Speaking

What happens to good people inside complicated organizations.

A federal executive and leadership researcher who translates five decades of motivation science into a framework any working leader can use on Monday morning. He writes about what happens to good people inside complicated organizations — and what the quietly strong ones do differently.

Keynotes Half-day workshops Leadership cohorts
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The Flagship Keynote

A research-grounded keynote with a diagnostic any leader can use on Monday morning.

No. 01 · Flagship

Autonomy, Relatedness, Competence: The Three Conditions That Determine Whether Your Best People Stay or Shrink

Based on The Lost ARC

A research-grounded keynote that introduces the three psychological needs at the heart of human motivation — autonomy, relatedness, and competence — and shows leaders how to diagnose, in any given moment, which need is most frustrated in the people they lead. Includes the three-question diagnostic that any working leader can use on Monday morning.

Ideal for: Executive teams, L&D summits, leadership development programs, and organizations navigating transformation, retention, or burnout.

Format
45–60 minute keynote
Audience
Executives · Leaders · L&D
Takeaway
The three-question diagnostic

Alternate Keynotes

Three more talks for the leaders
who already suspect something is off.

No. 02

The Secret Latch: Why Organizations Are Saved by the People No One Thanks

Based on Sisyphus.gov

Every dysfunctional organization survives because of the quiet competents — the people who know where the secret latches are, who fix the machines no one understands, who pass institutional memory from one generation to the next. This keynote names them, honors them, and shows leaders how to find, protect, and multiply them before they walk out the door.

Ideal for: Operations audiences, federal and military leaders, and any organization where tribal knowledge is walking out with retirements.

No. 03

Watermelon Metrics: How Leaders Fool Themselves About Progress

A diagnostic keynote on the ways organizations measure themselves measuring themselves — the dashboards that stay green on the outside while bleeding red on the inside. Draws on organizational research, field examples, and the author's direct experience leading a $25M federal product line.

Ideal for: Executives, boards, and leadership teams under pressure to demonstrate progress without sacrificing the substance of what they are doing.

No. 04

Quiet Strength: Leading When the Systems Above You Contradict Themselves

Based on Quiet Strength

A personal-leadership keynote for the mid-level leader caught between contradictory mandates — the person expected to execute with clarity while every layer above them sends a different signal. Offers thirty maxims, a practical discipline, and a reframe of what leadership integrity actually requires under those conditions.

Ideal for: High-potential leadership cohorts, mid-career development programs, and military or government audiences.

No. 05 · Workshop

Finding Your Organization's Secret Latches: A Diagnostic Workshop for Leadership Teams

Half-day · 3–4 hours

A facilitated session built around the ARC framework. Participants complete the three-question diagnostic on their own teams, identify the quietly competent people who are currently holding their organization together, surface the watermelon metrics in their own reporting, and leave with a one-page action plan specific to their team.

Ideal for: Executive offsites, leadership cohorts, and teams preparing for major transitions.

Three audiences he speaks to

Different rooms.
The same diagnosis.

The talks adapt to the audience without changing the underlying argument. Each version of the work is built from the same research and the same fifteen years inside.

Corporate
For L&D, HR, and leadership development teams.

Retention, burnout, and transformation fatigue are not HR problems. They are diagnosable failures of three psychological conditions — and they can be fixed with a framework your leaders can actually use.

Government
For federal agencies and SES cohorts.

You work inside the system I work inside. I wrote the book about what it does to good people — and what the quietly strong leaders do differently. From a peer, not a consultant.

Military & Veteran
For military leadership schools and veteran programs.

Leadership is the practice of creating conditions in which other people can function fully. I learned that as an NCO. The ARC framework is the vocabulary the Army didn't have when we needed it.

Why these talks land

An unusual combination.

Most people who speak about leadership have one or two of the following credentials. Justin has all four — and they are the source, not the ornament, of what he has to say. He has led teams under field conditions, run a $25M federal product line, taught philosophy at the college level, and synthesized five decades of empirical research into a framework working leaders can actually use.

The result is a speaker who is comfortable in front of an executive offsite, an SES cohort, a Sergeants Major Academy class, or a leadership-development summit — and who delivers the same underlying argument in language the room actually speaks.

Read the full biography

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