Thirty-five years in the room. Here's what I've learned.
There's a version of leadership development that happens in conference rooms and away days, where leaders learn frameworks and fill out worksheets and go home feeling like something might be different. And then it mostly isn't.
I've spent thirty-five years trying to understand why, and what actually works instead.
My career has moved between two positions that most people occupy exclusively: inside organizations, leading from within the complexity, and outside them, consulting and advising through an external lens. Having spent serious time in both places, I can tell you that each perspective misses something the other sees clearly. The best leadership development I know how to do draws on both.
Inside, I've led teams through the full weight of organizational change. As a leader at TD Waterhouse, BMO Financial Group, and HomeEquity Bank, I rebuilt sales infrastructures, turned around underperforming units, and learned, sometimes the hard way, what it actually takes to bring people through change rather than drag them. I've made decisions that worked and decisions I'd make differently now. That record is where most of what I know comes from.
Outside, as a consultant at Accenture's Canada Innovation Hub, ExperiencePoint, and The Refinery Leadership Partners, I've worked alongside leaders at organizations across financial services, technology, retail, healthcare, and energy. I've facilitated leadership programs at Harvard, Duke, and Stanford. I've delivered change and innovation workshops to more than 7,000 leaders and learners around the world.
What ties all of it together is a consistent observation: the organizations that develop strong leaders, genuinely strong leaders, not just capable-looking ones, do something specific. They take the human side of leadership as seriously as the operational side. They build leaders who understand what actually drives human performance, commitment, and resistance. And they treat leadership development not as an event, but as a practice.
That's what I help build.
I hold an MBA from Dalhousie University and am a Fellow of the Institute of Canadian Bankers. I live in Toronto.
My first book, What If "They" Aren't the Problem?: A Practitioner's Guide to Leading Change Through the Human Element, is coming soon.
Career Highlights
Executive Leadership
- TD Waterhouse
- BMO Financial Group
- HomeEquity Bank
Consulting & Innovation
- Accenture Canada Innovation Hub
- ExperiencePoint
- The Refinery Leadership Partners
Academic Programs
- Harvard University
- Duke University
- Stanford University
Education
- MBA, Dalhousie University
- Fellow, Institute of Canadian Bankers
A short note on who I'm not.
I'm not a unicorn. I'm not a billionaire. I didn't run a Fortune 100 company.
I'm someone who spent more than thirty-five years climbing the ranks the way most leaders do. From individual contributor into middle management. From middle management into the executive ranks, with stints as both a regional executive and a national vice president. And then out into consulting and advisory work with firms like Accenture, ExperiencePoint, and The Refinery Leadership Partners.
It was a real career, with real wins and real lessons. What's different is what I did with it.
I paid attention. I made the calls and lived with them. I watched what worked and what didn't, in my own work and in the work of the leaders around me. I read what was worth reading, ignored what wasn't, and built a practice from what I actually saw.
I'm not a guru. I'm someone who's walked the path most of your leaders are walking, paid closer attention to it than most, and turned it into something useful.
That's the work I do. And the reason it lands the way it does is that I'm not pretending to be more than that.
Partner with Keith
I work with speakers bureaus, learning & development firms, management consulting practices, and organizational development consultancies on a range of partnership arrangements: co-delivery, white-label, referral, and joint client work. If you're exploring that kind of arrangement, I'd like to hear from you.
Reach OutWant something useful right now?
If you're leading people in any capacity, there's a short piece I'd like you to have. Five questions I ask every leader before we start working together. It takes about fifteen minutes to read, and longer than that to sit with properly. The leaders who do the work tell me it's worth it.
It's free. And it's yours.