
Melissa Swift: How to Build a Powerhouse Workforce
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“People stuff” might be the toughest question organizations wrestle with, and Melissa Swift has a long track record of helping them solve these gnarly challenges. A respected leader in a complex and confusing field, she’s developed innovative data-driven techniques to better understand why transformations stall and coached top executives to boost productivity – and forestall burnout - by changing how work gets done. As the founder and CEO of leadership and organizational advisory firm Anthrome Insight, she works with leaders, organizations, and teams to fundamentally fix broken work – from workforce-level insight on changing skills to ground-level views on day-to-day ways of working. Through research and client work, Swift has developed a strong point of view and well-honed strategies for such issues as fighting technology overload at work, breaking bad organizational patterns of behavior, and not turning into the bad boss you once hated.
Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, in her speaking work Swift draws from her experiences assisting household-name organizations with questions like “What do we do if no one wants to work for us anymore?,” “Why can’t IT move faster?,” and “We’re getting outcompeted by tiny start-ups-have we really set our people up for success?” She uses humor, a dash of history, and unexpected statistics to challenge audiences’ beliefs about the world of work – and to illuminate practical strategies to actually change the future, not just repeat the past. Swift might cite labor market data or reference the movie Office Space – but it will always be with a pragmatic, actionable end in mind.
In her consulting career, Swift led people transformation practices for Capgemini, Mercer, and Korn Ferry, leading large teams across industries for work that spanned the globe.
She’s had the privilege of helping clients at sensitive and critical business moments such as the introduction of a new C-suite leader, the lead-up to a game-changing spin-out, and a talent crisis in a critical role. Across her diverse career, she has also founded a research institute on leadership of the future for Russell Reynolds Associates, launched two ESG practices at Deloitte, and conducted landmark carbon credit trades for Deutsche Bank.
Swift is the author of the book Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace, which explores practical strategies to get to a more human future of work. The book was recognized in the 2023 Porchlight Business Book Awards in the “Management & Workplace Culture” category, garnered her recognition in the Thinkers50 Radar class of 2023, and was named to McKinsey’s recommended reading list for 2024. She writes a quarterly and widely read column on leadership and culture for MIT Sloan Management Review, highlighting such topics as how the work of leadership has gotten harder, and how leaders can better navigate a hyper-transparent world. Her research has been published in Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal, and her insights have been quoted in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Economist, Axios, and more.
Being an Awesome Leader in Grumpy Age of Work. Technology, complexity, and a generally overwhelming world have made work tough these days – and the work of leadership has gotten tougher as a result. How can leaders grapple with everything from a million emails to matrix madness to QuitTok to RTO backlash? In this talk Melissa Swift digs into the nitty-gritty of a really tricky time in workplaces – and, with humor and kindness, gives leaders some practical, research-backed strategies to guide their teams with finesse even as their own sanity is challenged.
Couples’ Counseling for Humans and Technology. We’re being asked to embrace GenAI even as many of us struggle to boot up our laptops on a Monday morning. Your most challenging co-worker may, in fact, be a machine…or more accurately, an army of them. Taking its name from a chapter of her book, Work Here Now, in this talk Melissa Swift explores the many ways technology may be hindering rather than helping us at work – and how to flip the script to turn it into a better co-worker for yourself and your team.
Great Leaders are Good Detectives. Even with reams of data barreling down at us at every minute, as leaders the truth of any situation can feel elusive. In this talk, Melissa Swift discusses one of the most interesting “leadership hats” you can wear: that of detective. What does it mean to value the truth of what’s going on enough to seek it out? How do you separate signal from noise, and make really good data and evidence based decisions? You may never be Sherlock Holmes, but better leadership does mean taking on some of his and other detectives’ more interesting methods.
Work Is Broken: Here’s How to Fix It. We all want to make work better for ourselves and our teams – but to solve the problems, we have to name them. In this talk, Melissa Swift examines three ways in which work today is broken: work is intensified, work is misunderstood, and work is performative. She examines what each piece means, why it’s a problem (including the larger social trends involved), and critically…what you can do to fix it, for yourself and your team.
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