About Mike

Mike Palmer has spent more than 35 years helping organizations think more clearly, decide more wisely, and work together more effectively. His background spans litigation, mediation, negotiation training, and organizational consulting — work conducted across six countries and in organizations ranging from Johnson & Johnson and CIGNA to academic institutions and government agencies.

Mike has long believed that the most important insights about how organizations succeed or fail come not from within any single industry but from the intersection of law, social psychology, decision science, and organizational theory. The patterns that produce excellent organizations — and the habits that prevent them — are remarkably consistent across sectors.

Mike now focuses that knowledge on Community Health Centers. Nowhere else are the stakes so high, the resources so constrained, and the gap between what is and what is possible so consequential for real people. The communities served by Federally Qualified Health Centers— people living in poverty, without insurance, often carrying the accumulated burden of conditions that the healthcare system has historically underserved — deserve organizations that function at the highest level their mission demands. Most do not yet. We can close that gap. Mike has built Organized for Excellence to help forward-thinking leaders close it.

The program draws on more than three decades of research, writing, and practice. It is grounded in the same body of knowledge that has produced high-performing organizations in healthcare and beyond — from Paul O'Neill's transformation of Alcoa and later Pittsburgh's hospital system, to the governance research that distinguishes boards that lead from boards that merely comply. It is practical, evidence-based, and designed specifically for the realities of CHC leadership and governance.