Mal has worked for more than 20 years with senior executives in a broad spectrum of for-profit and non-profit organizations to help them implement systemic changes that preserve cultural values while measurably improving performance and productivity. He has worked in many industries, including health care, insurance and financial services, foundations and human services.  Mal is co-lead of CFAR’s Health and Hospital Systems practice group, and has deep experience across the health care ecology including large hospitals, integrated health systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals and health care alliances. Trained as an ethnographer, Mal has focused on the challenges related to changing organizational behavior in service of new strategic imperatives.  He co-leads CFAR’s change management group, called The Campaign Approach to Change, which offers an innovative approach to leading and managing change.

Mal’s academic training makes him sensitive to how people think—to why and how differences matter, and the impact those differences have on whether results are achieved or not. In his work with clients, he designs processes that harness the often unspoken attitudes of employees and managers, sweeping people into the process and working with, rather than against resistance to generate improved performance.  Mal also studies the role and framing of play in the workplace or "playful work,” and applies his understanding of this idea in ways that help clients innovate in the service of productivity. His work has included system-wide change, board development, executive development, team-building, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring, performance management and cultural diversity projects.

Skills/Knowledge/Abilities

• Initiative Design - Knows how to pull together people and resources to support change efforts
• Strategy with Top Teams - Works with leaders and their teams to set direction
• Organizational Development - Builds capabilities that support strategic directions

Recent Projects

• For a large health system—worked with the board chair on the board’s role in setting strategic direction, and with the chief operating officers of hospitals in the system to enact their role in strategy; also helped create integrative structures to tighten connection and communication across the system at both strategic and operating levels.
• For a non-profit community health corporation— helped the multi-hospital group reinvigorate and refocus their strategic priorities in the context of the changing healthcare landscape, and identify needed resources to achieve their objectives to gain better access to capital, technology and clinical assets.  
• For a large private foundation—led a systemic effort to change the way state and local government manage foster care and adoption programs. Improved efficiency of many organizations and introduced innovative techniques for managing change.  

Professional Facts

Ph.D. in Folklore, University of Pennsylvania

Faculty member, Program in Organizational Consultation, The William Alanson White Institute, New York

American Folklore Society Long-range Planning Committee

Member, International Society for the Psychoanalytical Study of Organizations

Member, AK Rice Institute, Philadelphia Center on Organizational Dynamics

Selected Writing

"Managing Strategic Policy Initiatives."
(with D. Stark) 1994. Building Support for Innovation Inside Child Welfare Agencies. 1999.

"A Working Life" and "Patterns of Change,"
films screened at the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Festival of Independent Film and Video.