Dov Seidman
- Founder, Chairman and CEO of LRN
- Author of “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life)”
Travels From
New York
Thomas Friedman’s 2014 Next New World Conference: HOW Do You Do Business in the Next New World?
Dov Seidman Speaker Biography
Named one of the “Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade” by The Economic Times, “the hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit” by Fortune Magazine and a “Game Changer” by Time Magazine, CEO, author and thought leader Dov Seidman has built a career, and pioneered an industry, around the idea that the most principled businesses are the most profitable and sustainable.
Eighteen years ago, Dov founded LRN with a powerful vision that the world would be a better place if more people did the right thing. From that basic notion, he has grown a successful business that has helped to shape the ways millions of employees, managers and leaders behave and interact all over the globe. LRN helps more than 500 leading companies worldwide develop values-based corporate cultures and inspire principled performance in business. LRN is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Growth Company community of dynamic high-growth companies with the potential to be tomorrow’s industry leaders and to become a driving force of economic and social change.
Dov maintains that in today’s connected and transparent world, people and organizations stand to gain by dedicating new thought and energy to how they do what they do. That's the inspiration behind his award-winning book, “HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything.” Now updated and expanded, HOW includes a new foreword from President Bill Clinton and a new preface from Dov on why how we behave, lead, govern, operate, consume, engender trust in our relationships, and relate to others matters more than ever and in ways it never has before. Since 2007, HOW has been published in the U.S., U.K., Germany, China, Korea, Brazil, France, India, Israel, Russia and Turkey.
The HOW philosophy is prominently featured as one of the nine rules for companies to embrace in Thomas L. Friedman’s seminal book, “The World is Flat.” In Friedman’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” Dov explains how to lead a green revolution by adopting the HOW philosophy to outbehave and outgreen the competition. Friedman’s latest work, “That Used to Be Us,” suggests the sustainability and success of our institutions, countries and world lies in HOW.
Dov is frequently invited to speak at leading industry events, and to senior corporate managers and boards of directors. Recent presentations include The Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, The World Economic Forum, The World Business Forum, The National Press Club and The Aspen Ideas Festival. He has also been the keynote speaker at University of California Los Angeles’s annual commencement, and has received an honorary doctorate from Hebrew Union College.
Dov’s views on business behavior, success and corporate culture have been quoted in hundreds of media, including an in-depth profile in FORTUNE Magazine and in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Charlie Rose and ABC’s Good Morning America. Each month, Dov shares his views on human behavior as the ultimate source of competitive advantage in a monthly column for Forbes.
Dov testified in 2004 before the U.S. Sentencing Commission arguing that corporations must move from a check-the-box, compliance-only approach to instead focus on fostering ethical cultures and behaviors. His proposals were adopted and today are the very standards by which companies, cultures and programs are judged.
Led by a lifelong pursuit and passion for ethical leadership, he and his company LRN became the exclusive corporate sponsors of the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity Prize in Ethics in 2008, as the institution was in its 20th year of celebrating ethical decision making among America’s youth. Dov is a member of the board at the 92nd Street Y.
Dov earned simultaneous bachelor’s and master’s degrees, summa cum laude, in philosophy from UCLA. He later earned a B.A. with honors in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. He, his wife Maria and their son and daughter live in New York City.
To book Dov Siedman call Executive Speakers Bureau at 800-754-9404.
The Fierce Urgency of HOW: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything
For more than two decades, Dov Seidman’s pioneering organization, LRN, has helped some of the world’s most respected companies build “do it right,” winning cultures and inspire principled performance throughout their organizations. Seidman’s distinct vision of the world, business, and human endeavor has helped enable more than 15 million people doing business in more than 120 countries to outbehave the competition. In this session based on his best-selling book How: Why We Do Anything Means Everything, Seidman exposes the forces and factors that have fundamentally restructured the world; provides frameworks to help you understand those hows and implement them in powerful and productive ways; helps you channel your actions and decisions in order to thrive uniquely within today’s new realities; and sheds light on the systems of how and introduces a bold new vision for leading and winning through self-governance.
Trust: The Ultimate Performance-Enhancing Strategy
Trust is a funny thing, one of those soft things that we often rush by. What’s not so funny is how often it lies at the center of our challenges and opportunities. That is because trust allows us to function in times of uncertainty. Business has long known about the benefits of trust, but absent any real metrics or data found itself at a loss to be able to do anything about it. In this session, Dov Seidman, called the “hottest advisor on the corporate virtue circuit,” by Fortune Magazine and one of the “Top 60 Global Thinkers of the Last Decade” by The Economic Times, shares insights from more than 20 years of visionary business leadership and reveals fundamental truths about trust, with an emphasis on how to build a culture of trust that fosters strong relationships, boosts individual performance, and helps organizations gain a competitive advantage.
Finding Humanity in the Age of Machines
The rapid advances in artificial intelligence force us to grapple with a question that is both philosophical and deeply personal: What does it mean to be human in the age of intelligent machines? In this session, Dov Seidman shares the perspectives that have brought him renown as both a business leader and public philosopher, weaving together insights on modern-day technology and business with timeless wisdom -- from Aristotle and Heraclitus to Adam Smith and David Hume. Our present revolution, Seidman explains, is not only one where we will need to rethink the nature and structure of our industries and institutions, but also one where we will need to create new systems that put humanity at the center and come to grips with the transformative implications of such a change
The Case for Moral Leadership in a Reshaped World
From business to politics, religion to sports, few Americans have more closely observed the changing nature of leadership than Dov Seidman. At a time of eroded trust in traditional institutions and authority, he draws a bold conclusion: we are in the midst of a moral crisis, when leadership itself has been disrupted. In this session, Seidman offers an equally bold call to arms, outlining the urgent need for a new kind of leadership rooted in moral authority. He identifies the five forces irrevocably shaping the world, and the four pillars of moral authority today’s leaders must embody: the pursuit of significant and noble purpose, the ability to inspire, unshakable values, and wisdom.
