speaking
Sarah Kaplan appears regularly in public and private speaking events, including for major corporations such as Scotiabank, IGM Mackenzie, Estée Lauder and many more. A list of her public appearances is here. For contact information, see here.
You can also see her page at the Lavin Agency.
Speaking topics, which can be tailored to particular client needs, include:
The 360º Corporation: what it would mean to really take your stakeholders seriously
Whether it is the Business Roundtable’s recent announcement that they wanted to deliver value to all stakeholders, or Blackrock CEO Larry Fink’s Letters to CEO asking companies to pursue purpose and not just profits, or former Unilever CEO Paul Polson calling for “heroic CEOs,” firms are increasingly interested in making corporate social responsibility more than window dressing. But, the challenge is how. Even the most well-intentioned executives find that they are stymied. Meeting these stakeholder demands often requires action that could compromise profits. In this keynote based on her new book The 360º Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation, Kaplan offers practical steps for companies to build capabilities in understanding the trade-offs embedded in their business models, avoiding incremental actions that don’t make real progress, and using the tensions created by stakeholder interests as a source of innovation and transformation. See an example talk:
What Hurricane Katrina and Nike’s “Air Hobbits” can teach us about running experiments, living with uncertainty, and thriving in a multi-stakeholder world
At some point during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, people remarked that the US government had a lot to learn from Walmart, a company who was often on the ground with water, food and resources before anyone else. For Walmart, the experience of the Katrina crisis was transformational—it provided a window into a new way of being. It began a series of explorations that have led them to make radical changes in how they do business, including commitments to zero waste, 100% renewable energy, promoting women’s economic empowerment, and many other initiatives. Nike’s first “Considered” show based on sustainable practices was released in 2005. The complexities of that moment offered a path forward for the company. The production of the shoe reduced manufacturing waste by 61 percent, energy consumption by 35 percent and solvents by 89 percent. While it won awards for environmental design, it didn’t sell well and detractors called the shoes “Air Hobbits.” The real success was that it allowed Nike to experiment with whole new processes, rethinking the design approach, the materials used, and the assembly process. It was that experience that contributed to their ability to use the Considered approach in the hugely successful Air Jordan XX3. In this keynote based on her new book The 360º Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to Transformation, Kaplan shows how experimentation in the face of uncertainty is central to a 21st century approach to corporate social responsibility. She argues that the win-win of shared value may lead companies to incremental solutions and highlights different examples of experiments that have lead to transformation in business models.
The myth of meritocracy
Despite decades of effort, our path to gender equality has been littered with roadblocks. One of the most prominent is the notion that any deliberate effort to promote greater diversity will undermine our meritocratic system. This is the excuse given by boards of directors when they explain why they don’t have women on their boards, and it is the complaint made by (now former) Google employee James Damore when the company women engineers. In this keynote, Kaplan draws on cutting-edge research to bring a fresh perspective to this conversation. Showing that these arguments are based on false premises., she explains how our systems of education, recruiting, and promotion are often unmeritocratic because, due to unconscious bias, the contributions of women and people of color are devalued. But, she argues, training in unconscious bias isn’t the solution. Indeed, it can often lead to backlash. Instead, she reveals what does work: changes to structures and systems that “nudge” people towards more meritocratic outcomes: Changing words in job ads, changing scales in performance evaluations, changing the choice architecture of promotion systems. Rather than relying on individuals to want to do the right thing, she proposes systems and structural changes that can help make real progress. See an example talk:
Gender equality as an innovation challenge
Why have we been stalemated on achieving gender equality? As an innovation scholar and author of the business bestseller Creative Destruction, Kaplan sees hope in applying an innovation lens to challenges of diversity and inclusion. In this keynote, she explains why traditional solutions achieving equality haven’t worked and highlights several innovative solutions that reconfigure how we work, and how to use a gender lens to achieve competitive advantage in products and services. See an example talk:
Getting beyond backlash
On the heels of major campaigns to increase the numbers of women on boards or women in STEM, and also the pressure of the #MeToo movement, many organizations are experiencing a backlash. Male executives do longer want to mentor up-and-coming women in their companies. Male engineers in tech companies are writing manifestos about how diversity is undermining quality. In this keynote, Kaplan uses the lessons she has learned as Director of the Institute for Gender and the Economy to show how we can get beyond the backlash and move us towards a more inclusive economy. She acknowledges that diversity can make us more uncomfortable, but then highlights how that discomfort is actually a source of the innovation and creativity that organizations seek from diverse teams. See an example talk:
