Culture is the engine.
Most leaders try to develop and manage culture around their strategy. I study why that gets the causality backward and what changes when leaders see it clearly.
We have the right strategy and the right people. So why isn't anything changing?
The plan is rarely the problem. Something beneath it is quietly working against everything above it.
My team says all the right things and keeps doing the same things.
What they say is the organization you designed. What they do is the one that actually exists. Those are rarely the same.
I feel like I'm pushing against something I can't see or name.
Most leaders do. That feeling is information. Learning to read it is where everything changes.
How I work
Where our work might intersect
Writing
My essays and newsletter explore culture, systems, and the human dynamics of organizational life. If you want to think alongside me before reaching out, this is the place to start.
Read my writing →Speaking
Keynotes and sessions for conferences, leadership retreats, and executive events. I bring research and two decades of practice into the room, and I leave audiences seeing their organizations differently.
Inquire about speaking →Advisory
A thinking partnership for executives working through complex organizational change. Not consulting, not coaching; a focused conversation grounded in research and practice.
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
I do this work because the research led me here.
I am a social scientist and author, a scholar-practitioner whose work sits at the intersection of research and practice. For over two decades I have helped executives, nonprofits, and institutions navigate the human dimensions of change.
My research focuses on why change efforts succeed or fail, not at the strategy level, but at the level of culture, meaning, and coordination. I hold a Doctorate in Organization Development and Change, and I write and speak on why culture is the engine of organizational change.
“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 on the human dimensions of organizational culture and change. My sessions are grounded in research and shaped by two decades of working inside complex organizations.
Inquire about speakingCulture Is Not an Object
Why the way most organizations think about culture guarantees their change efforts will fail
You Were Trained for an Organization That No Longer Exists
The mismatch between the mental models executives carry and the environments they actually lead in
Resistance Is Information
What your people are actually telling you when they do not move
Change Happens in Conversation
Why the dialogic reality of culture change is the most practical thing you can understand
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.