Speaking

I did not go on stage to tell people what they already knew.

I have spoken at industry conferences, expert events and inside organisations. I built each of the talks below around one idea that caused a little discomfort, brought clarity and returned to the audience the next day.

Conference keynoteInternal talkTalk with an exercise
Krzysztof Ożóg speaking on stage at the DTB Sustainability Summit
↳

The point was not to fill the stage. It was to make the room think — mildly inconvenient though that can be.

01

Polishopa · industry conference

Fuck the Customer

At Polishopa, I asked an uncomfortable question: what does an organisation do when a customer says something it does not want to hear?

I took apart five organisational defence mechanisms: fear of feedback, stereotypes, ‘isolated incidents’, the knowledge bubble and savings that become expensive later. The audience quickly recognised them in other companies — and in their own a moment later.

Side Notes / 01Customer evidence is often available. The courage to take it seriously is, rather less reliably, supplied.
02

Conference talk

It’s All About the Dots

In this talk, I explored the moment when a few unremarkable pieces of information suddenly changed the whole picture.

I showed that a post-it was not workshop decoration, but a fragment of reality to find, understand and connect with behaviour, trends, technology and organisational culture. We moved from information to knowledge — and then to an idea that had never been written down, but suddenly felt obvious.

Side Notes / 02A good designer reads between the dots. A better one sketches what is missing without pretending it was obvious all along.
Krzysztof Ożóg in conversation with an event participant
The interesting bit usually began when someone in the room disagreed.
03

DTB · talk and practical exercise

You Are Not Just Your Job

At DTB, I challenged the idea that a job title says anything meaningful about what we are actually capable of.

I first showed how a CV trapped capabilities inside roles, industries and lists of duties. Participants then pulled skills out of their own work stories, identified recurring patterns and translated them into new possibilities. They did not reinvent themselves. They noticed what had been visible all along.

Side Notes / 03Your job does not define who you are. HR systems may hold a different view.
04

TX Day · internal talk

What If?

During an internal TX Day, I shared situations in which a small experiment produced a better answer than a large plan.

I used five stories, five scales and no sterile laboratory: a landing page testing demand, a team taking over its own meeting, a month-long cooperation prototype, an Excel sheet preceding a major tool and a micro-test before a large civic process. Each attempt supported a different decision — how to start, structure, empower or scale.

Side Notes / 04It was less a journey of success than a sequence of sensible attempts. Far more useful.

Work together

If a talk ought to leave more than a photograph of a slide, we should probably talk.

I have an event