speaker
Many groups are looking for a way to bring the latest trends and issues affecting talent, innovation and intelligent organizations into focus – and to gain confidence and consensus for action.
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My speeches and workshops are designed to do just that. With humor – and a clear discussion of the interplay among shifting attitudes, new technologies, changing demographics, and the latest understanding of engagement, collaboration and innovation – I help you “turn on the light bulb” within your group and, at the appropriate time, work through the ideas and approaches best suited to meet your organization’s shifting needs.
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All my sessions are customized to the specific needs and interests of your group and can be done as either a keynote lecture of 60-90 minutes or an interactive workshop of 3-6 hours. For workshops, I have developed a number of popular group exercises designed to encourage wide-spread participation, learning, and application.
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Here are the most frequently requested topics for my speaking engagements and workshops today (click a topic to learn more):
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Going Above and Beyond: A Practical Response to the Challenges of Post-Pandemic Work
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What Does it Mean to Work Here? A Signature Experience for Extraordinary Engagement
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Becoming Iconic in a Post-Pandemic Era
Let’s step back and make sense of what’s really happening: today’s sense of disruption is:
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more than the pandemic,
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more than rapidly-advancing technologies,
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more than changing client and workforce preferences and priorities.
What is driving the “future of work” and why does it feel so disruptive?
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Most fundamentally, the type of work that differentiates has changed. Businesses are increasingly challenged to be innovative, adaptable – to sense and anticipate customers’ needs – to work as part of agile collaborative networks, to customize, experiment, and learn.
Most organisations and most leaders are not set up to optimize doing these things well. Most organisations have grown out of a time when success depended on scale and efficiency; the structures and practices are optimized for that challenge. For example:
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Authority through command-and-control – “cascaded” directives from the top
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Emphasis on efficiency and utilization metrics – measurement of productivity by time
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Bureaucratic structures to align multiple inputs
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Proliferation of “schoolhouse rules” designed to prevent individual action
For scale and efficiency, these practices were perfect.
Today, success requires mobilizing intelligence – and doing that well requires different organisational structures, practices and leadership approaches than scale and efficiency.
The need to mobilize intelligence is NOW. The “Future of Work” is catching up with this reality – creating organisations optimized to do this well; leading in ways that encourage every employee to invest their best efforts.
What will companies that stand out as exemplars of the best of 2030 do well? What capabilities are required to differentiate a business today? Clarity and focus on the most important activities is an essential starting point for considering the role of leaders and the shape of the organisation.
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Building an Intelligent Organization
The principles that drove the design of organizations over the past century were brilliant at achieving scale, low cost, and consistent quality. But they are detrimental to the capabilities and skills required today: initiative, innovation, insight, and collaborative actions. The essential principles for today’s organizations are: Options, Choices, and Trust. Erickson provides insightful, thought-provoking and pragmatic examples of how to create options, allow more personal choice, and build trust.
Options are essential for giving organisations the agility required to address today’s uncertain future and are the cornerstone of meeting the preferences of a diverse workforce. Erickson takes leaders beyond the platitudes of “be agile” to show how Own Less/Coordinate More – get what you need when and where you need it – makes it possible.
Choices allow intelligent adults to select work options that make sense for them. Erickson will share provocative ideas, such a pay for task, not time – stop measuring predominantly hours billed; judge the quality (and quantity, and timeliness) of the work performed and let people bid on the projects they would like to take on. Companies must give people a reason to choose your organisation – to opt in – try to scare ones who wouldn’t like it here away.
Two-way trust is a core principle of a contemporary organization: build your trust in your team; it will build their trust in you. Build trust by teaching “Simple Rules” for decision-making: criteria to make choices among multiple alternatives; logic to investigate new issues; acceptable “short cuts;” actions that are essential to your values or brand. Eliminate “school” rules – encourage a community of adults. Help people feel secure by giving them commercially valuable credentials – badges. Articulate logical skill progressions; required observable, objective accomplishments. Eliminate assessments based on subjective, judgemental attributes.
These principles: options, choices, and trust – are the cornerstone of organisations that can be optimised for today’s work, workforce and environment.
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The Role of Leaders Today
The activities that are most important for success today are largely ones that demand an individual’s discretionary effort. People need to “opt in.” The role of leaders is to create an environment that people choose to join, one in which they choose to do great work. Drawing on work with senior leaders around the world for over thirty years, Erickson will share her D-I-C-E model for leading intelligent organisations, showing how all great leaders of intelligent organisations Disrupt, Intrigue, Connect and Engage – along with pragmatic examples of how to do each.
