Speaking

A gifted storyteller and speaker who doesn’t just entertain and inspire, Corey empowers his audiences with practical and actionable insights that stick. He is a sought-after keynote speaker who has worked with organizations across the U.S. and in 30 countries around the world.

Corey delivers keynotes at organization-wide events, industry and trade conferences, as well as small gatherings of senior leaders, both in-person and virtually. Talks are typically 45-60 minutes long, followed by Q&A and can include a networking event or book signing.

To maximize the relevance and impact of each engagement, Corey works with the client team to customize the event for the unique priorities and pain points of the audience.

The Experience

For both virtual and in-person events, Corey delivers an experience that educates, engages and empowers by:

Weaving together bite-sized insights from rigorous, leading-edge research with memorable, illustrative stories.
Creating a highly interactive experience using a dynamic, multimedia presentation, delivered with energy, enthusiasm and humor.
Providing audience members with practical and actionable insights that stick.

Six Reasons to Book Corey

Expertise.

Having spent over two decades researching and publishing about strategic leadership and organizational transformation, Corey is a go-to thought leader on the topic.

Engaging.

A gifted and prolific storyteller, Corey delivers highly dynamic speaking engagements with energy, enthusiasm, and humor.

Experience.

As a speaker, trainer and advisor, Corey has worked with tens of thousands of leaders from hundreds of organizations across most industries and sectors in 30 countries.

Empathy.

Corey understands and relates to the challenges of being a senior leader in a rapidly changing industry because he is one.

Accomplished.

As a business school professor, Corey has received multiple “professor of the year” awards and international recognition for his work on executive education programs.

Professional.

Clients love to work with Corey because he’s a low-maintenance, high-performance speaker who helps ensure a stress-free event.

Most Popular Keynote Topics

Cracked It! Solving Strategic Problems

Of all the skills needed to succeed in work and life, research shows that complex problem solving is at or near the top. But for most of us, solving difficult problems and selling the solutions doesn’t come naturally and we haven’t been taught how to do it well. And when we try, a host of pitfalls trip us up. How can we do it better?

In this engaging, story-filled and often humorous keynote, Corey shows how to become a better problem solver and solution seller using a rigorous, practical and proven four-step approach. Based on his widely-acclaimed book – Cracked It! How to Solve Big Problems and Sell Solutions Like Top Strategy Consultants – Corey guides you through each step in the 4S method: from how to state, structure and solve problems to how to sell the solutions. You will leave knowing how you can create value by helping your organization crack the problems that matter the most.

What participants will learn:

The cognitive biases and pitfalls of problem solving and solution selling
How to define problems using the TOSCA framework
How to structure a problem using issues trees and analytic frameworks
How to solve problems using a hypothesis-driven approach
How to use the pyramid principle to sell the solution persuasively
Develop the discipline and confidence to tackle difficult problems outside your expertise

Innovating through Design Thinking

An organization’s ability to innovate – whether it's creating seamless and enjoyable customer journeys, radically new products and services, or breakthrough business models – is critical to long-term success. Innovation is about solving important, challenging problems in creative and value-creating ways.

In this engaging, story-filled and often humorous keynote, Corey shows you how to be a more creative and innovative problem solver using the rigorous, structured and human-centered approach of design thinking. Drawing on his widely-acclaimed book – Cracked It! How to Solve Big Problems and Sell Solutions Like Top Strategy Consultants – Corey brings the process and toolkit of design thinking to life by exploring how to empathize with users and clients to see a problem from their point-of-view, how to use these insights to reveal otherwise hidden opportunities for innovation, and how to transform ideas for innovative solutions into tangible prototypes for testing, refinement and eventual implementation. You will leave with an understanding of the core principles and tools of design thinking and insight into how to apply them across your organization to help it innovate and grow.

What Participants Will Learn:

Discover the types of problems design thinking helps solve
Develop an empathetic mindset – understanding the problem from the user’s perspective
Understand how to generate deep insights to reframe your understanding of a problem
Explore the tools of ideation to rapidly generate and refine concepts for solutions
Move from concepts to solutions by prototyping

Creating Future-Ready Organizations

Because the competitive landscapes in which organizations compete are constantly changing and undermining established competitive positions, strategic leaders must be concerned with the future viability of their organizations.

A core challenge of developing future-ready organizations is uncertainty about how competitive environments will change and the future an organization will face. While uncertainty makes commitments to strategic change risky, most organizations plan as if the world were predictable – developing forecasts, budgets, and initiatives that will succeed only if the external environment cooperates.

Developing future ready organizations requires leaders to manage uncertainty caused by changing competitive environments. This requires strategic innovation – the ability to anticipate how your organization’s competitive context may change and the implications of these changes, the courage to challenge deeply-held beliefs about what has made your organization successful in the past, and the willingness to depart from these assumptions and experiment with alternative business models and approaches to competition. In this engaging and provocative talk, Corey will show you how you can improve your ability to anticipate, challenge and experiment to help your organization become future ready.

What Participants Will Learn:

Why focusing on operational excellence drives out strategic innovation and leads to organizational failure
Why leaders must be ambidextrous by balancing efficient execution with exploration in the face of uncertainty
How leaders can foster strategic innovation by anticipating external change, challenging assumptions and pursuing disciplined experimentation.

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