Personal Profile

Chris GagneEnterprise Performance Consultant & Developmental Coach
Tākaka, New Zealand

I help leadership teams escape the $37B/yr "Agile" transformation circus and achieve radical adaptability by redesigning organizations for performance and dissolving the invisible patterns that keep them stuck.

Enterprise Performance Consultant & Developmental Coach. Former product leader w/successful startup exit and Agile Coach turned whole-organisation designer. After twenty years watching companies burn millions on methodology tourism, I now redesign organizations from first principles—strategy, structure, people, rewards, and process—for market leadership. Everything else is managed decline in the long-run.

I change destinies, not terminology. I'm informed by proven frameworks, not enslaved to them. I use Org Topologies™, flow economics, Large-Scale Scrum, systems thinking, and Cynefin to create organizations that respond to markets in weeks, not years. Consider: Not just "cross-functional Scrum teams"—whole-company alignment where teams own outcomes end-to-end as teams-of-teams. One company-wide backlog delivering systemic value, not fifty local optima. Value flowing continuously through the system, not rotting in queues.

Results: Lead time down 35-50%. Customer value shipped weekly if not daily. CEO decision to whole-company execution in weeks. Bureaucracy dissolved.

The deeper work: I develop leaders while transforming systems. Through Aletheia Coaching—integrating evidence-based developmental psychology, somatic techniques, and contemplative practice—I help executives dissolve the unconscious patterns that sabotage change. I address the human operating system, not just the organizational one. Change holds because we've transformed both.

Credibility: Edmund Hillary Fellow—world's first Global Impact Visa, 1 of 533 from 3,400+ applicants. Elite UCLA Anderson MBA (top 15% of class). Delivered transformation across four continents, from startups to Fortune 500s.

I work with: Executives ready to redesign their entire organization's operating system. P&L responsibility, 150-3000 person org, genuine consequences from poor performance. Not here for procurement-led SAFe installations or the like; I've seen where that goes and want nothing of the very real damage it causes.

Availability: Highly selective. Executive advisory for global leaders ready to own their transformation. Based in New Zealand's South Island (optimal for US West Coast and APAC coverage) with partner Bianca Hennings—APAC's first Certified Aletheia Coach.