Research-informed. Grounded in practice.
The Horizon Strategy Group connects strategy, people and practical implementation to help businesses of every size grow, improve and discover better ways of working.
Meet the founder behind the work
John Crowe, PhD
Founder, The Horizon Strategy Group
I started the firm because I believe most organizations want to do better, but they don’t always know how. I enjoy brainstorming with leaders and helping them discover more efficient ways to lead. The relationship between people and their work is hard and complicated, and I love finding ways to bridge that divide.
Dr. Crowe founded The Horizon Strategy Group to help businesses connect clear direction with better ways of working.
The Group’s approach is informed by industrial-organizational psychology: the study of how people work, make decisions and collaborate.
Before founding the firm, Dr. Crowe spent nine years in a large public school district of nearly 9,000 employees serving more than 52,000 students. He was an evaluation specialist, then Director of Enterprise Strategy and Innovation from 2020 to 2026. His work connected executive priorities, departmental implementation and governing-board decisions.
Dr. Crowe holds a Ph.D. in industrial-organizational psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. His published research looks at how teams learn from experience, what makes meetings work and how participation in decisions shapes engagement. He is a U.S. Navy veteran.
Explore selected experience and its relevance to your business →
Selected prior experience
-
Organizational effectiveness and design
Developed a proposed reorganization of all seven departments and divisions for the organization’s chief executive in 2023. Earlier, as a university research associate, conducted workflow analysis studies for three county government departments.
-
Strategic planning and execution
Helped the organization create two strategic plans and carry them out. Led the quarterly implementation cycle of the first, a 22-goal plan with about 300 dated tactics across 12 accountable leaders, and reworked its goals and timelines with department heads when COVID-19 disrupted it. The governing board adopted the revised plan. For the second, shared oversight of the seven cross-functional workstreams carrying it out and turned their priorities into decision items for the executive team.
-
Measurement and evaluation
Authored the measurement plan for the organization’s flagship goal, adopted by its governing board in 2026. Built and ran the board’s annual chief-executive evaluation for five cycles. Led a listening program with nearly 1,000 participants that informed the next strategic plan.
-
Change and team development
Developed the change-management guide for 14 workstream leads and the executive team, helped design the strategic plan’s succession tactics and delivered team training across 14 outpatient clinics. During the pandemic, led the organization’s crisis-response team in a school testing partnership with an academic medical center and first-authored its 2021 evaluation in JAMA Network Open. The study found that on-site testing more than doubled case detection.
-
Practical tools
Specified and built a coordination-application prototype with AI-assisted development tools to track priorities, decisions and dependencies across seven workstreams.
Principles in practice.
-
Start with the work, not the tool
Understand the problem before choosing a process, measure or technology.In practice We look at how requests, decisions and handoffs actually move before recommending a process, measure or piece of software. Sometimes the answer is a clearer routine rather than a new tool.
What the research says In research on technology acceptance, whether people saw a system as useful for their work was more strongly linked to its use than how easy it was to use.
Source: Davis (1989), MIS Quarterly.
-
Involve the people doing the work
Use their experience to understand the problem and test the proposed change.In practice Working sessions include the people who handle the work every day, not only leadership. They help describe the problem and try the proposed change before it is rolled out.
What the research says A review of 60 years of quantitative studies found that participation in the change process was generally associated with more positive reactions to the change.
Source: Oreg, Vakola and Armenakis (2011), Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.
-
Keep human judgment where it matters
Automate the clear and repetitive. Leave discretion with people.In practice Rules can handle routing, reminders and status updates. Approvals, exceptions and decisions that affect people stay with a named person, and the system shows them what they need to decide.
What the research says A human-factors model proposes deciding, function by function, what to automate and to what level, judging each choice mainly by its effects on human performance. Separate research on automation bias finds that people using imperfect decision aids make errors of omission and commission, and that experts are affected as well as novices.
Sources: Parasuraman, Sheridan and Wickens (2000), IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A; Parasuraman and Manzey (2010), Human Factors.
-
Measure what the decision needs
Define success, agree on a starting point and review results honestly.In practice Each measure has a written definition, an owner and a decision it informs. A starting point is recorded before anything changes, so later results can be compared fairly.
What the research says A classic management paper shows how reward systems can end up rewarding the behavior an organization is trying to discourage, while the behavior it wants goes unrewarded.
Source: Kerr (1995 reprint), Academy of Management Executive.
-
Build what can be maintained
Favor the simplest suitable solution, with clear ownership and support.In practice Before anything is built, we agree on who owns it, who maintains it and how it is documented. Where an existing product can be configured to do the job, we use it rather than building something custom.
What the research says By 2000, research on spreadsheets had consistently found errors to be common and non-trivial, which is why tools that a process depends on need review, documentation and an owner.
Source: Panko (2000), EuSpRIG proceedings.
-
Improve the work, not the pressure
Reduce avoidable friction without ranking people or treating higher output as the only measure of success.In practice Improvements target the process: waiting, rework, duplicate entry and unclear handoffs. Measures describe how the work flows, not how individuals rank.
What the research says Research on the job demands-resources model links high demands without matching resources to strain and burnout, and links resources such as support and feedback to engagement.
Source: Bakker and Demerouti (2007), Journal of Managerial Psychology.
Research is cited for context. Its authors and publishers do not endorse this firm.