About Louise

Louise A. Harris, PhD CMC CCMP
CEO, SToS Consulting Inc.
Founder, ChangeDesign.Institute

Strategic change consultant, educator,
and international speaker.

Equipping people to design and implement valuable and effective change in their organizations is my passion and expertise. I combine structured methodologies with design thinking techniques and neurocognitive visual tools to empower people to discover new opportunities for addressing their challenges and reaching their goals.

For over 25 years I have led and advised the development and implementation of innovative technological, process, and organization change initiatives in large and small organizations. I have worked in various industry sectors including healthcare, finance, insurance, education, and transportation.

I have always had a people-centric focus with the view that the point of any change initiative is to enable organizations and individuals to be more effective. I have helped and trained individuals across all levels of the organization apply visual modelling techniques to scope and plan change initiatives. These techniques enable clear stakeholder value, support holistic risk management and motivate commitment and collaboration across executive, employees, and external partners.

The success of any enterprise change ultimately depends on people changing the way they do things.

Not only do I consult on change, I have lived it. Born in Scotland, I spent my childhood in Africa and south east Asia and as a teenager, immigrated with my family to Canada. I have worked for small and large organizations and experienced being outsourced first hand. In 1998 I co-founded SToS Consulting Inc. in British Columbia, then moved to the east coast of Canada in 2010.

My desire to equip change facilitators with more effective methods and tools to engage busy stakeholders in change initiatives led me to return to university in 2016 to pursue graduate studies and engage in robust and practical academic research. This was a bigger change than I anticipated and initially was over whelming as my mental models needed to be expanded. It has been however, a highly valuable and stretching experience. I had the opportunity to perform innovative research with healthcare organizations engaging clinicians and administrators to figure out complex change within tight resource constraints. I successfully defended my thesis on Feb 25, 2021.

In 2020, I founded the ChangeDesign.Institute. Our mission is to train business leaders, change leaders and consultants in the evolving craft of change design. We use a facilitated learning approach that enriches the learning experience, focuses on application of new design methods and development of holistic design skills. The ChangeDesign.Insitute will continue my PhD research on innovative visual models and co-operative design methods.

In my spare time, I raise goats. Goats are very intelligent and habitual creatures. They notice the smallest change in their environment and react with both suspicion and curiosity simultaneously. Their dual reaction to change is a apt reminder to step out of 'either/or' thinking and hold both curiosity and apprehension in tandem in our approach to the rapidly changing world in which we work and live.

Start with a Focus on Why Change

Copenhagen, Denmark

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Las Vegas, USA

Dallas, USA

Watch Conference Video Clips

Upcoming Conference & Training Events

How to Engage Stakeholders more Effectively in Change Design
June 8 - 11, 2021

How to Increase Stakeholder Buy-in with Less Effort
May 17 - 20, 2021

How to Design Useful Diagrams Executives Love
Qualiware User Group
March 29th, 2021

Past Conference & Training Events

Strategic Change by Design - Certificate
Feb, 2021 : Module 1

Organization Change: How to Design Successful Digital and Process Transformations

Change Management
Memorial University
MBA Course : April - Jun 2020

Strategic Change by Design - Certificate
Jan - Feb, 2019 : Module 1
April - May, 2019 : Module 2
Sept - Oct, 2019 : Module 3

Methods to Facilitate Public Engagement Success
October 25 - 26, 2019 St. John's, Canada

ISEOR Research Center & Academy of Management ODC division
7th International conference and doctoral consortium
Using visual models to engage stakeholders
June 7 & 8, 2019 Lyon, France