A festival where big ideas meet real-life applications…

Why is this our 2024 theme?

So much is happening in the world of work right now; it’s exciting and inspiring and daunting at the same time. There is no shortage of radical thinking and sage advice for responding to the new challenges.  But how do we take these big ideas and convert them into practical and impactful changes in our organizations? This is the theme of our 2024 conference: converting bold new thinking into practical actions that have positive impact.

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A welcome message from this years’ Conference Chair: Keith Warren

Keynotes

Practical insights and experiences on how organization design and change work together and with culture to help organizations become agile

 

Session

Organization design is both a description of strategies, structures, and processes and a process for creating and aligning these features.   Design and change become the same thing when the pace of technological and social change and the frequency of reorganizations increases. At the same time, organization agility and culture change remain two of the big ideas begging for real-life applications.

Despite the increasing agreement on the definition of organization agility, there is much less clarity about how to become an agile organization. Specifically, culture’s role in becoming agile remains confusing in practice. Is culture the target of change? Is culture a constraint to transformation? Could culture be a facilitator of change? In this presentation, I will share practical insights and experiences on how design and change work together and with culture to help organizations become agile.

Bio

Dr. Christopher Worley is the Research Professor of Management at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business. He is a recognized leader in the field of organization agility, organization development, and organization design. Prior to Pepperdine, he was the founding Strategy Director at the Center for Leadership and Effective Organizations at the NEOMA Business School in France, a Senior Research Scientist at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, Chair of the Academy of Management’s Organization Development and Change division, and Director of the Master of Science in Organization (MSOD) program at Pepperdine University. He received the McGregor Award from the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Pepperdine University’s Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellowship. Dr. Worley is co-author of The Agility Factor, Becoming Agile, Management Reset, Built to Change, Integrated Strategic Change, co-editor of two volumes Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness series, and co-author of seven editions of Organization Development and Change.

Amazing opportunity to explore the skills, literacies, and mindsets that are most important in order to think like a futurist from an IFTF Distinguished Fellow

 

Session

We are very fortunate to welcome Dr Bob Johansen as a keynote speaker in 2024. A renowned thinker, speaker and writer, Bob has spent the past 50 years working as a professional futurist at the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley, the longest running futures think tank in the world.

In this session, Bob will give a taste of the best tools for future-back thinking. In particular, he will introduce the skills, literacies, and mindsets that are most important in order to think like a futurist as we design tomorrow’s organizations. Bob will draw from his two current books: Full-Spectrum Thinking and Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living, and make specific links to the practice of Organization Design and the organization of the future.

Bio

Institute for the Future Distinguished Fellow

Bob began working with IFTF in 1973 and has worked as a professional futurist for nearly 50 years. The author or co-author of 12 books and a frequent keynote speaker, he recently completed a trilogy that details the types of leadership that will thrive in the next decade. The New Leadership Literacies focuses on essential practices of leadership, picking up where Leaders Make the Future, its more skills-oriented precursor, left off; in 2020, he published Full-Spectrum Thinking, which focuses on the need for a future-back mindset. His latest book, Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living, is co-written with IFTF colleagues Joseph Press and Christine Bullen.

Bob holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois (which he attended on a basketball scholarship), an MDiv from Crozer Theological Seminary (where Martin Luther King, Jr., attended divinity school), and a Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion from Northwestern University

We will ground systems theory in tangible frameworks so you can analyze and optimize organizations and see them as interconnected ecosystems.

 

Session

As organization designers most of us subscribe to the idea of systems thinking but how do you apply it to the complex problems we face? In this practical session, learn how to evolve your organization design approach by integrating systems thinking habits and tools. We will ground systems theory in tangible frameworks so you can analyze and optimize organizations and see them as interconnected ecosystems (forests) rather than fragmented parts (trees). We will discuss the mental models embodied by systems thinkers, enabling you to shift perspectives and see relationships, patterns, and potential as you design. Part theory, part practice, this session will give you tools to design more effective and sustainable organizations, whatever your starting level of experience as a practitioner.

Bio

Beth Gunderson is the Founder of Minikahda Partners, an organization and talent architecture firm specializing in organization design and enterprise transformation initiatives. Beth is also an Executive Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) – Center for Effective Organizations, where she instructs in the areas of organization design and change. In addition she is an adjunct professor within the MBA program at École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL), Lausanne Switzerland.

