Book this speaker: Lisa Bodell

About This Speaker: Lisa Bodell

Lisa Bodell is a global leader in simplification, collaboration, and innovation. She empowers organizations to transform their performance by reimagining how they work. When the most important work isn’t getting done, Lisa believes the issue isn’t the people—but the work itself. By trading complexity for simplicity, she helps companies unlock creativity, drive innovation, and improve employee well-being, engagement, and retention.

As the author of Why Simple Wins and Kill the Company, Lisa has been recognized as one of the “Top 50 Speakers Worldwide.” She captivates audiences with her dynamic energy, humor, and insights. Lisa inspires leaders to question the status quo and make small, impactful changes that create time and energy to focus on the work that matters most.

After earning her business degree from the University of Michigan, Lisa Bodell began her career at Leo Burnett in Chicago. There, she discovered a talent for combining strategy with forward-thinking ideas. She later built two successful businesses before founding FutureThink in 2003. Today, FutureThink is a global leader in simplification and innovation, helping organizations like Google, SAP, and Citigroup drive change.

Lisa’s thought leadership has been featured in Forbes, WIRED, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times. She is a sought-after contributor to major books, including Warren Berger’s A More Beautiful Question and Adam Grant’s Originals. Her TED talk on innovation has garnered widespread acclaim.

Additionally, Lisa teaches innovation at American University and Fordham University. She serves on the advisory boards of several high-profile organizations, including the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum and the U.S. National Security Agency. Lisa Bodell is a proven expert, inspiring change across industries and helping leaders create lasting impact.

Speaking Topics: Lisa Bodell

Unleash the Power of Simplification

People are drowning in the work of doing work and its sabotaging organizations. Our days are continually hijacked by the unplanned and unnecessary – unproductive meetings, outdated rules, irrelevant reports, and endless emails that dampen morale, create feelings of futility, and can be detrimental to mental health. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell shows audiences a new way to unleash energy, collaboration, and innovation by embracing a mindset of simplification. This is not about getting organized or efficient – it’s about how small changes to make things simple can have a profound impact. Lisa’s insights, storytelling and interactive exercises make the case: adopting simplicity as an operating principle is the surest path to organizational transformation.

“Our systems are designed for a world that’s manageable and predictable. That world is gone. It’s time to look with fresh eyes at how we work. When we simplify, we unleash energy and creativity that is being lost by adhering to the status quo.”


You will learn:

• Why simplification is not just a method but a mindset and a habit – a key to resilience and adaptability and improved mental capacity and focus
• How to spot and eliminate organizational and individual busywork that’s outlived its time.
• Phone-based interactive polling and dynamic interactivity helps audiences discover surprising insights about what keeps them from doing their best work.
• Why subtraction is more important than addition. There’s only so much time
• How killing stupid rules enables organizations and teams move faster and with more focus

Leading Simplicity – A Roadmap

Embracing simplicity as an operational mindset will unleash the power of people and create a sustainable competitive advantage. But building a culture of simplicity requires advocates and leaders who send a message that simplicity is a strategic priority and that it’s OK to challenge the status quo. In this presentation, Lisa Bodell delivers real-world insights leaders can use to inspire their teams, ignite disruptive thinking, build speed and agility, and turn problems into possibilities. With energy, humor, and revealing interactive exercises, Lisa shows how simplicity is the catalyst that accelerates innovation, collaboration, engagement, and growth. Building simplicity into organizational DNA creates a sustainable competitive advantage because it’s the absolute foundation of resilience in the face of never-ending change.

“We’ve got to give people permission to challenge how they work. People know what’s driving them crazy. Simplification changes everything and unleashes them to focus on transformative work.”

You will learn:

• Why culture comes down to the work people do every day. If you get the work right, you get the culture right.
• How to make it normal to challenge the norm, creating space for change and true 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.
• When people aren’t drowning in the work of doing work there’s more engagement, less frustration, increased well-being, and improved retention.
• Set the groundwork for enduring change and improved problem-solving by reducing stress and giving teams the space to think and do the “work of work,” not just busy work.

Unleashing Innovation

In most organizations, the very structures put in place to help them grow all too often hold them back. As structures languish unchecked, people become overwhelmed with outdated processes, policies, reports, committees and meetings that frustrate them and hijack their workdays. Is it any wonder innovation becomes a challenge? In this presentation, simplicity expert Lisa Bodell shows how to increase the capacity for innovation by banishing unnecessary complexity. Making work simpler is the key to unshackling people to spend time and energy on their most important work. Lisa helps shift the organizational mindset – engaging everyone in the process of questioning the status quo. The tools and insights she provides help solve problems that stand in the way of breakthrough innovation.

“Getting the work right liberates people to apply their time and imagination in ways that drive performance and innovation.”

You will learn:

• How to make work simpler and reignite critical aptitudes such as curiosity, inquiry, and creative problem-solving.
• How companies are killing stupid rules to eliminate hurdles and focus people on work that leads to breakthrough innovation.
• Practical yet provocative techniques for reinvention and innovation with current products and services.
• Real-life examples of how even the smallest changes can have a big impact.
• Discover what is hijacking people’s time through Lisa’s interactive audience polling.

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