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Paul Leonardi      

Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara; Speaker on Digital Transformation & the Future of Work; Author of "The Digital Mindset"

Paul Leonardi is the Duca Family Professor of Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara and is the author of The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI. He holds appointments in the Technology Management Program (TMP) and the Department of Communication. He serves as the Investment Group of Santa Barbara Founding Director of the Master's Technology Management program (mtm.ucsb.edu).

Dr. Leonardi’s research, teaching, and consulting focus on helping companies to create and share knowledge more effectively. He is interested in how implementing new technologies and harnessing the power of informal social networks can help companies take advantage of their knowledge assets to create innovative products and services.

He has authored dozens of articles that have appeared in top journals across the fields of management, organization studies, communication studies, and information systems research. He is also the author of three books on innovation and organizational change. He has won major awards for his research from the Academy of Management, the American Sociological Association, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Association for Information Systems, the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the National Science Foundation.

Over the past decade, he has consulted with for-profit and non-profit organizations about how to improve communication between departments, how to use social technologies to improve internal knowledge sharing, how to structure global product development operations, and how to manage the human aspects of new technology implementation.

Before coming to UCSB, Dr. Leonardi worked at Northwestern University on the faculties of the School of Communication, the McCormick School of Engineering, and the Kellogg School of Management. He received his Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering from the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization at Stanford University.

Speech Topics

Leading Remote and Hybrid Organizations

Technology has allowed us to work anywhere at any time. But the best ideas come when we collaborate with others. So how can your organization collaborate when your workforce is remote? What are the best ways to organize your teams in a hybrid workplace – when some people are in the office but others are not? In this insightful talk, Paul uses a combination of cutting-edge scientific evidence and examples of successful companies to outline the steps you can take to build strong collaborations across multiple geographies, time zones, and cultures that result in high work performance and happy workers.

Overcoming Burnout in The Post-pandemic Workplace

Employee burnout is quickly becoming a pandemic of its own. It leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, reduced performance, loss of personal identity and, in many cases, turnover. In this talk, Paul Leonardi discusses the causes of burnout and why the pandemic has accelerated the experience of burnout in employees across all kinds of work situations. He then provides practical steps your companies can take to alleviate burnout and increase employee engagement as you begin to re-build your workplace norms and procedures in the post-pandemic world.

The Digital Mindset

The digital revolution is here. It’s changing how work gets done, how industries are structured, and how people from all walks of life work, behave, and relate to each other. To thrive in a world driven by data and powered by algorithms, we must learn to see, think, and act in new ways. We need to develop a digital mindset. In this talk, Paul Leonardi discusses the skills you need for a digital mindset and new ways of thinking that will enable you to be a productive leader in the digital economy. With a digital mindset, you can ask the right questions, make smart decisions, and appreciate new possibilities for a digital future. Leaders who adopt these approaches will be able to develop their organization’s talent to prepare their company for successful and continued digital transformation and individual contributors will learn how to better support their company’s strategic changes and advance their own careers.

Leading Digital Transformation

Have you noticed that the biggest challenges to your digital transformation efforts aren’t technological, but organizational? Technology changes the way we communicate and the way we work, disrupting the flow of information and collaboration in organizations. In this informative talk, Paul Leonardi shows you how to prepare your managers, employees, and customers for the digital future by leading cultural change.

Better People Analytics

Companies have more access than ever to data about their employees. Organizations know a lot about their traits and characteristics through people analytics. However, individual data does not give a complete picture of what is going on in a company. Instead, companies need to start using relational analytics to analyze their employee interactions and collaborations to better understand how teams will meet goals. In this insightful talk, Paul shares how companies can use new relational analytics to design high performance teams, identify key influencers, increase diversity and inclusion efforts, and prevent turnover.

Overcoming Digital Exhaustion

Your employees are overwhelmed and burned out. A big part of the problem is digital exhaustion. The pressures associated with being constantly connected, and having to interact with people via multiple tools simultaneously is wearing us out. In this talk Paul reveals the “exhaustion triad,” the key reasons that our use of digital tools is wearing us out. Then, based on his extensive research and work with companies, he outlines practical and easy-to-accomplish ways to help employees reclaim enthusiasm for their work by reducing the negative impacts of digital exhaustion and findings what he calls “digital wellbeing”.

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