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John Spence    

Strategic Planning Executive Educator & Author

John Spence is recognized as one of the top business thought leaders and leadership development experts in the world and was named by the American Management Association as one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. As a consultant and coach to organizations worldwide, from startups to the Fortune 10, John is dedicated to helping people and businesses be more successful by “Making the Very Complex… Awesomely Simple.”

For more than 23 years John Spence has traveled worldwide helping people and businesses be more successful. John is the author of five books and co-author of several more, a business consultant, workshop facilitator, keynote speaker and executive coach with a client list that includes numerous Fortune 500 firms to small businesses, professional associations and other organizations. John’s areas of expertise include: leadership, high-performance teams, managing change, organizational culture, consultative selling, strategic planning, strategy execution and the future of business.

At 26 John was the CEO of an international Rockefeller foundation, overseeing projects in 20 countries. Just two years later Inc. Magazine named him one of America’s Up and Coming Young Business Leaders. John is recognized as one of the Top 100 Business Thought Leaders in America, one of the Top 100 Small Business Influencers in America, one of the Top 50 Small Business Experts in America and one of the top 500 Leadership Development Experts in the World. The American Management Association named John one of America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch along with Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

John was named one of eight finalists for the Breakthrough Idea Award for the Thinkers50 2017 Distinguished Achievement Awards. The Thinkers50 celebrates the thinkers who have contributed the most to management thinking and practice over the last two years and whose ideas drive the conversations of the day.

John is a voracious learner and consumes a minimum of 100 business books, countless articles and blogs a year. He is a guest lecturer at more than 90 colleges and universities including MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Wharton School of Business, University of Auckland, Canterbury University, University of Krakow and Kozminski University. He was the owner or CEO of six companies and currently serves as a board member or adviser to several organizations and executives.

John has made a career of “Making the Very Complex…Awesomely Simple”. As a professional speaker, John is comfortable with anything from small groups of high-level executives to large scale seminars to keynote speeches at national meetings with as many as 10,000 attendees or more.

Speech Topics


SPECIALTIES

John provides a variety of services. His specialties include executive education and training workshops in the following areas:

  • Advanced leadership
  • High-performance teams
  • Strategic thinking and planning
  • Business excellence
  • Building winning cultures
  • Accountability and disciplined execution
  • Superior customer service

Strategies for Success

Over the past ten years John Spence has had the opportunity to speak with literally thousands of people in his workshops and seminars about the hurdles they face in trying to live a more happy, joyful balanced and successful life. From CEO’s to college students, John has discovered that there are a relatively limited number of reoccurring problems and self-imposed obstacles that seem to cause about 90 percent of the pain and disappointment in the average person’s life. Shockingly, most of these issues are completely avoidable (or at the least can be drastically reduced) – once you clearly understand what they are and why they happen. In this speech, John will uncover these specific life satisfaction issues and teach a number of realistic and practical tools to overcome those hurdles and move in the direction of a much more satisfying and rewarding life.

Excellence By Design

One of John’s top clients came to with a challenge. They wanted a presentation for 1,600 of their people that would clearly show them a specific process for “designing a future of excellence” for the organization that could take them to number one in the world in their industry. After several months of research and study John put together what has now become his most popular keynote speech.

“Excellence By Design” is a powerful, insightful and potentially life-changing look at what it truly takes to achieve excellence in business and life. Full of quotes, anecdotes and real-life examples, this speech lays out, step-by-step, precisely what an individual or organization must do to achieve uncommon success. This is a highly motivational presentation that is firmly grounded in research and common sense.

** This presentation is easily customizable by adding on a second area of focus, to create a program such as “Excellence by Design in Professional Sales.” Additional topics include: sales, leadership, life management skills, negotiations, strategic planning, motivation and interpersonal communications. Many conferences and annual meetings use the “Excellence By Design” format and then work with John to adapt it directly to the theme and major issues of the event for an extremely impactful presentation.

Building a High Performance Team

Based on John’s hands-on experience in leading advanced team building retreats for more than 100 companies worldwide, this speech will describe the key elements that all high performance teams must exhibit to function at peak levels.

Incorporating extensive research, “Best in the World” team benchmarks and numerous personal anecdotes and real-life examples, John will clearly outline the fundamental aspects of high performance teams and teach the essential skills necessary to build these teams.

The audience will leave this speech with a thorough understanding and respect for the challenges of creating and sustaining truly great teams and a specific framework for implementing advanced teambuilding in their organization.

Outstanding Business Leaders

Based on the work in his book: “Excellence by Design – Leadership” John will present the six key characteristics of all outstanding business leaders. Drawn from more than 10 years of research, and John’s personal experience as a leadership consultant and executive educator to hundreds of organizations worldwide, this speech delivers a clear, actionable and powerful overview of the specific skills, abilities and attitudes necessary to become a great leader. Dealing with issues such as vision, honesty, integrity, empowerment, risk-taking, trust and self awareness, audience members will leave this talk with deep understanding of the challenges and rewards of committing to being a living example of Five Ways to Run or Ruin a Great Company

During this eye-opening presentation John will describe in detail the specific elements he has documented to running and sustaining a successful enterprise. He will also pose a number of “Leadership Questions” to help audience members do a quick reality check and determine if they are on the right track, or headed for disaster.

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