Tim Larkins is the Founder and CEO of E5Xcellence

Tim Larkins has more than two decades of professional experience in service-related industries, including healthcare, business associations and education. He has won the prestigious Summit Award for Service Excellence Program Director of the Year and led his team to an unprecedented sweep of five national awards at the HealthCare Service Excellence Conference.

Trophies aside, Tim believes that the true reward of his work lies in changing hearts and minds. He is a passionate champion of Service Excellence, and his goal with every engagement is inspiring others to share in that vision.

Tim knows firsthand that can be a tough sell. As a financial executive at Laurens County Health Care System, he lobbied for a Service Excellence Initiative where two previous attempts had failed within 6 months. The board was divided, staff was cynical and physicians were openly hostile.

Determined to change the culture, Tim and his team endured. The outcome of that effort is still vivid in his mind:

“Two and a half years later at a medical staff meeting, one of our strongest opponents took the floor and commended us for going against him and many of his colleagues. He spoke of the cultural change that had occurred within the walls of the system and within him personally. After he finished, the entire medical staff stood and applauded the results of the program.”

Applause, trophies, changing the world - the life of a Service Excellence consultant can be pretty heady. Fortunately Tim has two children at home to keep him humble and a wife of 20 years to keep him grounded.