Kevin Freiberg, Ed.D.

Kevin Freiberg's Main Accomplishments Include . . .
Named one of the top "50 Best Minds on Leadership" by Leadership Excellence Magazine, Dr. Kevin Freiberg is among the most influential voices on the speaking circuit today. Kevin Freiberg is also among a select group of thought leaders working with Collective IQ, the top corporate venture advisor and platform in the world, to bring growth and innovation to their clients.

Kevin Freiberg has made a career out of understanding the core values and unconventional strategies used by world-class leaders. His book NUTS! was hailed by the Financial Times as one of the "Top five global business books of the year." Kevin Freiberg is also the co-author (with wife Jackie Freiberg) of GUTS! Companies That Blow The Doors Off Business As Usual and BOOM! 7 Choices For Blowing the Doors Off Business-As-Usual.

Kevin Freiberg has appeared on CNBC, CBS Sunday Morning, and the CBS Morning News for his views on the critical links between leadership, corporate culture and exceptional customer loyalty. Dr. Freiberg has also appeared on the television series Lessons in Excellence for CNBC India. Kevin Freiberg's articles and interviews have been published in the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Investor's Business Daily.

Dr. Kevin Freiberg helps business leaders better understand the impact of their choices, attitudes and behaviors on corporate culture and organizational performance. He has challenged corporate leaders all over the world to create unmatched productivity, customer service, and profitability by becoming faithful, devoted, hardworking servants of the people they lead. Kevin Freiberg has a global practice working with firms in Southeast Asia, Europe, Japan, India, the Middle East, Central and South America, as well as companies throughout the United States and Canada.

More About Kevin Freiberg . . .
As the founder and CEO of a San Diego consulting group and its professional speaking firm, Kevin Freiberg helps business leaders translate the winning strategies from enduring great companies into their own models of success. He is widely acknowledged for his expertise in helping clients build strong, purposeful cultures where people have fun and do heroic work that matters, everyone leverages technology to get smarter, better, and faster, gutsy leaders excel at hiring, retaining and unleashing world-class talent, customer-centric employees turn knowledge, service and hospitality into life-long loyalty, people take charge of their lives at work and assume responsibility for growing the business, and courage, risk and innovation enable the firm to establish rules by which others must play the game.

Kevin Freiberg has worked with some of the world's most admired companies—companies on the forefront of a revolution driving the new economy. A partial list of the firm's clients include: American Express, Bank of America, Business Consultants—Japan, Caterpillar, Century 21, ConocoPhillips, Coors Brewing Co, Cox Communications, Eli Lilly, Ernst & Young, FedEx, Federated Department Stores, General Electric, General Motors, Infosys—India, Jack-in-the-Box, Kuwait Gulf Link, Inc, Major League Baseball, Merrill Lynch, Minolta, NCR Japan, Nestle, Otis Elevator, Southwest Airlines, Sprint, Staples, State Farm Insurance, Tata Motors—India, Unisys, U.S. Marine Corps, and Universal Studios.

Before becoming a full-time speaker and consultant, Kevin Freiberg taught for eight years at the University of San Diego and San Diego State University. He has a Masters degree in Communication from San Diego State University and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from the University of San Diego.

• Gutsy Leadership

  Leaders shape culture, which in turn, shapes performance and determines the ultimate financial condition of your business. Leadership is a choice, not a position. If we got rid of your title would people still follow you?

  In this theme we unpack the character strengths of great leaders and show you how these strengths play out in some of the world's most revolutionary companies. Our objective here is to help you dramatically accelerate the development of leaders at every level within your company.

  We want to help you grow leaders who can energize and inspire others, who refuse to be held hostage by history and who have the GUTS to move your organization in bold new directions.

• Pockets of Excellence

  You learn what it takes to establish a critical mass of players who OWN IT. You know the type; the shakers and movers who take initiative vs. take orders. They don't make excuses, they make things happen.

  They might be victims of a crummy economy, an industry in turmoil or an organization undergoing significant change, yet they refuse to be victimized. Instead, they bring energy, vitality, creativity and the best of themselves to work—they are people of excellence and they create POCKETS OF EXCELLENCE.

  You'll get timeless choices, stories to share and actions to use immediately to create your own pockets of excellence

• Leading Innovation

  Want to move innovation from a tired cliché to a powerful competitive advantage? Want to make it everyone's job to innovate?

  We layout the preconditions leaders must create to make innovation a way of life—a deeply embedded part of your cultural DNA. Find out how the most creative companies in the world innovate BEYOND customer expectations. Learn what the best leaders do to inspire ingenuity and unleash imagination—to create a place that is perpetually loaded with fresh ideas.

  We will also take you behind the scenes and show you how, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, the people of Tata Motors achieved the impossible by creating the Tata Nano, a 1 Lakh ($2500) car that has taken the world by storm.

• Culture and Engagement

  What if your company had a reputation for being the BEST PLACE, where the BEST PEOPLE, can do their BEST WORK? We're talking serious competitive advantage!

  You can deliver on the brand promise you make to your employees; it means creating a place where impassioned people come to work fully awake, fully engaged and committed to driving growth.

