Printable Biography of Oren Harari

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An incredibly popular speaker and author, Dr. Oren Harari’s energetic, dynamic presentations excite and challenge audiences around the world with insight, humor and knowledge. Dr. Harari brings provocative, new perspectives on competitive advantage, organizational change, and transformational leadership. As a leading management consultant and bestselling author, he brings over 20 years of seasoned professional experience to the public speaking forum.

The Financial Times has cited Dr. Harari as one of the “Top 40 Business and Management Minds in the World,” and featured him in the fall 2001 book Business Minds. Harari believes that in the chaotic competitiveness of today’s markets, bold and often-radical management approaches are the key to top performance. He has also found that long-term financial success depends primarily on leaders’ abilities to capitalize on globalization and technological advance, and to launch dramatic breakthroughs in innovation, customer care, collaboration, mobility and speed.

In his seven books, Dr. Harari describes the strategic decisions and leadership behaviors that propel organizations into a successful position of competitive advantage. His 2002 book The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, reached the bestseller lists of , The New York Times, Business Week, and The Wall St. Journal. In this book, Harari applies 16 elegant principles of leadership to corporate and government arenas and demonstrates what transformational leaders do to take their organizations to new heights. In 2003, Harari wrote the follow-up corporate handbook The Powell Principles.

In 2000, Dr. Harari co-authored a revolutionary book, Beep Beep! Competing in the Age of the Road Runner. The book received rave reviews by Michael Dell, U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Thomas Donahue, and Fast Company founding editor, Alan Webber, among others. The book focuses on creating fast, agile, innovative organizations that will thrive in today’s globally networked, real-time “Road Runner” marketplace.

Dr. Harari also penned the 1999 bestseller Leapfrogging the Competition: Five Giant Steps to Becoming A Market Leader. The first edition was rated by Management General as one of the ten best business books of 1997 and was featured in a two-hour PBS special. Both editions received accolades from Colin Powell, Tom Peters, Michael Dell, Bill Marriott, and Target CEO Bob Ulrich, to name a few. Harari also co-authored the bestselling book Jumping the Curve: Innovation and Strategic Choice in an Age of Transition, which was rated by the prestigious Library Journal as one of the top 40 business books in 1994. Said Charles Schwab on the book jacket: “If I were to recommend that my managers read just one business book this year, Jumping the Curve would be it.”

Currently, Dr. Harari is writing his next book, which describes the most critical strategic challenges and opportunities for organizations during the remainder of the first decade of this new millennium. In particular, he will outline what leaders can do to position their organizations for competitive success in a transparent marketplace where the rate of imitation and commoditization is accelerating dramatically.

As a senior consultant with the Tom Peters Group from 1984-1996, Harari was one of its most requested speakers. From 1997-1999, he was the first designated “management expert” for Time Vista, Time magazine’s direct resources interactive website for businesses around the world. Dr. Harari was a senior columnist for Management Review from 1991-2000, and for the following two years he was the lead columnist for the online magazine Mworld.org, the American Management Association’s informational web site for the management community. He has also written articles for publications as diverse as Harvard Business Review, Business Strategy Review, Executive Excellence and many others.

Harari currently sits on the board of directors of two startup companies and is also on the board of The Integrity Institute, which is dedicated to elevating the integrity of corporations and capital markets. He is also a member of the Advisory Committee on Management and Leadership for the U.S. State Department.

Dr. Harari has spoken to premiere organizations worldwide such as Microsoft, Dell Computer, Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, 3M, IBM, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, Toyota, Wal-Mart, and General Mills. Harari consistently receives the highest ratings from clients and is considered one of the best business speakers in the industry.

Harari received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches in the MBA and executive MBA programs at the University of San Francisco.

DR. HARARI'S MOST POPULAR SPEECHES AND SEMINARS

1) How to Break From the Pack--and Stay Ahead Of It
In today's Copycat Economy, products and being commoditized, services are being imitated, and traditional barriers to market entry are collapsing. Markets are becoming more crowded with "me-too" players and products. In this environment, it's harder to differentiate yourself from competitors, it's harder to keep profit margins and customer loyalty up, and it's harder to grow market share and stock value. To sustain healthy growth and competitive advantage in today's Copycat Economy, your organization must break from the pack. Here are some of the issues Dr. Harari brings up, depending on each client's objectives:

