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Gihan Perera

Perth, Australia

Has COVID-19 shaken up your world? Are your people looking for leadership in this time of massive change? Do you want to be more confident and decisive in chaos and uncertainty?

Gihan Perera is a futurist, online presenter, conference speaker, and author who shows you how to be fit for the future in a fast-changing world.

For 25 years, he has worked with organisations and leaders throughout Australia, as well as in New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and North America – helping them to thrive in a fast-changing world. Since the pandemic, he has helped people lead in uncertainty, and act with clarity and confidence through crisis, recovery, and growth.

He is the author of “The Future of Leadership”, “Disruption By Design”, “Disrupted”, and 10 other books.

As a speaker, he shares future trends and thought-provoking insights – delivered with interaction, engagement, and humour – that leave people feeling positive, empowered, and optimistic about their future.

“Engaging, funny and witty, with an insightful global view of business” – Procurement Australia

“Funny and entertaining while at the same time gave us the inspiration to think ahead” – Pearson Education

“Engaging, funny, insightful and inspiring, delivered with intelligence and charm” – Builders Coach

“Delivered with thought, humour and energy, Gihan shared challenging insights about the pace of change in a disrupted world” – TAL

Forbes magazine rated him the #5 social media in?uencer in the world (and #1 in Australia) in his area of expertise.

Gihan is one of Australia’s leading online presenters, and has been delivering online presentations since 2009. Citrix (the company behind GoToWebinar) engaged him to teach their clients around the world how to run better online presentations. Garr Reynolds, author of the world-renowned bestseller Presentation Zen, asked him to write the online presentations section for the book.

He has always taken the lead in embracing emerging technologies and trends, from his university thesis in robotics and artificial intelligence, to leading a software development team building the infrastructure for the early Internet, founding one of Australia’s first Web development companies in 1996, teaching thought leaders how to create e-learning platforms, and helping business leaders with scenario planning to lead their teams into the future.

He is a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), the only internationally recognised designation for professional speakers. His formal background is in science and technology, with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Western Australia. But he’s always been interested in people and the way they communicate – and how to become ft for the future, so they embrace change, act on opportunities, and live happier lives.

Available For: Speaking
Travels From: Perth, Australia
Speaking Topics: Futurist, Leadership, Innovation, Trends

Gihan Perera Points
Academic 0
Author 274
Influencer 111
Speaker 10
Entrepreneur 0
Total 395

Points based upon Thinkers360 patent-pending algorithm.

Thought Leader Profile

Portfolio Mix

Company Information

Areas of Expertise

AI
Business Strategy
Change Management 37.51
Customer Experience
Digital Disruption 36.88
Digital Transformation 30.13
Diversity and Inclusion
Future of Work 30.17
Innovation 30.39
Leadership 33.33

Industry Experience

Financial Services & Banking
Healthcare
Hospitality
Insurance
Oil & Gas
Travel & Transportation
Utilities

Publications

10 Article/Blogs
Leave Some Things Behind
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March 22, 2021
In an innovation workshop I was running for leaders, a leader in her university’s student experience centre described some of their new initiatives – such as more parking, increased security for women at night, a wider range of eating outlets, and more social activities. As she spoke, it struck

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Future of Work

Top Leadership Trends for 2021 and Beyond
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March 18, 2021
A crisis doesn’t create leaders; it amplifies them. In “normal” times, many organisations tolerate mediocre or average leaders, but in a crisis those leaders are ruthlessly exposed. COVID-19 has disrupted our world, and people want leaders who step up and lead through crisis, recovery,

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Tags: Innovation, Leadership, Future of Work

Trust Is Your Responsibility
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March 15, 2021
In my many conversations with leaders working in uncertain times, I hear one word over and over again: trust. How do you trust people working from home? How do you trust people to take the initiative? How do you trust people to know when to follow the rules, and when it’s more appropriate to break

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

Diversity Trumps Ability
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March 08, 2021
In December, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo was fined €90,000 (about A$140,000) by the French Ministry of Civil Service because she had broken a rule about gender diversity in senior public service appointments. The 2013 rule was designed to increase the number of women in senior positions, but hereR

