Overview
The era of “design, implement, redesign” is over. In today’s world of perpetual change and disruption, organizations must transform in motion, learning and adapting as they perform. They must continuously and fluidly evolve in response to constantly shifting pressures.
At this conference, we’ll explore ways to build organizations with resilience, renewal, and reflexes at their core. We will share new thinking, practical tools, and the capabilities needed to design and implement dynamic, responsive systems where change is less a threat and more a source of momentum. If you believe that organizations should – and can – evolve while they work, this conference is for you.
A little ‘ditty from our Planning Committee Leads
What to love about Pittsburgh
Registration
Frequently Asked Questions
Visit our FAQs page to answer the most common questions
$1895
Ticket Options
| CONFERENCE $1895 *Discounted $400 thru 2/15/26 |
| STUDENT $695 |
| INTRODUCTION TO THE PRACTICE OF ORG DESIGN Pre-Conference Workshop $349 |
| DESIGNING YOUR OWN ORGANIZATION DESIGN BIZ Pre-Conference Workshop $449 |
| INTRO TO THE PRACTICE OF ORG DESIGN Pre-Conference Workshop – Student Rate $149 |
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Polarities as Engines: Designing Organizations That Evolve While They Perform
Barry Johnson – Polarity Partnerships
Organizations designed for continuous evolution must hold stability and adaptability simultaneously. This interactive keynote reframes polarities from problems to manage into the creative tension that fuels adaptation. Explore how your design preferences influence your work, and learn to map the tensions that define this transformative moment.
Structures for Motion: Org Design for Continuous Change
Evan Leybourn – Business Agility Institute
Companies are not stable systems, but the demand for constant adaptation carries a real human cost. Drawing on research from 2500+ companies, Evan argues that modern organizational design must create dynamic structures and systems that actively carry this burden of continuous change.
Democratizing Design Thinking: Scaling and Enabling Adaptability at Every Level
Jeanne Liedtka – University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business
Delivering on the strategic intent of organization design requires aligning all relevant organizational systems and attributes, including employee and managerial capabilities. This session will examine the skills employees and managers need to continuously adapt and explore the aspects of today’s organizations that get in the way, requiring us to think creatively about how to design to remove or minimize them.
Adaptive Systems Design: Strategies That Thrive On Change
Ken Thompson – AlignOrg + Rahquel Purcell – L’Oréal
Discover how to design organizations that evolve in real time. Learn practical tools to foster agility, align strategy, and drive impactful change in your organization including a compelling case study of a global transformation.
ORGANIZATION DESIGN IN PRACTICE – Peer-led Concurrent Sessions
Reinventor Organization: What It Is, and What Organizations Need to Do to Become a Reinventor
Kent McMillan & Tom Falkowski – Accenture’s Operating Model and Organization Design Practice
In the face of ever accelerating disruption, the buzz around reimagining traditional organizational constructs and practices is louder than ever. Join a conversation around innovative, yet practical, operating model shifts and the Seven Features of the Reinventor Organization.
This Moment Needs a Movement: Designing Change People Actually Want
Amy Wilson – Culture Shift Studio
We are living through a moment that is forcing every organization to choose: go quiet, or find your voice. In this peer workshop, you’ll move from diagnosis to design, building a 30-day experiment you can take back tomorrow, built for shared ownership, learning loops, and real traction, not compliance theater.
From Startup to System: How a New State Program Built for Continuous Evolution
Lindsey Behringer – CO Dept of Labor and Employment + Sara Watson & Ardis McElhaney – Accenture
How do you build systems capable of adapting as they operate? Discover how Accenture and Colorado’s FAMLI Division turned start-up chaos into continuous evolution, designing an adaptive operating model that kept strategy, structure, and culture in dynamic alignment.
Your Organization on Display: A Museum-Inspired Method for Breaking Assumptions and Prototyping Change
Isabella Bruno – Lab for Radical Museum Futures
Museums have been continuously evolving while preserving what matters for centuries—your clients are trying to do the same thing. This hands-on workshop translates museum practice into organization design methodology, culminating in a collective “Museum of Obsolete Practices” that shows, not just tells, stories about organizational change.
Autonomy by Design: 3 Laws, A Diagnostic Reading Method, and A Viability Framework
Dennis Stevens – OrgWright
Empowerment often fails not because people aren’t capable, but because the system isn’t safe. In this interactive session, participants will learn how to design the structural, human, and leadership conditions that make autonomy reliable, responsible, and sustainable—especially in complex, fast-moving environments.
Stop! Shift the Energy at Work: A New Lens for Organization Design
Donna Pearce, Julia Urbanchuk, Chris Young, & Awilda Borres
Explore a new, provocative, and unique ways to interact, through managing energy, reflection, insight, and learnings to activate creative solutions; to create an energy shift that inspires people to solve challenges. By tapping into the wisdom of human energy, our intention is to make the Shift the Energy at Work approach accessible and bring humanity back to organizations.
Living and Leading Through Uncertainty: The Inner Work of Thriving in a Complex World
Kevin Anderson – Dr. Organizational Design
How we can move beyond merely coping with life and organization design complexity to truly thriving within it? By tapping into our innate “complexity genius”—the natural capacity we all possess to navigate uncertainty with creativity, calm, and confidence. Through experiential learning and reflection, you’ll gain practical tools to transform anxiety into creativity, strengthen collaboration, and build the adaptive capacity needed to continuously evolve in today’s ever-changing world.
