What Makes Groups Work: The ManifestoMy first job was at a speaker bureau. I watched talks earn standing ovations and disappear before everyone reached the airport. The ovation measures the hour. The test comes a month later, when the talk is either changing how someone works or completely forgotten.
That is the standard here. Every keynote is built around the decisions your people are facing. And there are jokes, because nobody remembers a boring speech. Just not dad jokes. My kids have forbidden those.
The reel, one-page bio, photos, and AV rider are in the Speaker Kit. One file, no chasing.
Start with the problem, then book a twenty-minute call.
| If your leaders need to… | Start here |
|---|---|
| Make better decisions while AI changes the work | What AI Can't Decide |
| Hold a high-performing team together under pressure | It's Not Rocket Science... It's Harder |
| Get people to use AI rather than quietly resist it | Your Newest Team Member Isn't Human |
| Protect focus and execute the priorities that matter | Can I Have Your Attention? |
| Get honest disagreement out in the open, without damage | Disagreeing Without Coming Apart |
| Build cohesion across silos, locations, or generations | What Makes Groups Work |
| Lead through change when certainty is unavailable | Navigating Through the Fog |
| Address a specific theme or internal moment | Custom Work |
Even when it is rocket science, it's how you get people to work together that dictates the outcome.
I spent three years as Head of People at Venus Aerospace. During that time, the company completed the first-ever flight of a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine and secured more than $100 million. The thing that nearly broke the company wasn't the physics. It was getting the people who ran it to agree on what to do next, with everything on the line and nobody able to see the whole board. The talk tells that story, including the part where expertise turns into armor and what held the team together anyway.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Extended with Q&A (up to 2 hours)
How leaders make sound decisions, keep people together, and stay useful as AI changes the work.
AI can produce the analysis, draft the plan, and answer the question before most of us have finished asking it. It cannot decide what deserves attention, notice when the team is confidently wrong, or create the trust required for someone to say so.
This keynote helps leaders understand the work that becomes more important as the tools get better.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Extended (up to 2 hours) · Add-on: closed-door executive session
Getting your team to actually work with the tool.
AI now does work that used to define somebody's job security, and often does it better. Some people see opportunity. A lot of people see a threat and do not say so. No rollout survives a team that has quietly decided the software is competition.
So the talk stays with the humans, not the technology: why capable people resist capable tools, what leaders do that makes the resistance worse, and how to get a team working with AI instead of around it.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Workshop · Intensive
What actually earns focus when everything competes for it.
The tools that promised to make us productive mostly made us reachable. Somewhere in there, attention quit being something we aim and became something that gets taken, a little at a time, all day. Spent that way, it cannot do the work judgment needs.
The material grew out of the bestselling book and has been rebuilt for a moment when the thing fragmenting you is not just your phone. It is the entire environment around you. And yes, the guy who wrote the book on focus has ADHD. The deep training and team programs live at Focuswise.com.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Workshop · Focuswise deep program
Keeping the argument about the idea.
Most teams do not break because people disagree. They break because the disagreement turns personal, goes underground, or does not surface until it is expensive.
And the higher you sit, the less of it you hear at all. People close to power have a stake in your approval, and asking for honesty does not fix that when everyone answering knows you hold their paycheck. I learned to argue hard about an idea without making it about the person in competitive debate, then tested it on the executive team at Venus.
Teams leave with a practical way to disagree earlier, keep the argument about the idea, and make a decision without requiring everyone to pretend they saw it the same way. They may even have a decent time doing it.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Workshop · Team retreat
Culture, dynamics, generations, and getting people genuinely on the same team.
The oldest human advantage is people learning how to function together, and much of modern work cuts against it. Add different locations, competing incentives, and four generations each reasonably certain the others are doing it wrong, and the wonder is that any team coheres at all.
I have tested the same basic group problems with a rocket company and a youth baseball team. The settings looked nothing alike, but the group dynamics were familiar. This keynote gives leaders practical ways to rebuild connection, set shared expectations, and get people playing for the same team.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Workshop
Leading when the next quarter is a guess.
The fog stopped being weather you wait out and became the climate you work in. Markets, supply chains, policy, and technology refuse to settle into something leaders can confidently plan around.
Leaders still have to give people direction without pretending to have certainty. The keynote helps them keep a team focused and willing to move while the future is still taking shape.
Formats: Keynote (up to 90 min) · Workshop
When what you need isn't on the menu.
Sometimes the most useful thing is the one nobody inside has the standing to say. Book this and you're telling me to read where you actually are and bring what's useful, not what got pre-approved in a planning call. Might be new thinking that hasn't made it to a slide yet. Might be a proven idea aimed straight at your moment. Might be permission to stop doing the thing everyone privately suspects isn't working.
Side effects may include sudden clarity, uncontrollable honesty, and the urge to cancel half your meetings.
You already have a conference theme or a moment the talk needs to meet. The same body of work maps onto it, and the talk gets written to your event, not recycled.
A keynote can't fix a company. It can change what a company talks about.
Same day. Opens with the full audience, then takes on senior-team specifics behind closed doors.
Reframes thinking, then puts it to use. Teams leave with a deliverable, not just inspiration.
The stuck issues get surfaced and the group leaves with clear commitments. People reference these for years.
Quarterly intensives, the format that came out of Venus Aerospace. Long-term partnership, change that holds.
Investor pitches, board presentations, high-stakes moments. Private and confidential.
Leadership in the situations where the answer is not obvious: adopting AI, making decisions under pressure, protecting attention, hearing the truth, working through disagreement, and keeping a team together through change. Attention is where the work started; the bestselling book Can I Have Your Attention? came out of it.
People leave with a way to distinguish a full day from a productive one, protect time for focused work, and align the team around its most important priorities. Leaders also learn how their own attention signals what everyone else should treat as important.
The material comes from inside the job, not from observing it at a safe distance: three years running the people side of a rocket company, 10 years on stages, and a bestselling book on attention. Curt does not arrive with a heroic origin story or a five-step model that somehow applies to every company. He brings practical ideas, honest stories about where he got them wrong, and considerably more laughter than this answer suggests.
Most events book 3–6 months ahead. Some book 12+. Earlier is better, but good work has happened on short timelines.
Both. This material hits harder in person. Virtual works when it needs to.
Always. The core ideas stay intact. The examples, language, and emphasis are built around your audience and the decisions they are facing.
Twenty minutes, no pitch. You describe the event and the moment your team is in; if I'm wrong for it, I'll say so.
Premiere, Keppler, APB, Gotham Artists, and others. If one referred you, mention them on the first call.
Depends on format, duration, and scope. Ask and you'll get a straight number, not a range that moves.
Planning an event? Tell me what your people are facing. I'll tell you if I'm the right fit.
