Zach Stone

Zach empowers and fortifies teams to function at their highest level of productivity and wellbeing so they can deliver products of top notch quality that delight users. Getting to "done," is not the same as delivering value. As a scrum master who is deeply passionate about UX, it’s part of his role to ensure that the teams he supports are always evaluating how they deliver value, build great products, and to continuously improve.

Zach have been a group/process facilitator for 17 years, training over 15,000+ individuals from 27 different countries, and working with 100's of teams. He uses behavioral science, change management practices, Agile frameworks, system thinking, and design thinking to help organizations and individuals to be as productive as possible in high complexity environments. He thrives on facilitating and transforming "difficult conversations" and distilling the key learnings into growth opportunities for process improvement.

Before working in the private sector, Zach was a conflict mediator and facilitator. As a startup founder, he worked to foster measurable and actionable growth strategy in the midst of challenging transition periods.

Zach has been a lecturer for Wharton Business School on Innovation, The International Coaching Federation, the Association for Conflict Resolution, The University of Penn School of Social Policy, Drexel University, The Department of State, The Association for Higher Education, and featured by Apple inc., twice. He has facilitated and consulted in a variety of industries including NGO's, non-profits, healthcare, university, transportation, law enforcement, hospitality, and the federal government.

 

Leading Projects in the Age of Chaos

Tuesday, OCTOBER 15
2:30-3:20 PM CT

In the past 4 years, we have seen civil unrest, a pandemic, a ground war of a scale not seen in Europe since WW2, and constantly shifting markets. Tech burnout reached record levels in 2022 and 2023 with over 71% of workers self-reporting as having moderate to high burnout in a sample size of over 30,000.

We invented and had to learn a new way of working during the worst of the Covid crisis. Our work world has changed, and the pace of industry is increasing, but has our understanding of team health and psychological safety evolved? In this workshop, we will discuss behavioral science to support projects and organizations maneuvering conflict and crisis. Participants will explore strategies that work to foster healthy teams and bust myths about outdated approaches.

Behavioralist and former trauma/burnout studies practitioner Zach Stone will discuss what he has learned throughout his career, how he supported his team in Ukraine during the invasion and war, and how high-performing portfolios manage crisis.

We will discuss why many of the old rules for team building are outdated in the new age of chaos and how to build resilience in your organization.

Learning outcomes

Participants will learn how to:

  1. Identify core symptoms and signs of burnout and a breakdown in trust at the organizational level.

  2. Develop a neuroscience-supported understanding of why traditional team building can cause more harm than good when teams are in crisis or have low psychological safety. 

  3. Understand how to create a "wraparound team" (from trauma response) and how to apply the four-step crisis management model ( Assessment, Stabilization, Intervention, and Recovery) to the world of Project Management and Software Development. 

  4. Participants will break into small groups and identify immediate steps they can take to support teams in crisis.

 
 

Thank You to Our Wonderful Partners:

 
 
 
 
 
 

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