Human Centered Leadership · Creativity · Change & Transitions
Leadership is a
design challenge.
Your people are capable. The challenges are hard, and the usual playbook isn’t reaching them. We help leaders and teams do their best work: developing leaders, unlocking the creativity already in your organization, and guiding people through change.
Human centered leadership is inspiring and mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and do things that matter.
Ours. We wrote it, and we have spent more than thirty years putting it to work.
Sound familiar?
Good people. Hard challenges. Something isn’t clicking.
- Your best performers got promoted, and nobody taught them how to lead people.Leadership →
- The same few people bring every idea, and everyone else waits.Creativity & Innovation →
- The change was announced. The hallway conversations tell a different story.Change & Transitions →
- People don’t speak up until the problem is already expensive.Leadership →
- Innovation got handed to one team, and the rest of the organization stopped trying.Creativity & Innovation →
- The old way is gone, the new one hasn’t taken hold, and your team is stuck in between.Change & Transitions →
None of this means your people are the problem. It usually means something in how the work is led can be redesigned. That is the work we do.
What We Do
However you need us in the room
Some projects run for a year. Some are a single morning. We shape the work to the challenge, not to a package.
Every engagement runs on human-centered design, the method we learned at IDEO: inspiration (listen first), ideation (frame the real challenge) and implementation (prototype, test, refine).
Advisory & projects
Long-form partnership on an adaptive challenge — research, strategy, and execution with you rather than handed to you.
Keynotes
Conference keynotes and general sessions on leadership, creativity, and leading people through change.
Hands-on sessions
Teams practice the methods on a real challenge of their own. They leave having done the work, not watched it.
Leadership retreats
Multi-day offsites for leadership groups that need room to think, reset, and decide together.
Hard rooms, held well
Strategy sessions, design sprints, and the conversations a team cannot easily have on its own.
Individual & team
One-on-one and small-group coaching for leaders stepping into something bigger than their last role.
Our models
The thinking behind the work.
Creative Alliances™
How human centered leaders and teams work.
Bonds are how we feel together, tasks are what we do together, and goals are what we come to know and achieve. Communication runs through all three.
Explore Creative Alliances →Designing Change
Organizations change. People transition.
Nine movements for leading people through change and transitions, from ending to new beginning. Each one opens with a question rather than an answer.
It is the Change and Transitions ring of Creative Alliances.
Explore Designing Change →
Try the quiz
How human centered are you as a leader?
Ten questions, about three minutes. You get a profile across the five practices we look for, an honest read on where you are strongest, and the one place worth your attention next.
Take the quiz →About
Small in size, mighty in creativity
Jules Morris, Ph.D.
Partner
Thirty years in marketing, branding, and design, leading award-winning creative teams in marketing and media, including as Director of Marketing and Community Relations at WBIR, Knoxville's NBC affiliate. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee in creativity and leadership, teaches marketing, human-centered design, and leadership at the Haslam College of Business, and is credentialed in human-centered design by IDEO.
Michael (Lane) Morris, Ph.D.
Partner
Fisher Professor of Innovative Learning and Associate Dean at the Haslam College of Business, where he has spent thirty-five years teaching and leading. His research focuses on occupational stress and leadership, organizational development, and change. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Tennessee, human-centered design credentials from IDEO, and executive coursework on Adaptive Leadership from the Harvard Kennedy School.
bomb·dig·gi·ty (adj.) Awesomeness in its purest form. This work asks people to let go of something, sit in ambiguity, and try things that might not work. That goes better when the room is warm.
Insights
Writing on the work
Psychological Safety Isn’t a Perk. It’s the Leader’s Job.
What psychological safety is, what Google and Amy Edmondson's research found, and the four conditions leaders build, with practical steps and an FAQ.
The Creative Alliance: The Operating System Behind High-Performing Teams
What the Creative Alliance is, how Bonds, Creative Tasks and Goals work together in high-performing teams, and a quick check to use with your own team.
Leadership is a Verb, Not a Title
Leadership is something you do, not a title you hold. The definition of Human Centered Leadership, its three dimensions, and why the work starts inside.
Browse the full archive Ten earlier posts, 2020–2023.
Start a conversation
What are you in the middle of?
Tell us the challenge you are facing and who it lands on. We will tell you honestly whether this is work we are right for.