Public Speaking
I’m usually brought in when capable people and organisations sense that something isn’t broken — but it isn’t quite working either. Work is getting done. People are smart. The organisation functions. And yet energy is flatter than it should be, curiosity has narrowed, and the effort-to-reward ratio feels off.
That moment matters.
Because what’s often labelled as a motivation or engagement problem is usually something else entirely. It’s a design problem.
The work I do on stage
I deliver keynotes and facilitated sessions that help people rethink how work is actually experienced, and rediscover that they have more influence over how it feels than they’ve been using. This work sits at the intersection of behavioural science, design thinking, and lived experience. It’s practical, but not prescriptive. Provocative, without being reckless. Motivating, without slipping into hype. Rather than asking people to overhaul everything, I focus on small, intelligent adjustments, changes to how people communicate, collaborate, make decisions, protect focus, and approach creativity.
Think less total reinvention, more changing one ingredient and seeing what becomes possible.
Different people leave seeing different moves they could make. That’s not a lack of alignment. That’s how real change actually sticks.
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Why this work often happens inside organisations
Work takes up a huge portion of our lives, whether we like it or not. It shapes our energy, our confidence, our relationships, and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s possible. When work is designed badly, it quietly drains people. When it’s designed with intention, it becomes one of the most powerful places for growth, contribution, and enjoyment. That’s why a significant part of my work happens inside organisations. I work with corporates, leaders, and teams not because work is the only place that change matters — but because it’s one of the places where empowering people to make small, intelligent changes has the greatest impact.
When people are supported to shape how work actually happens, something shifts. Energy returns. Creativity reappears. Work starts to feel worth the effort again.
That’s the work these keynotes are designed to do.
The patterns I interrupt
Most organisations don’t have a motivation problem. They have smart, capable people who have slowly adapted to ways of working that drain energy, flatten creativity, and make collaboration feel harder than it should.
Over time:
curiosity gets replaced by caution
initiative narrows
people stop asking “and what if…?”
Work still gets done.
But it becomes strangely joyless and harder to improve. My keynotes and workshops are designed to interrupt that pattern. People leave saying some version of:
“And we could…”
And then, importantly, they actually do something about it.
What people leave with
My talks reliably create three things:
Relief — because people realise nothing is “wrong” with them
Energy — because work stops feeling so fixed and inevitable
Ownership — because change becomes local, doable, and chosen
Enjoyment increases not because standards drop, but because work is redesigned with more intention and agency. When people are allowed to shape how work happens, energy returns to the system — and performance, collaboration, and creativity tend to follow.
This work sits within my broader Newbiscuit approach: a design-led way of helping people reshape work and life through small, testable experiments rather than big, brittle plans.
A note on scope: work lives and whole lives
While much of my speaking happens in corporate settings, the thinking behind it is broader. The same patterns that flatten work, autopilot, avoidance, misplaced certainty, the sense that “this is just how it is now” show up across life more generally.
That’s why I’m also invited into conferences, festivals, and public forums focused on career change, reinvention, creativity, and living well. It’s one body of work, applied in different rooms.
What this isn’t
This isn’t a pep talk. It isn’t a wellbeing lecture. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all model of “better work”. And it’s not about bypassing leadership or lowering expectations. This work helps people take smarter ownership of how work gets done, inside the real constraints of modern organisations.
Where this lands best
I’m typically booked as a keynote speaker for:
leadership conferences and offsites
organisation-wide moments focused on culture, engagement, or change
innovation and creativity forums
situations where people feel capable but flat, busy but uninspired
The common thread isn’t industry or role, it’s timing. These talks work best when people sense that working differently matters, but aren’t yet sure what’s allowed or possible.
How people describe the impact
The feedback I value most doesn’t arrive on the day. It arrives weeks later. People tell me they’re enjoying work more, not because their role changed, but because they changed how they work. Small shifts. Real changes. Chosen, not imposed. That’s when organisations know the keynote did its job.