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

Let’s Get Digital – Podcast
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March 03, 2021
According to KPMG, digital transformation is the biggest challenge facing leaders in Australia. The pandemic didn’t change that – if anything, it accelerated digital transformation by 5-6 years. And yet, McKinsey says 70% of transformation efforts fail. Why? Because too many leaders and teams ge

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

The Three Biggest Mistakes Leaders Make with Digital Transformation
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March 03, 2021
For the last three years before COVID-19, KPMG’s survey of Australian CEOs reported that digital transformation was their #1 priority. Even the pandemic didn’t slow this trend – and many leaders say it even accelerated their digital transformation by 5-6 years! But many leaders and org

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

More Customers Want a Faster Experience
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March 01, 2021
I went to breakfast last week at a restaurant that provided QR codes for ordering directly from the table. Each table has a QR code on it, which you scan with your phone, and it takes you to their online menu. You choose what you want, pay with Google Pay, and the order goes directly […]
The p

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

Let’s Get Digital!
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February 22, 2021
For the last three years, KPMG’s annual “Keeping Us Up At Night” survey reported on what Australian business leaders consider their biggest challenges and issues. The same topic ranked #1 for all three years (pre-pandemic!): digital transformation. Even the pandemic didn’t slow this trend. I

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

Customers On Your Side
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February 18, 2021
COVID-19 has made your customers re-evaluate what matters most to them, and your customers now have different wants and needs. In this interactive session, you’ll learn the key drivers for your customers now, and discover how to carve out a competitive space for a new customer experience. You

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

Customers Want More For Less
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February 15, 2021
When we first moved to Australia in the 1970s, we kept in touch with relatives in Sri Lanka with the occasional long-distance phone call. They were expensive, so we four kids all lined up by the phone, spoke very fast for our allotted couple of minutes, and quickly passed over the phone to the next

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Tags: Future of Work, Innovation, Leadership

2 Books
Disrupted: Leading the change through crisis, recovery, and growth
Gihan Perera
June 11, 2021
Did 2020 disrupt your life more than ever before? Have you spent more than enough time in Zoom rooms? Do you want clarity and confidence to lead your team and organisation in this time of massive change?

In the early days of the pandemic, we got sick of the phrase “unprecedented times”, but they were unprecedented because they affected everybody at the same time. Over the last few decades, other industries have also faced massive disruption and change, and I worked with leaders and teams in those industries as they strived to survive or thrive.

But the coronavirus pandemic was (and is) different.

For almost everybody, this was their first experience of disruption that affected the entire world. You couldn’t switch to a new market, you couldn’t transfer your operations elsewhere, and you couldn’t escape to a safe haven. It affected everybody and everywhere.

What’s more, it created a triple crisis: a health crisis, an economic crisis, and a social crisis. Even if you work in an area that wasn’t affected badly by the health crisis – and hence didn’t suffer from the economic crisis – the social crisis continues to affect your team members, their loved ones, and others in their community.

I wrote my previous book “Disruption By Design” to warn leaders about inevitable disruption coming their way, and to urge them to take action (“disrupt yourself”) before it happened to them. I didn’t predict it would come from a pandemic, but I knew it would come from something.

This book is for leaders on the other side of disruption, who must lead with both their heart and their head, as they navigate through this time of uncertainty and rapid change.

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Tags: Leadership

Disruption By Design
Gihan Perera
April 12, 2019
We hear of so many organisations and industries being disrupted, and you might wonder if your industry is next – and whether you can do anything about it.

The answer is yes – if you’re willing to take action now, instead of waiting until it’s too late.

Clay Christensen coined the phrase “disruptive innovation”, but many people forget about the “innovation” part of that phrase. In a fast-changing world, the people who take action are the innovators, and those who don’t are the disrupted.

This is the key difference between disruption and innovation: Disruption is when change happens to you, innovation is when you create change yourself.

