Keynote Presentation
People and Technology-Powered Organizations: Designing the Operating Model of the Future
Greg Kesler – C-suite Advisor and Mackenzie Luong – Accenture
Technology and data are poised to revolutionize the way organizations operate, leading to significant implications for future organizational models. Build on the three themes of the 2025 conference as a way to think about today’s enterprise transformation agenda – fusing people and technology with innovative organization design thinking.
In this session, we will explore:
-
Why organization and operating model reinvention are now at the center of enterprise transformation.
-
How technology is both disrupting the business and enabling more powerful organizational arrangements.
-
Designing for working across boundaries, empowering front-line decision making, and using data and technology to amplify human creativity.
-
Applying the framework to the transformation agenda.
Greg Kesler consults with senior leaders on global organization design and activation, and is recognized as one of the leading practitioners, authors and speakers in the field. He has led whole company, global redesign projects for many leading multi-national companies across numerous industries over a 35-year period. He co-founded Kates Kesler Organization Consulting with Amy Kates, and has recently joined the faculty in the MBA program in the Jack Welch College of Business and Technology at Sacred Heart University.
Greg is the co-author of four books with Amy Kates, including Rethinking Operating Models: Designing People and Technology Powered Organizations (Kogan-Page, 2025); Networked, Scaled, and Agile: A Design Strategy for Complex Organizations (Kogan Page, 2021); and two others for Wiley/Jossey Bass.
After the Kates Kesler boutique was acquired by Accenture in 2020, Greg oversaw the integration of the firm into Accenture and led the new global Operating Model and Organization Design practice of more than 150 consultants worldwide. He led the new practice for two years before leaving Accenture in 2024, where he remains a member of the firm’s external luminary team. Greg is a passionate volunteer advisor to a mid-sized non-profit focused on conservation in East and Southern Africa. Before beginning his consulting career, Greg held senior HR management positions in the U.S. and Europe for Ingersoll-Rand and Pitney Bowes, where he was vice president, human resources for the office systems business. Greg holds an MA Degree in Organization and Human Relations from the University of Kansas.
Mackenzie Luong is a Managing Director with Kates Kesler Organization Consulting, part of Accenture. She works with leaders of companies around the world to make sound choices about the design of their organizations. Her experience sits along a spectrum of organizational design work, from building operating models (including innovation labs and structures for global expansion), to scaling capabilities, to inspiring leaders around future-fit growth opportunities.
Mackenzie has been Accenture’s preeminent thought-leader and North American lead for Operating Model Activation and is the Operating Model lead for Accenture’s Software and Platform industry.
Prior to joining Accenture, Mackenzie was an organization design leader at IDEO, a prominent innovation firm focused on achieving positive and disproportionate impact through design. She holds Finance and Marketing degrees from the University of Washington Business School and is an adjunct professor of Organization Design at Cornell University.
Mackenzie resides in Portland, Oregon with her husband, two daughters and dog.