  We'll unpack Southwest Airlines' crazy, yet very purposeful recipe for creating one of the most productive workforces in the world with 37 consecutive years of profitability. The greatest success story in the history of commercial aviation boasts a culture in which 35,000+ people are fully committed and inspired to achieve extremely high productivity, service, safety and financial objectives. This is an exciting, behind-the-scenes look into an all-American, yet globally recognized brand that will help you create your own blueprint for success.

• Service from the Inside-Out

  Service and loyalty are the result of leadership from the inside out—the consistent, diehard execution of a "people-first" service philosophy. This theme addresses the critical links between leaders who adhere to a "people-first" philosophy, turned-on, passionate employees who give something of themselves in addition to just doing the job and fiercely devoted customers who evangelistically tell your story.

  The research is very clear. Companies known for world-class service, quality and hospitality work hard to create cultures (even in tough times) where employees feel honored and served; people truly trust and connect with each other; seamless collaboration translates into flawless execution and work is fun.

  This theme allows you to borrow from the best and create your own "people-first" service strategy. We have written about many of the most admired companies and global service brands around and we're passionate about revealing the chutzpah and details behind their success.

• Hungry for Change

  New business models are disrupting the old. The rules of your industry are being rewritten. The future is unpredictable and the pace of change continues to accelerate. If you want to be built to last you must be built to change. The only question is: Will the changes you make be opportunity led or crisis driven?

  This theme is about getting in the right frame of mind—one that's hungry for change. It's about building a YES-FAST culture where people move with a sense of urgency, declare war on complacency and say "yes" to new skills, new relationships, new business models, new products and new markets. You have a choice. You can lean on yesterday's headlines and hope that what you've been doing will carry you into the future, or you can change.

• Fiercely Devoted Customers

  We'll share the key factors that will take you from plain vanilla consumer satisfaction to extreme customer loyalty; from simply being a vendor of choice to being a trusted advisor and a strategic partner with your clients.

  What if your team knew more about the pressures, pain points, preferences and particular nuances of your customers than anyone? What if they positioned themselves as industry experts who are better than anyone at providing relevant solutions? What if they mastered the discipline of follow-up and the art of making customers feel special long after the solution is delivered?

  Using these strategies your team can become the "go-to" people that fiercely devoted customers can't live without and competitors can't dethrone.

• Differentiate – Stand Out in a Crowd

  Radically different. Unforgettably distinct. Easily distinguished. Do these words describe your business?

  In a world of mimicry and "me-tooism," you can't be a leader by playing follow the leader. You lead by constantly finding new ways to add value. We will show you what it takes to "de-commoditize" your business and stand out in an overcrowded market.

  We will give you some vivid examples of extraordinary companies that are "special." What's so special about being special? Special means you are unforgettable. Special means that if we eliminated your business tomorrow you would be missed. Special means your customers can't live without you. Special makes the comparison with your competitors totally irrelevant because you stand out and give your customers something they can't get anywhere else.

• Making a Profit – Making a Difference (CSR)

  You will learn how some of the world's most admired companies rally around causes that go beyond making money to making the world a better place. For these firms Corporate Social Responsibility is more than a PR tactic, sales strategy or a trend. CSR is a way of doing business—and it's profitable. In a world where corporate behavior is under a microscope, socially-minded customers want to do business with socially-minded companies.

  Companies that care about the societies in which they operate also endear themselves to socially-minded employees, partners and investors. Whether it's green thinking, training entrepreneurs in poor villages to be self-sustaining or restoring disaster-stricken communities, these CSR leaders will inspire your group to see what's possible in terms of its own initiatives.

• Strategic Communication – Executive Messaging

  Someone once said, "any PR is good", not true! Every company has a story, and every leader has a responsibility to know the story and to tell it well.

  You'll learn how people of influence become even more powerful when they know how to tell great stories. Why, because stories are a compelling teaching tool—a fact that has been demonstrated for over 2000 years.

  Research shows that stories can increase recall by up to 300%! House a critical point in an interesting story and bingo—if people remember the story they will remember the point.

  Stories can strengthen team unity. They can also increase commitment and loyalty to the culture, a project and even a challenge. When was the last time you sat around with co-workers and talked about the all-nighter that got the shipment there on time; the heroic customer service comeback; or the brilliant marketing campaign that differentiated you from the competition and grew market share?

• NANOVATION: How a Little Car Can Teach the World to Think Big

  NANOVATION: How a Little Car Can Teach the World to Think Big is the international story of how Tata Motors and its young, whatever-it-takes, design team was able to accomplish the impossible through innovation, leadership, culture and laser like customer focus. This presentation takes you behind the scenes and shows you how team Nano pushed itself to innovate beyond customer expectations, overcome adversity, and risk despite fear of failure to find elegant solutions to seemingly impossible problems; budget constraints; design restrictions; rising material costs; political agitation; and even consumer concerns.

• Innovate or Perish: 8 Strategies to Accelerate Innovation

  It doesn't matter what industry you are in, someone, somewhere right now is building a product, process or business model designed to kick your butt. If it's you, then you define the rules by which others must play the game. If it's NOT you, then you had better get comfortable playing by someone else's rules. Someone is going to start a revolution that will change your world. How? By producing change that matters—change that disrupts the competition and amazes your customers. Why can't it be you? In a 90 minute keynote the Freibergs will take you on a "deep dive" into the kind of leadership that unleashes innovation and ingenuity.