Lisa Bodell

People are drowning in the work of doing work and it’s sabotaging organizations. Our days are continually hijacked by the unplanned and unnecessary – unproductive meetings, outdated rules, irrelevant reports, and endless emails that dampen morale, creates feelings of futility, and can be detrimental to mental health. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell shows audiences a new way to unleash energy, collaboration, and innovation by embracing a mindset of simplification. This is not about getting organized or efficient – it’s about how small changes to make things simple can have a profound impact. Lisa’s insights, storytelling and interactive exercises make the case: adopting simplicity as an operating principle is the surest path to organizational transformation. “Our systems are designed for a world that’s manageable and predictable. That world is gone. It’s time to look with fresh eyes at how we work. When we simplify, we unleash energy and creativity that is being lost by adhering to the status quo.”

You will learn:

• Why simplification is not just a method but a mindset and a habit – a key to resilience and adaptability and improved mental capacity and focus
• How to spot and eliminate organizational and individual busywork that’s outlived its time
• Phone-based interactive polling and dynamic interactivity helps audiences discover surprising insights about what keeps them from doing their best work
• Why subtraction is more important than addition. There’s only so much time
• How killing stupid rules enables organizations and teams move faster and with more focus

Embracing simplicity as an operational mindset will unleash the power of people and create a sustainable competitive advantage. But building a culture of simplicity requires advocates and leaders who send a message that simplicity is a strategic priority and that it’s OK to challenge the status quo. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell delivers real-world insights leaders can use to inspire their teams, ignite disruptive thinking, build speed and agility, and turn problems into possibilities. With energy, humor, and revealing interactive exercises, Lisa shows how simplicity is the catalyst that accelerates innovation, collaboration, engagement, and growth. Building simplicity into organizational DNA creates a sustainable competitive advantage because it’s the absolute foundation of resilience in the face of never-ending change.

“We’ve got to give people permission to challenge how they work. People know what’s driving them crazy. Simplification changes everything and unleashes them to focus on transformative work.”

You will learn:

• Why culture comes down to the work people do every day. If you get the work right, you get the culture right.
• How to make it normal to challenge the norm, creating space for change and true innovation to happen.
  Drive an agenda that makes simplification a seamless part of your operating system; placing equal importance on eliminating work as adding it.
• When people aren’t drowning in the work of doing work there’s more engagement, less frustration, increased well-being, and improved retention.
• Set the groundwork for enduring change and improved problem-solving by reducing stress and giving teams the space to think and do the “work of work,” not just busy work.

In most organizations, the very structures put in place to help them grow all too often hold them back. As structures languish unchecked, people become overwhelmed with outdated processes, policies, reports, committees and meetings that frustrate them and hijack their workdays. Is it any wonder innovation becomes a challenge? In this presentation, simplicity expert Lisa Bodell shows how to increase the capacity for innovation by banishing unnecessary complexity. Making work simpler is the key to unshackling people to spend time and energy on their most important work. Lisa helps shift the organizational mindset – engaging everyone in the process of questioning the status quo. The tools and insights she provides help solve problems that stand in the way of breakthrough innovation.

“Getting the work right liberates people to apply their time and imagination in ways that drive performance and innovation.”

You will learn:

• How to make work simpler and reignite critical aptitudes such as curiosity, inquiry, and creative problem-solving.
• How companies are killing stupid rules to eliminate hurdles and focus people on work that leads to breakthrough innovation.
• Practical yet provocative techniques for reinvention and innovation with current products and services.
• Real-life examples of how even the smallest changes can have big impact.
• Discover what is hijacking people’s time through Lisa’s interactive audience polling.

Imagine what you could do with the time you spend sitting in meetings and writing emails every day. Complexity is killing companies’ ability to innovate and adapt, and simplicity is fast becoming the competitive advantage of our time. Drawing on research and themes from her latest book, Why Simple Wins, Bodell inspires leaders and their teams to proactively move beyond the feelings of frustration and futility that come with so much unproductive work in today’s corporate world, to create a corporate culture where valuable, essential, meaningful work is the norm. By learning how to eliminate redundancies, communicate with clarity, and make simplification a habit, individuals and companies can begin to recognize which activities are time-sucks and which create lasting value.
Using highly engaging stories and techniques, Bodell proves that by using simplicity as an operating principle, we can eliminate the organizational and individual busywork that consumes us every day, and instead spend more time on the work that matters.

Keynote Takeaways

• Get informed by examples that resonate: consumers will pay more for simpler experiences; people recommend companies that exemplify simplicity; employees are brand champions in companies that operate with simplicity.
• Identify areas for simplification within your organization; Learn techniques to make simplification a habit.
• Understand which tasks take the most (unnecessary) time both individually and as a team.
• Start to create a culture of simplification and exemplify its practices.

Bonus opportunity: Empower your audience immediately by pairing a breakout session with any of Lisa’s keynotes, where her team of FutureThink trainers will teach the techniques to make simplification and innovation a daily practice!

Winning innovators embrace change—do you? What holds you and your organization back from better innovating, every day?
In too many organizations, we’re stuck in the land of status quo. We’ve forgotten how to think differently, and lack the simple tools to solve problems creatively. The very structures put in place inside organizations to help them grow all too often hold them back. This keynote is an inspirational call to arms: to start a revolution in how we think and how we work. If you want people to approach change differently, you have to help them change their approach.

Using engaging interactivity, real-world examples and practical advice, Bodell shares how teams can actually do less to achieve more. Leaders learn why providing guardrails to their teams instead of handcuffs can reignite critical aptitudes such as curiosity, inquiry, creative problem-solving, and more.

Keynote Takeaways:

• Everyone is a change agent
• Change involves a toolkit, not a process
• Reignite curiosity, inquiry and creative problem solving
• Small changes can make a big impact

Bonus opportunity: Empower your audience immediately by pairing a breakout session with any of Lisa’s keynotes, where her team of FutureThink trainers will teach the techniques to make simplification and innovation a daily practice