It’s the difference between being reactive rather than being proactive, being at the mercy of others instead of being in control, and being a victim instead of being a leader.

Innovation is disruption, but with you in control. In other words, it’s disruption by design.

This book describes the three steps in designing your own path for an uncertain future:

1. Use the skill of foresight to explore the external environment and understand it more clearly.
2. Leverage your talent: the people you enlist to bring along for the journey.
3. Take the right action, so you can make progress in a constantly-changing landscape.

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Tags: Change Management

1 Keynote
The Three Biggest Mistakes Leaders Make with Digital Transformation
Gihan Perera
March 03, 2021
For the last three years before COVID-19, KPMG’s survey of Australian CEOs reported that digital transformation was their #1 priority. Even the pandemic didn’t slow this trend – and many leaders say it even accelerated their digital transformation by 5-6 years!

But many leaders and organisations get digital transformation wrong – which makes it slow, expensive, and a massive business risk, especially in an uncertain, fast-moving world. Learn the three biggest mistakes leaders make with digital transformation – and how to avoid them.

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Tags: Digital Transformation

48 Podcasts
Let's Get Digital!
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February 25, 2021
According to KPMG, digital transformation is the biggest challenge facing leaders in Australia. The pandemic didn't change that - if anything, it accelerated digital transformation by 5-6 years.And yet, McKinsey says 70% of digital transformation efforts fail. Why? Because too many leaders and teams

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Empathy
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January 21, 2021
Getting up is harder than falling down, and people need time and space to adjust to their situation before they adapt to it. We explore what you can do to empathise with, support, and lead each of your team members. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Twelve Insights for 2021 - And Beyond
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December 05, 2020
As we come towards the end of this wild and crazy year, you might be looking ahead to a very different 2021. In this episode, I share 12 quotations I use with my audiences and clients when talking about innovation, change, disruption, leadership, and making a difference."We’re not broken, just ben

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

The Future Of Leadership
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November 07, 2020
In uncertain times, everybody is looking for real leadership. The best leaders provide clarity in confusion, inspire confidence in uncertainty, and act with calm amidst chaos. This podcast episode is an extract from a conversation I had last year with David Frizzell of Team Guru, talking about the f

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Building Your WFH Culture
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October 01, 2020
The pandemic has affected us in different ways, and one of the biggest changes for office-based workers is the shift to working from home (WFH). When COVID-19 hit, many office-based teams had to scramble to let people work from home for the first time.If you’re a team leader or manager facing a WF

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Leading Through Uncertainty
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July 10, 2020
During the coronavirus pandemic, you might have heard people say, “We’re all in the same boat”. But that’s not true! We’re all in the same storm, but we’re in different boats, navigating our way through the storm. If you’re a leader, you can’t control the storm and you might be stuck

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Reimagining the Post-Pandemic Workplace
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May 08, 2020
The office has only been around for 200 years, and it was essential in the past but isn’t now. COVID-19 has created our biggest work-from-home experiment, and that’s a good thing fur workplaces in the long term. With the acceleration of digital transformation, organisations have the opportunity

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Managing Conflict in Distributed Teams
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April 13, 2020
Conflicts occur in all teams, but distributed teams suffer more conflict than traditional, in-office teams, and those conflicts are sometimes more difficult to resolve. Use this four-step process to manage conflict when it arises. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Out Of Office
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March 22, 2020
With the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, you might be planning for the possibility of asking individuals or entire teams to work from home. If this is a new experience for you, it creates unexpected challenges. You might have the logistics, technology, infrastructure, and HR requirements unde

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently
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February 12, 2020
The old way of setting goals was to sit down every January and set your goals for the next 12 months. But that doesn’t work anymore because the world is changing so fast. This means goals quickly become irrelevant and it’s too easy to get sidetracked by other priorities. In this webinar, you wil

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Active Learning
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December 18, 2019
The World Economic Forum has identified active learning as one of the top five critical skills for success in the future. The best way to future-proof your career is to be the sort of person who can constantly learn, unlearn, and re-learn. Learn how to be an active learner - without being overwhelme

