PCMACE Webinar: Designing the “Next Normal”

June 16th | 10:30AM – 11:30 AM EST

PCMA Canada East Education Committee Presents:
An On-Line Connection Session; Hear from Lee-Anne McAlear,  Designing for the “Next Normal”, spend time networking in small groups and then participate in an on-line BINGO game for a wonderful prize!

Who is at the Beating Heart of Your New Business Strategies?

If effective new business strategies and practices are going to shape the ‘next normal’, they will have to be designed to meet the realities of people’s changing expectations Post-Covid.

Today’s best business leaders already follow the principles of user-centered, design thinking when dealing with issues large and small. With its direct, solutions-based means of future-casting and problem solving, rooted in understanding user needs, design thinking strategy can guide organizations in effectively responding to a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. For any effective strategy, a diversity of perspectives is essential.

Design thinking strategy is critical in the private sector as it navigates the devastating economic impact of the widespread lockdown. The most successful businesses saw an opportunity to enhance their offerings and provide a social service, such as a whisky manufacturer producing and distributing free hand sanitizer, garment makers sewing masks for frontline health care workers and UHaul offering a month’s free storage for college students caught in a bind.

To look at the coronavirus crisis as a problem amenable to user-centered design thinking is to acknowledge that customers need and want to be kept at the centre of planning and execution. Embracing this notion is at the heart of a strong user-centered design thinking strategy and a means to achieve success in the ‘next normal’.

In this talk, Lee-Anne will make the principles of user-centered design thinking strategies come alive. With high energy, multiple cases and examples and very practical take-aways, the audience will leave both applicable insights and an understanding of how to help create the “next “normal.

Speaker: Lee-Anne McAlear

Lee-Anne is also the founding partner of the Toronto-based innovation and leadership house, CURRENT, and a Director of the International Association of Innovation Professional – the only association offering globally recognized certifications in innovation.

Lee-Anne has worked extensively in the innovation space in over 32 countries (from the USA, Mexico and South America, through Europe, across Asia and down under in Australia) in both the public and private sectors.

She has piloted several global innovation initiatives that have, for example, delivered new approaches to brand revitalization, new methods for delivering patient care and new ways to address customer retention.

In her work at Schulich, she and her team are responsible for designing and delivering programs enhancing the innovation and leadership capabilities of executives and their people. Their programs are consistently among the top-rated at Schulich.

Lee-Anne speaks globally and has shared the stage with presenters as diverse as Alan Alda and Don Tapscott.

She is not only adventuresome in her approach to business, but she is also an adventurer in life having trekked the Himalayas, scuba-dived the Great Barrier Reef and white-water rafted in India.

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