Gary Harpst, Speaker and Author

Today’s leaders are well acquainted with chaos. While most businesses (hopefully) enjoy times of success and smooth sailing, we also face periods of disruption, upheaval, discord, and extreme stress. We may be tempted to approach these chaos cycles by putting our head down and waiting for the storm to pass. But Gary Harpst has an encouraging message: We are not created to be victims of chaos, but to harness it for our own purposes.  

Gary delivers an insightful and practical discussion of how to transform chaos into order by relying on strategies drawn directly from the Bible. You’ll learn how to find fulfillment and success by leaning into your innate ability to calm the madness and control chaos by:  

• Understanding the fundamental processes underlying how we put things together for a purpose.  
• Answering the question at the heart of leadership: What is it that holds my team together?  
• Mastering two critical dimensions: the habit-building system an organization needs to grow and stay fit and the relational skills that create oneness.  
• Discovering why everyone is biblically called to leadership and the dynamics of self-leadership.  
• Applying biblical principles to transform your organization through action. 

People often do inexplicable things both great and sometimes disruptive. As leaders, we are more effective when we understand human purpose and design. The Bible has clear and somewhat surprising insights about why people do what they do and give leaders a framework for engaging hearts and minds. 

In this session, participants will take away: 

• Our human charter and what it means to be created in the image of God. 
• Why chaos is not our problem, but our purpose. 
• The role of desire, reason, imagination and action in human design. 
• The number one tool for overcoming chaos.  
• The biggest barrier to overcoming chaos. The paradox all leaders face. 
• What leaders must know, do and be to grow in effectiveness.

As we think about individuals, we often use an “or” model. People are detail OR big picture oriented. Most individuals are energized by tasks OR relating to people. Of course leaders must recognize that individuals are different and learn how to leverage those differences. But organizations as a whole must be effective at the big picture AND the details. It must be good at executing tasks AND relating to people. 

In this session, Gary makes the case that effective organizations must master both the process dimension of excellence and the people dimension of engagement. Of these two, he challenges leaders to lay the foundation of a people-first mindset upon which process excellence is built. 

Participants will take away: 

• The biblical explanation of why human civilization has made amazing progress on the technology front but no progress on the human relationship dimension. 
• A five-step model for building “oneness”. Going beyond just teamwork to the biblical standard of alignment around shared purpose. 
• How to sustain the oneness model as the organization grows and changes. 
• New insights on deeply the meaningful purpose of leadership and how important it is to humanity. 

People want to win. More accurately, the Bible says they need to win. That is what we all are created for. This need drives us to things that seem almost impossible. We don’t have to think long to identify jaw dropping healthcare that saves an infant’s life that was born with heart defects, or a breathtaking musical performance or athletic feat. We are swimming in human achievement. 

But the brutal facts are that once something is built like a home or especially a business it takes more energy and effort to sustain its existence than it did to create it. Most of us as builders are simply not prepared for that. Leaders have to confront themselves with the realization that their role is not just to bring order out of chaos, but to maintain order as people and products come and go – as organizations and the world around them changes. 

In this session, participants will take away: 

What the three types of chaos are. 

What it takes to create order 

Why order it is more difficult to keep than establish it. 

Five deceptions that are barriers to keeping order. 

What the fitness industry teaches us about how to maintain order. 

• What chocolate cake teaches us about leadership. 

The Bible says the study of the universe reveals truth about God (and since we are created in His image something about ourselves as well). One peculiar truth is that the whole universe is made up 98% of two simple atoms – hydrogen and helium. And yet from those two atoms galaxies, human beings, flowers, animals, trees  all have been created. This teaches us something important about leadership. Creating things is not as much about the raw materials used but the wisdom to integrate them in unique ways.  

A primary role of leaders is to integrate people around a shared purpose. But when God did His amazing integration work, He used the laws of physics to bind atoms together in different ways. Leaders however are challenged to bind people together who do not obey the laws of physics. This is the essence of the challenge of leadership and why it is the most meaningful work in the world. 

In this session, participants will learn: 

• Why everyone is created to lead, no exceptions. 
• Why humans don’t obey the laws of physics. 
• Why civilization is advancing technologically at a breathtaking pace but is falling apart in terms of human relationships. 
• What leaders must know, do and be to bring order in their part of this chaotic world. 

Wiley published Gary’s latest book, “Built to Beat Chaos, Biblical Wisdom for Leading Yourself and Others,” in April 2023. The message of this book is that leadership is the most challenging and essential work for humanity to fulfill its purpose. It lays a framework for what effective leaders need to know, do, and be. 

• Prior to "Built to Beat Chaos, Gary released his the best-selling NYT, WSJ, and BusinessWeek book, “Six Disciplines Execution Revolution: Solving The One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier,” in 2008.
• In 2004, Gary published “Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Business That Learn, Lead and Last”, which became an award-winning step-by-step book for continual business performance improvement. The book details the Six Disciplines methodology, a holistic business-building process based on proven best practices in strategy, planning, organizing, executing, innovating and organizational learning.

Following several years of working for the Ohio State University and Marathon Oil, Gary co-founded and became CEO of Solomon Software, originally named “TLB, Inc.” (The Lord’s Business) headquartered in Findlay, Ohio. Under Gary’s leadership from 1980 through 2000, Solomon Software grew to more than 400 employees, servicing over 40,000 clients worldwide, and was sold to Great Plains Software in 2000.

Microsoft acquired the combined Great Plains and Solomon organizations in 2001, and located a software development and support campus in Findlay, Ohio until 2004. When Microsoft consolidated their development locations, Gary founded a new organization with these resources and established Solomon Cloud Solutions, a software engineering service firm for Microsoft Independent Software Vendors (ISV) and Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) Channel Partners. In 2001 Gary founded Six Disciplines (now LeadFirst.ai) to develop leadership systems to make leaders more effective.