Member since November 2026
Lisa Glenn is a keynote speaker and hospitality and travel technology advisor who challenges leaders to rethink the relationship between speed and progress.
Drawing on more than 20 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines, Lisa brings a distinctive perspective on how organizations navigate complexity, make decisions, and turn ambitious goals into meaningful progress.
Through her signature keynote, The Velocity Trap™, Lisa explores why organizations mistake activity for progress and how leaders can recognize when momentum is taking them in the wrong direction. She introduces the concept of the Deliberate Stop, helping leaders ask better questions, uncover hidden assumptions, and make more informed decisions before moving forward.
Lisa recognizes The Velocity Trap as a pattern that appears at every level, from organizations and teams to individual careers and personal lives. While the circumstances may differ, the underlying challenge is universal: knowing when to question the direction you're heading rather than simply pushing harder to get there.
Her message is not about slowing down. It's about achieving Informed Velocity™: moving forward with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
I'm passionate about illuminating the truth. I love asking the questions that challenge assumptions, reveal what others may have overlooked, and help people see situations more clearly. Whether in business, leadership, or personal life, I believe meaningful progress begins with an honest understanding of where we are, not just where we think we are. There's something incredibly rewarding about that moment when someone sees what they couldn't see before, and it changes how they think about what comes next.
I tell a story about a new ordering engine for a national restaurant chain that worked exactly as designed, yet failed to place orders correctly during its pilot launch.
One of the chain's luxury locations had a specialty chocolatier as a supplier. The store manager knew that she had to order chocolate truffles in multiples of 7 and chocolate bars in multiples of 8, because that's how the chocolatier packaged and shipped them.
But the rules lived in her head, and she wasn't in the room during requirements, so those rules never got into the new system. The system accepted whatever quantities were entered and sent the orders to the suppliers.
As luck would have it, the manager went on vacation during the pilot launch. The assistant manager placed the orders, and the system accepted and transmitted them. But the supplier rejected the orders because the quantities didn't match the required multiples.
Nothing malfunctioned. The system worked as it was designed.
The lesson? You can accurately document everything you're told and still build the wrong solution because you're missing critical operational knowledge.
It's a story I use to illustrate how easily we can mistake a complete-looking picture for the whole truth.
For more than 20 years, I built a successful consulting career, working with Fortune 500 companies on complex initiatives. I earned awards, received outstanding performance reviews, and was recognized for the value I delivered. By conventional measures, I was doing everything right.
But I knew I was caught in my own Velocity Trap.
I was so busy meeting expectations, delivering results, and keeping up with everything that needed to be done that I wasn't taking the time to ask whether all that activity was taking me where I actually wanted to go.
I knew I needed to stop and figure out what I wanted the next chapter of my life to look like. I even proposed a half-day retreat to my consulting firm, recognizing that I needed that kind of intentional time away from the demands of everyday work. The firm wasn't interested in funding it, and I kept going.
When my mother became ill, I stepped away from work to care for her. That time gave me the opportunity to reflect on questions I'd already known I needed to ask.
My experience reinforced something I'd observed throughout my professional career: The Velocity Trap isn't limited to organizations or teams. It can shape our careers and personal lives, too. We can be successful by every external measure while continuing down a path we haven't deliberately chosen.
Today, The Velocity Trap™ is the foundation of my speaking work. I challenge leaders and individuals to recognize when momentum has taken over, make a Deliberate Stop, and move forward with greater clarity and purpose.
We live in a culture that mistakes speed for progress. Our calendars are full, our teams are busy, and our lives are moving faster than ever. But what happens when all that momentum is taking us in the wrong direction?
The Velocity Trap™ is the tendency to confuse activity with achievement, urgency with importance, and forward motion with meaningful progress. It's a pattern that shows up everywhere: in organizations pursuing ambitious goals, teams racing to meet deadlines, careers driven by expectations, and personal lives filled with commitments that may no longer align with what matters most.
Drawing on more than 20 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines, Lisa Glenn challenges audiences to examine the assumptions driving their decisions and recognize when momentum has replaced intentional direction.
Through relatable stories, practical insights, and the concept of the Deliberate Stop, Lisa introduces four essential questions that help individuals and leaders reassess where they are, where they're going, how they intend to get there, and whether they have what they need.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize the warning signs of the Velocity Trap in organizations, teams, careers, and personal lives.
