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 “Please, not another boring conference. Do I have to?” If you feel this way, you should pray that Lorenzo the Visionary will turbocharge your next company or industry gathering.
Called the adult role model for Harry Potter, Lorenzo the Visionary was created by business consultant Dr. Larry J. Rosenberg as a way to help organizations look at their future threats, opportunities and prospects. Within the last year, Lorenzo has sparked discussions about the future at the Conference on Telecommunications and Information Markets in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Georgetown University Global Branding Conference, the Food & Drug Administration, and the American Society of Training and Development, among others.
Lorenzo is the culmination of a distinguished 30-year career as a management educator and trainer. Dr. Rosenberg brings everything he's learned from training managers from 70 different countries to his Lorenzo appearances to get companies to dive headlong into the future.
In this interview, Dr. Rosenberg describes how he uses wizardly techniques to punch up conferences and enable participants to enter the future and do business there in an engaging way.
- Your client list reads like the Fortune 500 – Sony, Toyota, Disney, IBM... You've worked with a lot of big organizations.
Rosenberg: It's taught me how to customize. I'm not an off-the-shelf lecturer. I feel I really have to understand a group before I can help them with their challenges. In 30 years, I've acquired a wide range of experiences. It's like an artist's palette of colors. I bring a full palette to all my projects, not just red, yellow and blue. Organizations can benefit from my reflection on the experiences of other organizations. I've seen situations where people were dealt bad cards and played them astutely. One company I know had a big fire and managed to come back. How do you get beyond a crisis? And challenges, large and small, are happening all the time in business.
- Is there anything unique about hi-tech companies?
Rosenberg: Yes, the future is coming at them at high speed. Come back in three months and lots of things will have changed for them. But core values endure. My job is to get high-tech managers out of the twigs and branches so they can see the forest for the trees. Let me give you an example: a major e-commerce trend is m-commerce, mobile commerce where people do more things on handheld devices while they're out and about instead of at their desks. The technology is changing rapidly but one of the cards in a special fortune-telling deck Lorenzo uses is intimacy – how well do they know the customer. They might have overlooked something as simple as preventing eyestrain in their new devices. The details may change but the value of knowing the customer and what the customer really wants will always remain.
- What does it mean to look at the future?
Does the future create us or do we create the future? That's the central issue. Is it choice or chance? Lorenzo is just a little bit of theater to draw people in, establish rapport, and get them into a different mindset. I've been at too many dry conferences where I've had to listen to lots of long-winded speakers. The emotion, the energy, the inspiration is missing in so much training today, in my estimation, and organizations need to do something to liven up their programs. I believe in doing that, as well as delivering substantial content.
- Tell us more about the Lorenzo’s mindset.
Rosenberg: Life deals us cards from a vast deck but we are the ones who decide how to play them. You have to expect the unexpected because the combinations of the cards. Lorenzo’s mindset is to be unrelentingly optimistic. Among the cards I lay out for people are things like Crisis, Problem, Setback, Stock Market Crash. We can be depressed about things like this and that's appropriate -- for a short time. But then we have to remain optimistic about the future and get creative about finding answers. We have to summon the will to say to ourselves, “I have substantial control over my destiny.” There's energy that comes from that belief and it lets us make a pact with ourselves, “I will do something not to be a victim.” Another part of this mindset is to realize that we are not alone and don't have to feel that way. Everything is much easier to bear when you have the right people around. So we to look for kindred souls and build alliances with people who have complementary skills. Lastly, the future is not a destination, it's a journey. It comes at you one day at a time. Lorenzo’s mindset calls on you to be continually aware that you are making decisions today that will shape your future tomorrow.
- What methods does Lorenzo use to get people into this positive mindset?
Rosenberg: When I appear at conferences, the first thing I do is change the atmosphere of the room. The moderator gives a big introduction and when the music starts up I enter in a puff of smoke wearing a wizard costume with a cone-shaped hat. It changes the energy in the room, which is what I want. Everybody's attuned to the fact that something different – something extraordinary – is happening here. This gets them ready to try on Lorenzo’s mindset. Then I do things to establish rapport with them, using wizard metaphors and humor. I also start talking about their organization, things that I found out through my research. This shows them that I'm not like other consultants who pull the same rabbit out of the hat no matter who the audience is. All of this is a healthy prelude to thought and makes them receptive to the training I'm going to share. Then I take out my special deck of cards consisting of standard words (Opportunity and Conflict) and terms specific to the company and industry. From the pattern of cards dealt, possible fates emerge for the organization in the future. This draws them into a conversation about different scenarios. Some of these get pretty provocative. Next I lay out more cards, which are possible resources to substitute or enhance the original ones. This dramatizes the creativity we possess to shape a more positive future. For longer programs, we break up into small groups to discuss planning for the what-if issues, then come back to synthesize the group findings into a larger whole.
- You mentioned you wrote a poem for the FDA. That's very distinctive for a business consultant. What does your audience gain by it?
Rosenberg: I use poetry to build rapport with my audience. It shows I've done my homework about their company and their industry. That I've got insight into their particular situation. People are often moved by my poems. It also shows them this is not your ordinary PowerPoint presentation, but that something extraordinary is happening here. It prepares them to think extraordinary thoughts and that's what I want.
- How about a little poem to capture this moment? You lived in Japan – make it a haiku.
Rosenberg: Lorenzo on the stage
Audience full of wonder
Future revealed |
