Alan is recognised as an international expert on leadership and human performance. He has a broad mix of commercial, academic, scientific and technological abilities. Over the past 24 years he has been a coach to many top business leaders and worked with the GB Olympic squad, coaches and athletes prior to London 2012 and Rio 2016. Originally trained as a medical doctor at Imperial College in London he worked for 11 years in the UK's National Health Service, in primary care in Australia and for a year in academic medical research in the USA. He ended up in Neuroscience research before leaving medicine to work with global business leaders. T RA C K R E C O RD // Alan has helped companies treble share price, enter the FTSE 100, salvage difficult turnarounds and establish market leadership in their industry. He has coached many executive teams to significantly greater levels of performance, transformed organisational cultures, helped leaders discover their purpose and identify new ways to succeed. He is an inspiring and entertaining keynote and his TEDx lectures have attracted over 4 million views. STYLE // Alan has an all-encompassing desire for the development of human beings and the enlightenment of leaders. His style is deeply insightful and robustly challenging. He is also very supportive, encouraging and humorous. He integrates his very broad mix of abilities and depth of thinking on multiple topics to help clients transform themselves, their teams and their organisations, achieving result that even they didn't think were possible. Q U AL IFICATIONS // In addition to his medical degree Alan also has a first class degree in Psychology from the University of London and a PhD in Immunology from Southampton University, UK. He has written numerous academic papers, published in peer reviewed scientific journals. He is the author of seven books on topics from leadership to how to solve the world's toughest problems and he has three more books in preparation.
The HR (R)Evolution – Change the workplace change the world.
We stand at a crossroads in human history where the two paths ahead could lead to two very different futures. One route could take us back to the harshest days of the early Industrial Revolution and the Great Depression. The other could lead us to a world of abundance, equality, inclusivity and prosperity for all. Which future awaits us will be largely determines by what happens is business. Dr Alan Watkins’ keynote will explore how organisations set themselves up for success well into the future? How do they reshape their people practices in particular to meet the changing demands of a digitally savvy workforce who will make up most of the workforce by 2020?
He has lectured to many organisations and HR communities on the ‘future of work’. His latest book,
which will be published in December 2019, is on this exact topic and has been described as a “must
read” by numerous CHROs from around the world.
Attendees leave with a deep insight into how organisations’ approach to their people has evolved over the last 100 years and how they will change in the next 50 years. Leaders will have a new view on how to set up their organisations for the future, leverage AI, roboticization and other global macro trends to ensure they stay ahead of the competition. Their new insights will include specific changes to organisational design (OD), management and development of the talent pool and deployment of new technology. Harnessing all these changes will futureproof the organisation and transform results.
Changing the way we see innovation to leverage superagile networked organisations of the future.
Most organisations are struggling to grow and increase their top line revenue or bottom line profits not least because they have lost the ability to innovate. In large part this is because most organisations see innovation itself as a process not an outcome. Most new products or services are ‘propelled’ through an R&D funnel towards the market and innovators are rewarded based on how little money they spend rather than how much money they make for their organisations. Thought leader Dr Alan Watkins explodes this approach and reveals how disruptive innovation requires products or services to be ‘impelled’ or sucked into the market.
Alan will explain how organisations can transform their innovation engine to stay ahead of the competition. This includes identifying all the key players, building a superagile networked three-layered organisation necessary to innovate successfully and how to work connect the key players together to cross the triple chasm to commercial success.
Attendees leave with a deep insight into how organisations’ need to change their operating model and the way they approach innovation in order to stay ahead of the competition. Using live network analysis data we explore how changing their target operating model (TOM) can transform the fortunes of any business which when combined with a new way to approach innovation. Such changes can help organisations go beyond world class and become truly world leading.
As all organisations become digitally enabled where does AI really take us?
The acceleration of digital transformation is one of the greatest challenges facing organisations over the next 30 years. This ranges from the roboticization of the workforce to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Many academics and commentators believe that AI is actually a threat to our survival as a species. Or at the very least we will see 30% of jobs disappear in the next 30 years and the emergence of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). But such ideas are based on a misunderstanding of robots, AI and ML and how they will actually affect the world of work.
Alan will explore the real debate in AI which stretches way beyond autonomous vehicles and rapid search. He will explore how to code mainframes with morality, why computer viruses may become self-aware and why and how humanity and AI will converge not diverge. He will ground this digitally enabled futurology in the commercial reality of today’s business problems.
Attendees leave with a completely new view of the digitally enabled future we are moving into. They will face into the issues of identity, the sentience of robots and why we need to understand human development and morality in order to set ourselves up for the future. We will look at what disruptive intelligence looks like and how they can unlock such capabilities within themselves learning from the principles of AI and synergistically interacting with the ideas that AI, ML and roboticization spawn. This keynote is for people who want to know what the future holds but even more are keen to know how this future will change them personally.
And become ten years younger in the process.
Most corporate leaders, professional sport stars and Olympic athletes can be brilliant sometimes but very few know how to be brilliant every single day. This is because very few have studied exactly what is takes to deliver exceptional performance day in day out.
The secret lies in understanding the real drivers of performance. The hidden dimensions that drive leadership behaviour. Alan will explain how to hack your own system and build the biology basis for brilliance. He will explore how biology affects brain function at the most critical moments of our day.
Alan will explain how all levels of the human system must be controlled if you want to be consistently brilliant. He reveals how all our brains shut down under pressure using a live demonstration to prove his point. He then goes further to demonstrate how to avoid this DIY lobotomy and how it is possible to maintain a high performance state of coherence even under fire. He has taught these skills to leaders all over the world as well as fighter pilots and professional athletes.
Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how they can go beyond biology and control their own brain function. They will also develop the ability to turn on any emotional state they need in any meeting or situation. Alan will also explain how controlling biology and emotions and inducing a state of coherence relates to many other techniques leaders may have tried to improve their performance. The shortened version of this keynote can be seen in Part1 and Part 2 of Alan’s TEDx talks (see links below), which have now been seen by over 3.5 million viewers.