With a career spanning an impressive range of industries including entertainment, consulting, and education, Adam Kingl has spent decades working in innovation, strategy, culture and leadership.
Adam is an adjunct faculty member at the UCL School of Management and Ashridge-Hult International Business School and is an instructor and programme director at Imperial College, Moller Institute – Churchill College – University of Cambridge, Hanken-Stockholm School of Economics, Headspring (FT and IE Business School joint venture) and Sauder Business School – the University of British Columbia. Previously, Adam was the Regional Managing Director for Duke Corporate Education, leading the organisation’s business in Europe, and advising clients on issues of adaptability, performance, creativity, and purpose. Adam was also the Executive Director of Thought Leadership and Learning Solutions at London Business School for a decade. He has been an associate of Saatchi & Saatchi and the Management Lab.
Adam is passionate about the future of work and the multi-generational workforce, and has authored a book on this topic, “Next Generation Leadership,” (Harper Collins; February 2020). His next book, “Sparking Success” (Kogan Page; April 2023) explores how companies in any industry can enhance their innovative, adaptable and inspirational capacity with lessons from prominent leaders in the creative arts.
Adam’s keynote presentations are an illuminating conversation that not only inspire strategic innovation but also unleash creativity and unlock issues within organisational culture. He speaks with warmth and compassion on paradigms of work and leadership, encouraging organisations to have different and better conversations, creating a simple and approachable path to transforming business success.
He contributes as a writer and expert interviewee to: The Financial Times, Sunday Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Guardian and Fast Company, among many others.
Adam holds degrees from London Business School, UCLA, and Yale. He was raised in Silicon Valley, California and now lives in Surrey, UK. He is a dual British-American citizen.
There has been plenty of literature and discussion on ‘how to manage Gen Ys’. If their paradigms of work and ‘how to be led’ are indeed very different to those of their managers of earlier generations, then surely how Gen Ys will lead their organisations in the near future will look and feel new. Therefore, the nature of work and leadership is about to change in fundamental ways.
Disrupting Your Industry with New Business Models. We often hear about innovation in the context of inventing new products or services. One of the innovation levers of senior executives, one which can be even more powerful in transforming business success, is reinventing one’s business model. While the implications of strategic innovation can be profound, the process of identifying the industry-disruptive idea that reinventing one’s business can be very simple and approachable – it’s a matter of having different and better conversations. We will explore how to do so.
Are Your Management Principles Fit For The 21st Century? Over the last century, business has modernised it almost every way except for how it organises, leads, coordinates and motivates its people. Yes, those organisations who have innovated their act of management are celebrated as pioneers and leaders in their respective industries. It is possible for every business to develop a formal method for reinventing its management, just as it has done for products and processes for decades. Management breakthroughs can deliver incredibly powerful competitive advantages that are more sustainable and of a larger scale than any other creative act.
In company life, we are returning, on a several-hundred year cycle, to the pre-eminence of humanity at the centre of what it means to lead. ‘Focusing on humanity’ implies recalling what followers notice first in their leaders – their behaviours. Then, we have to ask if those behaviours provide clarity, inspiration, engagement, coherence and enable creativity. The Renaissance was a flowering not only of the arts but of commerce, and the interdependency of those two forces. Are we in the midst of a new Renaissance of leadership that is asking us what it means to be human?
In August 2019, Chief Executives from the Business Roundtable, including those from Apple and JPMorgan Chase, argued that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. The shift comes at a moment of increasing distress in the corporate world amidst global discontent over income inequality, sustainability and substandard quality of work-life. Business as usual is no longer acceptable. Though this shift seems unique, history shows us that capitalism has evolved numerous times over the centuries. At this inflection point, what can businesses do to survive and thrive, and who are the bellwethers to listen to within our organisations?
We are living in an age of unprecedented rates of change. We’re well versed in narratives about shifts in landscape, industry, market needs, and redundant strategies. However, familiarity with the challenge does not necessarily create a solution. What do we have to do as leaders to navigate these waters? What skills do we require to keep our organisations relevant and successful in the 21st century? There are mindsets, tools and practices that you can use for yourself and in the development of others to make adaptability and agility a habit.
The Great Resignation is a crisis that disrupts business continuity and learning economies, and could cost the average sized company £750k to £3 million per year. Adam Kingl has been predicting this crisis since 2010, and over that time has conducted research, developed frameworks and lessons to mitigate attrition and engage your workforce. While Covid has accelerated attrition and forced many to re-examine what they want to achieve in their careers and lives, there is still cause for optimism that the world of work can be a force that makes life more meaningful.
In addition to keynotes to large audiences, Adam offers workshop facilitation, virtual and face to face for smaller groups of managers and senior executives, brainstorming sessions and consulting. For those organisations responding to the pandemic, Adam’s workshops and consulting have recently included highly contextual themes such as agility, digital transformation, decision making, reinventing one’s business and management models, and purpose.
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