Prior to founding her own firm she spent over 35 years in the consumer products industry in a variety of roles. She brings a true systems approach to design based upon the circuitous career path she took through Research and Development, Supply Chain and Human Resources. A majority of her career has been focused on large scale global organization design projects as well as building capability across the enterprise. In her current design consulting work she has spanned the spectrum from fast moving founder based organizations to global matrixed organizations changing their business models.

Beth received her BS from the University of Wisconsin in Industrial Technology – Package Engineering and her MA in Human Resource Development – Organization Development from the University of St. Thomas.

A thoughtful conversation about the future of our field informed by recent learnings in our global, dynamic environment.

 

Session

Amy Kates will share Kates Kesler’s experience in scaling to a practice of 150 organization designers and embedding the methodology into Accenture, a global firm with over 700,000 employees. She’ll show how they rapidly accelerated practitioner development while staying true to the principles of our discipline. Join us in a thoughtful conversation about the future of our field informed by recent learnings in our global, dynamic environment.

Bio

Amy Kates is co-founder of Kates Kesler Organization Consulting. Accenture acquired Kates Kesler in 2020 and Amy’s focus over the past four years has been to build a global team of 150 practitioners all using Jay Galbraith’s Star Model.

Amy was first introduced to ODF when Kathy Molloy invited her to attend the conference in Salem in 2003. Amy and Kathy co-chaired the 2006 conference in Charleston and Amy was a board member in the mid-2000s. She has attended and presented at many of our events and has ensured her firms have been regular conference sponsors.

Amy is co-author of five books on organization design with Jay Galbraith and Greg Kesler. Amy and Greg’s latest book is Networked, Scaled, and Agile: A Design Strategy for Complex Organizations (Kogan Page, 2021). She is currently helping the Accenture team write a new book on the common design challenges large companies face. She is also the host of the LinkedIn learning video course on organization design.

In addition to consulting, Amy has been a visiting fellow to the government of Singapore and has taught at Cornell University and the Danish Technical University. She currently serves as a board member of Educate!, the largest education social enterprise in east Africa, and is building a farm-stay guest house in Rwanda.

A panel discussion with a variety of organization design technology partners who will share what they have learned from hundreds of different organizations interested in their solutions. Along with current trends, panelists will discuss their point of view on the future direction of technology and its potential to amplify the practice of Organization Design.

 

Session

Technology is fast becoming an essential component of the Organization Designer’s toolbox. It allows us to glean far deeper insights into the true underlying dynamics of an organization and to more easily generate innovative new models for effective work. With these technologies evolving so rapidly, new capabilities are emerging that we could not have thought possible just a few years ago.

Our mix of technology partners will share their own stories of how they got into this space and why various organizations are reaching out to them. The interactive discussion will be anchored in the challenges and realities that practitioners face in their day-to-day work. How can technology improve the process and the impact of OD? How might practitioners need to change? Where is technology leading us and where do we want to lead the technology? Drawing directly on the audience’s hopes and fears, this session promises to be a lively and stimulating exchange of lessons learned, current trends and future predictions that will challenge, inspire… and maybe even nudge the course of tech’s development.

These “technology sponsors” are part of a special focus at this year’s conference, to ensure our organization design community is best prepared and more knowledgeable than most about what is possible and what might be best for their specific client or organization. We also expect the incredible insights and needs that our community shares with our technology partners enables them to provide even better solutions going forward!

It doesn’t stop here either! There will be an interactive session immediately following the panel to engage and hear from the entire conference community. Also, our technology partners will each have a dedicated space in the foyer throughout the conference, so you can stop by, engage in deeper 1:1 conversations, see some demos and get to know them better.

Orgvue is an organizational design and planning platform that empowers businesses to transform their workforce by understanding the work people do and the skills they have. The world’s largest enterprises and consulting firms use Orgvue to visualize and model current and future states of the organization and make faster, more informed decisions.
Nakisa is a global leader in cloud-native organizational design and workforce planning solutions, providing enterprises with the technology to democratize workforce planning and quickly reach business objectives. Nakisa OrgDesign allows HR and non-HR staff to collaborate on organizational structure design and to offer mutual strategic input. With Nakisa, managers create their best teams while HR and executives plan the optimal future for their organizations.
Agentnoon is a workforce planning & org design engine that helps drive organizational agility. Our platform helps enterprise companies visualize and design their future org efficiently. We work with 100+ enterprise customers across 15 countries.
The Org Design Podcast gives access to closed door conversations of leaders that plan and lead re-orgs. Our guests are seasoned leaders and the expert partners they trust to help shape their org structure decisions. They share stories on how they build healthy organizations and the often difficult learnings along the way. There is no perfect org, they are continually needing to change, so it’s essential to get Org Design know-how into the toolkit for every leader and the Org Design Podcast does just that.