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

How To Deal With Change
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September 29, 2019
We're all going through massive and unprecedented change, and it can sometimes be uncertain, frustrating, frightening, and stressful. The people who deal with it best aren't just born with that ability. They use scientifically-proven strategies to cope with, manage, and even embrace change. See acas

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

How Disruptable Is Your Business?
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July 19, 2019
You know disruption is coming, don’t you? It’s taken down massive companies and disruptors have transformed entire industries. So it’s only a matter of time before it's heading for you. It’s not about “if”; it’s about “when”.How will you deal with it? Some organisations take active

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Disruption By Design
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March 10, 2019
20 years ago, Clay Christensen wrote a groundbreaking article about "disruptive innovation", and that brought the term "disruption" into everyday business use. Hardly a week goes by without hearing about a business - or even an entire industry - being disrupted, so it's not surprising many business

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Tags: Digital Disruption, Leadership, Change Management

The Best Workplace on Earth
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December 09, 2018
We all know the workplace of the future will be very different from the workplace of today. It's more than just technology and automation - it's about the environment you create for attracting the smart, talented, savvy people with the skills we need for future-proofing our organisations. The bad ne

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Ask The World
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October 14, 2018
In our social, mobile, and highly-connected world, the best people to solve your problems could turn up in the most unexpected places. Don't just turn to the people you already know. There’s a whole world that’s willing to help. Reach out to them, and you tap into endless talent, skills, and exp

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

There's An I In Team
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August 07, 2018
We’re already seeing significant changes in the nature of work, and the workplace of the future will be very different from the workplace now. If you’re leading a team or organisation in this new world of work, you will face different responsibilities and challenges than you do now. Discover the

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

The Right Way to Be Customer-Centric
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July 09, 2018
There's a lot of buzz about being more customer-centric, but most experts and advisers miss the most important element of customer-centricity. Without it, you will almost certainly be disrupted by competitors inside or outside your industry. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Think Like a Futurist
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June 04, 2018
Futurists aren't fortune-tellers! They simply look broader, deeper, and further than most people, and help you find new opportunities to apply what they find. As writer William Gibson said, the future is already here - it just isn't evenly distributed. In this podcast episode, I'll teach you nine pr

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

The Future of Conferences
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May 04, 2018
Videoconferencing, online meetings, telepresence and other collaboration technology are gaining traction. Does that mean the in-person conference is obsolete? No – not by a long way! But its role has changed. In this webinar, Discover the top trends affecting our professional and personal lives, a

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Think Sharper
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March 28, 2018
Why do so many change and innovation programs fail? Even with management buy-in, a willing culture, and good ideas, too many innovation programs just don't get traction anymore. In this fast-changing world, there's one element missing from many of these programs, and it can doom them to failure. See

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

The Buzz About Bitcoin
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February 28, 2018
Bitcoin is currently valued at $17,057, but it's volatile and filled with hype. What IS it, and should you invest $15,662 of your hard-earned cash in buying it? Even if you don't have a spare $16,902 sitting around, take the time to understand the basics of Bitcoin and blockchain technology and know

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Disrupt Yourself
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December 23, 2017
You’ve done everything right, played by the rules, and built a solid business, but the world has changed and everything you valued is shaken to the core. So how do you continue to be successful in a fast-changing world? In a nutshell: Disrupt yourself. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

How to Lead From Anywhere
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October 02, 2017
The traditional workplace - an office with everybody working the same hours, at the same time, in the same place, and focussed on the same goals - is changing fast, but many leaders don't know how to apply their leadership skills to these new environments. Leaders who understand the needs of their d

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

Professional Development for Distributed Teams
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August 08, 2017
Members of distributed teams value and expect opportunities for professional development just as much as in-office team members. As a leader or manager, be proactive and innovative to find ways to help accelerate the experience curve for your distributed team members. See acast.com/privacy for priva

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Tags: Change Management, Digital Disruption, Leadership

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Gihan Perera