EVOLUTIONARY LEADERSHIP
COHERENT SYSTEMS
PROSPERING TEAMS
ORGANIZATIONS OF THE FUTURE
designing . building . maintaining .
ART + PRACTICE
Why? So that you and your organization can suffer less. Transformation and change as leaders and in organizational life are novel only in that somewhere along the way you may have been hoodwinked into believing they are about an end rather than a means. Said differently, you might mistakenly have tried to use will, might, and ego rather than leveraging nature to create the right conditions for flow, progress, and evolving.
The decision to design and run your organization, function, team, and yourself within a model of progressive change and ongoing transformation is a conscious choice. It is a leadership decision to look (rather than look away) at how your organization is or is not coherently working - as a matter of operating, as an expense line in your budget, as a culture intention akin to any other operating costs. Through being awake to, listening, and allowing the moments, relationships, interactions, decisions, and intent to reflect back - the coherence - you and your organization inform next actions, new innovations, write a different narrative or strategy, and design far better synergy.
Normalizing an active, conscious, and continuous ability to be awake and aware is the single greatest leadership decision you'll make. Relentlessly interacting with and meeting the moments is the work of our lifetimes - and where you and your team will discover the greatest joy and growth in your work.
STORY
Kathryn Maloney, M.A./ABS
Kathryn is an advisor, strategist, coach, and systems design consultant working with organizations large and small to nurture and advance progressive change and innovations, team functioning, and novel approaches to leading that enable fluency and fluidity. In a world that can feel deeply disconnected in its connectivity, a quickening pace that meets so much headwind, and the greatest access to intelligence in human history, she spends much of her time working with leaders to bridge organizational worlds, design companies and functions that will thrive in a post-industrial landscape, learn new org and leadership languages, and transition from former leadership paradigms to become more comfortable, adaptable, and resilient in current ones.
Understanding and applying methodologies and technologies without holding too tightly to them and projecting unreasonable expectations onto them is a large part of her professional charm. Having worked for over twenty years in the spaces of strategy, transformation and change, leadership, org design, and culture with companies as large as Boeing, Boston Consulting Group, Edelman, and GE; government agencies and NGOs like the United Nations (World Food Programme Innovation Accelerator, UNFPA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Reserve, IRS, and Health and Human Services; educational and research companies like Kaplan and Rand Corporation plus start-ups and female-founded businesses, Kathryn is excited by and cautious about this moment in time. Easy fixes are few and far between. Focus, presence, and a committed and applied progressive change approach will always win the race.
She has an academic background in the Applied Behavioral Sciences, is conditioned with a systems thinking lens, influenced by the org development and systems pioneers of the 20th century, and trained as a process and systems design consultant for organizational (as opposed to family) systems. She has deep research and data analysis chops and the rare experience of designing and executing large-scale, rigorous qualitative (human-centered, user-centered design) studies and facilitating the application of grounded results into organizational and public policy changes. She is trained and practiced as an executive/systems coach and master facilitator.
She did her undergraduate work in Italian Language, Literature, and Art History. The blessing of studying art history, language, and culture as an undergrad is a bedrock of her practice and teaching today. Her graduate work in Applied Behavioral Science (applied practice of consulting on leadership and change in organizational systems) through an experiential program (Leadership Institute of Seattle, LIOS) within a naturopathic college (Bastyr University) also gave her a practitioner tapestry far beyond a traditional theory education. A student of Vedic meditation, yoga, and eastern philosophy for years, Kathryn blends many minds - to include the one in her own belly - to bring wisdom and insight to any moment.
One of her favorite places is silence. Another is the sound of brilliant - and loud - music. Travel, beautiful food and wine, art, design, sunshine, the beach, sunsets, good people, grappling with ideas, solving riddles, and enjoying the moments by not taking it all too seriously make her days feel like good ones.
And while the education, professional and life experiences have taught her plenty, Kathryn's best motivation and most favorite teacher has always been her son, Sean Simonds. He is a kind, deeply insightful, and passionate human who dabbles at the intersections of strategy, the financial markets, research, and writing for UBS in NYC.