Travels from Los Angeles, California, USA
Nick Jankel's speaking fee falls within range: $15,000 to $20,000
Nick, a Cambridge-educated medical scientist and philosopher (Triple 1st/summa cum laude), has spent 30 years cracking the code of unlocking and unleashing transformation and innovation. With 28 years of experience serving the growth of ambitious organizations like Nike, Unilever, Intel, Virgin, PlayStation, and Novartis—and 25 years walking the talk as a high-impact, purpose-led entrepreneur on the frontlines of disruption—Nick is a lodestar of vision, velocity, values-driven business, and exponential value-creation for those navigating change, complexity, and uncertainty.
Nick is a groundbreaking theorist and master practitioner of transformational leadership and transformative (i.e., breakthrough) innovation, the two most powerful technologies for ensuring organizations can cope with relentless change, survive ruthless disruption, and deliver exponential value creation.
A highly experienced and sought-after professional mainstage/ headliner speaker at the very top of his game, Nick is booked by companies, conferences, institutions, associations, and nations—think Nike, LEGO, Unilever, Abu Dhabi, Pfizer, Google, No.10—who seek an unprecedented ROI from electrifying, exquisitely-customized, and science-backed keynotes that expand minds, captivate hearts & ignite change.
Nick’s keynotes help people thrive in change/complexity, unlock digital transformation/innovation, and become truly transformational as leaders and team members. He has cutting-edge talks on what is probable, possible, problematic, and provocative in the Future of Work, Health, Tech, Leadership, and Regenerative Business. Nick’s ideas are routinely called inspiring, powerful, rigorous, and bold.
Nick reliably delivers wow-inspiring talks at the intersection of technology, transformation, and innovation. He is out to share the reliably life-changing and often world-changing ideas, mindsets, habits, and daily practices needed to lead brilliantly through change, unlock constant breakthroughs in business models and teamwork, and blast through the barriers that predictably block innovation and transformation. He aims to simplify complexity, reduce the fear of uncertainty, and take the pain out of transformation.
Whether headlining at a conference or a top 100/300/500 leadership event, Nick seeks to touch the hearts and minds of all attendees and inspire them to rethink, reimagine, and rejuvenate so they rise to their challenges with more creativity, clarity, and courage than ever. As a leadership futurist, Nick helps audiences not just envision an exciting future but also shift how they think and act to cause the future they want.
In a speaking career spanning twenty-five years, Nick has become a virtuoso speaker, crafting a unique fusion of exhilarating ideas, empowering tips, and an enlivening stage presence. He has delivered for organizations as diverse as Pfizer, LEGO, Tesco, Kellogg’s, AstraZeneca, NHS, Schroder’s, WWF, Aspen Ideas Festival, Talks@Google, and CHRO Summit, showcasing his ability to cater to the unique needs of different industries and event types.
Nick takes the science, art, and craft of keynote speaking profoundly seriously. He sees keynotes as an underappreciated and underutilized tool for driving concrete change. He goes way beyond information, education, and motivation to inspire, accelerate, and transform. In addition to dazzling 45-minute keynotes, Nick has pushed keynote speaking to the limits to deliver unprecedented ROI for clients through experiential, interactive, and results-oriented formats.
As a trained scientist with a Triple First (summa cum laude) in medical science and philosophy of science from Cambridge University, Nick uses the latest neuroscience to inspire even the most critical thinkers and win over even the most demanding audiences (e.g., engineers, educators, clinicians, technologists, lawyers, and financiers). His ideas and tools can reliably transform outdated yet change-resistant behaviors and mindsets.
Nick is the co-founder and CEO of global leadership consultancy Switch On Leadership (SOL). Operating worldwide, out of LDN and LAX, SOL works with great corporations (e.g., Unilever, Walgreens, Intel, HSBC, Syngenta, Kellanova, Smucker’s, AbbVie, Genentech), government agencies (e.g., Cabinet Office, NHS), and non-profits (e.g. GBC, WWF, Rockefeller Foundation, Oxfam).
