Dawn Langley's Page

Where do you live and work (City)?

Live - Woking, Surrey. Work - nationally

What are your top professional skills?

Organisational Development
Change Management
Organisational design
Coaching and mentoring
Evaluation
Visual Research Methods
Narrative analysis

What kinds of management education and development services are you involved in?

Mainly work at the organisational level - major change inititatives, strategic development, diagnostics, financial modelling etc

What is your main interest in the AMED network?

networking, inspiration, collegiate discussion/debate, collaboration, personal development

Please share your favourite management development insight or quote.

Alice laughed. ’There’s no use trying,’ she said: ‘one can’t believe impossible things.’
‘I dare say you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast…’

Alice Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

What kind of person are you?

Morning

More about you (Short Bio or any other details you’d like people to know)

I have 25 years experience in the not for profit and public sectors as a manager, consultant, policy maker and funder. I was the first Director of Organisational Development for Arts Council England, an externally facing role, leading on the Thrive! programme and managing the completion of the Stabilisation and Recovery programmes (three major change management initiatives for arts organisations).

More recently I have been building my work as an independent consultant and current clients include Spread the Word, Arnolfini, Lighthouse (Brighton), Colchester Arts Centre, English Heritage and the Crafts Council. I have spent many years undertaking organisational diagnostics, reviewing business models and supporting organisational turnaround.

I am also an experienced researcher and evaluator having completed an MSc and now in the fourth year of a PhD in organisational learning. I specialise in narrative and visual research. I have five cats that choose to live with me, a passion for motorbikes and a strong sense of curiosity (probably caught from the cats!).

What I’d like from the AMED network is…

I would like to be able to use AMED for my own professional development, so a space where I can share my experiences and come across a wide range of different perspectives. I am particularly interested in the models and approaches that others are using and am equally happy to share my own. I am keen for it to be somewhere I can come for inspiration and informed debate.

What do you do for your own development?

I undertake a wide variety of formal and informal development. This can range from networking with other consultants to formal training courses on computer aided qualitative anaylsis. I have also been a member of action learning sets and read widely around topics that interest me. I like to think I am a reflective practitioner and use journals and photo diaries as part of my professional exploration.