About the Authors

RON ASHKENAS has been a thought partner, consultant, and coach on organizational change, leadership, and transformation with prominent private, nonprofit, and public-sector executives for over thirty years and is an Emeritus Partner of Schaffer Consulting in Stamford, Connecticut. He was part of the team that worked with Jack Welch to transform GE in the 1990s. His other clients have included the World Bank and Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Merck, Pfizer, and GSK pharmaceuticals; technology companies such as Cisco and Cognizant; Stanford Hospital and the MD Anderson Cancer Center; financial services companies such as AIG, JP Morgan Chase, Thomson Reuters, and Zurich Insurance; and consumer products firms including PepsiCo, ConAgra Foods, and P&G.

Ron has written numerous articles for the Harvard Business Review and is the author of Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done (Harvard Business Press, 2009). He also is the coauthor of four other books, including The Boundaryless Organization and The GE Work-Out. He lectures on change management, acquisition integration, simplification, executive leadership, and innovation at universities and conferences worldwide.

BROOK MANVILLE serves as an adviser and executive coach to a wide range of leaders on issues of strategy, organizational development, and leadership effectiveness. Earlier in his career, he served as executive vice president of the United Way of America and chief learning officer at Saba, a Silicon Valley provider of human capital management solutions. As a partner at McKinsey & Company, Brook consulted to several Fortune 500 companies, specializing in organizational development and knowledge-related strategy. He was also McKinsey’s first director of knowledge management.

Brook is a regular contributor to the Leadership Channel in Forbes. com. In addition to Harvard Business Review, he has written for Fast Company and Sloan Management Review and is the author (with Josiah Ober) of A Company of Citizens: What the World’s First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations (Harvard Business School Press, 2003) and (with Tom Davenport) Judgment Calls: Twelve Stories of Big Decisions and the Teams That Got Them Right (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).