Discover What's Possible

Keynotes, speeches & workshops

Michael is an acclaimed professional keynote speaker and offers a wide variety of topics to help his audiences get unstuck and get going on the stuff that matters. Explore his most popular keynote topics here.

Clear & Clean™ teams

Many teams in organizations are neither clear on what they're doing nor "clean” in how they work together. Under a façade of politeness and good will, leaders fail to create the space for the team to thrive, individuals give up responsibility for the team's success, and everyone pursues their own agenda. In short, the whole is often less than the parts.

Teams can become Clear & Clean through a number of processes, including:

• Individual and team coaching to help "clean up” dysfunctional relationships, establish new protocols of communication and behavior, and rehearse more productive ways of engaging in the work with each other.
• Strategic planning, giving individuals and teams a better sense of what is the Great Work that needs to be done. You can read an article by Michael on Great Work here.

Strategic Planning

Most strategic planning consumes a large amount of time to create an unusable document, which contains a vague and unachievable vision that is accompanied by a long and confusing list of things to do. Many strategic plans end up gathering dust, whilst many employees have little idea how their actions connect with the bigger picture.

Here are three principles that influence how Michael leads strategic planning sessions:

• Know what you're saying "no” to. It's easy (and often expected) to say "yes” to everything that comes along. Most teams have too much work to do, but find it hard to make the bold choices. The concept of Great Work, Good Work and Bad Work helps to make your choices clear. You can read an article by Michael on the differences here.
• Keep the plan alive. To make the strategic plan active, containable and usable, Michael uses a structure that he's adapted from Proctor & Gamble's planning process. The Vision-Strategy-Objective-Tactic strategic planning process not only creates a plan that can be captured on a single page, but forces people to make choices that connect "the doing bits" (that is, the tactics) to "the point" (that is, the Vision). You can download a blank template of the VSOT here (PDF).
• "Plans are useless, planning is useful." The process of creating the strategic plan often has more impact that the plan itself. The process should be creative, provocative, realistic and engage all the key stakeholders.

Brand-driven change

According to a recent article in the OD Practitioner, only 11% of change programs meet or exceed their original objectives.

There are many reasons why the wheels fall off, and one of them is the lack of a strong rallying point for change. The organization's brand can often provide that rallying point. Not only does it connect with the promise an organization is making its customers, but it a strong influencer on employees' behavior, so that they "live the brand.” Michael's worked with a number of organizations and supported them with brand-driven change.

You can download an article he wrote on living the brand for Strategic Communication Management here (PDF).

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©2008 Michael Bungay Stanier and Box of Crayons. All rights reserved.