International Speaker on How to Thrive With Disruption
Bestselling author Charlene Li speaks on disruptive growth strategies, leading in the digital age, and creating great customer experiences.
Whether it’s inspiring thousands in a hall or engaging in a boardroom, Charlene couples the ability to look beyond the horizon with pragmatic advice on what to do today. She is inspiring while being at the same time eminently approachable.
Charlene has spoken in front of hundreds of diverse audiences, from patient advocates, school superintendents, and realtors to the executive teams at Fortune 500 companies.
She has keynoted the opening and closing of conferences, conducted fireside chats with notable executives like Sheryl Sandberg, and participated in many webinars and panels.
Creates the A-Ha moment
With hundreds of appearances and five bestselling books under her belt, Charlene not only has the expertise to explain of the latest disruptive business and technology trends, but she also creates a personal moment of discovery for each person in the audience. By becoming active participants, the takeaways stay with people long after the keynote is done.
Connects with Empathy
The topics Charlene speaks about push audiences to the edge of their comfort zone so prior to each engagement, Charlene takes the time to understand where the audience stands in their journey, That way, she can customize the presentation to build a deeper connection and trust with the audience.
Builds Capabilities & Instills Confidence
It’s one thing to understand the problem – it’s another to know what to do about it. Charlene inspires the audience with the “why” for the disruptive change, then arms the audience with pragmatic advice on what to do. Most importantly, she gives them the confidence and the courage to go back and take that all-important first step.
Speaking Topics
The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail
“Disrupt or Die” has been the rallying cry for decades, but what does it actually mean to be disruptive, to make it the center of your strategy? Many established companies set a goal to develop “disruptive” innovations, believing innovation will disrupt their market and drive growth. But that’s not how it works: disruption doesn’t create growth. Growth creates disruption. Transformations are never easy, and the unrelenting pace of technological change makes it doubly difficult. But there’s hope and a way forward — starting with reframing your strategy, leadership and culture so that disruptive growth is at the top of your agenda.
Audience members will learn how to:
- Define what disruption is — and isn’t — and how it can drive disruptive growth.
- Identify and prioritize the right disruptive growth moves — and align the organization around them.
- Understand how leaders must show up differently when pursuing a disruption strategy.
- Instill disruption into a status-quo culture.
Leadership in the Digital Era
Digital technologies have revolutionized relationships — and leadership is no exception. To be truly engaged, effective leaders must harness the power of digital communications and branding, rather than remain on the sidelines, frozen by fear and the unknown. The key is understanding how your personal leadership style can be extended and scaled through digital techniques to achieve your most important goals
Audience members will learn how to:
- Master a new way of developing relationships, which begins by stepping out of traditional hierarchies.
- Listen at scale, share to shape, and engage to transform
- Shift to a digital mindset
- Apply the right digital tools to meet strategic goals
Creating a Next Gen Customer Experience Strategy
We all know that creating customer experiences is important. But which experiences take priority? And how do we justify
Audience members will learn how to:
- Prioritize which customer experience initiatives to invest
in, so that they drive both business results and meet customers’ heightened expectations. - Define and create next-generation customer experiences.
- Involve the right people and ensure that they have the skills, capabilities, and mindsets are required to succeed.
- Make great customer experiences a priority for everyone in the organization.
The Future of Work: Employee Engagement In The Digital Era
New technologies pop up every day that allow us to now connect and communicate with employees in real time. Yet organizations are wired for a bygone era when there was the luxury of time and proximity. Most organizations measure employee engagement in yearly surveys — hardly the way to truly engage employees in the digital era.
In this speech, Charlene makes the case to develop a new mindset, one that’s centered on creating a long-term relationship with employees that melds holistically with creating great experiences for customers. This integrated approach ties together the disparate parts of the organization dependent on a coherent employee engagement strategy — marketers are eager to tap employees advocates to scale scarce marketing dollars while HR wants to leverage them to spread the talent brand story. From collaboration platforms and Intranets to the use of social technologies and messaging, we’ll dig deep into how technology is changing the work and our relationship with employees.
Audience members will learn how to:
- Understand how employee expectations in the workplace are being influenced by their personal use of technology and the implications for employee engagement
- Identify the experiences that employees value the most.
- Create rich collaboration experiences that support a different way of work.
Tailoring Speeches for Verticals
HEALTHCARE AND PHARMA
- How do you create a compelling patient experience in a fragmented healthcare landscape? How do you create a sense that you know and understand the patient while working within the confirms of regulations like HIPPA?
- How are healthcare organizations embracing disruption to create better patient experiences and outcomes?
- Organizations in healthcare and pharma have as their foundation a strong sense of purpose and mission. How can leaders use digital technologies to translate and transfer these values deep into the organization and ensure that actions and practices align?
FINANCIAL SERVICES AND INSURANCE
- How can financials service companies disrupt themselves and stay ahead of well-funded
fintech startups as well as powerful new entrants like Amazon and Google? - Digital and social tools represent an untapped opportunity to engage both with clients and internally with employees. In the highly regulated financial services industry, how do you safely deploy and manage these seemingly risky technologies to drive business results and increase customer satisfaction?
- How are consumers’ experiences with disruptive companies like Amazon and Uber setting the bar high for financial service companies? How can you best understand and then deliver on these heightened expectations when you operate in a highly regulated industry?
RETAIL AND CONSUMER PRODUCTS
- In an Amazon and Alibaba dominated
world , what must retailers do to not just fend off these disruptive players, but thrive in the new digital landscape? - How are consumer products forging a new relationship with consumers with new technologies like IoT and disrupting traditional distribution and retail channels in the process?
- What are the best ways to connect customer experience to employee experience in the retail environment? How are organizations designing the future retail experience to match the realities of how people will work in the future?
Publications & Recognition
Publications
- The Disruptor’s Agenda, in research/writing phase, target publication February 2019.
- The Engaged Leader: A Strategy for Your Digital Transformation, March 2015. Independent Book Publisher Award, 2016.
- Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy, July 2013.
- Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead, May 2010. New York Times bestseller.
- Marketing in the Groundswell, June 2009.
- Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, May 2008, 2nd edition June 2011. Named by Amazon as one of the best business books of 2008.
Recognition
- LinkedIn Influencer, 2013 to present
- Top 50 Leadership Innovators, Inc, November 2015
- Top 100 Social Media Influencers, StatSocial, February 2015
- Most Creative People in Business 1000 by Fast Company, 2014
- Top 10 Marketing Influencers named by LinkedIn, 2013
- Named by Fast Company as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2010
- Open Leadership debuted at #5 on The New York Times bestseller list, May 2010
- Groundswell named the recipient of the 2009 Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best book in marketing
- Named by Fast Company as one of The Most Influential Women in Technology
- Groundswell named by CIO Insight as one of the Top 10 Business- Tech Books of 2008
- Named by Fast Company as one of The 12 Most Creative Minds of 2008
- Groundswell named by Businessweek as one of the Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008
- Groundswell named by strategy+business as one of the Best Business Books 2008and “Top Shelf” in Marketing
- Groundswell named one of 10 Insightful Web 2.0 Books by CIO Insight
- Groundswell, coauthored with Josh Bernoff, named by Amazon as one of the Top 10 Business & Investing Books of 2008
- Named by AdAge as one of its top 40 Women to Watch in 2008
- Named by NowPublic as one of the 50 most influential people in Silicon Valley
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Experience is what you get when
you don’t get what you want.
— Charlene Li —