Paul Gibbons

AI will touch every corner of our lives as citizens, consumers, and business people.  In this 60- to 90-minute keynote, Paul covers Artificial General Intelligence - and whether that creates an existential risk. Then closer to today, he covers the effect on jobs, on biases and fairness, on privacy and property rights, on accountability and malfeasance, and on human development. (See the "teaser" video below.)

Some CEOs call our moment the opportunity of a lifetime, but deciding which AI strategies to pursue is fraught with risk.  This 60- to 90- minute keynote covers a) why technology deployments often fail, b) the AI maturity model, c) how to create a vision, d) how to create an AI centered people strategy, e) what an AI deployment and governance team should look like, f) the ethics of AI, and g) getting an AI culture to work.  Paul has 35 years helping businesses deploy technology, at PwC and at IBM and is the author of six book on change leadership. (See the "teaser video below.)

Change management is essential, but big-name firms offer methods from the 1990s, and specialists often peddle New Age and pop psychology. We can’t use 1990s methods because the business world (duh) has changed; we can’t use pseudoscience and pop psychology (such as “left-brain/ right-brain”) because they don’t work. What does work? While there are no change silver bullets, behavioral science (including ideas such as nudging) offers a way of changing behavior sometimes ten times as effective as traditional change. Paul helped design PwC’s change methodology and has advised both Deloitte and IBM on how to upgrade their methods. His four books on change are best-sellers. 

McKinsey says that 85 million jobs may be displaced by 2025 by AI. By 2032, the market for AI is predicted to reach two trillion dollars. Business leaders face two related challenges – how do I take advantage of this new technology to create business value? And, more viscerally, how do I future-proof my career, and perhaps even gain a career advantage in this new world?

Old models of change management and leadership, even those from big-name firms, offer nothing by way of insights and tools to help understand the effect of mental health on change and how to build personal and organizational resilience. Yet look around your next meeting. One in five of us suffer at any given moment. Half of us will experience a mental health episode in our lifetime. (And of those, only half get treatment!) We know that change can affect mental health, but mental health also affects a leader’s ability to effect change. What can and should we do?

Did you know that research suggests that culture change fails 81 percent of the time? Yet, IBM’s CEO once said, “Culture change isn’t part of the game, it is the whole game.” And which of us hasn’t seen glossy values posters that get eye-rolls from staff? Why is that? Why is something so critically important impossible to shift? And how, when culture change succeeds, does it happen? Paul was ranked #5 in the world on culture change by Global Gurus. He has advised 3 of the “big-4” consulting firms on culture change and has advised Microsoft and Comcast on culture.

Today’s workers want a purpose, and not just a paycheck. They want meaningful and mindful work and not mindless work. Leading businesses know this – that people respond to purpose and to work for one greater than themselves. These conversations touch on business spirituality, but leaders aren’t spiritual gurus, and workplaces aren’t temples. Paul’s Spirituality of Work and Leadership: Finding Meaning, Joy, and Purpose in What You Do, is a guide for people and leaders to finding deeper purpose within themselves, and bringing their deepest values to work.

At 20, Paul had two degrees and spoke five languages; 10 years later, he was homeless. Earning a million dollars a year on Wall Street at age 25 was “putting out the fire with gasoline” – it didn’t cure the “hole in the soul,” it made it worse. His journey through alcohol addiction, substance abuse disorder, ADD, and depression is one that sometimes takes the lives of admirable people, Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, and Kurt Cobain. Resilience helps leaders and their teams thrive in difficult times - much as lifting weights, which first injures muscles, then makes them stronger. Contrary to popular myth, resilience isn't at all about being tough, or toughing it out. During this 90-minute to 1/2-day session, learn the skills that make leaders and their teams more resilient in the face of stressors and difficulties.