David Moscow, Co-founder and OD expert

The Moscow family name has its own legacy of entrepreneurial spirit and courage. In 1908, David’s grandfather wanted something more for himself and his family and decided to leave Latvia for the United States. They set sail but never made it to the New World having been hoodwinked by the captain who dropped them off in Barrow-in-Furness. This legacy is forever etched into the name ‘Moscow’ – an anglicised version of their Latvian name. With grit they worked hard to make the most of their new, unexpected situation, and it’s easy to see this familial spirit of adventure and fortitude in the way David worked and continues to engage with the world.

A pioneer in the relatively nascent field of organisational development, David was always thinking creatively to untangle knotty problems for his clients. He gave the example of an American bank in London where some of the Operations functions were not operating effectively or efficiently, despite an upgrade to a new computer system. The Head of Operations thought that he would have to increase staffing levels, but after David conducted an interview survey he suggested a different and novel approach. He advised the Operations Head and the General Manager not to take their normal “talking head” approach, but to engage their staff in the problem, by setting up a series of weekly lunchtime meetings of small groups of mixed level staff, facilitated by David, to review the problems they faced and to generate ideas and solutions for improvement. At the end of a six week period the groups presented their conclusions to the senior management at ”A Night at the Opra” (Operations Performance Review and Analysis) at a dinner in a smart local hotel. The changes to working practices and methods that the senior management accepted and adopted resulted rapidly in a double-digit gain in productivity and efficiency without the need for any more staff. The Head of Operations also learned a lot about how he needed to change his approach to managing his staff. After a future merger, this company would come to be known as JP Morgan.

A problem, an ambitious solution, real impact.

This year marks 56 years of positive impact at Sheppard Moscow – and it all began with David and Colin.  Today, we aim to occupy that sweet spot between how a client is working on their strategy and their business objectives, all tethered to the deep leadership development work we do. It was a lovely full circle moment to listen to David speak of how tracking impact was woven into his methodology and how that resonates with our practice in 2025.

Discussing legacy in ‘unprecedented times’ is particularly fascinating. We have spoken extensively about the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) landscape organisations are working to navigate. But organisations have weathered similar storms before. David and Colin were working with leadership through the introduction of computers in the workplace, moving from terminal-based computing to networks. You can imagine the upheaval and uncertainty, but David’s approach then is the same as how we approach AI now – this technology is a tool, the question is, how can we nurture and organise the human systems to make best use of them?

It might seem obvious, but humans continue to human. The fundamentals of how we behave, interact, make decisions and form relationships endures. Alex posed a current challenge to David around boosting efficiency through leadership development against the clock. David lit up, he stopped to think, and then with great clarity shared how he would have – and did – approach the challenge. In the late 60s and 70s David was engaged to bring disparate leadership teams together to develop strategy. He described how he would facilitate the leaders to reach a deep level of trust through authentic connection, and this co-created environment of honesty would then enable the ‘real’, honest conversations that needed to be had for the team to then ‘do’ strategy. This practice is reflected in what we now call a lifeline, which is part of our authentic leadership work – an intervention in which leaders undertake a process of discovery and sharing with each other. A new name, but an enduring practice.