Catherine Shinners is principal and founder of Merced Group.  Her work for clients is at the nexus of organizational change and design, social and digital technology implementations, and individual work practice to help people embrace new skills to support digital and network competencies

Based in Palo Alto, she's helped clients since 2006 bring the power of collaboration, community and enterprise social networking programs to leading companies from F100 high technology firms, to leading global banks and credit card firms, to a mid-size bio-technology firm and Silicon Valley tech startups.

Organizations have been optimized for efficiency and predictability, but not adaptability in a complex, hyper-connected world. People in organizations work and relate in 20th-century behavior patterns and mindsets. Leaders in companies worry about being dis-intermediated by upstarts who capitalize on fully networked business models.

Sometimes called “Future of Work” practices, they are a set of skills that empower individuals to navigate and thrive in networks, to build capacities for continuous learning, and supports new management practices that foster social and digitally enabled structures such as communities and adaptive teams.

Catherine speaks, blogs and writes about social business and is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia University’s Information and Knowledge Strategy Master’s program. She is also a member of a learning and practitioner network of global professionals, Change Agents Worldwide.  She contributed a chapter to Smarter Innovation: Using Interactive Processes to Drive Better Business Results with Change Agent colleagues. (published by the Ark Group in June 2014).