Duncan Brand and the future of work and leadership

Duncan Brand is a leadership and organizational effectiveness advisor, author of Mind the Gap, and founder of Intrinsic Leader, where he works with organizations to build stronger leadership systems, healthier cultures, and more thoughtful approaches to change. Across his career, he has worked inside and alongside nearly 100 organizations of different sizes and sectors, including healthcare, technology, finance, and public-sector environments, helping leaders navigate succession, team effectiveness, and culture transformation.

The ideas behind Duncan’s work were sharpened in environments where leadership was being tested in real time. He worked at the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis and in healthcare during COVID, watching leaders face situations they had not truly been prepared for. In those moments, technical expertise was not enough. What surfaced instead was how often organizations still relied on old command-and-control instincts, even while asking people to be adaptable, creative, and deeply engaged. That tension became central to the work Duncan does now and to the argument at the heart of his book, Mind the Gap.

His perspective is grounded in the belief that work has changed, but much of leadership training has not. While companies talk about innovation, agility, and readiness for an AI-shaped future, many still promote people into management without helping them learn how to lead other human beings.