Distinguish meaningful progress from activity that merely creates the appearance of progress.
Recognize when a Deliberate Stop is needed to reassess direction before moving forward.
Apply four practical questions to make more informed decisions about what comes next.
The goal isn't to slow down. It's to achieve Informed Velocity™: moving forward with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Ideal audiences: Leadership conferences, corporate events, women's leadership programs, professional associations, and career development events.
Artificial intelligence promises to help organizations work faster, make better decisions, and accomplish more with fewer resources. But what happens when AI is operating on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of how the business actually works?
AI doesn't create every problem it encounters. Sometimes it simply amplifies assumptions, gaps, and misunderstandings that were already there, producing the wrong outcomes faster and at a greater scale.
In this thought-provoking session, Lisa Glenn draws on more than 20 years of experience connecting business, technology, and operations to explore a critical challenge of AI adoption: the gap between how organizations believe their processes work and what actually happens in practice.
Through relatable examples and real-world scenarios, Lisa examines how missing perspectives, undocumented exceptions, and unchallenged assumptions can undermine even sophisticated technology solutions.
Rather than focusing on AI tools or technical implementation, she introduces the SHINE framework to help organizations ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and understand operational reality before accelerating or automating their processes.
Audience takeaways:
Understand how AI can amplify existing gaps between business assumptions and operational reality.
Recognize why automating a flawed process doesn't necessarily improve the outcome.
Identify the importance of exceptions, frontline perspectives, and end-to-end business processes.
Apply the SHINE framework to challenge assumptions before introducing or expanding AI-enabled solutions.
Ideal audiences: Business and technology leaders, innovation conferences, AI adoption events, business analysis professionals, operations leaders, and organizations exploring AI-driven transformation.
A project can be on schedule, within budget, and passing every readiness review, yet still encounter serious problems when it goes live. Why? Because the project plan doesn't always reveal what's happening in the real-world operation.
Drawing on more than 20 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines, Lisa Glenn explores the hidden gaps between what organizations plan, what teams believe is ready, and what actually happens when new technology, processes, or services meet operational reality.
Through real-world examples, Lisa reveals how assumptions go unchallenged, critical perspectives are overlooked, and traditional measures of readiness can create a false sense of confidence.
She introduces the SHINE framework, a practical approach to looking beyond the project plan, uncovering what others may have missed, and asking the questions that help organizations prepare for successful launches.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize why traditional project measures don't always reflect operational readiness.
Identify hidden gaps between planned processes and real-world execution.
Understand how missing perspectives and untested assumptions can undermine launch success.
Apply the SHINE framework to uncover readiness gaps before they become operational problems.
Ideal audiences: Project and program management conferences, business analysis professionals, technology leaders, operations leaders, transformation teams, and organizations preparing for major technology or operational launches.
I tell a story about a new ordering engine for a national restaurant chain that worked exactly as designed, yet failed to place orders correctly during its pilot launch.
One of the chain's luxury locations had a specialty chocolatier as a supplier. The store manager knew that she had to order chocolate truffles in multiples of 7 and chocolate bars in multiples of 8, because that's how the chocolatier packaged and shipped them.
But the rules lived in her head, and she wasn't in the room during requirements, so those rules never got into the new system. The system accepted whatever quantities were entered and sent the orders to the suppliers.
As luck would have it, the manager went on vacation during the pilot launch. The assistant manager placed the orders, and the system accepted and transmitted them. But the supplier rejected the orders because the quantities didn't match the required multiples.
Nothing malfunctioned. The system worked as it was designed.
The lesson? You can accurately document everything you're told and still build the wrong solution because you're missing critical operational knowledge.
It's a story I use to illustrate how easily we can mistake a complete-looking picture for the whole truth.
For more than 20 years, I built a successful consulting career, working with Fortune 500 companies on complex initiatives. I earned awards, received outstanding performance reviews, and was recognized for the value I delivered. By conventional measures, I was doing everything right.
But I knew I was caught in my own Velocity Trap.
I was so busy meeting expectations, delivering results, and keeping up with everything that needed to be done that I wasn't taking the time to ask whether all that activity was taking me where I actually wanted to go.
I knew I needed to stop and figure out what I wanted the next chapter of my life to look like. I even proposed a half-day retreat to my consulting firm, recognizing that I needed that kind of intentional time away from the demands of everyday work. The firm wasn't interested in funding it, and I kept going.
