Robert H. Miles
Robert H. Miles, Ph.D.
Robert H. Miles

Robert H. Miles Founder and President, Corporate Transformation Resources, is a global thought and practice leader in the fields of corporate transformation and executive leadership. He has served CEOs as the principal process architect and supervisor of over 30 corporate transformations. A summary of insights from these experiences, titled “Accelerating Corporate Transformations – Don’t Lose Your Nerve!” appeared as a feature article in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of the Harvard Business Review; and it was reprinted in HBS OnPoint (Spring 2012). Transformation Leader’s Guide: The Complete Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) Method (Routledge, 2022) is his career-spanning book on leading rapid, enterprise-wide transformation, which is complemented by his new online course, Transformation Leader’s Guide: Online Course (Flevy.com, 2022).

Over the past two decades Bob has pioneered an Accelerated Corporate Transformation (ACT) methodology at such leading companies as Apple, Black & Veatch, General Electric, IBM Global Services, Infineon Technologies, National Semiconductor, Office Depot, PGA Tour, Rockwell International, Southern Company and Symantec, as well as a number of emerging high-tech companies and public utilities. Miles also is the author of a series of books on corporate transformation including Corporate Comeback (Jossey- Bass/Wiley, 1997), Leading Corporate Transformation (Josey-Bass/Wiley, 1997), and, BIG Ideas to BIG Results, with Michael Kanazawa (2nd Edition, Pearson, 2016).

Frequently serving as a Process Architect to executive teams as they plan, launch and execute their corporate transformation efforts, Bob helps new CEOS “take charge” and sitting CEOs launch the next major phase in their organization. A trademark of his approach has been the rapid, high-engagement, all- employee cascade, which launches the execution phase by quickly focusing everyone in the enterprise on a shared set of performance and cultural initiatives targeted for breakthrough results.

On the Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School faculties for many years, Miles taught in the MBA, Doctoral and residential programs at Harvard, which helped CEOs and their teams plan corporate transformations. He is co-founder of the Macro Organizational Behavior Society, (Miles, Macro Organizational Behavior, 1980), a convocation of elected global scholars held each year at HBS; and he was elected Chairman of the Organization and Management Theory Division of the Academy of Management.

His other books include The Organizational Life Cycle, Managing the Corporate Social Environment, The Regulatory Executives, Coffin Nails and Corporate Strategies.

Later, he was Isaac Stiles Hopkins Distinguished University Professor and Dean of the Faculty at the Goizueta Business School of Emory University.

Bob has served for over a decade as a faculty member at both the Stanford Executive Institute and at GE’s Crotonville Operations. He also served on the Editorial Review Boards of Management Science and Administrative Science Quarterly, and on the Advisory Boards of the Organizational Effectiveness Division of The Conference Board and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Very early in his career, Bob was an Operations Analyst at Ford Motor Company, a First Lieutenant (Armor) in the U.S. Army, Special Assistant to the Director of Research, Development and Engineering at U.S. Army Missile Command, and a Project Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Miles received a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia (where he has served on the Advisory Board) and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Corporate Transformation Bob Miles