Lisa Bodell

  • Founder & CEO of FutureThink
  • Bestselling Author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins
  • Global Leader on Culture Change focused on Simplification and Innovation

“Complexity is crippling our organizations. It’s stifling our people and keeping them from doing their most meaningful and impactful work.” Lisa Bodell, a global leader on simplification, collaboration, and innovation, has a solution. Lisa shows organizations how to eliminate complexity and leverage simplicity – unleashing creativity and sparking the energy so essential to innovate and compete in a rapidly changing world. FutureThink, which she founded in 2003, works with leading brands worldwide and has become the largest source of innovation research, tools, and training in the world. Lisa is the author of two groundbreaking books, Why Simple Wins: Escape the Complexity Trap and Get to Work That Matters and Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution. She ranks on the list of Top 50 Speakers Worldwide and captivates audiences with her energy and humor. Lisa’s keynotes leave audiences inspired to change and arms them with radically simple tools to get to the work that matters.

 

 



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Past Hosts Include:
  • 3M
  • Janssen Pharma
  • Fidelity
  • Adobe
  • Allstate
  • EmpiRx Health
  • Dell
  • Kraft
  • Samsung
  • Google
Rave Reviews About Lisa Bodell as a Speaker
Lisa has the winning combination you look for in a keynote speaker – she is insightful, engaging and energetic. She was the top rated speaker at two Google events and inspired our audience to start an innovation revolution.

Speech Overview: Lisa Bodell on Killing Complexity: Why Simple Wins - Get Sharable Link
Talks & Conversations with Lisa Bodell
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Killing Complexity - Why Simple Wins

Complexity is crippling our organizations. Unproductive meetings, irrelevant rules and reports, and endless emails keep people from doing the work that matters most. Worse, complexity dampens morale and creates feelings of futility. It doesn’t have to be this way. CEO and TED-talk veteran Lisa Bodel ...

Complexity is crippling our organizations. Unproductive meetings, irrelevant rules and reports, and endless emails keep people from doing the work that matters most. Worse, complexity dampens morale and creates feelings of futility. It doesn’t have to be this way. CEO and TED-talk veteran Lisa Bodell shows organizations how to unleash the energy, collaboration, innovation, and engagement lying in wait by embracing a mindset of simplification right now. This spirited presentation shows how small changes can have a profound impact on the organization’s people, competitiveness, and ability to adapt. Lisa offers techniques used by the nimblest of companies to save time, kill rules, and simplify everything. Drawing on research from her book, Why Simple Wins, Lisa’s energy, engaging stories, and interactive exercises prove that using simplicity as an operating principle is the surest path to organizational transformation.

You will learn:

• How simplification sparks action and enables groups to move faster with more focus than everyone else.
• Why simplification is not just a method but a mindset and a habit – a key to resilience and adaptability.
• How to create a workplace where there’s more time to innovate and think.
• How asking questions helps eliminate organizational and individual busywork that’s outlived its time.
• Web-based real-time interactive exercises reveal what’s holding people back from embracing simplification.
• How killing complexity increases trust, engagement, talent retention, and helps people be their best.

Leading Simplicity - A Roadmap

Embracing simplicity as an operational mindset can unleash the power of people to be their best and focus on work that really matters. But simplicity needs an advocate and leaders who step up to send a message that simplicity is a priority that will reap outsized results. In this presentation, Lisa ...

Embracing simplicity as an operational mindset can unleash the power of people to be their best and focus on work that really matters. But simplicity needs an advocate and leaders who step up to send a message that simplicity is a priority that will reap outsized results. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell delivers real world tools leaders can use to create a culture with simplicity in its DNA and a bias for action. Lisa, author of the bestseller Why Simple Wins, unpacks stories and insights leaders can use to inspire their people, ignite disruptive thinking, build agility, and turn problems into possibilities. With energy, humor, and revealing online interactive exercises, Lisa shows that simplicity is the catalyst that accelerates innovation, collaboration, engagement, and growth. Simplicity will create a sustainable competitive advantage because it’s the absolute foundation of resilience in the face of never-ending change.

You will learn:
• How to cultivate a dynamic culture of simplification that makes challenging outdated practices the norm, creating space for more 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, fostering a more balanced approach.
• Align teams in identifying and eliminating time-wasting habits, allowing them to reach their goals more quickly.
• Set the groundwork for enduring change and improved problem-solving by reducing stress and giving teams the space to think.
• Create a strategic advantage by better focusing teams, driving proactive change, retaining talent effortlessly, and outpacing the competition with increased agility.
• Online interactive exercises reveal what’s holding your organization back from embracing a mindset of simplicity.

Unleashing Innovation

If your organization is not innovating as fast as you’d like, it’s time to address it – before it’s too late. In most organizations, the very structures put in place to help them grow all too often hold them back. If you want people to approach change differently, you have to help them change their ...

If your organization is not innovating as fast as you’d like, it’s time to address it – before it’s too late. In most organizations, the very structures put in place to help them grow all too often hold them back. If you want people to approach change differently, you have to help them change their approach. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell delivers a high energy and inspiring call to arms to start a revolution in how we think and how we work. Lisa is founder and CEO of FutureThink, the largest source of innovation research, tools, and training in the world. Her insights help increase the capacity for innovation by shifting mindset and engaging everyone in the process of killing off the status quo. In this presentation, Lisa inspires people to think differently and provides the tools to solve problems that stand in the way of breakthrough innovation in your organization.