With his team at SOL, Nick strives to craft the most transformative and so effective leadership, teamwork, innovation, and culture programs on the planet. Over 25 years, SOL has invented game-changing ways to unlock truly transformational leadership, breakthrough innovations, and exceptional teamwork.
Nick has spent 30 years cracking the transformation code. As a result, he has developed an original theory and robust methodology—Bio-Transformtion® or BTX®—for driving individual, organizational, and systemic change as fast as humanly possible. Nick draws upon his company’s comprehensive leadership curriculum, advanced innovation methodology, and transformative tools and practices to meet keynote briefs, covering topics like purpose, transformational leadership, innovation and transformation mindsets, storytelling, and ethical influencing with greater depth and more power than is conventional in a keynote speech.
Nick has coached, advised, and empowered 100,000+ Fortune 500 leaders, start-ups/scale-ups founders, local/national political leaders, policymakers, and changemakers. He has led 100+ purpose-led innovation programs, incl. catalyzing the most successful TV show of all time. He has contributed to billions of dollars of inclusive growth and outsized value creation.
A serial entrepreneur of multiple purpose-led enterprises, Nick has written six books, lectured at Yale, UC Berkeley, and Oxford, appeared in The Times and The Economist, written a column in the FT, been invited to Talks@Google and Aspen Ideas Festival, and starred as a transformation coach and TV host on two hit global TV shows (BBC, MTV). He wrote and exec produced a TV show green-lit for US network television on transforming businesses.
INSPIRING TRANSFORMATIONAL & FUTURE-READY LEADERSHIP
• Transformational Leadership: Leading In Change, Leading The Change
How to upgrade leadership mindsets to fall forward, not back, under pressure (headwinds, uncertainty, disruption). How to shift how leaders interact and communicate away from “Command and Control” to creativity, empathy, and influence. How to transform fiefdoms, friction, and fragmentation to unlock coherence and collaboration in top teams. How to sense-make, decision-make, and prioritize in complexity. How to go about solving the poly-crises of our age.
• Amplify Purpose-Driven Leadership & Business
The business case for genuinely purpose-led businesses and brands. Elevating ambitions and goals into a clear, compelling, and concrete purpose that people feel burning in their bellies. The purpose gap and how to close it by helping people connect their own purpose to the organization’s. How to help others find meaning and fulfillment in their work, no matter how mundane it may look. Developing a coherent business or brand purpose that can triumph against the forces of disorder, decay, and disintegration.
• Unleash The Power Of Storytelling & Influencing
How brains engage in and digest stories–and the critical power of emotion as well as reason in winning hearts and minds. How to structure a story so it is clear and compelling and avoids confusion, resistance, and disengagement. How to use ethical influencing and persuasion techniques to bring people along—without manipulation. Packaging up complex business cases, innovation pitches, sales messages, or team communications to drive desired behavior change. Techniques and hacks for getting and keeping attention on stage and in meetings.
• Cultivate Conscious & Wise Leadership
Building conscious leaders who are open not closed, responsive not defensive, and empowering not egotistical. Transforming mindsets and behaviors that sabotage ambitions and diminish others. Being self-aware, authentic, humble, and vulnerable—without appearing weak or weird. Making seemingly impossible business, strategic, and team decisions. Why paying attention to grief and gratitude, compassion and courage, can turbocharge transformation. Using wisdom and consciousness to bring more wholeness and aliveness to every discussion, meeting, and interaction.
INSPIRING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, INNOVATION & INTRAPRENEURSHIP
• Leading Breakthrough Innovation
What breakthrough innovation is, how it works, and how to do it right. How to blast through the barriers that block innovation. Why smartness is necessary but not sufficient for innovation (and can actually get in the way). The archetypal journey of disruptive innovation and how to proactively avoid the many predictable pitfalls. The killers and unlockers of innovation and how to maximize chances of lasting success. Ways to build an innovation culture—from the top down and bottom up.
