Former Digital Strategy Director for Obama's advocacy group OFA — author of No Point B.
Caleb Gardner was Digital Strategy Director for Organizing for Action, President Obama's political advocacy group, from 2013 to 2016, leading technology, data analytics and digital media for the organisation. He ran the @BarackObama social accounts, growing the Twitter account to the most followed in the world, and raised $50 million online through email and social media campaigns. He is a co-founder of 18 Coffees, a Chicago-based strategy consulting and training firm working across AI strategy, digital transformation, change management and leadership development, and the author of No Point B: Rules for Leading Change in the New Hyper-Connected, Radically Conscious Economy — a book whose central argument is that organisations and leaders need to abandon the idea that transformation has an end state. He is based in Chicago, where he also teaches at Loyola University Chicago, and speaks to audiences globally.
Gardner's framing of change is more rigorous and less comforting than most of the change management field. His experience running digital for Obama's advocacy operation — including the unglamorous realities of managing communications at scale under public scrutiny — gave him an unusually honest view of how organisations behave when the pressure is real and the visibility is high. His work since then, advising organisations through digital transformation, has reinforced rather than softened that view.
He suits leadership conferences, strategy and transformation events, and corporate forums where the audience is navigating significant organisational change — digital transformation, cultural shift, structural disruption. His sessions are particularly effective for senior leaders who have been told that the change will eventually be complete and have started to suspect that is not true. Audiences leave with a more honest model of what sustained leadership through change actually looks like, and a clearer sense of what that demands from them personally.
Caleb Gardner is a keynote speaker based overseas who speaks on business strategy, change management and government & policy. Book through Executive Speakers Australia.
A global pandemic. Massive digital disruption. Social upheaval. Every day it seems like the news cycle tells us about how the world around us is changing. If we can just get to the end of it all, we’ll be OK. (Right?) How should we as business leaders respond? How do you lead your people through a transformation when we have new emergent data about how the world is changing every day?
Leaning on his extensive experience in leadership, digital transformation, and political activism—including leading digital strategy for Barack Obama, the "Change" President—Caleb Gardner makes a compelling case for understanding change as a core competency in a digital world that is evolving every day, and why change leadership as a competitive advantage in the post-COVID economy.
Key takeaways
• Our media environment means we no longer share the same data, the same truth—and that includes employees sharing the same truths about your company.
• Change management can't be a linear process, moving your organization from Point A to Point B. Point B doesn't exist. Change has to become a core competency, because those who stop changing are going to lose to those who are more nimble and adaptive.
• Companies must put a big focus on internal communications and employee engagement, so employees are bought into the change direction and are proactively part of making all change initiatives a success.
The internet has become, in internet language, a garbage fire of political opinions, conspiracies, and resentment between friends and family members. People have lost faith in the tech industry, even as the biggest tech companies have even more power over our everyday lives. How did we get here? What can be done about it? And what are the implications for business leaders, who increasingly have to navigate this toxic environment?
In this talk, Caleb leans on his experience running one of the largest digital programs in existence—engaging with tens of millions of people every day via the Barack Obama social media accounts and email list, including the number one most followed Twitter account in the world—to talk about why the internet is so broken, and why we all have a role in fixing it.
Key takeaways
• The persuasive effects of algorithms on our news consumption means that we no longer share the same realities. We have to prioritize digital media literacy in education, and critical thinking for ourselves every day about what we share.
• Social media is like a biomass: every amplification of a negative message reinforces that message and encourages its creator. Personal responsibility matters to the system as a whole.
• From the perspective of history, we are all like Peter Parker: we've been given the power of Spider-Man practically overnight by carrying around the world's most powerful information and communication devices in our pockets every day. But we haven't had our Uncle Ben, with great-power-comes-responsibility moment yet.
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