Juliet Funt is the CEO of WhiteSpace at Work, a performance improvement and productivity firm that helps organizations, their leaders and employees flip the norms  of business in order to reclaim their creativity, productivity and engagement. With thought-provoking content and immediately actionable tools, she has become a nationally recognized expert in coping with the Age of Overload in which we all live  and work.

Topics:

Activity is not Productivity:
Raising Execution Through Reclaiming WhiteSpace
(Our signature keynote for general audiences, adaptable for leadership)

Every executive and team has only a select handful of true priorities. And they’ll do anything to move them forward quickly and triumphantly. But when talented workers are lost in unnecessary emails, meetings, reporting and other low-value tasks, they crawl toward these pivotal objectives. Distraction, interruption and unnecessary complexity further addle their creative spark. And they have no time to think.

Imagine instead a workplace where a majority of time is spent on tasks of true importance. Where thoughtful time is a priority and where norms and habits protect employees from touching work that drains them. This is a WhiteSpace culture, one where strategic pauses allow time for strategy and insight — and its creation may be more possible than you think.In this high-energy session, we’ll learn the basics of bringing positive changes such as these to you and your organization by examining the critical difference between activity and true productivity, between cramming in more tasks and selectively choosing to dive into the right ones with thoughtfulness.

We also meet and arm ourselves against The Thieves of Productivity, a group of positive assets that can often run amuck. By examining the surprising downside of these attributes, we create a customized road map toward more WhiteSpace at the individual, team and organizational level.

Performing to the Level of Culture
How to liberate talented teams from busywork and complexity
(A program designed for senior leaders)

Employees drive themselves hard in the Age of Overload. We’re fooled into thinking they’re more productive than ever. But is that true? Overloaded populations often habituate to their discomfort. But their companies tend to suffer from one or more deficits that affect the bottom line: the QQS Deficits- downfalls in Quantity, Quality or Sustainability.

Sometimes it’s a quantity problem with constant complaints about headcount and bandwidth. Sometimes it’s a quality issue; work level is slipping, and time to think high-altitude thoughts has evaporated. Or it’s a sustainability issue; employees are surviving but collectively asking, “How long can we keep this up?” Most companies endure a mixture of two or even all three.

Seventy-seven percent of surveyed CEOs noted that their organizational complexity is higher than three years ago. In this program, we consider a different path, one where a reductive lens helps pare back busyness and make room to reclaim and effectively use mental capacity. Also featured is actionable content that combats The Tools that Turn on You. These are support systems and devices that promise to improve our work style. In reality, they tend to defy boundaries, hijacking time and resources — think email, meetings, decks and more.

Lastly, we will discuss the relevance of WhiteSpace to leadership legacy, the story about us that is yet to be written.