Dov Seidman

Leading Authority and Advisor on Principled Behavior and Leadership

BIG IDEAS

• HOW: Why HOW We do Anything Means Everything . . . In Business (and in Life)
  A flat, connected, and transparent world has changed the rules of the marketplace. Customers, competitors, and the public now have unprecedented visibility into organizations and their operations. Drawing on his recent book and years of practical experience, Dov Seidman, CEO of LRN and author, persuasively demonstrates that the frontier of 21st century prosperity lies not in outperforming the competition but in outbehaving them – that it’s not what you do, but how you do what you do that matters most. Dov illustrates to the audience how they can win by literally outbehaving the competition and details the approaches that enable advantage and success over the long term.
• Driving Business Performance Through Culture
  From CEOs to the U.S. government, there’s a growing consensus that culture is one of the most important drivers of a company’s performance. It drives market success, and keeps good companies from scandals that can ruin their reputation. Dov Seidman, CEO and author of HOW: Why HOW We do Anything Means Everything . . . In Business (and in Life), explores what shaping a culture means, the range of cultures in the marketplace, and how, by focusing on the five hows of culture – how we know, behave, relate, recognize and pursue goals – corporations can embrace culture for greater advantage. It is meaningful insight for any executive looking to create a principled, winning corporate culture or in the process of merger, acquisition or other dynamic change initiative.
• The Importance of Ethical Leadership
  When it comes to ethics, there has long been a focus on setting the right tone at the top. Now, there is a growing recognition that ethics can only be infused within an organization if that tone extends to all the “tops” within the organization: business unit leaders, divisional managers, right down to supervisors and employees on the factory floor. In this provocative talk, CEO and author Dov Seidman will outline the attitudes, behaviors and tools that are representative of ethical leaders. He provides leaders at all levels of the organization with practical insights and techniques to increase their own ethical performance and to help them inspire ethical decision making and action among others.
• Brand, Reputation and Authenticity
  In an increasingly commoditized world, the value of many companies is tied to the value of their brands – the capitalized reputation of the goods and services that they sell. A strong reputation is what allows them to command a superior profit margin to their competitors. But beating the competition won’t come from traditional approaches of spin control and clever advertising lines, Dov Seidman will show. Underneath the surface there must be true authenticity in everything that the company does: from how it sells its brands, to how it makes them, to how it behaves in the world. A brand promise made is a promise that must be kept. And every employee must think and act as if the company’s reputation depends on his or her behavior, because, as Dov vividly demonstrates, it does.

SNAPSHOT BIO

Dov Seidman is a leading authority on principled behavior and leadership.  He has built a career, and pioneered an industry, around the idea that culture and ethical leadership is one of the most important factors driving business performance.  Acclaimed author and corporate practitioner, Dov is recognized as a thought leader on a range of topics – from achieving significance, not just success, in our new 21st century world, to the importance of trust in personal and business dealings to succeeding with both principles and profits in mind.  Truly a catalyst for change, he helps leaders and organizations discover business strategies to innovate, increase the value of their brand, and become more profitable by doing the right thing.

Dov is the author of the acclaimed How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything... In Business (and in Life) which maintains that outbehaving competitors has become critical to outperforming them.  In a hyperconnected and hypertransparent world, it is no longer what we do that sets us apart from others, but how we do what we do that matters.  HOW was selected as one of the best business books of 2007 by Soundview Executive Book Summaries and one of the Best Leadership Books of 2007 by Leadership Now. 

Dov is also the CEO of LRN, an advisory firm that helps companies shape their corporate cultures and build strong, principled organizations that win in the marketplace.  Founded in 1993, Dov has built a highly successful company whose clients include some of the world’s most respected companies shaping the ways millions of employees, managers and leaders behave and interact all over the globe.

In the wake of the corporate scandals that rocked global business, Dov testified in 2004 before the U.S. Sentencing Commission, arguing that check-the-box, compliance-only approaches were insufficient. Only by focusing on the underlying corporate culture could scandals be avoided. His views helped shape the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

Dov is frequently invited to speak at leading industry events and to senior management and boards of directors.  His views have been quoted in hundreds of print and broadcast media.  Recent presentations include The National Press Club, The Milken Institute Forum, The Outstanding Directors Exchange and The Defense Industry Initiative’s Best Practices Forum.  Recent media appearances include ABC’s Good Morning America, BusinessWeek, Charlie Rose, Condé Nast Portfolio and The New York Times.  He has also been the keynote speaker at UCLA’s annual commencement. Leading companies and organizations that have engaged Dov in large forum speaking engagements, keynote addresses and as a featured speaker include Qualcomm, Viacom, Altria, Raytheon, Warner Music Group and Dean Foods.
 
Dov’s perspectives have also been incorporated into other ideas and works.  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman prominently featured Dov’s thinking and excerpts from his interviews with Dov in the best-selling book, The World is Flat.  The updated edition, The World Is Flat 3.0, prominently features Dov’s philosophies as Rule #7 (proper use of outsourcing) and Rule #8 (“Hows Matter”) in Friedman’s nine rules for companies to embrace in a flat world.  Further, in the new book What’s Next from Jane Buckingham, founder of the trend-forecasting consultancy The Intelligence Group, Dov is quoted discussing the need to focus more on how behavior is perceived by an increasingly networked and informed public.

Dov’s views on business behavior, success, and corporate culture have been quoted in dozens of print and broadcast media, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, The Financial Times, CNBC, ABC’s Good Morning America and BBC News. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Thomas L. Friedman included excerpts from his interviews with Dov on the importance of trust and protecting and strengthening corporate reputations in his best-selling book, The World is Flat.

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, where he was a Newton-Tatum scholar and captain of the Balliol College crew team. He graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, where he was an editor for the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.