Speaking · Keynotes · Workshops

Talks that change how your audience thinks about how they work.

Not keynote-circuit ideas. These talks come from a decade on the ground inside organizations of every kind—doing the work, not just describing it. Every one gets tailored to your audience through a pre-event conversation.

Check availability Explore the talks

Sam has advised and led work inside organizations including

PG&E Akamai MITRE FreshDirect Les Mills Gitcoin RescueTime
Signature talks

Three talks, one thread: agency inside complex systems.

The Three Body Problem: Building Agency in a World of Complexity

Individuals, organizations, and societies are all facing the same problem. What if the way through is the same, too?

Keynote · 30–60 min Workshop & cohort formats available Leaders & practitioners

Rising complexity is breaking our operating systems at every scale: the individual drowning in demands they didn’t choose, the organization that can’t change how it works, the society straining under problems its institutions weren’t built for. We treat these as three separate crises with three separate bookshelves. This talk—drawn from the course Sam taught at Critical Business School—argues they’re the same problem at different scales, and that the way through isn’t more control. It’s building genuine agency: the ability to see the system you’re inside and act on it deliberately.

Audiences leave with

  • A way of seeing their personal, organizational, and societal challenges as one problem at three scales
  • The “operating system” lens: what it means to upgrade how you work, not just what you work on
  • Concrete starting points for building agency inside systems they didn’t design

Organizational Catalysts

Everyone owns a piece of how your organization works. Who owns the system?

Keynote · 30–60 min Workshop format available HR, OD & transformation leaders

Most organizations are renting their change capability from consultants when they should be building their own. The old assumption of “design once, run forever” has been replaced by the reorg treadmill: restructure, wait eighteen months, restructure again. This talk makes the case for a different function entirely—an organizational catalyst that owns the operating system and tends its ongoing fitness. Drawing on an extended detour through nuclear physics—fission to release the energy trapped in organizational debt, fusion to bring fragmented capability together—it argues the goal isn’t a changed state. It’s criticality: a self-maintaining capacity for adaptation.

Audiences leave with

  • A diagnosis of why both the reorg treadmill and rented transformation fail—and the middle ground between them
  • The fission/fusion lens for spotting trapped energy: organizational debt to release, fragmentation to fuse
  • Three moves for making the case without formal authority—and why AI makes this function urgent now

Facilitation Is Work Design

If culture is created by the quality of interactions—and meetings are where most interactions happen—what are your meetings building?

Keynote · 30–60 min Best as an interactive session Facilitators, team leads & practitioners

Facilitation gets reduced to tips and tricks for running a meeting. This talk reframes it as something much bigger: meeting design as the most accessible form of work design there is. Meetings amplify and reflect the organization back to us—who gets invited reveals assumptions about authority, whether decisions stick reveals whether authority is clear. Which makes better meetings a helpful Trojan horse: improving them quickly surfaces the deeper questions about strategy, decision rights, and ways of working.

Audiences leave with

  • The core reframe: to change your organization, go to where the interactions are and make them better
  • The three meeting modes—diverge, converge, align—and the discipline of doing one at a time
  • A facilitator’s real job description: holding the container, plus five facilitative skills to develop

Need something built for your moment?

If your event calls for something none of these quite covers, I’ll gladly develop a custom talk for your specific audience and moment—grounded in the same decade of on-the-ground experience.

Start a conversation
What organizers say

The reviews that matter: the people who booked him.

“You absolutely delivered on our expectations. I really appreciate all the thought, care and time you clearly put into it. It showed throughout—provoking people’s thinking, giving them fresh language and frameworks and helping them feel more resourced in their own roles.”
Garin Rouch · CIPD event organizer
“I called Sam up to bring his specific brilliance with organizations, leaders, and teams… he jumped right in and delivered everything we hoped for and more. He’s a great teacher and a great listener.”
Infrastructure & urban systems client
Formats & logistics

Three formats, zero fuss.

Keynote

30–60 minutes

With optional Q&A. Tailored to your event’s theme and audience through a pre-event conversation.

Workshop

Half-day or full-day

Working sessions for leadership teams and practitioner groups. Not a talk with worksheets—actual sensemaking on your real problems.

Virtual

Remote-first available

Keynotes and workshops delivered remotely for distributed teams and online events.

Based in the New York area · Available for travel worldwide · Fees discussed during inquiry

Book Sam

Tell me about your event.

I’ll get back to you within two business days. If timing is tight, say so—I’ll prioritize accordingly.

Prefer email? sam@deliberateworks.com