David J Foster MBA

Board-level advisor, facilitator & change manager

With an Executive MBA from London Business School and an interesting range of organisational experience, David Foster brings fresh perspectives to his ‘management bandwidth’ work with organisations.

Consistent with what MIT’s Edgar Schein calls ‘organisational therapy’, David first works to diagnose the root causes of the pain being experienced within teams or business units (typically a messy organisational problem of some form) and then to work with the people affected to devise a sustainable way to solve, resolve or dissolve the challenge. This approach engages and empowers people, creating energy and a sense of agency in those he works with.

Messy problems are unique in their configuration and thus difficult to describe, but can often manifest as major internal frustrations (which are soaking up time, money or human energy), or macro opportunities or threats (which require the organisation to be able to look with fresh eyes).

Recognisable symptoms might include depressed levels of net profit, friction between departments or business units, pains due to growth (such as post Series B or C funding), apprehension about necessary change, a culture of negativity or some other suboptimal behaviour within a team (or at an individual level), or simply a ‘feeling’ that the organisation should be able to work more effectively.

An organisational (or systems) therapist differs to a normal consultant in their willingness to step in quickly and discreetly to look for the holistic causes of problems, to devise ways to create effective and humane change, and then to step away again as soon as the organisation understands how to move forward again.

David uses tailored workshops as a key part of his change management toolkit, up-skilling individuals and teams using active learning approaches. He is both a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Certified Management & Business Educator and has designed 160 bespoke learning interventions to date. Based on these he has delivered 435 workshops to almost 2,600 participants, clocking up around a thousand hours of facilitative teaching.

David currently works full-time as Senior Change Manager at the University of Sussex, working within a project team delivering £200m of programmes & projects. He has a range of background roles including Trustee & Director of Signal Film & Media, a Director of Carbon Thirteen (CLG) Limited (part of Carbon13, where he is also a Board Advisor), Board Advisor at Cohesive Minds and Head Judge for the Change Awards

Further details about David Foster can be found at linkedin.com/in/davidjfoster