Culture is the engine.
Organizational culture emerges from how people and systems interact. My work explores these relationships and what they mean for leadership, organizational effectiveness, and change.
We have a clear strategy and capable people, so why aren't we making progress?
A good strategy and talented people aren't enough when the systems around them work at cross-purposes. Understanding how those systems interact is often the key to moving forward.
My team agrees on what needs to change. Why do we keep falling into the same patterns?
Agreement doesn't necessarily change behavior. The structures, routines, expectations, and relationships embedded in everyday work may still reinforce the very patterns you're trying to change.
I feel like something is getting in the way, but I can't quite identify it.
What you're experiencing may be the effects of a system that's difficult to see from any one position. Making those dynamics visible can reveal opportunities for change that weren't apparent before.
How I work
Exploring organizational culture, systems, and change
Writing
My essays and newsletter explore the human dynamics of organizations, specifically how people, culture, and systems interact to shape future possibilities. Here, I question familiar assumptions and view organizational life from a different perspective.
Read my writing →Speaking
Keynotes and conversations that challenge conventional thinking about culture, leadership, and organizational change. Pulling from research and decades of practice, I help audiences see familiar organizational challenges through a different lens.
Inquire about speaking →Advisory
I offer an independent thinking partnership for executives navigating complexity, change, and consequential decisions. Grounded in research and practical experience, our conversations surface assumptions, reveal system dynamics, and open new possibilities for action.
Start a conversation →Thinking in public
Recent writing
Making Sense of Change
When employee stability becomes resistance
Employee resistance to change is often attributed to fear or incompetence. In reality, it frequently grows out of stability. Long-tenured staff accumulate benefits, routines, and cultural influence that make disruption costly, both personally and professionally. Over time, that stability can evolve into inertia, shaping how initiatives are received and whether transformation takes hold.
Culture as Capability
A culture-first perspective on Organization Development and Change
What if culture isn’t something to manage after the strategy is set, but the condition that determines whether change can happen at all? This article argues for a culture-first perspective in organization development and change (ODC), emphasizing how meaning, norms, and shared understanding shape the success or failure of change efforts.
Making Sense of Change
Is COVID-19 the accelerator of nonprofit transformation change?
Crises don’t create transformation problems in nonprofits, instead they expose them. This essay examines why nonprofit transformation fails under pressure, and what moments of urgency reveal about culture, coordination, and systems.
About David
The work led me to the research. The research changed how I see the work.
For more than two decades, I've worked alongside executives, nonprofits, and institutions as they navigate organizational complexity and change. Those experiences led me to study the deeper dynamics of organizational life and how people, culture, structures, and systems interact to shape what organizations can accomplish.
I bring those perspectives together as a social scientist, author, and scholar-practitioner. With a doctorate in Organization Development and Change, my research and practice explore the human dimensions of organizations, the conditions that enable or constrain change, and why understanding the system matters as much as deciding what to do next.
“Most leaders are solving today's problems with yesterday's thinking.”David L. Harkins
Degree
Doctorate in Organization Development and Change
Practice
20+ Years
Focus
Culture, Systems and Human Dynamics
Available for
Advisory, Speaking, Executive Education
Speaking
Ideas that challenge how leaders see their organizations
I speak at conferences, executive retreats, and leadership events about the human dynamics of organizational life — how people, culture, structures, and technology interact to shape organizational outcomes. Using research and more than two decades of practice, I challenge familiar assumptions and offer new ways to understand complexity, leadership, and change in todays world.
Culture is not an object
Why treating culture as something leaders can design, manage, or fix misunderstands how organizations actually work.
You were trained for an organization that no longer exists
How inherited assumptions about leadership, control, and organizational effectiveness limit our ability to navigate today's complexity.
Resistance is information
What resistance reveals about the relationships, assumptions, and organizational conditions shaping people's responses to change.
Change happens in conversation
How dialogue shapes shared meaning, organizational relationships, and the possibilities for meaningful change.
Free Newsletter
Human Equation
Think alongside me
Ideas on culture, systems, and what it means to lead in uncertain times. If you want to understand my thinking before reaching out, this is the place to start. Published on Substack.