Jim Lawless
Leadership, Strategy Execution and High-Stakes Transformation
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Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- Has inspired over 1 million people worldwide
- Author of Taming Tigers (new book DARE forthcoming)
- Britain’s deepest freediver – 101 metres
- Known for turning extraordinary real-world experiences into practical lessons for leadership, performance and change
*Fee ranges are presented as a guideline only. Speaker fees are subject to change without notice. For an exact quote, please contact your Speaker Exchange Agency representative.
Jim Lawless’ DARE Loop gives individuals’ the courage to change their thinking and behaviours quickly, his Second Strategy produces the leadership environment where that is possible.
He uses both when partnering closely with CEOs to architect and build decision velocity and organisational courage: changing how leaders and their teams operate, to deliver ambitious strategy at scale.
His client list includes Apple, Microsoft, Diageo, Bayer, BAE Systems, Novartis and VW Group. He is the author of the global bestseller Taming Tigers (Penguin Random House).
He has delivered keynotes on his DARE Loop framework and Second Strategy architecture to well over a million people across five continents and is ranked among the world’s leading business speakers by Global Gurus.
Jim’s credo is that performance and change are extremely emotionally testing for the individual and for those who would lead them, with discipline, through uncertainty to bold new ambitions. They are not academic pursuits or cascaded strategy decks.
He tests his frameworks at the extreme edge. He became the deepest freediver in British history in just eight months with a dive to 101 metres on a single breath; he moved from non-rider to televised jockey in twelve months.
Both were deliberate applications of the DARE Loop methodology. Both ran alongside his day job and his most important role, fatherhood.
As a speaker, Jim leaves behind a precise, practical and simple map that audiences use to navigate uncertainty, swapping ownership and action for hesitation and escalation, for many years after the event.
As an architect of strategy implementation, he walks beside clients to create tangible success stories, together.
Jim worked as a City of London commercial solicitor before moving into high-performance and change. He was elected a Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society for the Arts in recognition of his business writing.
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For people who need to adapt, own, transform and perform, takes an audience from waiting for permission to owning their decisions, using his own descent to 101 metres as the worked example.
Key takeaways:
- The DARE Loop as a repeatable model: Decision, Action, Result, Evaluate
- How to design backwards from a future result instead of repeating last year’s habits
- Tools to manage the self-doubt that comes with moving outside the comfort zone
For CEOs and executive teams whose enterprise strategy has been rolled out but is not yet changing behaviour, a disciplined way to deliver it through people at the speed the market demands.
Key takeaways:
- Why empowerment cannot be commanded, and what people actually need before they will act under uncertainty
- The pre-taken decisions and commitments that let a strategy execute without escalating to the top
- How an executive team’s own behaviour, not its messaging, becomes the proof for the organisation
For the CEO, executive team, people team and top 100, looks at how to design a future-fit organisation when the future itself is unknown, drawing on the agile operating models Jim has seen built inside global brands.
Key takeaways:
- How leading organisations build for speed and adaptability under uncertainty
- What an agile, empowered organisation actually asks of its leaders
- Where to design for adaptability instead of betting on a fixed forecast
For people and teams expected to deliver when the stakes are high, explores how to stay effective when pressure rises, uncertainty increases and the instinct is to fall back on familiar behaviours, drawing on Jim’s experience of performing at the limits of human capability and working with high-performing organisations around the world.
Key takeaways:
- How to make clear, effective decisions when pressure, uncertainty and competing demands increase
- How to manage the internal noise that can undermine confidence, judgement and performance
- Practical tools to build the psychological fitness to perform consistently when it matters most
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