Marketing strategy, disruption, competitive strategy, guerilla marketing, speed as a competitive weapon, getting your message heard in a crowded market, hijacking the conversation, culture & execution.
Book StephenA keynote speech can help give an annual meeting a sharpened point of view. But what do we do for the other 51 weeks out of the year?
If you’re like most companies looking to seize the narrative in your marketplace – or change the rules of the game in your industry – or you’re just interested in finding faster, better ways of translating ideas into action so you can topple the Goliath in your industry, why wait for the next big meeting?
There are times for introspective thought leadership and there are times to put concrete action plans on paper and get them ready to execute. This special “Killing Giants Activation Workshop” event is for the latter of these two – when you know what your top level objectives are but aren’t certain how you’re exactly going to tactically deliver on them in the marketplace.
In this intensive one-day workshop, we will review the key tenets of The Killing Giants Framework and view them against the large macro trends affecting your industry today and the key business objectives your company has articulated, seeing the biggest possible picture of your challenge through a unique lens of global competitive best practices. Then, with your team fully engaged in this immersive learning environment, we will apply the Power of 3™ integrative exercise described in Killing Giants: 10 Strategies to Topple the Goliath In Your Industry (Portfolio, 2011) to identify the patterns and opportunities in the data we’ve uncovered. If you need to get your operating teams focused for a day and need them to quickly generate three or four big ideas, you’ll find this workshop out-performs your expectations (because we’ll generate more than a dozen big ideas – and your team is like most of the groups we’ve had, they’ll finish the day with more energy and enthusiasm than they had walking in the room in the morning).
Audience: the right audience for this one-day workshop is 12-15 people comprised of marketers, key agency members and other key operating group stakeholders – essentially anyone and everyone involved in how your company presents itself to your customer base.
Key take-aways:
The Killing Giants Activation Workshop is an intensive one-day session ideal for any company that needs to get big ideas delivered in the immediate time frame. It draws on both your specific top business priorities and the most important macro trends that impact your industry – and then shoots them both through the “third lens” of the Killing Giants Framework, allowing you to see the patterns that others miss.
Storytelling at work is more complex than just spinning clever anecdotes. It’s about being able to effectively persuade an audience to your point of view. It requires a careful balance of telling a good story well with the psychological underpinnings of how we, as humans, communicate and make decisions under both social and time constraints.
Master the art and science of storytelling in the corporate setting and you stand a good chance of seeing your ideas get approved and funded. Miss the importance of the balance between these seemingly unrelated elements and you’ll likely spend a good deal of your time wondering why your proposals are so often rejected.
By combining the archetypal structures of storytelling with the social psychology of interpersonal influence – and then viewing them both against the very real constraints of the modern workplace, which is its own unique medium – we can understand exactly when specific psychological decision triggers will move us to “yes” in the progression of a story. If we can master these principles, we can use them in a systematic, proactive manner.
In this 1-day workshop, authors and consultants Stephen Denny and Dr. Paul Leinberger will lay out the foundation of how the social psychology of interpersonal influence intersects with archetypal story structure so that business people can communicate more effectively, more vividly and with greater impact – all with the clear goal of getting their audiences to “yes” that much faster.
Denny and Leinberger will draw upon the best thinking in the social psychology fields to present an interpersonal influence framework that has been rigorously battle-tested in the field, while also drawing in the most important elements of storytelling. Synthesizing these two seemingly disparate fields of science and art, attendees will come away with a set of “thinking tools” that they can apply immediately to high stakes projects that, if approved, could transform both businesses as well as careers.
Attendees will learn:
This leadership development session is geared for any senior executive, from VP and director to the C-suite, who recognizes the importance of being more persuasive in pitching big ideas to key stakeholders.
Stephen is brilliant at getting a team to focus on the why & I really enjoyed the workshops he moderated and developed for Jabra. He knows how to push the boundaries of the team and inspires everyone around him to think outside the boundaries. I look forward to working together again in the future
So many of us are familiar with Stephen's written work. He is thought provoking for those of us in businesses both big and small. He delivers his point of view in a compelling and dynamic way in person. Stephen was also highly effective working with us to generate ways to apply various lenses to our work and identify new solutions and approaches to our future executions.
Stephen brought a breath of fresh innovative air to our marketing team’s strategic positioning work during my previous role in an IT enterprises services organization. He delivered a crisp framework and engaging workshop to help capture both new ways of thinking as well as grounding our outcome to deliver against our objective. The energy and external insight Stephen provided also helped ensure the team actively participated and enjoyed every minute of the process as well as being proud of the outcome. I would recommend Stephen to organizations both large and small, both giants and disrupters.