I help organizations create leaders who have the time to lead.
Where leadership, productivity, AI, and culture meet.
For over a decade, I've been studying one thing: where leaders' time actually goes.
And it turns out that your diary tells you far more than how busy you are.
It shows what gets prioritised, what gets avoided, where people are trusted, where they aren't, whether AI is actually creating capacity and whether leaders have enough space left to lead.
Once you see that, productivity looks different, AI looks different, leadership looks different and culture looks different
That's the territory I explore in every keynote.
“Nothing short of life changing – perfectly suited as the precursor to major change programmes or new business initiatives”
— Jackie Cupper, GSK
Think You Don’t Have Time? Yes You Do!
This isn’t a keynote about time management.
I ask audiences to look at something they rarely stop to examine: where their time actually goes.
Using live interaction, real data and a few uncomfortable questions, we uncover how much of their time is lost on things that no one will miss.
What happens next is the interesting bit.
People start to see their time differently. The problem they thought was a lack of time often turns out to be something else entirely.
And once they can see where their time is going, they can start making different choices about what to do with it.
One Keynote, Four Perspectives…
Every audience is different. The underlying idea never changes. Choose the perspective that fits your audience:
Leadership: The biggest barrier to better leadership often isn't capability, it's having the time to lead.
AI: AI doesn't create value by itself, the value comes from what leaders choose to do with the time it gives them.
Productivity: Most organizations don't have a productivity problem; they have a leadership capacity problem.
Four-day week: The four-day week isn't about squeezing five days into four; it's about removing the work that shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Not just a keynote
My keynotes don’t just inspire, they provide intelligence about how your organisation uses time.
Using responses gathered during a keynote, you can go even deeper with a Time Insight Report — a bespoke, anonymised analysis that:
Benchmarks your organisation against global leadership efficiency norms.
Reveals how much time is being lost across each leadership level.
Highlights the core reasontime is lost and where your investment should be directed.
Your report can be used to prioritise where AI and automation will have the biggest impact, focus your organisational design efforts and shape your L&D strategy.
Ready to challenge how your audience sees their time?
Whether you're planning a conference, leadership event or company off-site, my keynotes are designed to leave your audience seeing leadership, productivity, AI and the culture at work differently.
Meet The Time Rebel
Throughout 20-years in financial services technology transformation, Paul Holbrook realised the biggest barrier to organisations wasn’t a gap in capability, It was false productivity.
So he walked away from the corporate grind and used what he learned to help organisations reclaim lost time and create healthier, higher performing teams.
As a former managing director in the City of London he created the Diary Detox® – a colour-based productivity method that gives people a day back in their calendar, every week – and more time to lead.
Having wowed audiences of global organisations, he’s now an accomplished keynote speaker and author of ‘What Are You Doing? The uncomfortable truth about how you waste time at work’, bringing fresh insight and humour to the way organisations approach productivity, culture and leadership.
Hear the story behind the Time Rebel
In this episode of the People Purpose Podcast, Paul shares what made him walked away from the corporate grind, how the Diary Detox® method was born, and why he believes time is the most honest measure of culture.
Want to dive deeper?
Paul’s book ‘What Are you Doing? (rated 4.6 Stars on Amazon) explores how leaders waste time at work and how to fix it.
It’s the foundation of his Diary Detox® method and his signature keynote.
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For Kindle - Click here