• The symptoms of the Copycat Economy, the causes of Commodity Hell, and how you can break from the pack while your competitors stay stuck in "hell".
• Why so many orthodox and familiar management approaches are doomed to keeping you stuck in the pack; Beware--your company is probably doing some of them!
• How to lead customers and markets (not just respond to them), how to continually reinvent your organization and your value proposition--and how to do all this profitably.
• How to create a culture of curiosity, passion, constant innovation, prudent risk, and disciplined execution--Why? In order to stay perpetually exciting and unique in ways that matter to customers.
• How to select the best markets for your organization--and then how to dominate them.
• How to create a higher cause that will help your organization make a big difference, brand a unique footprint, and leave a big legacy.
• How to create a powerful pipeline of breakthrough products and services that defy conventional wisdom, current industry practices and even your own organization's current menu.
• How to provide your customers with a service and experience they thought was simply impossible--and thereby elicit reactions that go way beyond a commodity feeling of "satisfaction"; that's how you build customer loyalty and break from the pack.
• How to innovate in supposedly "dull" areas like cost reduction, operational efficiency, and supply-chain management--not just to save lots of money and time, but to enjoy quantum leaps in foresight, customer care, and agility.
• Why the track record of conventional "mergers and acquisitions" (M & A) is so awful, and how the revolutionary new 6T Blueprint for M & A will help your organization break from the pack.
• How to succeed and graduate from the "12 Step Leadership Recovery Program", which will make you a hero in moving forward boldly, creating break-from-the-pack plans, and executing them with brilliance, flair and discipline.

2) The New Leadership Paradigm: What it Takes to Transform Companies and People
From Dr. Harari’s books and other research, he selectively draws from nearly 30 elegant, rigorous, "battle-tested", leadership principles that will help you lead your organizations to new heights of competitive advantage and employee commitment. Some of these principles include:

• How to "eat change for breakfast", how to make change a competitive weapon.
• How to build a spirit of speed and entrepreneurship in your organization.
• How to build a sense of healthy urgency and avoid complacency and arrogance.
• How to execute with overwhelming force and effectiveness.
• How to selectively get the right people thrilled, and the right people angry in order to get exceptional things done (as Colin Powell notes: "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off").
• How to promote a constructive clash of creative ideas.
• How to avoid getting stuck in pessimism, resistance and a culture of 'no' (in other words, how to spread optimism, confidence, passion and hope).
• How to become 'The Chief Dis-Organizer'.
• How to properly empower and trust the people in the trenches--and hold them accountable for results.
• How to pick the best people and get them to stay.
• How to lead with integrity and character.
• How to take the right sorts of risk.
• How to unleash your talented people without creating chaos.
• How to stay engaged without micro-managing and second-guessing.
• How to rev up your current employees and get everybody "on board".
• How to "team up with aliens" (individuals and groups outside your industry)
• How to take personal responsibility for your own career growth and skill development.
• How to "lead from the middle".
• How to lead with the "5 C's": Courage, Creativity, Compassion, Curiosity, and Consistency.
• And much more!!

3) How to Create Fast, Agile, Innovative, "Road Runner" Organizations
Dr. Harari explains how to create fast, agile, innovative organizations that will thrive in today's globally networked, nanosecond marketplace. Some of the topics include how to create an organization:

• that quickly identifies and capitalizes on fleeting market opportunities.
• that gets to market first.
• that "turns on a dime"
• that plays offense a lot more than defense.
• that is so lean and competent that it can focus on "market units of one" (customized products, personalized services for each customer).
• that has a bold and audacious cultural "tone".
• that, internally, obliterates the barriers to ideas and information.
• that is transparent, boundariless, and collaborative.
• that is perpetually learning.
• that turns employees into owners and businesspeople.
• that is characterized by energy and excitement.
• that is cost efficient, operationally rapid, and highly creative.
• that transforms itself into a web of innovative networks and alliances.
• that has technologies, systems, cultures and people that are all aligned towards big audacious, groundbreaking goals.
• that is full of people who work hard and have fun while they do what conventional wisdom says is impossible.

4) Jumping the Curve: A New Business Paradigm for a New Marketplace
Dr. Harari describes why organizations and markets are now in a historically significant "age of transition", and why leaders must help their organizations "jump the curve", that is, make significant, discontinuous leaps in their products and business models. He discusses four critical strategic leadership imperatives:

• The innovation imperative: how to practice "creative destruction."
• The intelligence imperative: how to grow a "smart" organization.
• The coherence imperative: how to link execution to values and ideals.
• The responsibility imperative: how to guarantee that the customer is the final arbiter of your efforts.