Kieran Flanagan

In addition to being one of the only female Creative Directors in the world of MadMen, at 20, Kieran was also one of the youngest Creative Directors to lead a multi award winning advertising agency. 

In an impressive career, she has lead multi-national accounts across multidisciplinary departments and businesses working at McCann, Smart, Kindred and VCD (a team she
helped found and build into the agency of the year in her first three years in the industry). In that time, Kieran also directed the Strategic and Creative team behind the most successful new product launch in Australian history, won awards around the world for creativity and effectiveness, spent three years running Australia's premier creative school, AWARD, and coauthored 'Shift' with her business partner Dan Gregory.

She is currently the co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at research, training and innovation think tank, The Impossible Institute, teaching and lecturing at The Miami Ad School and has spoken to audiences as diverse as the UN in Singapore (as part of a group working to end human trafficking), sales teams for Coca Cola, leadership forums and education summits. All while producing work for markets as far flung as the United States, Russia, SE Asia, Europe, Oceania and TEDx Sydney.

Kieran is a passionate advocate for the commercial power of creativity and a return to more human engagement, cultures and leadership.

Topics

WE-Q: Raise your Collaborative Intelligence

Collaboration is no longer seen as a touchy, feely nice to have. Something organizations talk about but seldom deliver.

The increasing interconnectivity of our media and communities, the complexity and interdependence of the work we do and the unrelenting pressure to innovate and constantly raise the bar have made Collaborative IntelligenceTM, or We-QTM, the killer app.

So how do we raise your organizations’ We-QTM?

In this interactive and compelling presentation, Kieran Flanagan will reveal:

• How to create a culture based on “Co-PIsTM” not just KPIs
• What leaders need to know to build teams that work together and avoid “white anting”
• Why successfully navigating change is a collaborative activity

Creating Engagement: The Customer Quotient

"Tomorrow’s customer is not where they were yesterday. Nor are they who they were!"

Trends such as Collaborative Consumption, Social Sharing, Mass Personalization, Intangible Value and the ‘Rise of the Female’ and BRIC Economies mean we can no longer use 20th century marketing and sales techniques or customer service practices if we wish to remain relevant.

In this insightful, challenging and exciting presentation, Kieran will reveal the trends that are transforming who consumers are, but just as importantly, how these trends can be used to build greater engagement, loyalty and increase our share of voice and wallet. Specifically, she’ll reveal:

• The 5 trends determining tomorrow’s customer
• How to engage customer networks
• Why we need systemic exceptionalism — intangible value trumps functionality and experience is the new currency
• Why CSR needs to be more than token

Creating Change: Agile Intelligence

“Navigating the work of the future will require a capacity to re-think, un-think and out-think.”

Even resilience is losing its relevance as a tool for navigating change as social & business research reveal it to be a short-term strategy - it must, eventually, run out. This trend is leaving individuals suffering from change fatigue, career promiscuity, out-dated processes and coping mechanisms and ultimately, professional burnout. This makes developing an agile culture the last competitive advantage.

In this practical, thought-provoking and entertaining presentation, Kieran will help your team develop cognitive elasticity and build tomorrow’s competitive advantage - Agile Intelligence. Think of it as “Luminosity for the business brain”.

Specifically, she’ll provide a window into:

• The 5 trends influencing future skills
• Why we need to seek right answers… plural!
• How agility facilitates a possibility mindset
• How to develop fast Ideation cultures
• Increasing mental bandwidth under pressureHow to think in questions not statements

Selfish, Scared and Stupid: Stop fighting human nature.

If you want to succeed then you must prepare for failure! Taken from the newly released book of the same title, behavioural strategist Dan Gregory / Kieran Flanagan challenges audiences to step away from the ‘motivational hot air’ and instead design teams, systems and products that align with reality; because we are ALL a little selfish, scared and stupid sometimes.

Key takeaways from this presentation include:

• Drop the delusion - how to anticipate the worst to ensure the best
• Systemise success - we can all build excellence into our procedure
• Motivational fear - how we can harness the basest of human instinct for business greatness