About

Over a half century of organizational and management research has shown that human systems change requires a crucial element: the participation of the stakeholders! Whether business change or social change, new human systems do not emerge unless relationships between the stakeholders become different. Yet there are complex conditions that tend to keep those relationships the same. Thus, change practitioners need to skillfully employ a robust change strategy based on participatory methods to shift the system. This website seeks to provide some of the best tools that I know of for facilitating such systems change.

Doug Walton, PhD

I am Doug Walton, PhD, an organizational change strategist and author. I have worked with some of the world’s largest technology organizations to improve their ability to innovate and change rapidly in the fast-paced, global economy.

I am also a professor of organizational systems design at the Saybrook Graduate School and President of the International Systems Institute. I hold MA and PhD degrees in organizational systems.

My first book, Internet-based Framework for Empowering Social Change- An Application of the Principles and Methodologies of Human Systems Design is now available. I have also published a number of articles. Two that were published recently are listed below.

• Is Modern Information Technology Enabling the Evolution of a More Direct Democracy?
• Revitalizing the Public Sphere: The Current System of Discourse and the Need for the Participative Design of Social Action

Toward the end of last year, a chapter that I co-wrote came out in the second volume of Dialogue as a Collective Means of Design Conversation.