Designing With a Wider Lens: The View From a Different Altitude
Jeanna Kozak + Elliott Barron, Michael Fraser, Dean Walsh
Learn how to test organization design decisions using a broader range of organizational data and simulations to surface trade-offs, risks, and value impacts before restructuring.
EXPERENTIAL SESSIONS
Live Org Design Challenge:
Pittsburgh Southside Chamber of Commerce
Step into a real, current org design challenge and put your practice to work, grounded in the place where we’re gathering.
In this interactive working session, participants will collaborate with peers to support the Southside Chamber of Commerce in Pittsburgh, a neighborhood that has been revitalizing and reinventing itself for decades. The chamber is navigating its next phase of evolution. As part of ODF’s tradition of weaving the local context into the conference experience, this session invites you to engage directly with a Pittsburgh-based organization facing real design questions.
There’s no better way to get to know your community than working elbow-to elbow on a task. You’ll explore real constraints, surface trade-offs, and test design ideas in real time. It’s a chance to design with your peers, and give back to the local Pittsburgh community.
Expect lively debate, practical experimentation, and perspective-sharpening insights you can carry back into your own organizational work.
Making Sense of the Data:
Bringing Our Research to Life Together
ODF’s recent research study reflects a meaningful investment of time and insight from this community. Many conference participants contributed directly by completing the survey, and all bring experience that helps give the findings depth and context.
In this facilitated sense-making session, participants will work with the research data and explore what it reveals when paired with lived experience. Through shared stories, examples, and dialogue, we’ll examine emerging patterns, tensions, and questions and consider how they show up in real organizations.
Together, we’ll turn data into insight, deepen our collective understanding of the field, and strengthen the connection between research and practice.
Expect thoughtful conversation, perspective-building, and a richer appreciation of how our shared inquiry shapes the work of org design.
Where are we meeting?
Join us at the historic
Omni William Penn Hotel
Conference Room rate $189/nt (+tax)
Register online (as available thru 3/26/26)
Rate available nights of Apr 26 – May 3
*If you register for Omni Select, receive complimentary welcome drink and free deluxe WiFi
530 William Penn Place
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15219
412-281-7100
(approx 18 miles from Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT))
– Public Transit via 28X Airport Flyer for $2.75 ea way, takes approx 50 minutes
Valet parking for $45 per night/vehicle
Self-parking available at nearby Mellon Square
Adjacent to the “T” or Pittsburgh Metro System
(links all points of downtown Pittsburgh and Station Square)
Who wants to catch a Pittsburgh Pirates game?
Continuing the tradition, we expect a group of baseball fans to head out to a ballgame.
We are proud to partner with the Pittsburgh Pirates to enjoy an evening out at PNC Park! Gather with your colleagues while taking in a ballgame at the “Best Ballpark in America”!
WHEN: April 29 – first pitch @ 6:40 PM
WHO: St. Louis Cardinals at Pirates
WHERE: PNC Park – less than a 10 minute walk from Omni William Penn Hotel
COST: $46.72 – $47.75 – Each lower level ticket includes $10 Loaded Value to redeem for food, beverage, or merchandise during game
Purchase Deadline: Apr 22, 2026
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.
Introduction to the
Practice of Org Design
Monday, April 27, 2026 | 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:
- Jodie Goulden, an ODF Board Member and Consultant/Founder, Orgdesign Works LLC
- Brandon Curry, ODF Community Engagement Volunteer and Managing Advisor/Founder, Work Arts LLC
Designing Your Own
Org Design Business
Monday, April 27, 2026 | 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM
$449
Ready to Scale Your Organization Design Practice?
A Master Class for independent & boutique consultants who want to win better clients and more projects, all at higher fees
Are you an independent or boutique organization design or similar consultant looking to level up your practice? In today’s rapidly evolving market, where major firms are consolidating through acquisition, there’s never been a better time for us smaller consultancies to capture high-value opportunities — if you know how to position yourself effectively.
Facilitated by:
- Kate Dixon, ODF Advisory Board member and Principal/Founder of Dixon Consulting
- Julian Chender, ODF Advisory Board Liaison and Founder of 11A Collaborative
Appreciation for our 2026 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.
Learn more about our T&O/Human Potential practice, our Operating Model offering, and our new org design book Rethinking Operating Models.
AlignOrg is a premier boutique organization design consultancy firm helping leaders achieve Differentiation by Design®. We partner with executive teams to translate vision into operational reality by aligning strategy, structure, talent, and ways of working—ensuring organizations can deliver on their business goals and brand promise. Our approach combines deep expertise in organization design with a practical, no-size-fits-all methodology grounded in our proven 5-step framework. Working with many Fortune 500 companies, we help leaders clarify strategy, build effective organization design roadmaps, and implement change in ways that drive lasting performance.
Orgsure is a work intelligence platform enabling the precise definition and analysis of work. Its data-rich taxonomy supports a wide range of analyses across organizational structures, job architecture, capabilities, value streams, and competencies. By treating work as the primary unit of analysis, Orgsure establishes a common data foundation for users across the enterprise. It is a persistent, easy-to-use system for understanding and modeling how work is executed and managed.