Dr Jason Fox Book as a speaker/entertainer for your next event
Key Points for Dr Jason Fox
- Dr. Jason Fox advises Fortune 500 companies, multinationals, and diverse entities worldwide, specializing in guiding leadership teams through complexity.
- A bestselling author and lecturer in systems and behavior, Dr. Fox pioneers unconventional growth beyond traditional norms.
- Awarded "Keynote Speaker of the Year," Dr. Fox's approach resonates with skeptical senior leaders, offering fresh perspectives.
- Living in an old chocolate factory in Melbourne, he embodies a unique lifestyle, enjoying atypical pursuits like extreme reading and coffee appreciation.
Topics for Dr Jason Fox
- A quest beckons
Beyond the default
The opening session of any event is the most critical, as it sets the trajectory and tone for the whole affair. Getting this right is paramount—lest we see folk remain ensnared in operational matters. The last thing we want is for people to remain sitting in isolated silos with arms folded, all stiff in their professional armour, stealth-checking their email.
This keynote is honed to open events. Even the most sceptical participants will find themselves open and enthusiastically engaged; warmed to the opportunity at hand. - Into the storm
Leading into the unprecedented
It’s common practice to hire a futurist who can string together cherry-picked success stories that demonstrate how “Everything Is Fine” and “Technology is Amazing—look!”. Such contributions are entertaining distractions that often feel good (because: the future is bright, carry on!)—but perhaps your leaders are mature enough to confront the reality at hand.
Because our current trajectory is cyberpunk and not great. We stand amidst the confluence of intersecting trends, to the backdrop of a meta-crisis (replete with societal and ecological collapse). Something fundamental has got to change. We need creative and subversive leadership, more than ever. Your event can be a catalyst for this. - Make clever happen
Unlock meaningful progress
The closing keynote provides the resonant ‘end note’ that folks will remember, long into the future. This is not the time for a dry technical session; nor is it a time to hear from a speaker’s personal story of success. Instead: this is the time in which you want your audience to mindfully translate and distill the inklings, hunches, realisations, connections and insights generated by your event into the actions conducive to meaningful progress. As an award winning keynote speaker and a wizard with a PhD in motivation science—I can make this happen, ensuring your event is a resounding success. - Artificially intelligent
Keep your wits amidst exponential change
The default narrative for artificial intelligence is that it is amazingly powerful and can do many creative things, but it will never replace ‘being human’. And that, whilst it can be used for ‘evil’—it can also be used to achieve great ‘good’. Such nothing-statements have some face-validity to them, but the underlying message is palliative—and misses the point entirely.
AI is one of the greatest exponential enablers in the history of humanity. But in the context of our already-flawed systems, the question is: what will it enable? Will AI be our saviour—or will Moloch (the god of coordination failure) see to it that AI accelerates our demise? - Change the game
Shift behaviour, shape culture
Fluff and fist-pumping rah-rah can be quite stirring. Rousing, even. But the longevity and actual impact of motivational presentations—once we return to work—is often questionable.
Smart people require more than just a motivational pep talk. If you want your people to be the champions of your enterprise culture—and demonstrating the behaviours most aligned to your strategy—then they ought understand the science behind what drives collective motivation.
In this keynote, we unpack the elements of gameful design—including the most effective levers your leaders can use to influence collective behaviour and culture. - The “future of leadership”
What is leadership anyway?
One might think of ‘leadership’ as the sensibilities apt for the efficacious coordination of efforts at higher orders of complexity amidst emerging contexts. Thus the question is: what is emerging? And how might we develop our leaders so as to be most relevant and apt into the future?
I have been an advisor to many leadership teams on such matters, and have co-created (and contributed to) many leadership development programs to this effect. The “future of leadership”—in complex contexts—is decentralised, developmental, fluid, post-authentic, oscillatory, and (often) asynchronous. Which, I know, is quite different to the notions of leadership that the pre-internet age groomed us for. That’s the point. - The ritual of becoming
Who are you to become?
So: you were taught to ‘dream big’, ‘set goals’ and ‘believe in yourself’. Quaint. But maybe you’ve outgrown this? Dreams are nice—but they can become tyrannical narratives. Goals are fine—but they only work in predictable domains. Self-belief is tricky—for it’s a paradox. All of this is made harder by social media, where even vulnerability is performative.
