Joel Yanowitz has over 30 years’ experience helping leaders address pressing business and organizational challenges. Joel is known for his ability to help leaders dramatically improve performance through leveraging the human side of the enterprise. His work with top teams is focused on generating alignment and accelerating the pace of execution. With start-ups, where founders and leaders need to take smart action under conditions of high complexity and uncertainty, his work focuses on building the capacity for rapid learning and improvement – particularly when dealing with high conflict /high-stakes situations.

His clients have included venture-backed start-ups, growth stage, and large companies, including NatWest Bank, Strava, Prime Roots, Electronic Arts, Travelocity.com, ATT, FedEx, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Nissan, Clorox, Current TV, The Coca Cola Company, Daimler Automotive, and British Petroleum. He has also had numerous clients in the education world, including non-profits organizations, foundations, and school districts. 

In addition to his consulting expertise, Joel has held leadership roles building businesses, managing sales, and launching new organizations. As co-founder of Innovation Associates, from 1978-1995 he helped pioneer the body of work known as Organization Learning as described in fellow co-founder Peter Senge’s landmark books The Fifth Discipline and The Dance of Change. From 1995-2000, he was a Vice President of Arthur D. Little, a global management consulting company, where he led the Organization Practice and co-led the Strategy Practice in North America. In 2000 he founded The Cascade Group.

Joel has served on a number of corporate and non-profit Boards. He lives outside of San Francisco, where he enjoys tennis and mountain biking and holds a fourth-degree black belt in Aikido.