John Austin, PhD

Strategic thinking is a core skill of adaptive leaders who enable your business to thrive amidst constant uncertainty. Dr. Austin identifies the key barriers to strategic thinking and how successful leaders overcome these challenges. Building from the work outlined in his book Unquestioned Brilliance, participants in this session will consider the key practical actions that they can consider to keep specific strategic initiatives moving and to also help make their organizations, and their own careers, more resilient in the face of strategic shifts. The session will include application of several techniques designed to embed strategic thinking into day-to-day work.

It is often easiest not to act when confronted with a daunting challenge.  Yet, action inspires. Dr. Austin challenges participants to navigate a change process in a way that builds momentum, reduces change resistance and minimizes unanticipated barriers. Build from an interactive case of a significant change initiative (the signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers), participants work through five keys to leading successful changes. This session is inspiring, yet practical. Participants leave the session with a shortlist of questions and actions to drive a change forward.

It is interesting to listen to experts tell us what they think will happen in the future. However, expert insight is far more useful when taken as input into our own mapping of possible industry futures. After examining the risks of overconfidence, confirmation bias, and conventional wisdom. Dr. Austin introduces a technique to prioritize and connect industry uncertainties. Participants work together to map key industry uncertainties. This topic is well suited for an opening session (to inform conversations at the conference) or as a closing session (to bring together provocative points made throughout the conference)

Innovation requires insight, translation of insight to action, and successful replication of the action. Dr. Austin tells the stories of inspirational people and organizations that have managed to navigate the innovation process from insight to sustained action. Participants are introduced to practical techniques to jump-start this process and apply it to their work. Participants are challenged to look for sources of insight, push beyond inertia, and act.

We rely on teams more than ever to meet increasingly challenging goals. The gap for many team leaders is not the one between ignorance and knowing, it is the gap between knowing and doing – we see the dysfunction but do not have time or energy to fix it. We will experiment with several practical techniques for creating and sustaining high-performing teams and removing barriers to collaboration and explore the four areas of common team leadership dysfunction: creating, motivating, coordinating, and deciding.