SIGNATURE KEYNOTE
BUILD THE RELATIONSHIPS THAT MAKE TRANSFORMATION WORK
The Human Infrastructure Behind Technology, Change & Growth
Every organization is being asked to transform. AI is changing how work gets done. New technologies are reshaping roles and expectations. Customers want more. Employees are navigating uncertainty. Leaders are under pressure to move faster. But even the best strategy or technology cannot transform an organization on its own.
People have to trust one another enough to move with it.
Brad Englert learned this over more than 40 years at the intersection of technology, leadership, and relationships. During 22 years at Accenture, including 10 years as a partner, and later as CIO of a 330-person organization at the University of Texas at Austin, Brad led complex implementations, built long-term client relationships, developed leaders, and transformed an IT organization from a reactive “fire-drill” culture into one grounded in proactive customer service. Through those experiences, he discovered something deceptively simple: transformation moves at the speed of relationships.
In this practical, story-driven keynote, Brad shows leaders how to build the trust and relationships that allow people to communicate honestly, navigate uncertainty, solve problems, adopt new ways of working, and move forward together.
At the heart of his approach are three practices that guided him throughout his career: understand what people are trying to achieve, set and manage expectations, and genuinely care about their success.
Because technology can enable transformation, but relationships make it work.
Tangible Takeaways
Audiences will learn how to:
- Build relationships before you need them. Create the trust across customers, teams, partners, and stakeholders that becomes invaluable when change or disruption arrives.
- Understand what people are trying to achieve. Ask better questions about goals, aspirations, pressures, and priorities so transformation becomes something people can see themselves participating in, not something being done to them.
- Set and manage expectations early. Replace assumptions with clarity and create the honest communication necessary to move people through change.
- Turn genuine care into an operating practice. Show employees, customers, and partners that their success matters, strengthening the trust that drives engagement, loyalty, and performance.
- Move from reactive heroics to proactive relationships. Build the connections and communication rhythms that allow teams to anticipate problems, collaborate faster, and navigate complexity together.
- Use your words. Have the conversations others avoid. People are not mind readers, and transformation requires the courage to say what you need, ask what others need, and surface issues before they become barriers to progress.