In this presentation, Erickson reviews the framework in depth, shares practical approaches to leading intelligent organizations through the pandemic and offers useful tools leaders can use to build strength for the future. Leaders will leave filled with ideas of actions to add to their own leadership approach.
Erickson shows how everyone can help shape the environment – whether you are the formal organisational leader, a project lead, or a team member.
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Going Above and Beyond: A Practical Response to the Challenges of Post-Pandemic Work
The conditions imposed by the pandemic are requiring leaders to go above and beyond the norm to build intelligent organizations in an era of unpredictable change. How does leadership change in a virtual work environment? How can companies address the growing wave of resignations?
Many of Erickson’s sessions today highlight the specific challenges posed by today’s work environment and offer practical ways companies and individual leaders can be more successful.
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Insuring a Continual Infusion of New Ideas
Two of the critical elements of Erickson’s D-I-C-E model are to Disrupt and Intrigue. Leaders must insure new perspectives are always part of the organization’s view. Erickson helps leaders gain practical approaches to:
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Bring provocative or unsettling ideas in.
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Send people out to see what others are doing.
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Legitimize and celebrate diverse ideas and new perspectives.
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Create time to “think;” a habit of thinking together.
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Ask “How Might We” questions to draw others in.
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Encourage experimentation.
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Use Design Thinking tools and a focus on specific customers to develop deep insight into behaviour and needs.
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Leveraging the Power of Collaboration
How do you transform an organization that doesn’t have a collaborative culture? New technologies are offering emerging opportunities for people to generate, capture and share knowledge, connect with helpful colleagues and information, tap into new sources of innovation and expertise, and harness the “wisdom of crowds.” These collaborative technologies are quickly changing the way work is done and the way organizations function – and the pandemic has hastened the speed of change. Based on her years of deep research into the barriers that prevent and motivations that create organization-wide collaboration, Erickson provides sound guidance on re-shaping your organization for future success.
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Build trust-based relationships; help develop networks

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Make communications easy and efficient
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Role model cooperation
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Allow time for socialization; organise events specifically to create new relationships
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What Does It Mean to Work Here? A Signature Experience for Extraordinary Engagement
A highly engaged workforce has never been more important. Much of the work today requires an individual’s discretionary effort – people have to choose to innovate, share knowledge, and provide extraordinary service. Many employees, particularly those in younger generations, are less motivated by money than the connection they feel to the work. And the lingering recessionary climate has left many employees demoralized – and in need of a significant emotional boost. Meaning is the new money. Companies with extraordinary employee-employer relationships understand what it means to work in their organizations and excel at embedding that meaning in the day-to-day employee experience.


Engaging employees is never about copying another corporation’s best practices. It’s about digging deep to identify what’s uniquely important to your organization. As Tammy’s research shows, individuals find meaning in different aspects of work; work plays different roles in our lives. She provides ways to understand the values that are most important to your employee population and helps design rituals that are specific to your organisation and illustrate your values.
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Whom Will You Lead?
Bottom line: people don’t all want the same thing from work. We bring unique expectations, preferences, and goals. Understanding how others view work and interpret events in the workplace is essential for leadership. We’ll explore how insights from developmental psychology can help explain why people of different generations have disparate expectations – and gain an understanding of how to work effectively with colleagues of all ages, including our newest hires.
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Individuals’ attitudes toward work are changing:
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a preference for more personal control over career paths and work options
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a belief that security depends on one’s growing skills and networks
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a desire to do work that is interesting and meaningful now
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for many, less desire to accumulate physical assets; greater interest in the purpose and social benefit of the work they do
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Leadership Masterclass
A thought-provoking speech? An engaged discussion with a senior team? An in-depth class to share practical approaches and develop specific actions for your organization?
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Award-winning leadership advisor and organizational behavior expert Tammy Erickson offers customized workshops during which she can discuss any or all of the topics described above in the level of depth appropriate for your needs.
Interactive workshops can be designed as half-day, full-day or multiple-day programs – Erickson incorporates experiential learning activities that drive understanding and offer participants practical tools for building stronger, more resilient, innovative and collaborative teams and organizations.
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