Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
The founding principal of Madrona Strategy Works, where he advises leaders on enterprise strategy, organizational design, culture, and leadership-team effectiveness. His research explores how organizations adapt and thrive amid uncertainty and change.
Carl B. Watson, Ph.D., is the founding principal of Madrona Strategy Works, where he advises leaders on enterprise strategy, organizational design, culture, and leadership-team effectiveness. He is also an Affiliated Research Scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations at USC Marshall and a former executive at Nike, Microsoft, and JPMorgan Chase.
As VP of Transformation, Organizational Strategy, and Culture at Nike, Carl and his team drove enterprise transformation across the Nike, Jordan, and Converse Brands, including the strategic translation, design, and activation of the global operating model for the consumer sport evolution. Under his leadership, they successfully launched a new enterprise-wide focus on high-performance teaming and multi-year work to re-energize Nike’s company culture.
Carl led Microsoft’s Organizational Development & Culture Activation team. He was the organizational architect of the strategic shifts for the Entertainment + Devices business and, later, the Windows + Devices Group, shifting these businesses from an operating system on PC hardware to a service powering experiences across devices. He and his team were accountable for major enterprise-wide culture initiatives and evolving the enterprise operating model, during a critical juncture in the company’s industry-defining culture transformation.
His research examines strategic renewal and how organizations build the capabilities to adapt in turbulent environments. Carl holds a Ph.D. in Management, Designing Sustainable Systems from Case Western Reserve University; an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan.
Ep 02 | The Pivot Is The Point
Leading In Uncertainty
“The short-term, long-term has been a paradox. What we're experiencing now is that the long-term aspects of leading organizations have become more uncertain. It's more difficult to see whether any long-term plans play out, but that paradox has always existed.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
“It's very difficult to maintain motivation when your work keeps flipping. When the thing that you're working on is, is less relevant or no longer relevant, or you have to pivot constantly.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
“In this environment, the pivot is the point, right? If you don't pivot, you can't reach the goal. I think part of the challenge with a lot of organizations is that their goals and their missions are really prosaic. Though that doesn't inspire people. That doesn't help people figure out what's important versus what's not important.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
“You can actually improve your leadership by seeking to understand the choices that people are making through direct observation. Because things are moving so rapidly, the organization's information pump is too damn slow. By the time managers get information, build perspective, the world's already changed.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
Ep 01 | We’re Squading Wrong
Getting Flexible Deployments Right
“…everybody becomes overworked because you try to tackle every problem that the system produces, and no organization can do that. You have to choose. Prioritization is a key role of management, and managers who refuse to prioritize fail their teams.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
“…these competing priorities from people's home teams actually matter for the work but also create conflict. The core challenge is taking those and making productive use of those competing priorities so that you can actually get a better outcome than you would if it was homed in just one of those teams.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.
“Conflict often results from a failure of pre-negotiating things that should be pre-negotiated. As a VP in an organization, I have three people I have to negotiate with in most things, to stand up a project or to make space for something. The people on my team are dealing with 10 or 15 people they have to negotiate with, and that's exponentially more difficult.”
-Carl B. Watson, Ph.D.