Strategic Design for Complex Problems
The challenges leaders face are increasingly complex, and technology is changing faster than most organizations can adapt. I help leaders see the underlying problems, choose new directions, bring their people with them – while considering broader issues.
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Dr. Anna-Maria Rivas McGowan
Strategic Executive Advisor · NASA Senior Technical Executive for Complex Systems Design (retired)
When technology, people, organizations, budgets, and societal challenges pull in different directions at once, the problem is messy. That is where I work. I bring the rigor of a researcher and engineer, the judgment of someone who has taken ideas from theory to flight, the insight of an organizational scientist, and the ability to explain it all clearly, so you can see the real problems and act on them.
Who I work with
Executives, boards and leadership teams in industry, government, research and academia, around the world. Clients range from large organizations to small teams facing high-stakes decisions.
Selected results
Recent client work
- A strategy stress test whose ideas, including major investments totaling over $350M, the client adopted.
- An independent review and long-range vision for a client who came back for more work.
- Investment advisors who used the ideas and guidance to make investment decisions.
At NASA
- A NASA satellite team who used bespoke workshops that I created to make several changes to their team’s approach, commenting: “If we had done this five years ago, we would be in better shape today.”
- A NASA senior leadership team used my problem formulation to help identify underlying technical and organizational problems, and engaged their organization in my bespoke workshops, leading to collaboratively developed solutions to existing problems and a letter of commendation from a NASA senior executive.
33 years at NASA · DARPA · NSF · NATO
“Much of [the] groundwork you laid in complex systems / design … are all paying major dividends in … [your] aspirations … are largely instantiated at this point … Simply wonderful.”