Curt Steinhorst

Human attention is the most limited, valuable, and misunderstood resource in the modern marketplace. Curt Steinhorst helps leaders and teams take control of their attention and focus on what matters most for their success by applying the science behind how the brain works to the reality of our hyper-connected, hybrid world.

As a child, Steinhorst moved at a pace the world is only now catching up to — always a mile a minute, with his head in the clouds, dreaming of a future while ignoring that day’s homework. Diagnosed with ADHD, he found that his rapid processing and boundless curiosity were not just quirks, but assets that would propel his dynamic career.

Today, Steinhorst is the founder and CEO of the consultancy, Focuswise, where he helps organizations develop focused and productive leaders, teams, individuals, and cultures. He is also a senior executive at Venus Aerospace, where he drives strategic initiatives that not only advance hypersonic travel but also help leaders adapt to and shape a rapidly accelerating world. Growing up, we imagined flying cars and cities on Mars, but instead, we got smartphones and mass ADHD. Steinhorst is now at the forefront of tackling both these challenges.

A highly respected keynote speaker, Steinhorst’s work, which is deeply rooted in his personal experiences, has placed him on stages in front of global leaders and as an advisor to visionaries from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. He has delivered over 500 keynotes for organizations including AT&T, Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase, and the US Naval Academy. Steinhorst is also the author of Can I Have Your Attention?, which explore how to manage attention in the high-speed digital era, and is a regular contributor to Forbes on leadership and the future of work.

Known for his humility, authenticity, and humour, Steinhorst’s approach is fueled by intellectual curiosity and empathy. Through speaking, writing, executive leadership, and advisory roles, he guides leaders through the complexities of today’s world to shape the future and build organizations that thrive at speed.

Virtual / Live Keynotes:

As the founder and CEO of Focuswise, Curt Steinhorst has worked with top companies like Deloitte, JPMorgan Chase, Nike, AT&T, and many more. He’s also a regular Forbes contributor and author of the bestselling book, Can I Have Your Attention? Additionally, as the Head of People & Culture at Venus Aerospace, he’s actively building a future-facing workplace based on his time-tested techniques of focus, accountability, and productivity.

Shaping the Future of Work
Transforming Who, Where, How, What, and Why We Work +

The pandemic revealed issues with the pre-pandemic workplace and taught employees valuable lessons about how they best work, and what they expect from their employer, and convinced them not to settle for less.

In Shaping the Future of Work, Curt Steinhorst covers the five essential lenses to understand the rapidly changing landscape of work:

• Who Works: Employee demographics are changing with multiple generations working together and a more diverse workforce.
• Where We Work: Remote work, redesigned offices, and hybrid locations have shifted where we work.
• How We Work: A more varied workforce that includes employees, contingent workers, and gig workers has created new opportunities.
• What is Work: New technologies and digital transformation have led to the emergence of new job roles, necessitating reskilling.
• Why We Work: Workers expect companies to provide clear value to them while they, in turn, create value for the company. The importance of belonging and culture in the workplace remains unchanged. However, the way in which they are developed and sustained needs to be updated.

This session will teach leaders how to prioritize the present and guide their company toward the future. --

Growing Your Company Without Shrinking Its Culture
As you grow, how do you preserve what makes your organization special? +

How can you maintain the unique aspects of your culture as your company grows and brings in new colleagues and customers?

In this session, Curt Steinhorst helps you identify ways to protect and sustain your company's culture during growth. He challenges you to rethink assumptions about scalability and addresses how what created cohesion, efficiency, and "magic" in the past can actually create silos and inefficiency in the future.

You will learn how to expand, adapt, and thrive through clarity, communication, and intentional attention. Curt will address common and often misunderstood culture drivers, including:

• Culture is driven by clarity.
• Communication driven by convenience creates chaos.
• A leader's ability to avoid certain decisions is as important as those they make.
• Meetings are more likely to drain us than connect us.
• Attention is your most limited and valuable resource.

By learning how to adapt your organization and its actions, you will leave with  practical and sustainable solutions you can implement to preserve what makes your company’s culture unique while giving it room to evolve. --

Signal in the Noise
Communicating to Drive Trust, Alignment, Accountability, and Results +

Leaders need to communicate their strategic vision effectively in today’s noisy and uncertain environment — or face missed milestones, chaos, conflict, and lack of accountability. Unfortunately, employees often don't understand or connect their work to the strategy.

• 72% report a lack of understanding
• Only one-third feel like their leaders communicate effectively
• More than 70% of employees don't read company emails or content

This is compounded by the staggering amount of change and information employees face daily, leading to an insurmountable volume of messages, tasks, and meetings. It is more important than ever for leaders to communicate clearly and compellingly what matters most.

