Author: Michelle Davies

  • Why I Left the Practice Leader Role to Build Something of My Own

    By Michelle Davies, CEO & Founder of Davies Winyard Associates
    October 2026

    After nearly 30 years building my People and Change career within management consulting firms, I made a decision that surprised colleagues, friends, and family. I stepped away from my role as a practice leader at an established management consulting firm to build something of my own, Davies Winyard Associates.

    It wasn’t because I had stopped enjoying consulting. Quite the opposite. I still love the work, especially the challenge of untangling complex problems. I love walking into a complicated situation, looking beyond the obvious to understand what is really driving it, identifying practical solutions, and working with leaders to put those solutions into action.

    What changed was what I wanted from the next chapter of my career.

    For much of my career, I had the opportunity to operate entrepreneurially within consulting firms. I built practices, managed and developed staff, oversaw client relationships, sold work, recruited talent, led client delivery, and rolled up my sleeves to do the client engagement work myself.

    Eventually, I realized I wanted to take the entrepreneurial part one step further.

    I wanted the freedom to choose the challenges I worked on.

    There is tremendous value in experience, but there is also a danger in becoming too comfortable with what you already know. Once you have implemented the same type of transformation several times, you know the patterns. You know many of the pitfalls. You can certainly do it again, and do it well, but it may no longer challenge you in quite the same way.

    Give me a complicated organizational problem, a transformation that hasn’t been fully defined, a leadership team trying to figure out how to move from strategy to execution, or a business trying to understand the people implications of significant change. Those are the situations I find most interesting and rewarding.

    Curiosity has always shaped how I approach my work, and complex challenges are what energize me.

    Starting Davies Winyard Associates has given me the opportunity to shape my work around what I value most. It allows me to combine decades of experience in organizational change, strategy, culture, process redesign, transformation, and leadership effectiveness while still seeking out situations and solutions that require me to think differently.

    It also gives me the freedom to be selective about where I can add the most value.

    This independence changes how I work with clients. I focus on what the situation actually requires, bring in the right expertise when needed, and stay close to the work rather than fitting the problem into a predetermined solution.

    Not every engagement is the right engagement. Not every client needs what I do. Part of being a trusted advisor is being willing to say that.

    But when there is a difficult problem involving people, organizations, strategy, and change, and the answer isn’t immediately obvious, that’s where I want to be.

    After nearly three decades in consulting, I didn’t leave the profession behind.

    I simply created the opportunity to practice it differently.

  • After 30 Years in OCM, Here’s the Failure Pattern No One Wants to Name

    By Michelle Davies, CEO & Founder of Davies Winyard Associates

    June 2026

    After three decades in Organizational Change Management, I’ve seen countless methodologies, frameworks, and playbooks come and go. Yet one failure pattern continues to repeat itself—quietly, consistently, and often unchallenged:

    A lack of broad-based participation.

    Most change initiatives do a solid job engaging sponsors, project teams, and subject matter experts. These groups are typically involved early and remain actively engaged throughout the lifecycle.

    But when it comes to impacted stakeholders, the approach often narrows to two familiar levers:

    • Communications
    • Training

    Both are important—but both are largely one-way.

    And that’s the problem.

    The Missing Piece: Two-Way Dialogue

    Change doesn’t fail because people were informed too late.

    It fails because people weren’t involved early enough.

    Broad-based participation means shifting from telling to engaging—creating continuous, two-way dialogue with the people who will actually live the change.

    It’s about:

    • Listening to stakeholder input throughout the lifecycle
    • Using that input to shape more realistic, practical solutions
    • Creating shared ownership—not just awareness

    What Broad Participation Looks Like in Practice

    High-performing change programs don’t treat stakeholders as recipients—they treat them as contributors.

    They create structured opportunities for involvement, such as:

    • Participating in business requirements gathering
    • Contributing to solution design discussions
    • Engaging in early demos to provide feedback
    • Joining change champion networks
    • Participating in future-state process validation workshops
    • Serving as testers before go-live
    • Supporting hypercare and stabilization

    These are not “nice-to-haves.” They are what make change real, workable, and adoptable.

    Why This Matters

    When stakeholders are brought in late, resistance is predictable.

    When they are involved early and continuously, something powerful happens:

    • Buy-in starts before go-live
    • Adoption accelerates
    • Solutions improve in quality and usability
    • Sustainability becomes far more achievable

    Instead of a sponsor and project team working in isolation for months, the organization moves forward together.

    The Bottom Line

    If there’s one lesson I’ve learned after 30 years, it’s this:

    Change is not something you implement to people.

    It’s something you build with them.

    Broad-based participation isn’t just a best practice—it’s the difference between change that struggles… and change that sticks.