Organization Design in Practice

Learn more in this immersive and interactive workshop about expertly integrating strategy into operating model and organization design choices and implementation programs.

Session Details

Strategy shapes how big ideas from the external world get filtered, prioritized, and transformed into many large and small decisions and activities inside organizations that drive key business performance outcomes. Strategy plays a critical role in operating model and organization design, as a roadmap to future performance, a capability that guides ongoing decision-making and execution, and a function that owns and drives the production, implementation, and measurement of winning strategies. This workshop will enable participants to apply new concepts and tools, using real-world examples, to further integrate strategy into their organization design toolkit.

About The Speaker

Alice Mann is the founder of Mann Partners, a boutique human capital advisory firm that enables private equity-backed and Fortune 500 executives to build powerful, high-performing organizations and teams that drive future growth, profit, and shareholder value. Mann Partners offers rapid organization and leadership assessment, organization strategy and design, leadership team effectiveness, succession planning, and board development services.

As a partner at Sentinel Capital and an operating partner at Blue Wolf Capital, Alice played a crucial role in driving human capital goals and capabilities to achieve portfolio company growth targets. Additionally, with Kates Kesler Organization Consulting, she led global company operating model and organization design engagements.

As a published author and former lecturer at Columbia University, Alice has shared her expertise on organization and leadership transformation. Her role as Vice President at JPMorgan Chase involved leading global operating model programs during several large-scale bank mergers. Leveraging her Ph.D. and M.A. in social-organizational psychology from Columbia University, Alice is passionate about advising leaders to accelerate value creation by solving their biggest human capital challenges.

What is the role of Artificial Intelligence in Organization Design? What impact will it have on the way we approach and practice OD?

Session Details

Right now, the world is abuzz with opinion and conjecture about the future of AI. It’s a highly debated field that can be confusing and overwhelming. This session will cut through the noise to focus on the relevance and benefits of AI to OD. It will examine the type of relationship we need to have with AI, and will explore the ways AI can be deployed to bring new insights and perspectives to progressive design.

Phanish is a leading academic in the field of organization design who studies how AI relates to organizational form and function. He, along with his collaborator Dr. Nghi Truong, has developed ‘Eunomicon’, a Large Language Model trained to offer suggestions for organization design based on the microstructural approach he developed with colleagues. Eunomicon can act as a design co-pilot, offering suggestions and expanding options, explaining its reasons and also can critique your designs.

Phanish will begin by discussing the role of AI in OD and then move on to demonstrate Eunomicon with a practical problem statement. We will hear about real-life examples of Eunomicon’s application, including at the United Nations where Phanish serves as a Special Advisor on Organization Design & Analytics on a pro-bono basis. The session will end with a Q&A.

This will be an engaging and interactive session, leaving you with a much clearer understanding of AI in the context of Organization Design.

About The Speaker

Phanish Puranam is a Professor of Strategy, and the Roland Berger Chaired Professor of Strategy and Organisation Design at INSEAD. He is also a former chair of the Organizational Design Community (ODC).

Phanish’s research in organization science focuses on how organizations work and how we can make them work better. His current work focuses on different ways in which intelligent algorithms relate to organizations, in their roles as tools (eg, machine learning applied to organizational data), team-mates (eg, human-AI collaboration) and as templates for organizing (eg, blockchain, metaverse).

Phanish is a leading author of several books relating to organizational analysis and design, and the future form of organizations.

Interaction Models visually depict the back-and-forth “interaction” needed between groups in future-state organization designs. This modeling workshop equips you to lead this scenario based approach which answers the question “how will it work?” in a practical way.

 

Session Details

Interaction Models visually depict the back-and-forth “interaction” needed between groups in the future-state organization designs. The step-by-step visual depiction of the future state transports our teams into the future, allowing them to more clearly envision what they need to build. We have found that this scenario based approach answers the question “how will it work?” in a practical way that helps lead to successful designs. This modeling workshop will prepare you to lead grounded and equitable conversations that are a critical part of any organization design effort. 

