Al Comeaux

Given the estimated $3 trillion spent – and $2 trillion wasted – on organizational change efforts each year, how can leaders think about change differently? What do leaders at companies that win at change do vs the unsuccessful ones? In this signature keynote, Al finally brings an insider’s view, sharing how winning companies don’t try to get their people to change…they get their people to want to change. From getting our own hands dirty as leaders, to pulling our people through the change, and understanding the invaluable role that listening and modeling play, Al lays out how leaders can win their change efforts. Drawing on his vast experience of living, leading, and researching change from the inside during a 30+ year career as an executive at disruptive companies like Travelocity and large, established companies like GE and American Airlines, and through scientific research and storytelling, Al weaves together a compelling and practical case for a new way of looking at organizational change that is sure to reset leaders’ mindsets about change and set them up for success.

Global forces and technology are both driving the need for change in our organizations…and the need for change only becomes greater, faster with each new technology, each global macrotrend or event. We see it in how we and our people work each day, how we communicate with each other, and so many other ways. So, how do we change our organizations to keep up with these forces and the demands they drive? How do we take advantage of these events, macrotrends and technologies without losing our people—the very ingredient we need to be successful in these times. In this keynote, Al brings to life the formula for successful change: The irony that leaders must focus on inputs, not outcomes, in order to achieve the desired outcomes. The need for leaders to walk-the-change-talk. The need for leaders to listen to their people, whose ideas are likely to be more robust, and more grounded in reality. Using science, great stories and examples from his three decades in corporate life, plus his twenty-year journey studying change, Al shares a formula for successful change that will endure today and prepare any organization for change demands that can’t yet be foreseen.

How do we as leaders get our people to drive fundamentally better business results than our competitors’ people? There is no silver bullet: Doing it requires us to pull many levers to affect the brain’s rational and emotional processors. We’re great at developing rational explanations for things, but neuroscience makes clear that emotion plays just as big a role. In this keynote, Al brings his 30 years in-seat as an executive at renown companies such as GE, Travelocity and American Airlines, to reach fellow executives on a different level and teach them how to appeal to our people’s hearts to drive better results. With stories that touch the brain and the heart, and with research from management, neuroscience, and social science, Al explains the importance of heart and the principles we must live and work by if we want motivated people who will consistently outperform.

Executives tend to focus on tactical excellence during change. Project management. Finance- related decisions. Technology choices. These things are important. But most change efforts fail. In this engaging keynote, Al brings his 30+ years in-seat as a corporate executive at noted companies such as American Airlines, GE and Travelocity, plus more than two decades researching successful and unsuccessful change initiatives to put our focus as executives on the one thing he’s found will beat us at change: our people. If our people don’t change, our organization doesn’t change. And our people don’t have to change. With that in mind, Al breaks out five different types of people and how we have to think about them during change. And he explains how the most important work we do is before we execute, by getting our people primed for the change. Because—as he’s seen from living, leading, and researching change—all the king’s project management and all the king’s technology prowess won’t buy us much if our people don’t want to change.

As businesses grapple with the post-pandemic world—figuring out how to compete for business and employees while grappling with decisions about office space, employee autonomy, even whether to add remote people of all flavors—we have to take a step back and ask ourselves: What’s it going to take to succeed in such a blurry world? And once we’ve decided on a direction, how do we as leaders ensure this new way succeeds and keeps us competitive? Al Comeaux is perhaps the best positioned person in the world to help ground us in what’s needed. His 20 years of leading change—he’s had to flip business models overnight and led changes during a hostile takeover, an IPO, a leveraged buyout, rapid massive globalization, and so much more…all kinds of uncharted territory—this grounds him in the kind of thinking we need as we take on a whole new future. In this keynote, Al also brings science and data from his decades researching change, as well as fantastic stories that underscore his points. It’s a fast- paced, energizing yet deep talk that will challenge all of us to be better leaders so our organizations flourish—not flatline—through these uncharted times…and always.