Short Bio of Speaker

Mandy Johnson is a high-achieving businesswoman, best-selling author and experienced educator who lives the philosophy that a clear vision and the passion to achieve it can transform people’s lives. After completing a journalism degree at the University of Queensland, Mandy roved the world for three years as a tour leader/independent traveller.  On her return to Australia she joined Flight Centre Limited (FCL) and by the age of 28 was the company’s youngest-ever director, of the UK operation, winning the ‘Director’s Award for Outstanding Achievement’, along the way.

She learnt an enormous amount in the process.  FCL morphed from a small local business to a billion-dollar ASX-listed global entity and Mandy had hands-on experience in applying the company’s unconventional strategies, such as the restructure of the entire company into Stone Age communities of ‘families’, ‘villages’ and ‘tribes’.

After taking FCL’s UK operation from scratch, to a half million pound profit with over 60 shops, Mandy left and journeyed for a year with her husband through South and North America.  On return to Australia, she joined FCL’s six-person Australian leadership team as head of the company’s HR businesses, but found that this role couldn’t compete with the trail-blazing excitement of running an overseas area.

Mandy left FCL in 2000 to follow her passion of writing and her best-selling book, Family, Village, Tribe, the story of FCL and its winning business practices, has attracted international interest. It is currently being translated into German for the European market. Following the release of her book in July 2005, Mandy and her husband achieved another long-held dream when they bought a campervan and embarked on a twelve-month tour of East and West Europe, Scandinavia, Morocco and Turkey with their two pre-school children.

Mandy has been a corporate educator for over twelve years and uses her experiences to inspire others. She strongly believes that organisations should align themselves with the way people inherently prefer to work and calls on her hands-on experience of FCL’s unique strategies to back these up with examples. (FCL has won ‘Employer Of The Year’ awards in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK beating mainstays like Walmart and Microsoft).  Mandy also believes that people can transform their lives and her sessions emphasise how individuals can make each year better than their last.

TOPICS

 “You Can Take The Person Out Of The Stone Age, But You Can’t Take The Stone Age Out Of The Person”

Target Audience: Corporates, community organisations, other groups

Level of Sophistication: General/Intermediate/Advanced

Duration of Talk: 
1 hour  - standard presentation
Four one-hour sessions – the standard presentation plus three interactive sessions to draw up business plan and strategies to incorporate evolutionary psychology philosophies into your organisation.
General - This topic can be tailor-made to suit individual needs and time-frames.


List of connected topics:
‘What Gets Rewarded Gets Done’
‘The Road Ahead –Your Best Year Ever’

Synopsis of Presentation :
For 99.9% of human history, man has been a hunter-gatherer. This has had a major effect on humankind – even though people today like to pride themselves on their modern rationality, their natural inclinations actually duplicate those of their prehistoric ancestors. This has enormous significance for a modern organisation and Mandy uses examples from FCL’s history to illustrate how the application of the principles of a Stone Age culture can invigorate a community and enable people to work in a way they inherently prefer.

Who Should Attend :
 Managers, community leaders, organisational groups etc

How you will benefit :
Participants will learn the fundamentals of how evolutionary psychology can be applied to organisations including:
How group size affects people’s satisfaction, motivation and productivity.
The optimum community sizes for peak performance.
How to physically restructure an organisation into these revitalizing and self-replicating communities to give people a continuing sense of personal and social identity.
Other aspects necessary for successful implementation – leadership, egalitarianism, autonomy, rewards and sharing.
Common mistakes to avoid such as ‘the shag on a rock’ syndrome

Classification :
Business and organisational health and well-being, team-building.

TOPIC    What Gets Rewarded Gets Done

Target Audience: Corporates, community organisations, other groups

Level of Sophistication: General/Intermediate/Advanced

Duration of Talk:
1 hour – standard presentation
2- 4 hours – standard presentation plus an interactive session to create a business plan that specifically incentivises and motivates people in your organisation
General - This topic can be tailor-made to suit individual needs and time-frames.

List of connected topics:
‘You Can Take The Person Out Of The Stone Age But You Can’t Take The Stone Age Out Of The Person.’
‘The Road Ahead – Your Best Year Ever’.



Synopsis of Presentation :
A lack of rewards is the source of many of society’s problems: why employees are demotivated in businesses that pay them by the hour rather than on what they produce or sell; why politicians who are rewarded for getting elected oversee huge budget deficits; and why schools that pay a flat wage instead of rewarding on student performance turn our hundreds of illiterate children every year. Mandy uses concrete examples from FCL’s successes and failures to demonstrate how an organisation can be structured so there is a direct correlation between what people do everyday and the rewards that they receive. Robert Gottliebsen the renowned business analyst commented in his bestseller 10 Best and Worst Decisions of Australian CEOs that the organisations that put in place these ideas ‘earn substantially more profits than those with traditional staff arrangements.’

Who Should Attend :
Managers, community leaders, organisational groups etc

How you will benefit :
Learn how people can physically and emotionally own what they do every day including:
Monetary rewards and how you can relate these to performance.
Freedom and autonomy as effective motivators.
Ownership schemes –better to have 75% of something than 100% of nothing
The power of recognition and how to objectively measure it.
Turning people from caterpillars into butterflies – the importance of personal growth and development

Classification :
Business and organisational health and well-being

TOPIC The Road Ahead – Your Best Year Ever

Target Audience: Business leaders, teams, organisations, general public - This session is suitable for employees and other people who wish to create their own personal plans or for groups of executives to work on a joint business plan.

Level of Sophistication: General/Intermediate/Advanced

Duration of Talk:

Half day - standard presentation plus an interactive session in which participants create a 12 month plan to make the next 12 months their most successful ever.
Full day for business teams – a standard presentation plus an interactive session in which the teams define their vision, goals and strategies into a single business plan, as well as putting in place ways in which they can measure, communicate and stay committed to the plan.
General - This topic can be tailor-made to suit individual needs and time-frames.


List of connected topics:
‘You Can Take The Person Out Of The Stone Age But You Can’t Take The Stone Age Out Of The Person.’
‘What Gets Rewarded Gets Done’.


Synopsis of Presentation :
A clear vision sets a direction for the mind to follow. Using concrete examples, Mandy illustrates how to create a clear and detailed vision and what steps are necessary to achieve, and stay committed to making the next 12 months the best ever. 

Who Should Attend :
Management, teams, organisations, general public.

How you will benefit :
Participants will learn:
The three steps to a successful plan.
How to use last year’s disappointments and achievements to find out what they really want.
How to align goals with personal values.
How their plan can make a real difference to their life and the lives of those around them.

Classification :
Business, Personal/ Well-Being, Personal/Career