storytelling

Sharing Experiences in Leadership, Creativity and Growth

Mark is never without a story to share. Gleaned from a life full of common experiences, unconventional triumphs and fascinating people, Mark’s wisdom is in his ability to talk about complex challenges in the simplest of terms. Mark travels the world to meet with businesses and organizations and talk about the challenges they face and the risk they run if not taken head on. 

Mark tells stories of business and personal growth, making his audience feel simultaneously at ease and invigorated like he’s known them for years. During keynote speeches for large corporations and small organizations, Mark shares lessons of aspirations, culture transformations, modern leadership, creativity, managing change, courage and innovation.

Lessons in Leadership: Competing with Creativity

Many people in business today are thrown into leadership positions with very little training. Companies and workforces are more complex than ever before, merging Baby Boomers with Millennials and telecommuters with flexible work spaces. Environments and marketplaces are changing rapidly and competition is fierce. Companies cannot afford to have processes or bureaucracy blocking their path to greatness and must create a free-thinking environment to inspire people to compete. Mark shares with his audiences how to inspire a workforce of creativity and confidence to grow at a rapid pace and create things consumers won’t believe is possible. He talks about coming to work with big dreams and driving vision and energy so your people can create things the world has never seen before.

Key Ideas

• Understand the effect your leadership can have.
• Pick something you can win at. Set outrageous goals.
• Instill the belief that everyone can make a difference.

Rewrite the Playbook: You Create the Future

The secret to the future isn’t doing what you’ve done in the past better. The secret is creating new and different things the world has never seen before. If you want to continue to play by the rules of the marketplace or play by the rules of the industry nothing much is going to change. You can get incrementally better. You can get tighter focused. You can execute better. But if you want to do something extraordinary, you have to rewrite the playbook. Growth is not predicated by market conditions, competitors or customers. You are responsible for your own growth and changing the trajectory of your company and industry. Growth is a mindset which, once instilled into the bloodstream of an organization, is infectious beyond belief. Mark tells his story of transforming the adidas culture in America to create a new kind of energy and enthusiasm for a 60+ year-old brand. Recognizing people as thinkers and not just doers allowed a complete transformation of a well-established corporate culture. Mark talks about competing in today’s world where consumers look forward, not backwards and how – to constantly reinvent yourself – you must engage your people.

Key Ideas

• Change the rules of the game.
• Create an open-thinking environment. 
• Experiment. Be courageous! 

Market Conditions Don't Determine Growth... You Do!

In any flat or transitioning market there are companies that shrink and those who grow. As everyone knows during such times there is only one way to grow: Take market share from your competitors. This is precisely what TaylorMade did under Mark King’s leadership. From 2000 to present day, golf has been a no-growth market. During that time TaylorMade quadrupled its size from 300 million to 1.2 billion dollars and continues to show solid growth. One of Mark’s core beliefs centers around the concept of growth as a cultural mindset that must be infused into the bloodstream of the organization at every level. It is the leader’s responsibility to establish this and be a tireless promoter of it.

Key Ideas

• Vision and strategy are meaningless without a fully engaged staff.
• Give people a sense of belonging.
• Creating energy ultimately drives sustainable results. 

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When you unleash the potential of people, amazing things can happen.