This keynote offers a ‘post-authentic’ guide to cultivating your own development as an adult. If you find yourself jaded with the otherwise masculine bent of motivational speakers come to ‘optimise’ your life—you will love this session.
Drawing upon motivation science, adult development and mythopoetic sensibilities, you will find your way to new motivation and meaning in life. - Fireside conversations
Sometimes our events allow for more intimate contexts, wherein we can explore the questions that are alive in us, and pursue insight beyond the edge of knowledge.
My firesides often take the form of a short and thoughtful provocation followed by a generous bias towards emergent conversation and Q&A. As for content, I am often asked to share my thoughts on a wide array of topics—though I primarily offer insight from the following domains:- Quest leadership – strategic innovation, the ‘future of leadership’,
Motivation design – psychological safety, values, focused and deep work, gamification, dark patterns, habits/rituals/rhythms - New philosophies – metamodernism, emergentism, adult development, cognitive complexity, cultural code, the many hues of solarpunk, trickster bricolage.
The metacrisis – systems collapse, climate change, multipolar traps, attractor-basins, deep adaptation, post-growth/post-hope/post-doom sensibilities (fun!), dancing with Moloch (the god of coordination failure). - Decentralised coordination – blockchain technology, artificial intelligence, DAOs, web3, NFTs, incentive structures, lorecraft and the future of work.
- Complex adaptive systems – self-organising, sense-making, negative capability, void hunting, memetics, hyperobjects, coordination protocols.
- Quest leadership – strategic innovation, the ‘future of leadership’,
Testimonials for Dr Jason Fox
We first engaged Jason to facilitate an important strategic offsite with our senior leadership team. The opportunity for such off sites is rare, and the time senior leaders have together at such off sites is very precious. It was essential we engaged someone who could not only cover the agenda, but also provide space to explore new possibilities. Jason did this and more. He immediately built rapport with the team, and was able to challenge us to think beyond our defaults. The result was a strategy that was refreshing, courageous and differentiated, and a leadership team that was inspired to make it happen. We couldn't have predicated this, but Jason's unique approach allowed it to happen. We have since then engaged Jason to help us build momentum with our people. He delivered a keynote to our business in support of the strategy, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We loved that he was able to tailor it serve the strategy. Then, recently, we engaged Jason again to facilitate further strategic development. And it just gets better and better! We look forward to such experiences, and will be working with Jason again in the near future.
Executive General Manager of Personal Insurance Distribution
Suncorp
It was great spending time with you last week at our event in Chicago. You captured the conference themes and highlights in such a unique and special way that exceeded our conference attendees’ expectations. I wish all my speakers could be as smart, talented and delightful to work with as you are. Thank you for raising the bar even higher than we dreamed possible! It was an absolute pleasure working with you on this event. On behalf of the entire IIR team, thank you again for making the main stage legendary (and memorable and FUN)!
Senior Conference Producer
The Institute for International Research, New York
We were facing some serious challenges across the CSIRO, and as a result we were forced to make some tough decisions about what programs and positions could continue. This, coupled with redundancies and a climate of uncertainty meant that the morale of our researchers and staff wasn’t at its highest. The leadership team organised an important event to present our vision and strategy for progress to over 400 of our people. We wanted to solicit input from them to shape the strategy—but it was critical that the day was facilitated delicately, with good thinking and deliberate design. And so we hired Dr Jason Fox to ensure this important event was a success. Serving as our facilitator and closing keynote speaker, Jason maintained a buoyant and practically optimistic tone throughout the day. His use of humour and intelligence was masterful—he had everyone constructively contributing to our strategy, connecting and collaborating at a level we rarely see. And finally, his expertise in motivation design was exactly the pragmatic yet strategic perspective our people needed to move forward. I recommend Dr Jason Fox for any organisation wanting to progress important strategy in challenging times—his work is magic.