• Leading Change & Digital Transformation
How to take the turmoil out of transformation by understanding the archetypal journey of deep change. Why smartness is necessary but not sufficient for transformation (and can actually get in the way). How to build emotional resonance and not resistance so that transformation unfolds rather than unravels. How to avoid the many predictable pitfalls so you avoid burning money, time, and goodwill. Ways to ensure transformation is a triumph and not a tragedy by managing fear, silos, and power plays.
• Drive Entrepreneurship & Corporate Intrapreneurship
Cultivating a founder’s mindset to unleash agency, accountability, and innovation. Balancing freedom and flexibility to unlock intrapreneurship—with guidance and guardrails to prevent damaging disruption. Spotting, motivating, and nurturing potential entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs and providing them with the right conditions to innovate and disrupt. Why conventional performance management techniques will likely crush the energy and momentum of intrapreneurs/entrepreneurs.
• Innovate With Ethical AI
What AIs can do, can’t do, and may never be able to do so you do not waste precious time and resources. Exciting yet actionable usage cases for AI—whether for employee effectiveness or serving emerging customer needs. The mindsets needed for exponential value creation that AIs herald. AI model collapse and white-collar career collapse. Designing killer apps, not apps that kill us!
INSPIRING TRANSFORMATIONAL TEAMS & CULTURES
• Build High-Performing & Transformational Teams
Working groups vs. transformative teams that deliver change and innovation. Balancing performance with purpose and drive more agility. Building accountability and responsibility without shame and blame. Innocuous behaviors that tank trust and undermine teamwork. Developing cross-functional teams that can realize bold vision together. The different archetypes needed in teams. What genuine psych safety is and isn’t and hacks to cultivate it. How to motivate not manipulate people. Unlocking much-needed coherence in leadership teams.
• Unlocking Innovation, Change & Transformation Mindsets
Understand the critical people side of change that blocks all the best intentions. How agility starts with emotional mastery to ensure people flow and don’t freeze in uncertainty or under pressure. How to release outdated ideas that block innovation/transformation and embrace new ones that are future-ready. How to build mindsets and cultures that are as comfortable with reflection, creativity, and customer empathy as with control and perfection. How to hack perfectionism and boost experimentation.
• Unlock Collaboration & Unleash Relational Energy In Business
The power of relationships in business. Being kind and empathic even when busy, stressed, and overwhelmed. Resolving interpersonal issues and conflict transformation. Holding space to ensure others feel seen, heard, appreciated, and respected. Delegating effectively, with guardrails. Difficult conversations and dealing with difficult people. Different forms of collaboration and leading them wisely. How to be a radiator, energizing and enlivening your co-workers, not a drain!
• Strengthen Resilience & Wellbeing In The Workplace
What uncertainty, anxiety, and stress do to the brain and body and how to notice the signals. Signals of fragility in individuals and organizations. Resilience, robustness, and regenerativeness, or anti-fragility. Avoiding wellness washing. My 9-pillar framework that everyone to systematically build more resilience for the turbulent times ahead.
INSPIRING THE FUTURE OF SECTORS & INDUSTRIES
• The Future Of Work
The needs, attitudes, and motivations of the different generations in the workplace. The major tensions and conflicts in the Future Of Work—and different lenses for resolving them. Considering and coping with Back to Office mandates. The 4 Ms of great workplace cultures and how to unlock each: meaning, mastery, membership, and majesty. How to build connection, trust, and belonging in the hybrid reality (without becoming a corporate cult). How to build a safer, more supportive, and more sustainable working culture from the bottom up as well as top-down. How to leverage new people and productivity technologies within a human-centric workplace.
• The Future Of Leadership
The top characteristics of future-fit leaders, from vulnerability to vision. The various business cases for transformational, visionary, and future-fit leadership. Why smartness is necessary but not sufficient for future-forging leadership (and can get in the way of creativity and connection). How to evolve the consciousness and competence of leaders so they can adapt business models and delivery models not just once but many times to lead their organization and industry to a thriving future. Why outdated “training” approaches fail to deliver transformational leaders and how to embrace leadership transformation.
