Matthew Duke
Management Consultant Senior Manager
Accenture
Matthew Duke is Accenture’s Florida Education Practice Lead, serving K-12 and college and university clients across the state. Matthew brings 20+ years of consulting experience – primarily in the ERP/organizational transformation space – across the education, government, and non-profit sectors to help his clients solve their toughest challenges. Matthew also spent eight years of his career in higher education administration and on graduate faculty at the Montgomery campus of Auburn University. Matthew brings extensive experience in Organizational Change Management, large and small group data collection and facilitation, and large-scale program evaluation management and execution.
Why did you choose to join the Sterling Board of Directors, and what have you gained from the experience?
I have been studying, teaching and, consulting in the field of public-sector organizational performance for more than 25 years. In fact, I wrote my dissertation in the late 1990s on the application of Total Quality Management to empower line workers in state and local governments. My hope is that by joining the Sterling Board of Directors I’ll have the opportunity to continue learning and sharing about the evolving trends in the field.
You have 20+ years of management consulting experience. Can you tell us one, if not the most major, opportunity for improvement you see initially when you meet with clients to help through complicated public-sector transformation initiatives? Is there that through-line or are these OFIs highly dependent on client sectors, size, etc.?
The primary impediment I see, time-and-time again, to the success of large-scale, public-sector transformation initiatives is the lack of a well-formed and tested governance model. Governance models can be easy to draw up, especially when organizational structures and reporting lines are clear. However, when initiatives span a broad enterprise, with disaggregated power nodes, governance models can become much trickier. Too often governance models prove to be no more than paper tigers when pressure is applied and are ineffective in supporting the forward progress of projects. Governance models should be tested early and often throughout a project to determine their effectiveness, as opposed to waiting until deep into an initiative when tough decisions often have to be made.
If you could take a week off from your regular life to immerse yourself in learning something new, what would it be?
My family gave me a guitar for my recent birthday, and I have a goal of learning to play a song by the year’s end. I suppose a week of immersion wouldn’t hurt.
For people who would like to follow up on you and/or your work, where may they find you?
Follow me on twitter at @mldukephd, and connect with me on LinkedIn here.