William Taylor
Co-founder of Fast Company, he shook up the business-magazine world and the world of business. His latest book shows how to unleash breakthrough creativity and cutting-edge performance in even the most traditional fields.
Price range
- $25,000
Expert
- Business Growth
- Change
- Corporate Culture
- Entrepreneurism
- Innovation
- Leadership
- Peak Performance
- Teamwork/Teambuilding
- Technology
Experience
- Corporate
- Publishing
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About
Bill Taylor is a best-selling author, celebrated entrepreneur, and groundbreaking thinker who shows organizations and their leaders how to compete, innovate, and win—during times of growth as well as times of crisis. He made his name as co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company, one of the most influential magazines of the last two decades. Fast Company has won countless awards, from “Startup of the Year” in its early days to “Magazine of the Year,” the highest honor in its field, and has earned a passionate following among executives and entrepreneurs around the world. Its editorial success led to great business success. A company that began in borrowed office space in Harvard Square eventually sold for $340 million—the second-highest price for a single magazine is U.S. history. Fast Company recently celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary and continues to shape the global conversation about business.
Since starting Fast Company, Bill has written three books on creativity, leadership and change. His most recent book is Simply Brilliant: How Great Organizations Do Ordinary Things in Extraordinary Ways. The book offers a set of messages and a collection of case studies on how to unleash breakthrough innovation and cutting-edge performance in even the most traditional, hard-to-change fields. His previous book, Practically Radical, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. His first book, Mavericks at Work, was a New York Times bestseller and was named a “Business Book of the Year” by The Economist and the Financial Times. Bill has published numerous essays and CEO interviews in the Harvard Business Review, and his column, “Under New Management,” ran in the Sunday Business section of The New York Times. He now writes regularly for HBR.org.
A graduate of Princeton University and MIT’s Sloan School of Management, Bill speaks with intellectual authority and real-world experience on how to stand for something extraordinary in a world of hyper-competition and nonstop change, the connection between who you are in the marketplace and how you lead in the workplace, and the importance of making sure that what you know about your field doesn’t limit what you can imagine about the future. Provocative and inspiring, he offers firsthand accounts of how game changers are transforming their companies and shaking up their industries—and insights into how you can do the same in your own organization.
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Video Clips
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Topics
The Hard Work of Big Change – Rules for Transforming Your Organization and Challenging Yourself
Breakthrough technologies. Radical business models. New customer preferences. Remote work. In an era of hyper-competition and unpredictable crises, even the most successful companies have to rethink and reimagine every aspect of how they do business and deliver results. But how do you break new ground when there is so much pressure to avoid mistakes? How do you keep people focused and confident in a world that seems so risky and uncertain? In short, how do you unleash long-lasting, positive change in turbulent, fast-moving times? These are the questions Bill Taylor addresses in his provocative and energizing keynote. His message is designed to help leaders from all walks of life transform their organizations, shake up their industries, and challenge themselves. He brings his message to life with colorful stories of organizations that are unleashing innovations and driving transformations in all sorts of fields—from retail to software, automobiles to financial services, hotels to hospitals. Bill offers a manifesto for change and a manual for achieving it—at a moment when change is the name of the game.
Here are some of the themes he emphasizes:
- In a fast-changing world, the most successful organizations embrace strategies that allow them to stand for something special and inspire others to stand with them.
- The more things change, the more the worries about change remain the same.
- In a world reshaped by technology, change leaders embrace the power of emotion and psychology.
- You can’t be serious about changing unless you’re also serious about failing.
Talent, Culture, and the Future Of Work – How to Unleash Fierce Execution and Nonstop Innovation in Good Times and Bad
Everything about talent and culture is ripe for reinvention—which is why great organizations and their leaders work as distinctively as they compete. In an era of brash ideas and urgent crises, organizations that create the most extraordinary value are the ones that generate the most widely shared sense of commitment, connection, and compassion among colleagues. Whether you’re in a fast-moving technology field or a more traditional industry, your organization can’t be exceptional in the marketplace unless it creates something exceptional in the workplace. In a keynote that is at once highly strategic and deeply human, Bill Taylor draws on his access to some of the world’s most high-performing and creative workplaces to explore how organizations can unleash and sustain a culture of fierce execution and nonstop innovation. His ideas, lessons, diagnostics, and case studies are a pragmatic guide to the future of work and a cutting-edge agenda for recruiting, evaluating, organizing, and retaining talent.
Among the questions he helps organizations and their leaders answer are:
- Why should great people join your organization?
- How do you know a great person when you see one?
- Does your organization work as distinctively as it competes?
- Do you offer the small gestures that send big signals about what really matters at work?
Out of the Crisis—Lessons on Leadership and Change in the Shadow of Covid-19
A crisis, the old bromide goes, is a terrible thing to waste. One way not to waste the brutal crisis of the past year is to reflect on all it has taught us about leadership and change, and try to do better. What do we understand today, that we didn’t understand a year ago, about the most powerful ways to engage customers, the best ways to motivate colleagues, the smartest ways to innovate?
This past year, executives, entrepreneurs, and change agents have wrestled more than ever with the worries and stresses that “keep us up at night.” Now at last, we have a chance to focus on “what gets us up in the morning”—the opportunities and possibilities that can remake our organizations and make progress on the work that matters most.
In this topical and timely keynote, filled with lessons about competition, work, creativity, and change, Bill Taylor draws on case studies of leaders who have inspired colleagues to unprecedented levels of performance, organizations that have won big in tough times, workplaces that have generated exceptional enthusiasm and commitment.
He emphasizes seven lessons can help leaders and organizations create a more hopeful and prosperous future.
Optimism matters—everybody needs a reason to believe.
Tough times can bring out the best in people.
To solve big problems, focus on small wins.
Don’t just champion new ideas, strengthen personal relationships.
Don’t pretend you have all the answers.
Give everyone a reason to feel proud of what they do.
To overcome bad news, revel in good news.
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Testimonials
3 people have recommended this speaker
“you were one of our top 2 rated speakers across the entire 3-day program with a perfect average rating of 5.0! In addition to this outstanding overall score - you received 100% of strong audience consensus for speaker knowledge and superb presentation delivery.”
“Bill Taylor knocked it out of the park! He had a great style and delivery, and the message was bang-on what we were looking for. He also did the best job I’ve ever seen of tying his message back to comments and examples from internal speakers that spoke before him. We really enjoyed having him.”
“Bill Taylor was outstanding. He was an entertaining storyteller who did a great job of connecting the dots between our business and his knowledge of client experience and innovation.”