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A Keynote Address Must Be Uplifting and Thought Provoking
by Gary Gagliardi

A great keynote address sets the tone for the entire event or business conference. Keynotes are great because they work for any size of audiences, but they are short. My keynote presentations run from 60 to 90 minutes. The shorter the presentation, the more discipline it takes to do it really well.

My keynotes are designed to be informative, inspirational, and a bonding experience. These presentations are designed either for an organization's employees -- most often its sales and marketing force -- or for an organization's customers or clients. My keynotes have two goals:

  • The first is to excite my listeners about the strength of the organization's current strategic position.

  • The second is give the audience a new perspective for seeing the challenges they face as opportunities.

All my keynotes draw all their strategic concepts from Sun Tzu's The Art of War and use quotes from the book to illustrate the points I am making. I offer my keynote addresses with a slide show, but the point of my slides is to provide an emotional backdrop for my presentations. The slide show mixes pictures illustrating ideas with text offering thought-provoking questions.

Before preparing my keynote presentations, I need to discuss the organization's strategic situation with a number of people from the organization. Typically I talk with the executive who is responsible for the business event and to a few of different types of attendees. I normally ask a series of questions regarding:

  • The organization's core philosophy

  • The changing conditions in the business environment

  • The nature of the economics in the marketplace

  • The decisions that attendees must typically make

  • The techniques that make the organization unique

In the end, the session should:

  1. Excite the audience about the organization's strategic opportunities

  2. Introduce the audience to the power of thinking more strategically

  3. Provide attendees a new perspective on the organization's position

  4. Instill in attendees the desire to improve their understanding of strategy 

I charge a flat fee of $5,000 for my keynote addresses. The event planner is expected to cover the cost of lodging and food for the travel day before, the day of, and the travel day after the session.  For overseas presentations, those arranging the event must pay for business-class travel for two and for food and lodging during the presentations and for the days immediately before and after.

 

Copyright 2005-2008, Science of Strategy Institute / Clearbridge Publishing, Gary Gagliardi
The leading publishers of award-winning books based on Sun Tzu’s The Art of War