Dan Gingiss: The Experience Maker

We set our quarterly goals, create a bunch of projects and tasks to complete them, and dutifully measure… everything. We’ve got meetings to plan our meetings and spreadsheets to track our dashboards. At the end of the year, we fill out our performance reviews, calibrate them across the department, and reward the lucky few with the highest scores.

But here’s the thing: we’re stuck in The Optics Trap.

It’s a century-old system designed for visibility, control, and compliance—optimized for what’s easy to see and count, not what actually drives performance today. Organizations say they want innovation and collaboration, but what they reward is speed, task completion, and most of all, visibility.

The truth is that no performance review, assessment, or ratings system captures the one thing that actually transforms a business: each employee’s ability to create Collective Lift.

Collective Lift is about multiplication. It asks.

What becomes possible because you exist?

When people practice Collective Lift, they make everyone around them better. And they don’t need a title to do it.

In this transformative keynote, Dan Gingiss reveals what organizations should be measuring to identify their Collective Lifters.

You’ll discover how the Chicago Cubs used Collective Lift principles to end a 108-year championship drought. You’ll meet a theme park employee who proved you don’t need a title to transform an entire department into the best-performing team in the entire chain. And you’ll learn how Dan’s own unique management style made him “the boss everyone wanted to work for,” even before he had a name for it.

You’ll leave with concrete actions you can take immediately—regardless of your title—to practice Collective Lift. Whether you’re a frontline employee, manager, senior leader, or executive, you’ll see exactly how to start measuring what actually matters.

This includes the three signals that separate true leaders from those who just look the part-

• Individual Trajectory – Are people more capable after working with you?

• Team Multiplication – Does your team’s capability increase when you’re around?

• Organizational Impact – Do your ideas spread beyond your immediate sphere?

Because at the end of the day, your legacy won’t be your title or what you achieved alone.

It will be who achieved more because you existed.

That’s Collective Lift.

We all know that support staff are at the forefront of driving great customer experiences. But the one thing that customer-centric companies understand well is that great CX is not the job of customer-facing teams alone – everyone has an equal role to play.

This session will explore how all teams in your organization are in the “customer experience business,” and how driving such a culture forward is key to organizational success.

You’ll learn

1. How different teams such as marketing, finance, and legal shape the customer experience; real-life examples of the  impact of non-customer facing teams on the end customer; how a company-wide commitment to CX improves customer loyalty.
2. Your customers don’t care about your organizational chart or which department handles what. They look at your company as a single entity, and expect that everyone — from the front-line customer service agent to the legal department to the custodial staff — is focused on making their experience remarkable.

Want your team to stop talking about customer experience and start creating it? In this hands-on session, participants put Dan’s WISE framework — Witty, Immersive, Shareable, and Extraordinary — into action. They are also introduced to a bonus letter — “R” for Responsive — that will make them WISER than the competition.

Built on two decades of real-world experience leading CX at brands like McDonald’s, Discover, and Humana, this workshop is an idea-generating engine where your people roll up their sleeves and brainstorm simple, practical, and inexpensive CX improvements you can implement right away.

By the end, you’ll have a long list of customer-focused ideas — created by your own team, plus a room full of energized Experience Makers ready to bring them to life.

Looking to take your team’s customer experience game to the next level?

 In this dynamic and interactive session, participants don’t just learn about the WISER framework—Witty, Immersive, Shareable, Extraordinary, and Responsive—they put it into action. Your team will roll up their sleeves and start brainstorming simple, practical, and inexpensive customer experience ideas that can be implemented right away.

 This isn’t just a workshop—it’s an idea-generating engine that taps into the creativity of everyone in the room. Guided by Dan, attendees will brainstorm fresh, actionable ideas for each of the WISER steps. By the end, you’ll have a long list of inspired, customer-focused improvements created by your own people, ready to take back and implement.

 Empowering, energizing, and packed with creativity, this workshop ensures that everyone leaves feeling like an Experience Maker, ready to bring these new ideas to life and share them across the organization.

Ready to unlock the power of your customers’ voices? Imagine transforming raw customer feedback into a goldmine of insights that propel your business forward. The Voice of the Customer Amplifier workshop does just that – and more.

In this high-impact session, you’ll:

• Dive deep into real customer interactions across all channels
• Uncover hidden pain points and opportunities for excellence
• Perform root cause analysis to prevent future service interactions
• Engage your leadership team in collaborative problem-solving
• Develop actionable strategies to elevate your customer experience

Prepare for an energizing, eye-opening experience featuring your actual customers that will unite your team and ignite passion for customer-centric innovation. You’ll leave feeling inspired, aligned, and equipped with the tools to drive meaningful change.

 The result? Dramatically reduced call volumes, lower operational costs, higher satisfaction scores, and a customer experience that your customers will want to tell others about.

 There’s nothing quite like the literal voice of your customer; it will revolutionize your business! Quarterly sessions recommended, monthly for optimal impact.