In this session we will:

  • explain the interaction model, including the approach and benefits
  • outline the strengths arising from its emphasis on collaborative co-creation
  • be clear about where and how interaction models begin and end
  • equip participants to utilize the model in their own organizations

About Our Speakers

Dr. Kevin Anderson is a consultant in organizational design and performance, leadership, change management, and cultural initiatives. Kevin has over twenty-five years of experience in designing and delivering high impact, global organizational solutions. Organizations he has worked with include Thomson Reuters, City of Minneapolis and Accelare Consulting where he worked in health care, retail and education. He is currently a senior organizational development consultant at Cargill. 

Kevin has a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership, Policy and Development from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelors Degree in Speech Communications and Political Science from Macalester College.

Kevin is the author of Organization Design Made Easy and The New Workplace: Performance Through Virtual and Hybrid Teams. In this latest book Kevin’s chapter on  Building Organization Design includes a section on Interaction Modeling. Briana Bradley provides the chapter reflection and deep dives on our favorite topic of ours!

Briana Bradley is an OCM and Organizational Development professional whose career has focused on human-centered change, agile methodologies, and creating valuable connections in our work. Briana’s work has spanned small start-up environments, nonprofits and now Cargill, one of the largest private companies globally. At the simplest level, we are all a bunch of humans going to work. She leads change efforts in a way which honors the employee experience while simultaneously maximizing business outcomes. Interaction modeling has been a big passion and focus for Briana as she’s helped to build and deploy the capability across Cargill’s Org Dev and HRBP community over the last three years.
Explore how organizations are taking different paths to adopting and embedding artificial intelligence into their organization and the potential for driving meaningful disruption to business models and outcomes.

Session Details

Fact or Fiction? Wade through the hype of Generative AI, AI, automation, and technology and their impact on the future of work and organizations. Explore how organizations are taking different paths to adopting and embedding artificial intelligence into their organization and the potential for driving meaningful disruption to business models and outcomes. Learn how data and artificial intelligence impacts how we think about and approach organization design.

In this session we will provide you with the knowledge you need to understand the implications of data and technology on work at the individual, team, and enterprise level. You will be introduced to frameworks and tools you can use to identify opportunities to design a data and tech enabled organization.

The session is centered around an application exercise of using data and technology to rethink how to build organization capabilities by infusing data and technology into Jay Galbraith’s Star Model and the impact on how we think about structure, process, metrics and rewards, and talent.

About The Speaker

Tom Falkowski is Managing Director in Accenture’s Operating Model and Organization Design Group and Global Lead for Op Model and Organization Design Digital Disruption.

Tom consults with CEOs and other senior leaders on their enterprise operating model, helping them to puzzle through the relationship between global business units, global functions, and geographies. More and more those conversations include how data and technology will Impact their operating model and ways of working.

He is a member of Accenture’s Generative AI Center of Excellence with a focus on how data and AI impact talent and organizations and co-author of Accenture’s research on the Tech-Powered Operating Model

Tom brings a unique perspective drawn from his broad business, leadership, and consulting experience. As a business leader, Tom has led sales organizations, product groups, consulting organizations, and international teams. As a consultant, he has partnered with over 150 organizations on a range of topics including organization design and effectiveness, digital disruption, executive and leadership assessment and development, learning and performance strategy and change management/culture change.

Tom is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and holds a Masters degree in Information Resource Management from the Air Force Institute of Technology and a Bachelors degree in Finance from Boston College.

We have all had soul-crushing moments at work. This session explores how to design organizations that thrive by intentionally using a more soulful lens.

Session Details

We have all had soul-crushing moments at work.  And we all know that soul-crushing isn’t good for business.  This session explores how to design organizations that thrive by intentionally minimizing the soul-crushing.

Businesses thrive when they use a soulful lens.  But often we leave soulfulness to chance, by putting it in the hands of individual personalities, or trying to preach it into the culture.  As org designers we have the power to build soulfulness right into the system.  In this session we’ll explore how we can make soulfulness very practical by weaving it into the way we design organizations.