When my mother became ill, I stepped away from work to care for her. That time gave me the opportunity to reflect on questions I'd already known I needed to ask.
My experience reinforced something I'd observed throughout my professional career: The Velocity Trap isn't limited to organizations or teams. It can shape our careers and personal lives, too. We can be successful by every external measure while continuing down a path we haven't deliberately chosen.
Today, The Velocity Trap™ is the foundation of my speaking work. I challenge leaders and individuals to recognize when momentum has taken over, make a Deliberate Stop, and move forward with greater clarity and purpose.
We live in a culture that mistakes speed for progress. Our calendars are full, our teams are busy, and our lives are moving faster than ever. But what happens when all that momentum is taking us in the wrong direction?
The Velocity Trap™ is the tendency to confuse activity with achievement, urgency with importance, and forward motion with meaningful progress. It's a pattern that shows up everywhere: in organizations pursuing ambitious goals, teams racing to meet deadlines, careers driven by expectations, and personal lives filled with commitments that may no longer align with what matters most.
Drawing on more than 20 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines, Lisa Glenn challenges audiences to examine the assumptions driving their decisions and recognize when momentum has replaced intentional direction.
Through relatable stories, practical insights, and the concept of the Deliberate Stop, Lisa introduces four essential questions that help individuals and leaders reassess where they are, where they're going, how they intend to get there, and whether they have what they need.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize the warning signs of the Velocity Trap in organizations, teams, careers, and personal lives.
Distinguish meaningful progress from activity that merely creates the appearance of progress.
Recognize when a Deliberate Stop is needed to reassess direction before moving forward.
Apply four practical questions to make more informed decisions about what comes next.
The goal isn't to slow down. It's to achieve Informed Velocity™: moving forward with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
Ideal audiences: Leadership conferences, corporate events, women's leadership programs, professional associations, and career development events.
Artificial intelligence promises to help organizations work faster, make better decisions, and accomplish more with fewer resources. But what happens when AI is operating on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of how the business actually works?
AI doesn't create every problem it encounters. Sometimes it simply amplifies assumptions, gaps, and misunderstandings that were already there, producing the wrong outcomes faster and at a greater scale.
In this thought-provoking session, Lisa Glenn draws on more than 20 years of experience connecting business, technology, and operations to explore a critical challenge of AI adoption: the gap between how organizations believe their processes work and what actually happens in practice.
Through relatable examples and real-world scenarios, Lisa examines how missing perspectives, undocumented exceptions, and unchallenged assumptions can undermine even sophisticated technology solutions.
Rather than focusing on AI tools or technical implementation, she introduces the SHINE framework to help organizations ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and understand operational reality before accelerating or automating their processes.
Audience takeaways:
Understand how AI can amplify existing gaps between business assumptions and operational reality.
Recognize why automating a flawed process doesn't necessarily improve the outcome.
Identify the importance of exceptions, frontline perspectives, and end-to-end business processes.
Apply the SHINE framework to challenge assumptions before introducing or expanding AI-enabled solutions.
Ideal audiences: Business and technology leaders, innovation conferences, AI adoption events, business analysis professionals, operations leaders, and organizations exploring AI-driven transformation.
A project can be on schedule, within budget, and passing every readiness review, yet still encounter serious problems when it goes live. Why? Because the project plan doesn't always reveal what's happening in the real-world operation.
Drawing on more than 20 years of consulting experience with Fortune 500 companies, including Microsoft, Starbucks, and Alaska Airlines, Lisa Glenn explores the hidden gaps between what organizations plan, what teams believe is ready, and what actually happens when new technology, processes, or services meet operational reality.
Through real-world examples, Lisa reveals how assumptions go unchallenged, critical perspectives are overlooked, and traditional measures of readiness can create a false sense of confidence.
She introduces the SHINE framework, a practical approach to looking beyond the project plan, uncovering what others may have missed, and asking the questions that help organizations prepare for successful launches.
Audience takeaways:
Recognize why traditional project measures don't always reflect operational readiness.
Identify hidden gaps between planned processes and real-world execution.
Understand how missing perspectives and untested assumptions can undermine launch success.
Apply the SHINE framework to uncover readiness gaps before they become operational problems.
Ideal audiences: Project and program management conferences, business analysis professionals, technology leaders, operations leaders, transformation teams, and organizations preparing for major technology or operational launches.