Aaron Dignan
- Digital Strategist and Founding Partner, Undercurrent
- Technologies are Transforming our Economy
- Inspiring Change / Culture
Travels From
New York
Aaron Dignan Speaker Biography
Everywhere he looks, Aaron Dignan sees the same phenomenon. Our most trusted and important institutions—in business, healthcare, government, philanthropy, and beyond – are struggling. They’re confronted with the fact that the scale and bureaucracy that once made them strong are liabilities in an era of constant change. For the past ten years, he has studied organizations and teams with a new way of working that prioritizes adaptivity and autonomy over efficiency and control. Aaron contends that teams everywhere need to join them in the future of work.
As the founder of The Ready—a global organizational transformation and coaching practice—he helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson & Johnson, Charles Schwab, Kaplan, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Rabobank, Boeing, Macy’s, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Sweetgreen, Dropbox, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York Public Radio, and charity: water.
Dignan is co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, an active angel investor and helps build partnerships between the startups and end-ups he advises. He’s also a co-founder of Responsive.org. And he has sat on advisory boards for GE, American Express, PepsiCo, and the Cooper Hewitt, as well as the board of directors for Smashburger. He is the author of Game Frame (Free Press, 2011) and Brave New Work (Portfolio 2019).
To book Aaron Dignan call Executive Speakers Bureau at 901-754-9404.
Brave New Work
We sit at the precipice of a completely new world. Exponential technologies are transforming our economy in unpredictable ways—democratizing power, concentrating wealth, connecting everyone and everything, and challenging our assumptions about business as usual. In response, new ways of working and organizing are gaining popularity, spurred on by radical entrepreneurs who are willing to question everything about what an organization is and how it should operate. The change we face technologically and culturally is nothing compared to what’s coming. To be ready, Dignan contends we need to focus on making our teams and companies more adaptive, more exponential, and (perhaps counterintuitively) more human. In this presentation, he offers a path to readiness that applies to anyone, from the new hire to the chief executive.
The Ever Better OrganizationManaging Complexity and Uncertainty in the 21st Century
We sit at the precipice of a completely new world. Exponential technologies are transforming our economy in unpredictable ways – democratizing power, concentrating wealth, connecting everyone and everything, and challenging our assumptions about rights and privacy. In response, new ways of working and organizing are gaining popularity, spurred on by Generation Y entrepreneurs who are willing to question everything about what an organization is and how it should operate. The change we face technologically and culturally is nothing compared to what’s coming. To be ready, Dignan contends we need to focus on making our teams and companies more adaptive, more exponential, and (perhaps counterintuitively) more human. In this presentation he offers a path to readiness that applies to anyone, from the new hire to the chief executive.
The Responsive Organization
Tesla, the fastest-growing stock in the automotive industry and maker of the safest car ever made, is run by a software engineer. Amazon has a market cap three times bigger than Target, in spite of the fact that it operates at a loss. Valve is able to run a multi-billion dollar gaming company with a few hundred employees without job titles or managers. What is happening? Technology—particularly software—has had a destabilizing effect on legacy organizations everywhere. Today’s fastest growing, most profoundly impactful companies are using a completely different operating model. These companies are lean, mean, learning machines and are organized around a new pattern: the ability to evolve in real time. In this presentation, Aaron Dignan will speak about his research on organizational responsiveness, his work on the front lines with companies like GE, American Express, and PepsiCo, and why companies everywhere need to change the way they work and organize in order to succeed in an age of uncertainty.
The Game Frame Workshop
The Game Frame Workshop will take your company through a crash course in tackling challenges at work from the perspective of game design. Participants will workshop existing business challenges and walk away thinking like a game designer – equipped with the seeds and buds of solutions. This two day workshop is broken up into three sections: Play, Learn and Design.