Director of Advanced Manufacturing
CSIRO
We had the goal of bringing together key stakeholders and leaders from our industry to focus on prioritising long-term research for future innovation. Anyone who has attempted this will know that it can be a challenge, as the tendency is to focus on existing priorities or at least those which we can see more clearly. To get people truly thinking to the future requires a different approach, and we are very fortunate to have engaged Dr Jason Fox for this. He has a unique and refreshing approach that just works. His expertise and experience were invaluable. Jason partnered with us from the start, working and mentoring us through concept development, communication design and progress management. This all lead to an inaugural ‘Futures Forum’ event that facilitated real breakthrough thinking, and left us with a refined set of priorities and areas to focus on. Jason’s involvement allowed us to make great progress in this new area of investment, and it really motivated people to get excited about the possibilities and future of the industry. If you’re serious about exploring new opportunities for innovation and competitive advantage, you can't go past Jason Fox.
General Manager of R&D Investment
Cotton Research & Development Corporation
We at FIBS invited Jason as a keynote speaker to RATKAISUN PAIKKA, the leading Corporate Responsibility event in Finland, in May 2015. In total 700 business and sustainability professionals participated in the event, and Jason was our star speaker. Jason couldn't be there in person, so we arranged a video-connection for his presentation. Even via Skype and limited time Jason was an inspiration and captured the audience with his talent, wit and authentic style, sharing much needed, to-the-point and out-of-the-box insights and tips on how to truly get people motivated and engaged at work. Working with Jason and his team was a pleasure from the beginning till the end, and we’re very much looking forward to future collaboration with him. Thank you!
Manager of Operations & Programs
FIBS CR Network (Finland)
Our Commercial Claims team spent time reviewing our strategy and needed a way to share the work we had done with our teams. We were originally going to bring Dr Jason Fox in to contribute his expertise in progress design (he came highly recommended), but after our initial discussion we realised we could go a whole lot deeper and Jason could help us deliver the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’. Jason not only helped us to understand how we could translate our strategic intent into the behaviours and work culture that would make it happen—he worked with his partner Kim to produce a hand-drawn ‘visual narrative’ video to communicate the story behind our strategy to the wider business. Instead of producing another PDF report that lives buried away in the intranet, this approach has been a hit and everyone knows what we’re working towards, and why. I highly recommend Jason’s input for any organisation looking for a fresh approach to strategic development. Jason was really easy to work with. His input was thoughtful, practical and progressive—he really helped us to rethink the way we communicate strategy.
Senior Leader of Performance, Strategy & Optimisation Commercial Claims
Suncorp
We made two great decisions when we were choosing keynote speakers for our annual Australasian Research Administrators Association Conference this year. The first was to have Jason Fox open the conference, and the second was for him to close it! Jason’s relevant, engaging, and (occasionally) irreverent presentation incorporated pop culture, motivation science, mixed media and had our delegates engaged and keen to hear more from the outset. Most importantly, his closing keynote provided a visual summary of key ideas from our meeting, and his illustrations continue to be a memorable and humorous keepsake for delegates well after the event. Jason offered our delegates unique insights into our profession, a mirror to assess our motivations, tools for reflection on our professional practices, and easy strategies for making things happen after the event ... not to mention being seriously funny. Highly recommended for conference organisers who want to keep delegates engaged and finish their event with an hilarious bang!
Conference Convenor
The Australasian Research Administrators Association
I initially approached Jason to deliver a keynote to our business for our annual conference so that he could, in his own persuasive, inimitable way, hold a mirror up to some of our less-than-helpful work practices, and create a case for thinking differently about making progress and working on things that matter. Given Jason’s experience in workshop facilitation, his role quickly expanded beyond the keynote to facilitating an entire day of our conference where he played the role of consultant, mentor, guide and contributor. Jason helped us navigate our way through thought-provoking activities that challenged our people during the event, and delivered practical tools and constructs for continuing the analysis and experimentation process afterwards. Jason is a leader in the field of motivation science, but crucially he understands the importance to businesses of linking theory to practice so that thinking differently becomes part of one’s daily toolkit, rather than something we do only once per year at an event. I look forward to learning more from Jason in the years to come.
Group Manager of Enterprise Digital & Social
Origin Energy
We had Jason speak at our 925 festival in Helsinki—an event designed to empower Finland business leaders to think bravely and work smarter. The Finnish audience is very discerning, and we’ve worked with some of the best thought leaders from around the world—and I can honestly say Jason is world-class. He provided insight that was fresh, bold and very pragmatic.The audience loved his wit, passion and highly original style, including hand-drawn slides. As a bonus, he was a pleasure to work with.
Creative Director & Founder
Idealist Group, Finland