Organization design and workforce strategy for CEOs and CHROs
I design the structure, roles, skills and workforce plan your business needs next. I work fractionally, two to three days a week, or through a fixed four-week diagnostic.
Three ways to work together
Start small with the diagnostic, or bring me in as your senior lieutenant. Either way you get the structure, the jobs and the skills worked out before the next system or reorganization lands.
Workforce Architecture Diagnostic
A clear read on your organization and the decisions ahead, built from your own HR data and conversations with your leaders.
- Structure scan: spans, layers and cost by layer
- Job architecture health check
- Critical roles and bench strength
- Pipeline math: the hiring, promotion and retention rates your leadership goals require
- AI exposure by role family
- A 90-day roadmap of the decisions you face
Fractional Workforce Architect
For three to six months I work as a senior lieutenant to you. I build the org design, job and career architecture, skills taxonomy and workforce plan, including how AI changes the work in each role, and I bring your leaders along.
Architecture Build
One defined build: an organization redesign, a job architecture and leveling project, or a skills inventory with proficiency levels.
What they say on the first call
- “We are changing the organization.”
- “Our leaders need to operate differently.”
- “Our talent systems are not producing what we need.”
- “We need to build capability at scale, including for AI.”
- “We know we have a problem, and we are not sure what the problem is.”
Same start every time
I talk with your executive team and learn what you have already tried. Then I come back with a plan and the decisions you need to make.
I do not assume the answer is training. Most structure problems start in how roles, levels and decision rights are set, so that is where I look first.
Proof from the roles where I built it
Most of this work comes from full-time leadership roles, and I name the role so you know where it happened. The last group is my advisory work since 2023.
Organization and workforce architecture
One career architecture for a global network
As Regional SVP, Talent and Learning, dentsu (co-led the global work)I brought the method I first built at Merkle to dentsu. In the US business, three in four people who left did so within three years, with no visible future at the company. We collapsed more than 100 job families and 15,000 role descriptions into 13 job families and 10 levels, leveled on accountability, solutioning and complexity. Phase one mapped 15,000 North American employees into three new service lines. We then extended the framework worldwide.
45,000+ employees mapped globally. Minimal departures, and engagement rose during the restructure.
A skills-based organization in Workday
As Chief Learning Officer, MerkleMerkle was growing fast, and career paths didn’t exist yet. Working across the organization, we built a framework around the skills we knew were critical, with 15 consolidated job families and 10 career levels. To become a skills-based organization, we defined skills and target proficiencies for every role at every level and validated them with senior leaders. Employees rated their own skills in Workday, and managers validated the ratings.
10,000 employees on one framework. We customized Workday so employees could lay their skills profile over any role in the company and see a clear development path to it. Leaders gained a standard staffing model, a pricing tool and utilization data. Right people, right skills, right price, right time.
Redesign, turnaround and merger at a utility
As Principal Consultant, Organizational Development and Change, Constellation EnergyAt BGE, I led the largest organization redesign in the utility’s history. I met weekly with BGE’s executive team and facilitated redesign work with more than 200 people across sub-project teams. At the Ginna nuclear plant, I was change lead to the site leader through a turnaround after Constellation acquired it. I also directed change management and integration planning for the proposed Constellation and FPL merger.
At BGE, span of control rose from 6.9 to 11.4, and no unit kept more than four layers. No involuntary reductions.
Succession and the leadership pipeline
As Regional SVP, Talent and Learning, Americas, then Global Chief Learning Officer, dentsuI built and ran dentsu’s succession planning process for the Americas, including quarterly talent reviews, and supported our Americas CEO in global talent reviews. We required ready successors for 43 critical senior roles and ran a talent marketplace every three months. Leading with Strengths, our CliftonStrengths-based program with one-to-one coaching for senior leaders, developed the people on those slates.
60% of critical senior roles filled internally, against a 50% target. Leading with Strengths won dentsu’s global North Star award in 2022.
One talent function from many
As Regional SVP, Talent and Learning, dentsuI merged talent and learning resources scattered across 250 boutique marketing agencies into one Talent and Organizational Effectiveness center of excellence. The team of 40 served 15,000 employees, with three service pillars and a full role architecture. A centralized learning operations team ran the systems underneath. A leadership and professional development team built level-based programs, and talent business partners delivered technical training through capability academies.
$3M lower annual cost, with more leadership, technical and professional development for the business.
