I’m an executive, leadership expert, and author, and have spent my career exploring large organizations from the inside. I look for the lessons from the real world that help people and teams thrive, and that make work a more human place for all of the humans in it.

I’m the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, April 2019), and of two cover stories in the Harvard Business Review: The Feedback Fallacy, (March/April 2019), and Reinventing Performance Management, (April 2015).

My first experiences of teams and leadership were as a student musician and conductor. I was fascinated by the unspoken understanding between people playing together and carried this fascination into the corporate world. I currently serve as the Senior Vice President of Methods and Intelligence, the data and research engine behind all the people stuff at Cisco. This organization aims to reveal the answers to some of the most challenging questions about work. How can we measure the experience at work reliably? Of the things that we can measure, which matter most? And how can we take what matters most and embed it into our people practices and systems?

Prior to this, I led Cisco's Leadership and Team Intelligence organization, which was focused entirely on serving teams and team leaders.

I live in Montclair, NJ with my wife and son. Music has been inside me for as long as I can remember. I revel in the rhythms of words, songs, and human interactions. I look for humor in everyday situations. I love what makes people weird.

You can connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter (@littleplatoons), or Instagram (@ashley_goodall). And if you’re someone who believes, as I do, that work can be better, for all of us, than it is today, then join The Freethinking Leader Coalition to learn more at freethinkingleader.org.