Today’s busy, noisy world is a challenge – for us, and for anyone we want to help learn. In this keynote, Professor Beau Lotto, a leading expert in perception, returns to the keynote stage to discuss how we can make the most of our amazing minds in these uncertain times.

He’ll take us on a journey through learning, perception and the power of going from knowing to understanding . Along the way we’ll explore why we need to let go of our addiction to certainty if we are to thrive in today’s increasingly uncertain world.

That uncertainty plays havoc with one key part of being a learning leader – making decisions. It’s no longer enough to collect and assess all available information before making a decision. There’s too much of it, and it changes too quickly. Instead, we have to escape the ‘certainty trap’ and create cultures that understand how to change well to the decisions we make.

But this – like all learning – can only be done well if we understand how our brain operates, the biases and assumptions that shape perception and the difference between knowledge and understanding. We don’t ‘download’ information from the world. Rather we create meaning from that information our perception – this can accelerate our speed of learning, but it can also be a hindrance if our confirmation bias takes us in a direction we don’t really want to go.

Beau will show how understanding our brain’s craving for meaning, and working with it, will liberate us to work better ourselves, and also improve how we help others in their learning.