About me

Ryan both researches and facilitates change in organizations.

As a workplace harmony promoter and organizational researcher Ryan Armstrong, Ph.D., helps others find practical, accessible ways to transform their work into something productive, sustainable, and meaningful. 

Considering often taken for granted assumptions and the behaviors that lead to sustainable learning, he has led dozens of workshops and been invited for talks on organizational change and well-being at prestigious universities throughout Europe.

His work has been featured in several high-quality peer-reviewed academic journals. He earned a Ph.D. in Business from the University of Barcelona on the topic of performance management, and is currently  a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona Department of Business, where he researches and lectures on the topics of leadership, operations management, and conflict management. 

Ryan grew up hearing about his parents’ struggles treating patients. What was interesting was that most of the problems they talked about weren’t a lack of knowledge or a lack of treatment options, they were related to administration and management.

“I always thought the way I would continue their mission would be through being a good manager. At first, like many, I thought I could learn on the job, so I worked in San Francisco to learn from the best. I read every book I could get my hands on. I remember thinking “these people must know what they are talking about. There must be great wisdom in these books and in the way companies are managed”. To an extent, that was true. But the theory I came upon was also disorganized, incoherent at times, inconsistent. There was not one theory of how to lead a good organization: there were thousands of them. Getting a PhD in business only exposed me to a greater level of disagreement about seemingly trivial things.

I found the solution by connecting the dots. Instead of pursuing a management science, I turned outward, to the complexity sciences, philosophy, social work, sociology, psychology. I found that there is way to bring about happy, productive, meaningful work, and that way is both evidence based and relies on your experience”.

The stakes are high. For most of us, work is mere drudgery. We spend most of our lives working, yet many of us do not particularly enjoy it, or even think it matters. Stress at work is higher than ever, and appears to be increasing. Many professions face increased burnout. What is ironic is that all the worry for doing our job well is likely driving us to lower individual performance, habituates bad practice, and reduces the ability of the organizations in which we work to adapt to a rapidly changing competitive environment.

His research is focus on providing comprehensive, evidence-based approaches to increasing well-being and productivity at work. Through multi-modal training, coaching, and facilitated problem solving he helps teams to identify and pursue what matters, more effectively.