You’ll learn to apply a soulful lens to Org Design:

  1. Learn what a Soulful Lens is.
  2. Identify and attend to underlying organizational pain.  
  3. Uncover soul-crushing elements in an organization’s current design.
  4. Incorporate soulfulness into the Org Design.

About The Speaker

Jardena London is CEO of Rosetta Agile, Author, Speaker, and Business Transformation Consultant

  • Jardena is on a mission to create thriving workplaces that also feed our souls.
  • Jardena is a Business Transformation Consultant, author, keynote speaker.
  • She’s been a consultant for 27 years, serving as founder and CEO of RosettaAgile.
  • Jardena has spent the last 15 years focusing on Business Agility and Transformations, sparking bold, disruptive thinking with corporate clients.

Her recent book, Cultivating Transformations:  A Leader’s Guide to Connecting the Soulful and the Practical has been described as “the book you buy and carry around with you everywhere.”

Is your organization healthy? Should you care? Come learn about how one internal organization design team is changing the conversation about organizational health through an innovative organizational health assessment focused on strategic differentiation.

Session Details

Organization Design professionals have been talking about organizational health for years, but could we even recognize a healthy organization? What is a healthy organization anyway? Can anyone actually measure health? If so, would it make any difference to business leaders?

USAA’s internal organization design team believes that we have those answers and more! We’ve developed an internal Organizational Health Assessment that relies on existing data and metrics to not only gauge an organization’s health but also strategic alignment—something that leaders care about a lot! Join us in our session to learn how we did it and how you can, too!

About The Speakers

Whit Laga is the executive over organizational design, health, and effectiveness at USAA. Whit is a tenured organization design professional with expertise in strategy formation, organization design, facilitation, transformational success, and C-Suite and Sr. Executive coaching.

Prior to joining USAA, Whit was an external consultant and a lecturer at Purdue University working in a variety of industries and solving diverse design problems. Whit’s training and expertise is interdisciplinary and comparativist, and he seeks to bring unique viewpoints to problems through diverse cross-pollination of ideas, industries, disciplines, and cultures.

Theresa Garcia joined the USSA Organization Health & Effectiveness team in 2022 following nearly eighteen years at Boeing leading Organization Design Consulting for new and joint ventures, global mergers, and defense services.

Theresa holds a Master in Organization Development (MSOD) and Executive Certificate in Applied NeuroLeadership from Pepperdine University, and a Bachelor’s in Business Administration from the University of Arizona. She holds multiple certifications in organization behavior and large-scale change. In addition, she is an ICF certified Professional Certified Coach, speaker, and author in next generation leadership.

Mark Robinson recently joined the USAA Organization Health and Effectiveness team at the end of 2023, yet has been practicing organization design for over 10 years as an internal and external consultant. He spent 15 years with Harley-Davidson, where he helped implement a global expansion strategy, including the start-up of Asia Pacific and Latin America regional offices and redesign of the entire global field organization.

Mark is an ODF board member, honored to give back through volunteering to this community. He has an MBA and a Master’s degree in Organization Development from Bowling Green State University and a business degree from the University of Maine.

Our methods and processes for organisational design are many and varied, yet how might we think more deeply about the cultural context in which we are designing? In this indigenous case study, Jane and Leon share first hand learnings on how existing cultural frameworks can be leveraged if we keep an open mind, we co-design and stay focused on shared outcomes. Listen to the insights of the team involved on how they were able to shape the redesign of their organisation using their own cultural practices and frameworks.

 

Session Details

“He aha te mea nui o tea o? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata”.

What is the most important thing in the world? It is the people, it is the people, it is the people.

We welcome you to learn a little about Aotearoa New Zealand and how we might evolve organizational design and change frameworks and practices to better align to the known and long held traditions of indigenous people. There are many proven frameworks that already exist and may not need a western developed method to be applied.

This is a case study of how we might listen to truly understand, reach a shared vision and then let go of our methods to co-create a way forward that is more intrinsically rooted in respect for different cultures we are aiming to empower and serve.

Though based on examples from the Pacific, this session will enable practitioners to consider their own experience when working in different cultural environments and how they adapt their methods to include what already works.

About The Speaker

Jane Judd has 20+ years international experience in organisational design and change. Jane describes herself as a strategic change facilitator and recognises her design skills are core to all aspects of change.

Jane designs, organisations, business models, service delivery models, frameworks, roles and change. Jane is passionate about the employee and customer experience and ensures the voice of the customer and employees are integral to any design work.

