Richard O'Quinn

I study how people lead, decide, and organize under the most demanding conditions imaginable, and what those environments reveal about leadership and practice more broadly. My research examines how leaders make consequential decisions under uncertainty and time pressure, how embodied skill and expertise develop in operational settings, and how teams sustain coordinated performance when conditions are most demanding. My central argument is that organizations at the edge of their capability show us things about leadership and human coordination that ordinary settings conceal. This work sits at the intersection of practice-process theory and phenomenology, and draws on my twenty-three years of service across the US Army Infantry, the 75th Ranger Regiment, and Special Forces, experience that affords access to empirical settings and practitioner networks rarely available to management researchers. I bring this research and experience directly into the classroom and engagements with industry, government, defense, and law enforcement partners, using what extreme contexts reveal about leadership to help practitioners in any organizational setting decide, lead, and act more effectively.