Deborah Rowland

Why organisations work with Deborah Rowland

• Her 2015/16 global research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries, quantified that leader inner capacities account for over half the success or failure of large complex change – a finding that directly challenges how most organisations design transformation programmes.
• The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model give organisations a specific diagnostic language for the leadership dimension of change: eight interconnected skills with a clear evidence base, not another generic competency framework.
• She spent the first half of her career inside the systems she now advises, as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide. She understands the constraints of the position, not just its theory.
• Four Wiley-published books, articles in the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, and papers accepted at the Academy of Management give her frameworks independent credibility beyond the consulting relationship.
• Her most recent book, From Ought to Is (Wiley, 2025), applies the Still Moving thinking directly to polarisation and systemic inertia – relevant to organisations managing post-merger integration, contested cultural change, or restructuring in divided environments.

Biography highlights

• Author of Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change (Wiley, 2017, bestseller) and From Ought to Is: Catalysing Change and Movement in a Polarised World (Wiley, 2025); co-author with Professor Malcolm Higgs of Sustaining Change: Leadership That Works (Wiley, 2008)
• Named on Thinkers50 Radar 2017; ranked 31st on HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers list 2021
• Contributor to Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review; original research accepted at the 2016 Academy of Management and 2019 European Academy of Management
• Former VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo; Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell; People Director at BBC Worldwide; earlier senior roles at Gucci Group
• Founder of Still Moving change consultancy; advisory clients include RWE, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, Diageo, Unilever and De Beers
• Faculty contributor at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath business schools; Advisory Board member, International Institute for Leadership and Safety Culture
• Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University

Biography

Most large-scale transformation programmes fall short not because the strategy is wrong, but because the leaders running them revert to familiar patterns when complexity peaks. Deborah Rowland has devoted three decades to studying that specific failure mode. Her research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries and geographies, found that four inner capacities of the leader – staying present, responding intentionally, tuning into the system, and acknowledging the whole – explained over half the reason why big complex change either succeeds or fails.

That research was not produced from the outside. Rowland spent the first half of her career as a practitioner, serving as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide, with earlier senior roles at Gucci Group. She has led major restructurings from within, and understands directly the conditions under which change leaders default to unhelpful patterns. That experience is embedded in every practical element of the Still Moving framework she subsequently developed.

The intellectual architecture behind the framework spans four published Wiley books. Sustaining Change (2008, with Professor Malcolm Higgs) identified four external practices of effective change leadership. Still Moving (2017) showed that four inner capacities must precede those practices – and that this inner dimension accounted for over half the variance in change success. From Ought to Is (2025) extends the argument to address polarisation and systemic inertia as the specific obstacles leaders now face.

Named on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2017 and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, she has also taught at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath. She holds a Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University – a training in systemic observation that continues to shape how she reads organisations and the people leading them.

Key speaking topics

• Large-scale organisational transformation
• The inner capacities of change leadership
• The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model
• Systemic change approaches
• Leading through polarisation and organisational inertia
• Culture change and movement
• Executive leadership development in complex environments

Ideal for

• Executive leadership teams and boards sponsoring or overseeing major transformation programmes
• CHROs and senior HR leadership communities
• Leaders at the top of organisations navigating post-merger integration, major restructuring, or contested cultural change
• Business school executive education participants on leadership and change programmes

Audience outcomes

• A clear understanding of why leader inner state – not change methodology – is the primary driver of transformation success or failure
• Practical exposure to the Still Moving eight-skill framework and Change Vitality model as a leadership diagnostic tool
• Ability to identify specific leadership behaviours that correlate with success in large and complex change
• Approaches for leading systemic change without defaulting to controlling or directive patterns under pressure
• A more honest assessment of personal leadership habits that may be slowing organisational change