In recent years Jane has seen an opportunity to better contribute to elevating diverse voices through design and change – with a specific focus on the indigenous voices of the Pacific. Jane has learned a lot about adjusting organisational design and work practices to ensure they fully meet the needs of different cultural audiences.

Jane has followed the Organization Design Forum for many years and attended the conference in Michigan in 2017. She is excited and delighted to share insights with this community this year.

Jane’s change expertise is internationally acknowledged, and she has served as the Global President and Chair of the Change Management Institute for eight years between 2015 and 2023.

Leon Takimoana is Pouwhakahaere Whanake (deputy Chief Executive People and Culture) at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.  Te Wānanga o Aotearoa was established in 1984 and has grown to become one of New Zealand’s largest tertiary education providers, operating in over 80 locations throughout the country. A truly inspiring, innovative, and award-winning organisation that solely exists to transform individuals, families, and communities through education.

Leon has extensive experience in human resources and supporting organisational design across the education, not-for-profit, corporate, and professional services sectors throughout Australasia and the South Pacific.  In recent years, Leon joined SPC International, a group of 20+ Pacific Countries who join collaborate to maximise the impact of aid and development funding from around the world to increase social, economic and climate resilience of the Pacific Island communities. This involved first- hand experience of adapting western frameworks and policies to environments with cultural differences.

Leon returned to New Zealand to lead the People and Culture function with Te Wananga o Aotearoa.  Leon has demonstrated a commitment to transforming the People and Culture frameworks and policies to represent Te Ao Māori. (a Māori world view) to enable positive and engaging cultures aligned with driving improved organisational performance.

GenAI is here today, and it’s here to stay - so where do you start, or focus, your efforts? We’ll share our understanding of how deep and broad the impact can be.

 

Session Details

Everyone has heard the hype around GenAI, so much so that it already feels a bit like yesterday’s news. But GenAI is here today, and it’s here to stay – so where do you start, or focus, your efforts? This session will show an approach to understanding how deep and how broad the impact is on your organization.

This session will explore the impact and potential of generative AI (GenAI) on organizations. People are asking “where do I start?”, or “are my current efforts likely to move the needle?”. We will explore a work breakdown framework to understand how GenAI can augment work, and show an approach to defining hotspot areas and the level of impact. The session will include interactive group activities, practical information, and tool demonstration. Participants will be equipped with an understanding of where to best apply the big idea of GenAI to real-life situations in their organizations.

About Our Speakers

Andrew Williams is a Senior Principal at Slalom. He has more than 20 years of experience leading and advising on programs and projects focused on organizational effectiveness and business transformation. Andrew has honed his skills in the areas of organizational redesign, and is happiest when working at the intersection of new technologies and new ways of working.

Mehmet Tuzel is a Global Solution Lead at Slalom specializing in AI-Enabled Organizations. With over 20 years of experience in both corporate and consulting roles, Tuzel focuses on leveraging AI and machine learning to enhance decision-making, optimize workforce, and create stakeholder value. He has led various projects in AI solutions, workforce strategy, operating model design, and business transformation in various industries.

A look into detrimental impacts from overlapping C-Suite functions and how critical it is to more carefully consider and define roles, functions, and organizational design as they structure for transformation and for the future.

Session Details

A new study reveals the detrimental impacts on organizations and employees from overlapping C-Suite roles, departments, and functions. Lack of clarity in responsibilities and decision-making authority are causing alarming levels of frustration and harming the productivity and output in organizations. The proliferation of C-suite roles, including Chief Digital Officer, Chief Data Officer, and most recently Chief AI Officer has been prevalent in the technology area for years. However, the trend has become more widespread with newer, often overlapping functional roles such as Chief Growth Officer, Chief Customer Officer, or Chief Transformation Officer. This session will highlight how critical it is for HR executives, CEOs, and Boards of Directors to more carefully consider and define roles, functions, and organizational design as they structure for transformation and for the future.