You will learn:
• How our current organizational values and structures, designed to help innovation take hold, often hold it back – and how to change that.
• How to unleash the dormant potential in teams by reigniting critical aptitudes such as curiosity, inquiry, and creative problem-solving.
• Practical yet provocative techniques for reinvention and innovation with current products and services.
• Proven methods that reignite change and transformation and make everyone a change agent.
• Examples of how even the smallest changes can have big impact.
• What’s holding your organization back from innovating through the use of online interactive exercises.

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Speaker News
<p>FutureThink</p>

FutureThink

FutureThink is the Lisa Bodell's award-winning management consulting firm.  Not only does it feature Lisa, but also workshops and accelerated learning sessions. FutureThink has already facilitated 25 this year as they help to continue the momentum and generate additional enthusiasm after Lisa’s talks. Participants learn practical tools they can implement with their teams.  Take a tour now..

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<p>Is Complexity Killing Your Organization’s Opportunities for Greater Success?</p>

Is Complexity Killing Your Organization’s Opportunities for Greater Success?

How deeply have you thought about the cost of complexity to your organization? It’s time for a pulse check. Do you believe you have an innovative culture but find teams have little time to focus on valuable, meaningful work –  trumped by meetings, emails, and reports? If yes, then you may be losing valuable employees and big business opportunities.

If this sounds familiar, then it’s time to admit that our true work culture is predicated on the work people do every day, not how our environment makes us feel, although that is a bonus. LISA BODELL, CEO of FutureThink and bestselling Author of Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins, helps organizations get to the root of their complexity, so that employees can simplify and get back to focusing on meaningful, value-based work, that drives business outcomes!

<p>1,500 Fidelity Employees Give High Praise for Lisa Bodell's <em>Why Simple Wins</em> Keynote</p>

1,500 Fidelity Employees Give High Praise for Lisa Bodell's Why Simple Wins Keynote

LISA BODELL recently gave her Why Simple Wins keynote to Fidelity employees and their post-event survey came back with 278 awesome replies!  Here are a few highlights:

“Was great! How we define what is ‘simple’ is key…makes me think differently about how I can do my work.”
“It was incredible how accurate her assertion was on how we naturally make things harder than we need to. This really resonated with me.”
“I liked the exercises that Lisa had the audience do. It was a great way to illustrate how complicated we can make things as an organization.”
“This was brilliant, fantastic.”
“Lisa provided practical ideas as well as being a tremendous presenter.”
“Lisa is very good, I hope to implement some of these ideas in my work.”
“I really enjoyed this topic! it is so relevant to the dynamic that we work in every day.”
“Lisa did an excellent job of demonstrating how we over complicate our daily lives, especially in the workplace. I have plans to ask my team, ‘What rules do we have that hinder your daily job?’ to see how many assumptions my own team has. I feel I benefited from this program and am excited to apply what I have learned to my daily role.”
“It reiterates small things matter. It's created a thought process to give attention to value added and non-value added tasks.”

When people hear this talk, they tell Lisa that they feel “Energized, Empowered and Invigorated” to start tackling workplace complexity with a different mindset. Lisa provides immediate takeaways that leave the audience feeling empowered with actionable tools.

<p>Lisa Bodell, Forbes contributor</p>

Lisa Bodell, Forbes contributor

Lisa is obsessed with simplification as a work and life hack. As founder and CEO of FutureThink in NYC, she's helped people at Google, Novartis and Accenture kill complexity and create space for innovation. When not delivering a keynote or TedX talk somewhere in the world, Bodell is writing books (Kill the Company and Why Simple Wins) or reading them. A board adviser for the Association of Professional Futurists and council member of the World Economic Forum, Lisa is also a carpooling mom of two. She has taught innovation and creativity at both American and Fordham Universities, and the North Pole is on her bucket list because it’s where every time zone converges.  Catch up on her latest thoughts.

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Books by Lisa Bodell
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Biography

“Complexity is crippling our organizations. It’s stifling our people and keeping them from doing their most meaningful and impactful work.” Lisa Bodell, a global leader on simplification, collaboration, and innovation, has a solution. Lisa shows organizations how to eliminate complexity and leverage simplicity – unleashing creativity and sparking the energy so essential to innovate and compete in a rapidly changing world. FutureThink, which she founded in 2003, works with leading brands worldwide and has become the largest source of innovation research, tools, and training in the world. Lisa is the author of two groundbreaking books, Why Simple Wins: Escape the Complexity Trap and Get to Work That Matters and Kill the Company: End the Status Quo, Start an Innovation Revolution. She ranks on the list of Top 50 Speakers Worldwide and captivates audiences with her energy and humor. Lisa’s keynotes leave audiences inspired to change and arms them with radically simple tools to get to the work that matters.

After earning her business degree from University of Michigan, Lisa launched her career at Leo Burnett in Chicago, where she discovered a gift for uniting strategically-driven ideas with forward-thinking themes. She went on to build two successful businesses before moving to New York and focusing on the simplification and innovation space with FutureThink.

Lisa brings a compelling perspective to the sought-after topics of simplification and innovation to over 100,000 people each year. A thought leader and serial entrepreneur, her transformational message has inspired executives at top-ranked organizations such as Google, SAP, Citigroup, and the Department of National Intelligence.

Lisa has contributed her expertise to a wide variety of media. She is a monthly contributor to Forbes and has frequently appeared in other media including: Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Inc., Harvard Business Review, and CNN. She has also been featured in many major books such as Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question, Adam Grant’s Originals, and AfterShock, the 50-year celebration based on futurist Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock.

Lisa has taught innovation at both American University and Fordham University and has a TED talk on the topic. She has served on the board of advisors of several organizations, including the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum, the United States National Security Agency, the Association of Professional Futurists, and the Novartis board of Diversity & Inclusion.