Nigel Barlow

Topics:

• Shaping the future
• Creative approaches to change
• Innovate or die
• Beyond costumer satisfaction: creating legendary service
• Beyond the brand: stories, dreams and legends of business 
• See more below

Making the success of others come to live and inspiring you to create your own success stories. 

Nigel Barlow barely needs an introduction, since he is one of the worlds most dynamic and interesting business speakers. For the last 15 years he has worked intensively with a number of Nordic as well as international companies, such as AGA, Carnegie, Ericsson, Frigoscandia, Nokia, Rockwool, British Petroleum, British Telecom, Mobil Oil and Nestlé. 

Nigel Barlow finished his education from Oxford University. He established the UK division of Tom Peters Group and today he is managing his own company, Service Legends. His book ”Batteries Included! Creating Legendary Service” focuses on creativity, change and customers. Tom Peters has reported the book with the words; ”Nigel Barlow’s book is simply brilliant! Do we need to hear more about good customer service? The simple answer is a big YES. And this book proves it”

Nigel’s dynamic presentations are said to contain ”a magic means to create change” amongst the audience. Whether or not you are as spellbound as the rest must be tested in real life, but we have no doubt. And neither do the companies Nigel Barlow has already given an inspiring boost. You will find a few examples below:

"The course of events that Nigel guided us through in Switzerland was simply magnificent"
Jan Belfrage, Corporate Vice President, AGA AB

"I wish to thank you for an exceptional speech at our conference. Your ability to deliver your message in a clear and humorous way was a great success. By focusing on a few key messages on happy customers, renewal and proactive actions, I believe we had a huge reinforcement of our conference theme 'Building businessmanship into the organization.'"
Kenneth Rådne, President, Ericsson Software Technology

1 MINDSET - MINDFREE!

• How minds become frozen.
• Developing ‘beginner’s mind’ to stand back and see business opportunities.
• Why success - individual and organizational - can be a trap.
• Challenging received wisdom, clichés and ancestral thinking.
• Why attitudes make or break organizations - and what to do about it.
• If we’re not vigilant we all develop ‘job blindness’. The cure is to challenge ourselves and our businesses by constant self-questioning and curiosity. This is how we open up new possibilities for achievement.

2 CREATIVITY and CHANGE

• Forget ‘thinking outside the box’ - change it!
• Types of creativity - adoption and innovation.
• How to think ‘what if’ and ‘why not’ rather than ‘yes, but’!
• Insights for opening the mind to fresh possibilities.
• Learning ‘focused craziness’.
• Change is discontinuous. We need first to see where we limit our own creativity and then to explore how to open our minds to the next leap or discontinuity in performance.

3 LEADERSHIP and CREATIVITY

• Why we must become the change we want to see.
• How to encourage creativity in others.
• Understanding our own style - and how it impacts those around us.
• Creating a culture of constant creativity.
• Leading the creative team - how to ensure that two minds really are better than one!
• The leadership blind spot is to overestimate the influence of what we say and underestimate the power of what we do. What does it mean to become the change you’re preaching - and inspire others to follow with passion.

4 CREATING LEGENDARY CUSTOMER SERVICE - BATTERIES INCLUDED!

• The customer progression from good to excellent to legendary.
• What ‘perception is reality’ really means.
• Why your organization is a hologram – and how everyone and every process contributes to the picture the customer sees.
• Stealing from the service legends: lessons from the world’s leaders.
• How to become famous for service.
• Customer satisfaction as a goal is yesterday’s idea. The only aim worth realizing in today’s insanely competitive markets is to become not good, not merely excellent, but legendary for the service you deliver to your customers!

5 BRAND MAGIC

• What does your brand stand for?
• Why you can only differentiate by being truly different!
• Stories that develop the brand – inside and outside the business.
• Acting like a challenger: inspiring examples of outsiders who have created brand excitement.
• What it means to really ‘live the brand.’
• Everyone knows that brands win. But why do so many companies try to differentiate in exactly the same way as their competitors? Discovering the unique and authentic soul of your brand is the key to standing out in a look-alike, copycat marketplace.

6 PEOPLE! PEOPLE! PEOPLE!

• Why people are more than your ‘greatest resource’.
• How to create ‘players’ – and root out the walking dead, cynics and spectators.
• Fanatical about talent: the All Time Top Seven of people development.
• The leader as coach – seeking the highest in people.
• Higher tech means higher touch: how loving what you do is a lifelong inspiration to others.
• Contrary to the fashionable idea that business is in a war for talent – implying this talent is limited – it’s all around you. Learning how to see and encourage the true potential in others in the most vital management skill of all.

7 SELF-BELIEF IS EVERYTHING

• The sky’s the limit. Or is it? Exploring self-limiting assumptions about our own abilities.
• Moving beyond self-stereotypes.
• How to never think of defeat (or that’s what you’ll get!).
• Inspiring others with belief in themselves.
• How to think the unthinkable and do the impossible.
• I love what Stephen Jobs said in recruiting John Scully from Pepsi - Would you like to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or would you like to change the way people think? How can we similarly raise peoples’ eyes to new horizons, even in what is so often an unremarkable job?

8 A QUESTION OF STYLE (or WHY WE’RE ALL CREATIVE)

• Analyzing our preferred style of creativity, problem-solving and decision-making.
• Self-awareness and personal development.
• Appreciating and using the strengths of others.
• Stretching the envelope – how to step out of our own preference when the situation demands it.
• Using style diversity to enhance personal and team creativity.
• The number one human blind spot is the assumption that everyone else sees (or should see) the world the way we see it. To transcend this we need to start with self-awareness. From there we can understand the creative use of different styles and strengths. Clarity begins at home: we can only change others by first changing ourselves.

9 SHAPING THE FUTURE THROUGH CREATIVE STORYTELLING

• Why stories are more effective than visions and missions in shaping the future.
• What it means to ‘invent the future’ rather than be a spectator of change.
• Creating 360° stories: the future from the viewpoints of customers, people and stakeholders.
• Working backwards from the future: making your story come alive.
• Using stories to communicate inspire and release people’s emotional intelligence.
• Most vision and mission statements are a failure. They’re look-alike, left side of the brain abstractions that end up on plastic laminated cards and invoke a Dilbert-like cynical response from the workforce. Creative stories, on the other hand, create the magic of allowing people to see and become excited by the future and be fully committed to inventing it.