• Inspire A Better Future Of HR & HRTech
Making talent and leadership development fit for a complex, chaotic, and crisis-hit reality. How exponential digital technologies can help unlock way more human-centric organizations. Making HR an encourager of innovation and growth, not a killer of them. Breaking through stereotypes to fulfill HR’s potential as leaders of the leaders. HR as wisdom keepers of the culture—unlocking the full force of People Power.
• Transform The Future Of Sustainability & Regenerative Business
Getting people into the right mindset to accept, adapt to, and act on climate change. Turning the cynical, critical, and fearful into the hopeful, the possible, and the empowered. Baking sustainability and social value in at the start of all innovation and transformation projects. Building reciprocal and interdependent relationships with each other, with nature, and with place. Ways to elevate the sustainability function so it can lead an organization toward a regenerative future.
• The future of Technology for Leaders
Exponential technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Harnessing emerging technologies to unlock sources of untapped value. Driving transformations in products, processes, and business models. Transitioning from tech specs to stories, from code to culture, from technologies to innovations. Why smarts can be a bug, not a feature of tech-driven innovation. How to avoid being disrupted by company killers and instead generate the killer apps of the future.
• The Future of Education & EdTech
The possibilities and limitations of AI and EdTech. Emerging forms of learning and schooling, from micro-schools to flipped classrooms. Why empathy, grit, and creativity are rarely developed through conventional education approaches. Breakthroughs in neuroscience that unlock game-changing opportunities in learning. Ways to unleash change and transformation mindsets in both learners and educators. How technology combines with practice to unlock the skills our societies need to survive and thrive in a turbulent future.
“Nick had a pronounced and profound impact. Exceptional!“ – President, Kellogg’s North America
“I saw the room go from a bit tired to very inspired. Totally engaging and fully immersive. You wouldn’t want to miss a second of it. It was powerfully supercharged right from the start.“ – VP Digital, Alfa Laval
“Nick goes deeper and clearly made an impact on me and others. Looking forward to seeing the seeds grow in me and my organization!“ – EVP, Merck
“Exactly what we wanted. Our CEO has been quoting Nick’s thinking to our leaders.“ – HR Director, Oxford University
“Huge impact! Outstanding framework and powerful tools.” – Chris Hood, President, Kellogg’s North America
“Very inspiring. Nick’s insights resonated very much and are already growing seeds of change.” – COO, Sanofi
“Inspiring, entertaining and a wake up call for every leader to become a truly transformational today: for a better tomorrow!” – Head of Marketing, EMEA, Alfa Laval
“Without doubt the highlight of the two days. Thought-provoking; insightful; enjoyable.” – Manager, Centrica
“Lots of food for thought. The synthesis of biomedical research with business case studies was compelling and called to mind the most inspirational classes from my time at Stanford Graduate School of Business.” – General Counsel, LGC
“I really enjoyed his keynote. Lots of insights to share with my leadership team. Thank you! – CEO, Unilever Health & Wellbeing Collective
“What a brilliant presentation about transformational leadership. I truly enjoyed the part about his Bio-Transformation theory and all the insights he provided us with. THANK YOU!” – SVP, Pfizer
“A WONDERFUL job. People found his talk so inspiring. Someone I work with said “I feel seen this morning.” The talk was motivating, thoughtful, and so well delivered. THANK YOU! – VP, McCormicks & Co
“I consider myself a DEI champion and I had not heard anyone explain diversity challenges like he did.” – Director, Association of Financial Markets in Europe
“Inspired us to continue to work on ourselves as leaders and lead the change. The value of the transformation tool was spot on. Thank you!” – SAP
“Fantastic speaker with passion and enthusiasm, highly engaging and able to simplify complexity.” – Commander, Ministry of Defence, UK
“Nick transformed our event with his engaging, evocative talk that hit all the nails that we put out there. It set a perfect scene for the remainder of the workshop. Very well done and thanks indeed!“ – GM, Syngenta
“Great talk delivered succinctly & dynamically. Especially loved the reference to free style rap – as a life longer lover of hip hop it was great for someone to acknowledge the skill it takes.” – Astra Zeneca
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Switch On: Unleash Your Creativity and Thrive with the New Science & Spirit of Breakthrough
Switch On presents a compelling science-driven, wisdom-inspired answer to the most pressing question of the age: How do we as individuals, and our world as a whole, thrive? It is based on 20 years of research and experience at the forefront of personal, social and corporate change. The result is Breakthrough Biodynamics, a groundbreaking fusion of the latest neuroscience, evolution , ancient traditions, practical philosophy and powerful tools for making transformation happen.
Breakthrough Biodynamics will help you to:
Never be stuck or stressed again by using the 10-step Breakthrough Curve Bring more freedom, consciousness, mindfulness into everyday life Identify, and let go, of the habits and beliefs that are holding you back Find peace by healing past pain and suffering Discover your purpose and, with it, what to do with your life Hone your intuition and use it to make great choices Learn from the greatest leaders how to ensure your ideas become real Turn inspiration into action and make a difference to your world
Become A Transformational Organization: Galvanize agility without losing stability to survive and thrive in the digital, disrupted, and damaged world
The fast-moving, furiously-changing world of exponential digital technologies, seismic social changes, and global existential risks is demanding that every organization innovates with agility whilst still maintaining efficient management and predictable returns. Those that cannot unleash the potential of their people to transform products and processes as times change quickly become obsolete. This is why one S&P company is being replaced every two weeks; and why 50%-75% of the Fortune 500 are predicted to disappear in a decade.This challenge to Business As Usual cannot be underestimated.
The Command & Control management system of the 20th Century, upon which most organizations are built, was designed to limit the very empowerment, creativity, and adaptability needed to compete in the 21st Century. The vast majority of an organization’s strategic problems—from disrupted business models to disengaged staff—are rooted in this broken paradigm. Restructures that don’t break through this thinking are doomed to fail; even as much-lauded alternatives, like “self-management”, often end in dysfunctional chaos and costly complexity.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
By choosing to become a Transformational Organization, you can ensure your enterprise does not just survive, but actually thrives in, the digital, disrupted, and damaged world. Architect your enterprise upon the neuroscience-inspired *Create & Control* blueprint described in this book and you get the best of both worlds: a stable hierarchy that is generative but not dominative; and an agile network of self-organizing teams and distributed leaders that is purposeful and not chaotic.
Discover how to become a Transformational Organization today so you forge the future—rather than fail it.
Now Lead The Change: Repurpose Your Career, Future-Proof Your Organization, and Regenerate Our Crisis-Hit World By Mastering Transformational Leadership
Now Lead The Change is a tour de force that brings together, in one volume, the essential science, wisdom, and tools for becoming a truly transformational leader—from one of the world’s preeminent theorists and teachers.
Our world is being hit by multiple crises—from Covid-19 to the climate emergency. Our organizations must adapt rapidly to exponential technologies and ever-changing customer needs. We all must deal with endless uncertainty, overwhelm, and automation. But conventional leadership thinking was developed to maintain the status quo, not to transform it.
Our emerging reality requires that every leader can upgrade their mindsets and habits not just once, but constantly, to ensure their organizations, and societies, adapt in time. With our disrupted and damaged world demanding continuous transformations—in products, processes, policies, and people—only truly transformational leaders take charge of change to secure sustained success. No enterprise—or species—can outperform the capacity of its leaders to be transformational. It is adapt or die on an unprecedented scale. The stakes could not be higher.
Now Lead The Change sets out out a powerful and profound—yet extremely practical—method for mastering transformational leadership so you can lead your people, organization, and system towards a regenerative future—from one of the world’s preeminent theorists and teachers of transformational leadership.
Within is a lucid, luminous, and illustrated summary of Bio-Transformation Theory, pioneered by the author over 25 years on the front lines of personal, business, and systemic change. Grounded in the latest brain science, fueled by essential embodied wisdom, and focused on landing lasting change in concrete situations as fast as humanly possible, BTT contains 7 life-changing—and world-changing—principles to master your own biology; metabolize any problem into purpose and profit; and step up as a next-level leader with transformational mindsets, habits, and tools. Contains chapters on what Covid-19 reveals, amplifies, and requires from leaders.
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