Free Business Topics in Chicago
It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3: Browse for a topic, Click the orange request button, Fill out the contact form.
Now the speaker will contact you in the next few days to coordinate details.
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Hire What You Can’t Change
Tim Reynolds, Co-Founder, Clover Lane Partners, LLC
Request This Free SpeechHiring is a two way street. It must be right for both the business and the employee. This workshop provides a different perspective on your biggest challenge and opportunity – hiring people who will thrive in the position and culture.
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The Cost of Organizational Incoherence
Jon Schickedanz, Managing Partner, The Alliance Strategic Group
Request This Free SpeechEvery organization pays a hidden tax when its stated priorities and its actual behavior do not match. This session identifies what that tax looks like in practice: duplicated work, decision paralysis, and leadership teams that agree in the room and diverge the moment they leave it. Using real patterns from executive coaching and organizational alignment work, this talk gives HR executives, department chairs, and CEOs a way to diagnose incoherence before it shows up in turnover or missed goals, and a practical starting point for closing the gap. MORE >
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Culture Is First an Execution System, then Values Statement
Jon Schickedanz, Managing Partner, The Alliance Strategic Group
Request This Free SpeechMost leadership teams treat culture as something to articulate rather than something to build. This session breaks down why that distinction matters and what changes when an organization starts treating culture as infrastructure for decision-making instead of a poster on the wall. Attendees leave with a practical framework for locating where their teams actually stall, whether that is unclear priorities, misaligned incentives, or decisions that get made twice because the first one never stuck. The focus is operational, not aspirational: specific, testable changes leaders can make to how their teams decide and act. MORE >
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Tying Operating Systems to Strategy: Turning TPM, Lean, and MOS into Real Results
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechMany organizations roll out operating systems with enthusiasm, only to watch them fade when production pressure hits. This talk explores why these systems often stall and how leaders can connect them to strategy in a way that actually lasts. MORE >
John shares how to make operating systems meaningful to frontline teams, how to reinforce expectations through leadership routines, and how to build systems that don’t rely on “heroes” to keep them running. Audiences leave with a clearer understanding of how to make TPM, Lean, and MOS work in the real world, not just in training rooms. -
Building a Culture People Don’t Want to Leave: Leadership That Sticks
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechEvery plant wants lower turnover and higher engagement, but most overlook the one thing that drives both: leadership consistency. When expectations change from manager to manager, employees feel unstable — and instability sends people looking for the exit. MORE >
This talk dives into how leaders shape culture through everyday behaviors. John shares practical, real‑world examples of how aligned leadership creates trust, how follow‑through builds credibility, and how small habits can transform the way employees feel about coming to work. It’s a down‑to‑earth look at how to build a workplace people want to stay in. -
Reliability That Lasts: Embedding Stability Into Daily Work
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechEvery plant wants reliability, but few achieve it in a way that lasts. Tools and systems help, but they don’t hold up without leadership discipline behind them. This talk explores how reliability is built, not through big initiatives, but through small, consistent behaviors that shape daily work. MORE >
John shares how to create stability even when production demands spike, how to build systems that don’t rely on individual heroes, and how leadership habits can make reliability feel natural instead of forced. It’s a practical, real‑world guide to creating operations that run smoothly day after day. -
The Turnover Equation: What Really Drives People Out the Door
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechTurnover is one of the most expensive and frustrating challenges in manufacturing, yet the real reasons people leave are often misunderstood. This talk breaks down the human side of turnover, the moments when employees decide to stay or go and how leadership plays a bigger role than most realize. MORE >
Through candid insights and relatable examples, John explains how clarity, consistency, and respect shape an employee’s experience far more than pay or perks. Audiences learn how to spot turnover warning signs early and how to build a culture where people feel supported, valued, and motivated to stay. -
The Missing Link in Manufacturing Performance: Connecting Behaviors to Daily Processes
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechMost plants have binders full of processes, charts, and operating systems yet daily execution still varies wildly. The problem isn’t the process; it’s the behavior gap between what leaders expect and what teams actually do. In this session, John explains why even the best systems fall apart without the right leadership habits behind them. Audiences learn how clarity, confirmation, and follow through turn processes into predictable routines, and how small shifts in leadership behavior can dramatically improve safety, quality, and reliability. It’s a practical, eye opening look at the human side of operational excellence.
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Breaking the Cycle of Reactive Manufacturing: From Whack a Mole to Real Leadership
John Casey, Founder and President, Shamrock Consultants
Request This Free SpeechManufacturing leaders know the feeling: fix one problem and two more pop up. It’s exhausting, expensive, and strangely familiar. This talk explores why so many plants fall into “Whack a Mole Leadership,” where quick fixes replace real solutions and teams spend more time reacting than improving. MORE >
Through relatable stories from the plant floor, John shows how small leadership habits can unintentionally create chaos and how a shift toward clarity, planning, and discipline can break the cycle. Audiences walk away with a fresh perspective on why problems keep resurfacing and what leaders can do to finally get ahead of them. -
Read the Room: Frameworks for Multigenerational Communication
Gabby Rosely, Consultant, Gabby Rosely LLC
Request This Free SpeechThe US workforce is the most age-diverse it's ever been, with Gen Z now outnumbering Boomers for the first time. Yet most teams are still struggling with the same old generational friction.
I'm gonna be real with you: generational cohorts are just the starting point. MORE >You're not actually going to walk around asking coworkers their age so you can put them in a box. That would be weird. If you know someone’s age but still make assumptions about them, the point is totally missed.The POINT is: learning about how worldviews & values are shaped, how to ask the right questions, read the room, and connect with people who think completely differently than you do. This keynote / workshop gives you the tools to do that - with your team, with strangers, with prospective clients - so you stop second-guessing yourself and start building actual trust.
“Staying in Your Own Lane DOESN’T work in Business” moves beyond tired stereotypes to unlock what actually motivates Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z.
What You'll Experience:
- Understand the real values and communication preferences driving each generation
- Interactive exercises that build empathy and reveal hidden strengths
- Practice the conversations you've been avoiding, like, giving feedback, addressing conflict, motivating people who seem checked out
- Leave with a personalized strategy to connect authentically with every team memberThe real result? You stop tiptoeing. Your team stops living on islands. You build the kind of trust that makes people actually want to work together. Generational differences become your greatest advantage.
Why me? I'm a Gen Z leader who managed teams across all four major generations at age 21. I also totally face-planted at first, thinking I could "stay in my lane," do things my way, and it'd all work out. Spoiler: it didn't. I had to learn this stuff the hard way, in the face of everyone doubting me because of my age. (Trained by Gallup-certified Strength Advisors & MetaPerformance Institute, but honestly, the real credential is that I've lived both sides.).