Douglas K. Smith

Doug Smith is a consultant, executive, writer, teacher, lawyer and inventor concerned with organization performance, innovation, strategy, and change. A former co-leader of McKinsey & Company’s worldwide organization practice, Smith’s work has been cited for innovation and impact in Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Fast Company, Forbes, Business Week, Inc., Information Age, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Leader to Leader and other publications. He is named one of the world’s top management thinkers in The Guru Guide;and, in High Impact Consulting,his work is cited for producing the number one return per consulting dollar of all consultants discussed. 

Smith is the author of seven books, including Make Success Measurable, which provides the tools and disciplines required for setting and achieving performance in today’s tough competitive environment. He is co-author of the award winning The Wisdom of Teams, widely acknowledged as the best book written on teaming – as well as its sequel and companion, The Discipline of Teams.  He is also the author of Taking Charge of Change, a path-breaking book named by the Peter Drucker Foundation as “the best book on change management.”  Smith is the co-creator of the “Horizontal Organization,” a design for organizations that Fortune called the “model for the next 50 years” and a creator of the McKinsey Rapid Response network, one of the nation’s earliest and longest-lasting innovations in knowledge management.  In addition, Smith is the architect of Achieving Excellence, an innovative leadership program sponsored by Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation that he co-delivers with Harvard’s Hauser Center to executives in the affordable housing and redevelopment field.

As a consultant, he has worked with organizations in nearly fifty industries spanning the private, non-profit and governmental sectors.  In addition to consulting, writing, and speaking, Smith has taught high school math, physics and chemistry in West Africa, practiced corporate and entertainment law, managed a diversified manufacturing company, and served as director or advisory board member of various non-profit organizations as well as eCommerce companies in performance management software and services, e-learning, health care services, e-tailing, and nonprofit technology services.  He is co-founder and CEO of Web River Media, a company that has invented a fundamentally new form of digital entertainment, education and advertising.  He wrote the business classic Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented Then Ignored the First Personal Computer, and co-authored Sources of the African Past (a college level history text). His latest book On Value and Values describes the possibilities of ethical life in a world of markets, networks, organizations, friends and families. Smith has a B.A. degree from Yale and a J.D. degree from Harvard Law School.