In a world awash in profound change and at a time when everything is on the table, Polly LaBarre helps leaders make sense of and creatively respond to the forces buffeting their organizations. A bestselling author, speaker, and thinker who’s advised top global organizations, Polly’s mission for the past 20 years has been to make every kind of organization fundamentally more resilient, innovative and inspiring.
Her insights embolden and equip leaders at every level to make a meaningful impact. Polly is an inspiring and provocative voice on the big ideas and important questions that will shape the future of organizations, work, and collective progress.
Polly’s work is driven by three core questions: 1) How do we support human flourishing? 2) How do we cultivate the audacity of imagination required to tackle our most intractable problems? 3) And, how do organizations and individuals change how they change to become endlessly resilient?
To make genuine progress on those questions, Polly studies and works with progressive organizations, creates curriculum, and runs experiments for unleashing creativity, expanding collaboration, and accelerating change.
As co-founder of the Management Lab (with Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini), Polly spent the last decade working to develop a methodology, platform and practical tools for building organizational capability and accelerating change. Polly and her colleagues deployed that pioneering approach to collaborative innovation in a range of large-scale experiments in “hacking management” inside leading companies and across a global community of some 35,000 management innovators.
Polly is the coauthor of the bestselling book Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win (which The Economist named a “Book of the Year” and called “a pivotal work in the tradition of In Search of Excellence and Good to Great”). She was a member of the original team of Fast Company magazine, where she played a central role in the remarkable success of a magazine that recast the conventional wisdom on working, leading, and winning.
A sought-after speaker, moderator, and interviewer, Polly has delivered hundreds of keynote addresses around the world and developed and hosted numerous events. Her writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including Fast Company, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune.com, the McKinsey Quarterly, and The Huffington Post. In addition to frequent television appearances on CNBC, PBS’s Nightly Business Report, Good Morning America, and the Today Show, Polly has also been a business and innovation correspondent for CNN where she produced regular segments on big ideas and best practices from the world of business and beyond.
Polly is a passionate (and experimental) gardener, an ardent cook, and a devoted yogi. She serves on the board of CitySeed, a nonprofit working to build a just and healthy food system and economic opportunity in New Haven, CT. A graduate of Yale University, Polly lives with her family in New Haven.
A monster wave of change has set off a vast reckoning with our taken-for-granted beliefs about every aspect of how and where work gets done. Every leader today must grapple with the inescapable imperative to create and embrace a comprehensive agenda for meaningful change on the design of work and the interconnected urgent challenges of our time—deep inequities, structural dehumanization, environmental calamity. Polly LaBarre takes leaders on a journey across this new landscape—inspiring them with fresh thinking on the work of leadership and equipping them with powerful new approaches for this new work order, including:
“I would like to tell you that the Planetree Audience loved your presentation! Great job! I heard comments that you were the best keynote we have ever had by far! Thank you again for the presentation and also meeting with our staff afterwards. It was sensational!”
“Polly hit it out of the park. She was warm and well received. Attendees loved how she kept the concepts simple and digestible. We loved having her.”
“She is truly gifted in making connections and keeping all engaged.”
“We could not have had a better presentation to close out our Wednesday session. Your insight on innovation in the workplace as well as how we can better incorporate innovation into our core company DNA was a hit!”
“I had high expectations, but you completely exceeded them! You were absolutely brilliant on all fronts: content, delivery, timing, storytelling, and more. Everyone I talked to cited your talk as the highlight of our conference.”
“Polly was FABULOUS!!! Articulate, provoking, exciting, strategic, practical, humble…a good representation for women!!! Everything I was hoping for. I would recommend her!”
“She was spot on. Did exactly what we needed. I love that woman!”
“I had high expectations, but you completely exceeded them! You were absolutely brilliant on all fronts: content, delivery, timing, storytelling, and more. Everyone I talked to cited your talk as the highlight of our conference.”
“Polly was FABULOUS!!! Articulate, provoking, exciting, strategic, practical, humble…a good representation for women!!! Everything I was hoping for. I would recommend her!”
