Hal Gregersen

Powerful organizational and industrial forces can keep any senior leader from hearing (or asking) uncomfortable questions, and creating a “good news cocoon,” at his or her own peril. It’s what Hal Gregersen, Ph.D., calls “The Leader’s Dilemma,” and it can be exceedingly dangerous in an era when dramatic market shifts can happen unexpectedly. In this session, Gregersen discusses how leaders and organizations can escape the innovator’s most dangerous blind spot, the space where “we don’t know what we don’t know.” Based on in-depth interviews with more than 200 of the world’s best question-asking leaders, including Charles Schwab’s Walt Bettinger, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Bain’s Orit Gadiesh, Tesla’s Elon Musk, Fidelity’s Abigail Johnson, and General Stanley McChrystal, he reveals five daily disciplines these leaders rely on to surface the right questions. Gregersen also helps audience members become better questioners in real time by sharing key questioning tools and helping them unlock solutions, innovations and processes.

Disruptive technologies are fueling digital transformation at unprecedented levels, demanding us to rethink our roles and tasks, adopt new responsibilities, and manage the range of emotions that result from all the above. Navigating the transitions sparked by digitally-driven change requires deep awareness —of ourselves and others, says MIT leadership expert Hal Gregersen, Ph.D. This cutting-edge keynote leverages current research on over fifty leaders of digital transitions to deliver a structured process and transition toolkit for leaders tackling the question, “how do we recognize and successfully navigate digitally-driven transitions when change happens?” Gregersen shares unique insights, tools, and frameworks for navigating the human side of digitally-driven change and helps people adapt to new identities, acquire new capabilities, and productively manage emotional energy in the process.

Having interviewed more than 200 top leaders in his decades of research and writing, leadership and innovation expert Hal Gregersen, Ph.D., expertly moderates panel discussions that create deeper participation in the material from everyone involved. Consider Gregersen as a moderator for the entire event: In his opening keynote, he’ll encourage a new way of thinking about the forthcoming sessions through the lens of questioning. During the event, he’ll serve as a catalyst for attendees to practice their questioning skills as they learn new material and engage in deeper conversations with other conference attendees. At the close of the event, Gregersen may facilitate a session that recaps how the questioning techniques served participants throughout the event. Not only will they have spent the entire conference practicing questioning techniques, but they’re equipped to immediately apply those methods to their work.

For all of us, the pandemic turned the world upside down in terms of what we do, where we do what we do, how we do it, and when we do it. Whether we like it or not, we are being forced to give up habits that worked well in the past and navigate our way through entirely unknown and uncomfortable territory. As individuals and leaders, we are struggling to figure out what’s next, meaning “What new skillset or mindset is worth the effort to engage with?” so that we can make progress in times of extreme transition. In this session, Hal Gregersen, Ph.D., explores the power of transition curve leadership and the role of catalytic inquiry in moving ourselves and others forward.

During this presentation, Gregersen will tap into twenty years of transition curve research (see Questions are the Answer, The Innovator’s DNA, and It Starts With One) to help leaders:

- Identify what’s next when facing extreme uncertainty and learn how to descend and ascend the toughest parts of a transition curve

- Explore how to acknowledge and manage the emotional arc of unexpected transitions, such as how to tolerate “not knowing” or rushing too fast into action mode

- Harness the surprising power of inquiry to summit new transition curves successfully

When confronted with a problem, our typical response is to look for a pre-packaged solution. But in a world increasingly transformed by technology and riddled with uncertainty, we face problems that have no ready-made answer or past precedent. Employees may think their role is to have all the answers, but in fact, says Hal Gregersen, Ph.D., they should be asking questions – especially when operating on the edge of uncertainty. In this presentation based on his book, “Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life,” Gregersen outlines his Question Burst method, which is designed to transform companies into hotbeds of innovation by teaching leaders and employees to rediscover their powers of inquiry. Drawing upon his first-hand research on innovative companies and leaders at Amazon, Pixar, Tesla, Zymergen and more, Gregersen demonstrates how asking questions inevitably leads not only to solutions but to valuable new and transformative ideas.

Is an innovator born or made? This is the question Hal Gregersen, Ph.D., along with the late Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, set out to answer for their bestselling book, “The Innovator’s DNA.” Drawing on his firsthand conversations with 100+ game-changing founders and CEOs – and research from more than 15,000 creative leaders around the world – Gregersen discusses five key skills that innovators leverage to solve challenging problems and discover new markets to fuel economic growth. Gregersen also focuses attendees’ energy on actively developing these skills through brief, high-energy learning activities so they leave thinking and acting differently in their professional work and personal lives.