Ending the fourth-quarter layoff cycle
As Chief Learning Officer and Senior HR Business Partner, MerkleAgencies often cut staff in the fourth quarter and rehire in the first to make the numbers. Our Great Place to Work data showed people felt like commodities, so we stopped the practice.
Engagement jumped, and Merkle was trending toward Top 100 recognition by year three, while the company grew from 600 to 10,000+.
Leaders and people data
Connecting people data to business results
As Global Chief Learning Officer, dentsuWe combined learning, HR, Glint engagement, finance, operations and client NPS data into one dataset by country and service line, and built a global learning analytics dashboard on top of it. Using Workday Skills Cloud, we mapped the courses behind 80% of training hours to a skills taxonomy. We segmented every learner by behavior, and every course earned one of four calls from its usage and ratings: Preserve, Promote, Refine or Revive.
We learned to judge every program on evidence. We saved time and money by promoting high-impact courses to a wider audience and improving popular courses that were not yet landing.
Fundamentals of Leadership, from Merkle to the Americas
Built as Chief Learning Officer at Merkle, then scaled at dentsu as Regional SVP and Global Chief Learning OfficerAt Merkle I built the Merkle Management Training Program, a week-long, 40-hour program for senior managers that ran quarterly. I taught most of it, and members of the executive team taught several sessions. It carried Merkle’s culture through rapid growth. I also built Fundamentals of Leadership for mid-level managers: three-hour live sessions every spring and fall in small peer groups, with new content each cycle based on what leaders asked for and what the business needed. Every leader left with an action plan and coaching support. After dentsu acquired Merkle, we carried the program into the larger company. When the pandemic hit, we moved it fully online for 2,500 people leaders in more than 100 live sessions, and the results held. By 2023 it ran across the Americas in English, Spanish and Portuguese.
In 2022 alone: 4,233 enrollments, 2,466 completions across 111 sessions. 96% rated the facilitation positively and 86% said they would apply the skills on the job, with response rates above 80%.
Advisory work since 2023
Enterprise supply chain talent transformation
Global aerospace and defense companyI consolidated talent enablement resources from several business units and corporate functions into one enterprise team with a common operating model, still connected to the businesses. I designed a skills-based strategy linking career architecture, role requirements and proficiency to critical supply chain capabilities.
A sourcing capability academy launched as the first pilot.
A culture playbook for an HR leadership team
Loyola University MarylandI built a culture playbook with the HR leadership team, ran a team assessment and facilitated conflict resolution across the team.
A cave rescue simulation for health system executives
Novant Health, with Grand DynamicsWith Grand Dynamics, I built an immersive cave rescue simulation for 75 Novant Health executives to practice leading under pressure as part of the system’s culture work.
Todd Walther
For 25 years I have worked in the gap between a company’s strategy and what employees experience the Monday after. I was Global Chief Learning Officer at dentsu, where I led talent and capability for 65,000 people and launched the company’s first enterprise AI enablement strategy with Microsoft, Google, AWS and Adobe. Before that I built talent functions at Merkle, Under Armour and Constellation Energy.
I spent my free time climbing and skiing in the Tetons while I co-founded and built Grand Dynamics with my brother. We used outdoor adventure, physical challenge and applied business psychology to help teams and executives work better together. Roped to a partner on a steep granite wall, you learn quickly how people behave under pressure. That lesson, my training in organizational psychology and 25 years of building and rebuilding organizations all shape how I see the work.
I live in Ellicott City, Maryland, and work with clients across the United States.
- Education
- M.S., Applied Industrial/Organizational Psychology, University of Baltimore. M.S., Experiential Education, Minnesota State University, Mankato. B.A., English and Psychology, College of William and Mary.
- Credentials
- SPHR. LaMarsh Certified Master of Managed Change. EQ-i 2.0, MSCEIT and Six Seconds certified. ATD Certificate in Human Performance Improvement.
- Teaching
- Former adjunct faculty, Georgetown University and the University of Baltimore.
Grand Dynamics International
Immersive leadership programs, designed with my brother Tim Walther. When a client wants a team to learn by doing, I bring Grand Dynamics in as a partner.
BoardForward
Board development sessions for nonprofits, starting with a fundraising module that helps board members raise money with confidence.
Start with a 30-minute conversation
Tell me what is changing in your organization. I will tell you whether a diagnostic, a fractional engagement or neither fits.