About The Speaker

Dr. Janet Sherlock is a digital and retail executive who has modernized tech organizations, processes, and solutions through expertise in digital transformation, customer & user experience, omni-channel strategy, data & analytics, marketing technologies, supply chain efficiency, and security, privacy, and compliance. Janet is Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Ralph Lauren Corporation. She and her team drive the company’s digital transformation. Previously, Janet was CIO at Carter’s, Inc., the world’s largest manufacturer and retailer of baby and small children’s apparel and accessories. Prior to that, she led the Digital and Omni-Channel practice at Gartner, a leading research and advisory firm. Her leadership journey includes various P&L and technology leadership roles at Guess?, Inc., Calico Corners, British Petroleum, and ExxonMobil. Janet currently serves on the Board of Directors for BJ’s Restaurants and Brewhouse (NASDAQ: BJRI), and serves on the Nominating & Governance and Audit Committees. She contributed as a member of the Board of Advisors at Backcountry.com from 2018 – 2021. Dr. Sherlock served as a Public Officer on the Board of Directors for the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA), appointed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal from 2013 – 2017. She was the Chairman of the National Retail Federation (NRF) CIO Council from 2015 – 2017. Dr. Sherlock also served as an Economic Advisor for the Federal Reserve Bank. A long-time advocate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Janet is an executive sponsor for the corporate DE&I program at Ralph Lauren. She is one of the founding board members of The TechPACT, a non-profit organization established in 2020 to address underrepresentation in the Tech Industry.

Janet holds a doctorate in Organizational Change & Leadership from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Marymount University, and a BS from Penn State University in Supply Chain Management.

Beyond her current corporate roles, Dr. Sherlock has combined her vast experience and research on organizational design and provides guidance to organizations and leaders seeking to create efficient, growth-driven organizations, focusing on technology and technology-related fields.

Discover how organizations are strategically evolving their team structures, collaborative networks, decision-making processes, and governance, while harnessing the power of Gen AI to shape their organizational design.

Session Details

As generative AI reshapes the very fabric of business ecosystems, leaders are faced with the daunting task of proactively navigating the rippling effects of Gen AI on their organizational structures, roles, governance, and decision-making. During this presentation we will delve into the fundamentals of establishing governance models, assigning decision ownership, and fostering environments that ready organizations for the activation of Gen AI. Let us jointly explore how we can harness and augment core capabilities to enable and thrive in this new era of Gen AI.

About Our Speakers

Aparupa Bhattacharya, MBA

Aparupa is Deloitte Consulting LLP’s US Organization Strategies & Design Leader. She is energized by collaborating with executives to architect the leadership and people solutions that enable their strategic priorities– whether growing for the future or reshaping for efficiency and effectiveness. Aparupa and the Organization Strategies & Design practice do this with innovative and flexible approaches to design and build operating models, conduct organization analytics, and re-imagine organization structures. She has spent over 20 years understanding leadership dynamics in complex organizations and uses these insights to lead the shaping of decision rights, governance models, roles and functions, to transform organizations to lead in today’s rapidly evolving environment. Aparupa pairs these capabilities with 20 years of experience in driving strategy articulation, leadership alignment, organizational change management, and strategic communications with large organizations in a variety of industries, including the US Federal government and global clients. She holds an MBA and Health Sector Management Certificate from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a BA in Communication Studies from Vanderbilt University. She is a proud Founding Board Member of Great Lakes Academy Charter School in Chicago, where she lives with her husband and two feisty dogs.

Maya Bodan

Maya is a Managing Director in Deloitte’s Organization Human Capital practice. Maya has over 15 years of both Consulting and in house HR experience supporting senior leaders through large scale organization design and operating model transformations across Technology, Media, Telecommunication and Financial services clients. Maya has a specific focus across organizational strategy and design initiatives specializing in the future of work, specifically in looking at designing flexible and networked organizations. She has extensive experience managing large organization transformation projects focusing on large scale change, restructuring, acquisitions, offshoring, organizational culture change, and talent management. Maya sits on the Deloitte Organization Design & Decisions Solutions leadership team both within the US and globally.

Pre-Conference Workshops

We devote the day before the conference to workshops that build knowledge, skills, and competence for practitioners at different stages in their career.

You are welcome to join just a pre-conference workshop on May 6

or add the additional day of learning to your conference attendance

Introduction to the Practice of Organization Design

Monday, May 6, 2024 | 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM

$349 ($149 Student)

Are you new to the field of organization design? Do you want to better understand and be conversant in foundational organization design models and processes? If so, this engaging, interactive program will build your awareness, understanding, and knowledge as an emerging practitioner of organization design. You will be introduced to a growing, inclusive, learning community and connect what you already know to the vital practice of organization design!

