Donnell Josiah
Organizational Change Strategist • ChangeDynamix, LLC
Hanover, Maryland, United States •
Request Pricing
About
• Speaks from experience — not theory: More than two decades leading and advising complex technology and organizational transformations across federal, state, and commercial environments. • Proven leadership at enterprise scale: Provides independent oversight and executive guidance across more than 20 major IT programs within a statewide modernization portfolio valued at over $770 million. • Connects boardroom priorities to breakroom realities: Combines engineering, program management, and change-leadership expertise to address both the strategic demands of transformation and the people responsible for making it succeed. • Author of a practical, published framework: The 5-Ps of Change (Routledge), gives leaders a clear, repeatable approach for identifying misalignment, strengthening execution, and accelerating adoption. • Insights leaders can use immediately: Keynotes and workshops that move beyond inspiration, equipping audiences with practical language, tools, and actions that convert transformation efforts into measurable, lasting value.
Speaking Topics
Signature Programs (6)
Every organization has watched a major change go live on time, on budget, dashboards green — and then quietly fail, because the technology deployed but the people never adopted. Drawing on 28+ years leading complex transformation across government, higher education, and enterprise, Dr. Donnell S. Josiah reframes “resistance” as a signal of misalignment and introduces the 5-Ps Framework — Purpose, Planning, Process, Performance, People — the five interdependent pillars where adoption is won or lost. Attendees leave with a shared language for diagnosing where a change is failing at the seams, and one concrete move to strengthen the weakest pillar in a transformation they are leading right now.
Key Takeaways
- Diagnose why a technically successful launch can still fail to deliver value — the gap between deployment and adoption
- Apply the 5-Ps Framework to locate the pillar where a transformation is losing alignment
- Leave with one practical, human-centered move to strengthen adoption on a current initiative
Audience
Executives and senior leaders responsible for change — COOs, CHROs, CIOs/CTOs, transformation and PMO leaders, public-sector program sponsors
Format
Duration
45 or 60-min keynote · half-day workshop available
Delivery
Much of what organizations label “resistance” is a rational response to insufficient voice, clarity, capability, and ownership. Drawing on 28+ years leading complex change, Dr. Josiah reframes resistance as data — a signal pointing to exactly where a change was designed without the people expected to carry it — and shows leaders how to replace persuasion-heavy change management with genuine participation and ownership.
Key Takeaways
- Read resistance as diagnostic data, not a character flaw
- Identify the ownership levers — voice, clarity, capability, trust — that turn pushback into buy-in
- Apply one participation move that makes the change theirs to carry
Audience
CHROs, HR and people leaders, OD and change practitioners
Format
Duration
45 or 60 minutes · workshop format available
Delivery
We launched it” is the most dangerous sentence in transformation. Go-live proves a system was deployed — not that anyone adopted it, that performance improved, or that value arrived. This session gives talent-development and L&D leaders a practical way to build and measure real adoption, not activity: the difference between delivery metrics and adoption metrics, the post-go-live scoreboard, and the 90-day window where change quietly lives or dies.
Key Takeaways
- Distinguish delivery metrics from adoption metrics
- Build a post-go-live adoption scoreboard
- Use the 90-day window — and the one question that catches failure early
Audience
L&D and talent-development leaders, training directors, enablement teams
Format
Duration
45 or 60 minutes · fits chapter meetings and webinars
Delivery
Your Experience with Donnell
Your perspective matters!
What was it like engaging with Donnell?