Ashley Goodall

One of the stranger quirks of corporate life is that the systems and processes we use to manage performance—cascaded goals, ratings, consensus meetings and so forth—don’t actually help people improve their work. They are more an annoyance than an accelerator. Beginning with an analysis of why this is, Ashley Goodall then reveals the conditions that do, in fact, lead to increased performance at work and demonstrates that all of these emanate from teams. He shares three core principles that organizations can use to put teams at the center of their approach to organizational performance and build more (magical) teams like their best teams, along with examples of these principles in action.

Of all the myths we have come to believe about the world of work, the idea that there is a single, universal and easily learned set of characteristics that make a person a leader is perhaps the most harmful. In this presentation, Ashley Goodall weaves together an examination of our traditional concept of leadership—and an examination of its shortcomings—with insights from the Civil Rights movement in the USA to provide a powerful illustration of leading at its finest.

In today’s fast-paced business world, many have come to think of change and disruption as the building blocks of innovation and success, but what if the reality is actually the opposite? According to leadership expert and former Deloitte and Cisco HR executive Ashley Goodall, change initiatives are often launched with little thought of the cost in human terms, thereby alienating employees and harming innovation and productivity. In this eye-opening presentation, Goodall draws from his award-winning book “The Problem with Change,” to illustrate the psychological costs of constant change, and to demonstrate how change can itself stymie the progress it seeks. Instead of reflexively instigating disruption, Goodall argues, leaders should focus on embedding stability into their organizations through people practices designed to help people do their best work. With these practical “stability management” strategies in hand, leaders will see innovation and improvement begin to emerge naturally from their organizations.

In today’s business environment of constant disruption, workplaces have become surprisingly hard places to get things done. How can Human Resources rethink its function to give employees the tools they need to do their best work? In this revealing presentation, drawing from his award-winning book “The Problem with Change,” Ashley Goodall argues that the fundamental role of HR is to “Build People-Up”—that is, to ground every people practice and program in the essential nature of human performance. Audiences will leave challenged to reestablish HR as a full-throated advocate for employees and as a truly empowering function in an organization.