Facilitated by:  Cynthia Escamilla, an ODF Board Member and Principal/Owner of Elena Consulting LLC

A Primer for Running Your Own Organizational Network Analysis

Monday, May 6, 2024 | 9:00 AM – 4:30 PM

$549

In today’s faster-paced, more complex business environment, its often the structure of a firm’s informal network versus its formal hierarchy that defines success. Learn how you can add ONA to your organization design toolkit and gain new insight to help solve today’s most important design challenges.

Facilitated by: Steve Garcia, an Author and Managing Partner at Contemporary Leadership Advisors (CLA)

“The paradigm shifting mindset, discussions and topics, and [the] cohort of passionate leaders representing companies and solo/entrepreneurs was remarkable. I felt I was walking amidst giants, feeling humbled by the wisdom and brilliance all around.”

-2023 Participant

“I was incredibly impressed by the quality of all the sessions. I have so many takeaways that my brain is absolutely whirling. This was a truly fantastic and mind-expanding experience.”

-2023 Participant

“Group was warm and welcoming, great atmosphere, great sharing. Loved connecting with other companies to hear where they are at and their challenges.”

-2023 Participant

“My experience was exceptional! What made it exceptional?  Interactions with passionate OD professionals and Transformational Leaders with broad and deep OD and Transformation experience and knowledge.”

-2023 Participant

“Attendee willingness to share knowledge, processes, anecdotes, useful practices, and information all contributed to my euphoric and exceptional experience.”

-2023 Participant

Join us at the historic

The Saint Paul Hotel

350 Market Street
Saint Paul, MN 55102

Twin Cities in Minnesota

Click here to reserve your room
with code 5120046
(NOTE: set Rate Type -> Group)

or call the hotel directly – 651-292-9292
reference 
ODF Festival of Org Design

Conference Rates  – $159/nt + tax
(based on availability thru 04.08.2024)

The hotel does not have their own lot but does offer valet parking
or there are nearby garages


Property is 9 miles from Minneapolis-Saint Paul Int’l Airport

There are a number of options for transporation from the airport to the hotel – learn more here

Thank you, Lauren!  

A 2024 Partner donating her time and services . . .

Don’t just take notes. Visualize them. Bring a meeting or event to life in a way that will help participants engage and retain knowledge. Our visual notetakers capture key insights and takeaways during meetings and events with words and images. We use active listening and content synthesis to create an illustrative record of the session.  The final product is a knowledge artifact that lives on and is used to quickly recall the highlights and feelings of the experience, as well as to communicate to those not in the room.

Learn more about Lauren Green &
Dancing with Markers

Appreciation for our 2024 Community Sponsors

ODF is a non-profit organization grateful to the generous sponsorship and support of leading organizations in the design community.

Accenture’s Talent & Organization (T&O) / Human Potential practice helps shape the organization and workforce agenda for our clients. As a part of our global portfolio, we have a robust operating model and org design offering that has been super charged with the inclusion of Kates Kesler. Together, we help our clients align their strategy and operating model to stay competitive and grow beyond traditional core business.

Visit our T&O/Human Potential practice, our Operating Model offering and our new org design book Network, Scaled and Agile.

Orgvue is an organizational design and planning platform that empowers businesses to transform their workforce by understanding the work people do and the skills they have. The world’s largest enterprises and consulting firms use Orgvue to visualize and model current and future states of the organization and make faster, more informed decisions. 
Nakisa is a global leader in cloud-native organizational design and workforce planning solutions, providing enterprises with the technology to democratize workforce planning and quickly reach business objectives. Nakisa OrgDesign allows HR and non-HR staff to collaborate on organizational structure design and to offer mutual strategic input. With Nakisa, managers create their best teams while HR and executives plan the optimal future for their organizations.
The Org Design Podcast gives access to closed door conversations of leaders that plan and lead re-orgs. Our guests are seasoned leaders and the expert partners they trust to help shape their org structure decisions. They share stories on how they build healthy organizations and the often difficult learnings along the way. There is no perfect org, they are continually needing to change, so it’s essential to get Org Design know-how into the toolkit for every leader and the Org Design Podcast does just that.
Agentnoon is a workforce planning & org design engine that helps drive organizational agility. Our platform helps enterprise companies visualize and design their future org efficiently. We work with 100+ enterprise customers across 15 countries.