Bill Burnett

The pandemic of 2020 created massive disruption—a change of such scale that things will never be the same again. Life-altering disruptions can be personal, regional or global and are increasingly part of modern life. We all need to know how to design our way through them. When a disruption arrives, it ends the way things were and throws life into a confusing latent zone before the new world begins. It’s tempting to “just wait” for things to go back to “normal”—but they never will. The only way out of the waiting room is through generative acceptance. In this presentation, Bill Burnett shows how to turn the ambiguity of disruption into design freedom by generatively engaging the new reality and staying ahead of the unpredictable. Learning how to set the bar low and clear it with frequent and small redesigns for all aspects of life and work can help us not only learn to survive disruption, but to find new opportunities within the uncertainty. Disruption Design is a new core competency for modern life.

The pandemic forced our humanity out into the open, especially on the job. When you Zoom into work from the bedroom, your colleagues see you as a real person, not just a role. Disruption hits us all so hard that it makes our shared humanity—our hurts, our fears, our vulnerability—immediately more visible, and increases the levels of trust between employer and employee. Bill Burnett demonstrates how this change in relationships offers the potential to make work a more human experience for all of us. He also warns against the danger for business leaders who ignore this shift in the culture. If organizations try to simply return to “normal” and take away that increased level of trust and recognition from their employees, they will soon find their talent looking elsewhere.

The question “What do I want to be when I grow up?” is one that never truly goes away. Whether you are a college grad entering the workforce, a forty year-old shifting careers, or a sixty-eight year-old trying to define an encore career, the search for a fulfilling life never stops. In this riveting keynote that can be adapted to a hands-on workshop, award-winning product designer Bill Burnett teaches audiences how to look at career and life planning through the lens of design. Participants are given the tools to build their way forward and to develop various life scenarios just like a designer tests multiple prototypes. This approach fosters creativity and adaptability and allows audiences to accept that there is never just one right path.

Talent management professionals know that traditional, hierarchical relationships between employers and employees are shifting rapidly, and the future of talent retention, particularly among millennials, lies in keeping employees engaged. In this lecture, Bill Burnett helps talent management professionals become early adopters of design thinking, integrating managers’ personal development conversations with employees’ life design goals so that each employee can actively co-create his or her experience within the company.

The notion that a student’s college major will determine what they do for the rest of their life and that everyone must find their “passion” if they are to succeed are myths, or what psychologists call dysfunctional beliefs. In this thoughtful and inspiring lecture, Burnett helps college students and grads debunk these myths and understand that there is no single right path. Following the framework of design, Burnett walks audiences through the process of trying out lots of ideas, taking action and learning by doing. This is a lecture that can change a student’s life.

Topic customization for freshmen: Burnett also adapts this talk for incoming freshmen to help them learn how to design their college experience.