Mark DeVolder

Why organisations work with Mark DeVolder

• A practising change consultant with a named methodology, Empowered Change, used inside organisations from NASA to Coca-Cola, not a motivational speaker who borrows the language of change.
• Author of Perpetual Pivot, a book-length argument that continuous adaptation is now the default operating condition, with a defined construct leaders can apply to repeated reinvention.
• Holds a research doctorate on unity, diversity and synergy from Fuller, which gives the work an evidence base most change keynotes lack.
• Has worked with leadership teams in regulated, high-stakes environments such as Pfizer, Qatar Petroleum, Siemens and the US Air Force, where the cost of badly handled change is operational, not theoretical.
• Brings a Target Zero safety-culture frame for clients in industrial and engineering sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not engagement scores.

Biography highlights

• Doctorate, Fuller, with dissertation on unity, diversity and synergy.
• Founder of the Empowered Change methodology, used in client engagements across five continents.
• Author of Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change and Get Engaged! on employee engagement.
• Has spoken in over 25 countries to clients including NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Qatar Petroleum and the US Air Force.
• Signature talks on change, resilience, employee engagement and Target Zero safety culture.

Biography

Change has become the operating condition of large organisations, not the event between strategies. The leaders who hold their teams through repeated restructure, integration and digital reset are not the ones with the most polished communications plan. They are the ones who understand how people move through transition and can hold the line on engagement when the next wave arrives.

This is the territory Mark DeVolder has worked in for two decades. His Empowered Change methodology and the wider argument set out in Perpetual Pivot: How the Best Leaders Adapt to Exponential Change treat continuous adaptation as the default state of senior leadership. The work is built on a doctorate from Fuller on unity, diversity and synergy, which gives the practice a research base rather than a personality base.

Client engagements have included leadership teams at NASA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Siemens, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Royal Bank of Canada, Verizon, Medtronic, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Qatar Petroleum, alongside the US Air Force. The work spans corporate integration, regulated industry, industrial safety and public-sector transformation, which means the methodology has been tested against very different definitions of what a failed change actually costs.

For industrial and engineering clients, DeVolder also runs a Target Zero programme that frames change leadership as a safety-culture problem. In those settings the test of good change leadership is not employee survey scores; it is whether the operating environment becomes safer or more dangerous through the transition. That is a sharper test than most change keynotes are built to pass.

Key speaking topics

• Change management and organisational transition
• Leadership through continuous restructure
• Resilience and decision-making under pressure
• Employee engagement during transformation
• Safety culture and high-performance operating environments
• Adapting to exponential change

Ideal for

• Boards and executive teams entering or recovering from major restructure, M&A integration or digital reset.
• CHROs and transformation leads accountable for retaining trust and discretionary effort through repeated change.
• Operating leaders in regulated, industrial or safety-critical sectors where change failure shows up as incidents, not survey scores.
• Senior leadership development programmes building change-leadership capability across cohorts.

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of why repeated change erodes capability and what to protect first.
• A practical model, the Empowered Change journey-map, for diagnosing where a workforce sits in a transition.
• Specific behaviours senior leaders can adopt during continuous restructure to hold trust and engagement.
• Language to talk to a workforce about change without slipping into corporate abstraction.
• For industrial clients, a route to connect change leadership directly to safety performance.