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David Hurst is a speaker, consultant and writer on management. As a reflective practitioner he has a unique niche in the field. He spent twenty-five years working in the corporate world as an effective manager and extracted from his experience some highly innovative ideas about leadership, the management of change and the dynamics of organizations that promote creativity and learning. He communicates these ideas to audiences around the world in the form of creative presentations, in-depth seminars and articles that have been published in leading business publications such as the Financial Times, Globe and Mail, Harvard Business Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organizational Dynamics, Academy of Management Executive, Business Quarterly, and Organization Science. His book Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change was published by the Harvard Business School Press in 1995. His second book on golf and management, Learning from the Links, was published by The Free Press in 2002.

For ten years David Hurst was Executive Vice-President of a large North American industrial distributor. With sales of over CDN $1 Billion, the company employed 1600 people. Here, in addition to his operational line responsibilities, he handled the Group's Management Development and Management Information Services.

He began his career in retail distribution, but soon became involved in mergers, acquisitions and business turnarounds, particularly in the steel industry. He immigrated to Canada in 1977 and, after two years as a management consultant, joined an industrial distribution company. He was appointed Executive Vice-President in 1982 during a tumultuous period when he, as part of a senior management team, saved the organization from bankruptcy during a severe business recession.

David Hurst was born in England but grew up in South Africa. He holds an MBA (Finance) from the University of Chicago and a BA (Psychology) from the University of the Witwatersrand. He is affiliated with the Richard Ivey School of Business as a Research Fellow at the University of Western Ontario's National Centre for Management Research and Development.

Presentations Include:

Courageous Leadership

There is growing evidence that human organizations, like many complex living systems, require ongoing challenges if they are continually to renew themselves. This presentation looks at the role that leaders must play in this process of creative destruction. For it is not enough for managers merely to "shake-up" their organizations and then stand outside the process. The defining characteristic of all effective leaders is to be "one of us," to be seen to share a common fate with their followers. It is the heart of what we mean by integrity – for the only purpose that can redeem the process is the renewal of the total system.

Crisis & Renewal: Finding Opportunity in Adversity

No one likes crisis, but despite our wishes to the contrary the course of civilization's progress is neither smooth nor sure. To a considerable and largely unacknowledged extent society and its component organizations advance strategically by accident, economically by windfall and politically by disaster. Armies are reformed only after defeats; safety regulations are introduced after accidents; and firms only change strategies after significant reversals. On the other side of the balance, blockbuster products seem to emerge from nowhere and companies you have never heard of ride trends to fame and fortune. This isn't just chance. It seems that human organizations don't change when they want to; they change when they have to, when they feel compelled to change. At the personal level this thought is captured in the old adage that "People don't change when they see the light; they change when they feel the heat." This presentation which can be customized to fit any organization's situation examines why crisis is such a powerful catalyst for change and how you can harness its power in your organization with practical actions. Economic meltdowns create opportunities for change and it helps if you can find the opportunities in adversity.

Crisis & Renewal: Meeting the Challenge of Organizational Change

This presentation presents a radical view of how all successful organizations evolve and renew themselves, and what managers need to do to lead the revival. It argues that there are often times when managers must create deliberate crises in acts of "ethical anarchy" in order to break the constraints of success. Organizational renewal involves going back to the founding principles of an organization to reconnect the past with the present and restore the excitement and emotional commitment that are often missing from large enterprises. It is the integration of these renewal activities with conventional management practices that allows managers to lead their organizations to new life.

How Leaders Learn

What and how do leaders learn? The evidence is clear. Leadership is a cluster of skills that is learned through special kinds of experience not lectures in classrooms! The skills themselves are complex bundles of perceptions and actions that cannot be learned in abstract. In the workplace the key factors seem to be challenging work assignments, significant bosses and hardships. But what are the fundamental processes and can they be duplicated in development programs? The answer is that they can, but the conditions are demanding. New competencies come only from new sensitivities developed through timely, specific feedback. And creating the commitment and discipline to achieve mastery requires contexts that are often difficult to duplicate.

Boxes and Bubbles: The Management Crisis

This presentation deals with management's reactions to the bewildering world in which they found themselves and how they changed their concepts and their practices to successfully handle the turbulence. The lessons drawn have wide application to all kinds of organizations undergoing rapid, discontinuous change.

Hunters and Herders; Team and Team Work

In this presentation, the hunter's egalitarian mode of life is contrasted with that of the herders and their hierarchical structure. The social dynamics and physical contexts which compel hunters to become herders and shown to exist within our modern organizations.

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