Key Outcomes:

• Communicate clearly and authentically with employees from all generations, locations, and backgrounds
• Discover what it takes to build true clarity in your organization
• Structure and deliver impactful messages
• Bridge the gap between executive strategy and employee activity to ensure adoption and execution --

Intentional Leadership in a Rapidly Changing Workplace
How to Drive Trust, Collaboration, and Results through Uncertainty +

Today's leaders face many challenges, including the great resignation, hybrid and remote work, shifting employee expectations, and tense social and political landscapes — plus the noise and uncertainty of daily life.

Leaders need to build trust, communicate effectively, and demonstrate empathy to improve recruitment, retention, productivity, engagement, and well-being.

The core challenge is not a leader’s lack of awareness or concern. Many leaders do what they can — but the primary resource necessary is under assault and in critically limited supply: A leader’s intentional attention.

In this presentation, Curt helps leaders identify old assumptions, hidden traps, and new ways to connect effectively.

Key Outcomes:

✔ Navigate varying and conflicting work preferences based on employee generation, experience, tenure, background, and personality
✔ Reconfigure team protocols to remove costly distractions that sabotage productivity
✔ Increase capacity and space to innovate
✔ Maintain trust in times of chaos, volatility, and uncertainty
✔ Achieve clarity of purpose that drives teams further

Leaders will come away with tools to help them relate to and guide employees — and drive their own intentional attention — with higher achievement and greater engagement for all as the reward. --

Healthy Hustle
Doing Your Best Without Burning Out +

Despite wellness programs, unlimited vacation days, and flexible arrangements, high-performing individuals are burning out at epidemic levels.

In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that technology would allow us to work only 15 hours per week by the end of the century, leading to an increase in leisure time and standard of living.

Technology has enabled us to do more, faster, yet we find ourselves bored, miserable, overwhelmed, exhausted, and burnt out.

What Keynes didn't predict was that technology would open the floodgates to infinite connections, opportunities, ideas, tips, and ultimately, an overwhelming amount of information. And we consume 118 zettabytes of it daily. How we make decisions about what information deserves our attention will determine how we respond to this environment.

In this presentation, Curt Steinhorst emphasizes the power of human attention and focus to overcome stress and burnout. By combining brain science with the realities of working in today's connected world, Curt's "focus wisdom" helps individuals achieve a meaningful career and life.

Key Outcomes:

✔ Use the power of attention & focus to overcome stress & burnout
✔ Know techniques for prioritizing tasks, setting boundaries, & managing time
✔ Understand the impact of organizational culture & policies in preventing turnover & advocating for change
✔ Strategically make decisions about what information deserves attention for a fulfilling career & life --

The New Team Rules
Connecting, Collaborating, and Producing Results in the Age of Zoom +

How do you build a productive team when co-workers are no longer in the same room or even available during the same hours?

And how do you create better rhythms of work and communication that ultimately drive greater engagement and success for your team?

Effective teams foster creativity, accountability, and diverse ideas, but achieving this is complex. Different work styles and priorities can lead to conflicts and slow progress. Communication overload and excessive meetings can reduce focus and productivity. Team dynamics can result in power struggles, lack of accountability, and stress.

In this session, Curt Steinhorst outlines hidden drivers that can harm teams. He provides a playbook for working together in a way that makes room for diverse work styles and communication preferences.

Key Outcomes:

✔ Transform diverse, dispersed, and disconnected individual contributors into a high-performing team
✔ Improve communication while avoiding overload and interruption
✔ Ensure organizational goals link to team priorities
✔ Negotiate successful ground rules for remote/hybrid work/in-office arrangements
✔ Improve collective decision-making within teams.--

Selling in Today’s Noisy World
How to Capture and Keep Attention in the Age of Distraction (for sales professionals) +

Today's buyer is harder to reach than ever, and even harder to keep. The rules have changed. To effectively reach them, sales professionals must radically alter their strategies  to cut through increasing noise, distractions, and uncertainty. The volume of messages coming at all of us requires intentionality in the communication format, channel, length, and timing. It has never been more important to communicate clearly, concisely, and persuasively.

In "Selling in Today’s Noisy World," attention expert Curt Steinhorst will prepare you to excel in today’s complex and challenging communication environment — helping you authentically connect with today’s increasingly diverse, multi-generational, constantly connected, easily distracted audience. He introduces you to the critical lens of focus and attention, which Microsoft CEO Satya Natella calls today's scarcest resources.

A must-hear program for these times, Curt shares insights garnered from years of coaching sales teams, founders, CEOs of multibillion-dollar brands, NFL hall of famers, NBA Owners, Olympic gold medalists, TV personalities, TED Talk presenters, and Shark Tank contestants on how to capture and keep the attention of their internal and external audiences.

Key outcomes::

✔ Adapt to the varying and conflicting preferences based on generation, background, and personality
✔ Communicate effectively in ways that capture attention, sustain engagement, and increase clarity.
✔ Discover counterintuitive communication methods that surprise, delight, and stick
✔ Avoid well-intentioned communication mistakes that decrease engagement
✔ Leverage your customer's distracted state to communicate more effectively with them --

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