Dean van Leeuwen
Most leadership teams can name the forces most likely to disrupt them. The problem is not the knowing, it is that trend awareness almost never converts into decisions their organisation will actually commit to and execute. That gap, between seeing change coming and acting on it before the window closes, is where competitive advantage is won or lost.
Converting strategic foresight into decisions that commit resources and change behaviour is what Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global and former McKinsey consultant, works with senior leadership teams to achieve.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen
- His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after
- His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not
- His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event
- He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages
- He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk
Biography highlights
- Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK
- Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger
- Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau
- Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon)
- TEDx speaker
- MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law
- Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte
Biography
Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action.
His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns.
Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau.
He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy.
Key speaking topics
- Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis
- Leadership decision-making under uncertainty
- Innovation as organisational capability
- Strategic transformation and competitive advantage
- The BANI operating environment
- Antifragility and organisational resilience
- Human-technology collaboration
Ideal for
- Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption
- Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning
- Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts
- Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight
Audience outcomes
- A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored
- Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict
- Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources
- A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term
- Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise
Talks
A leadership keynote on how to build clarity and momentum when the operating environment is brittle, anxious, nonlinear, and incomprehensible – and why the old VUCA playbook no longer fits.
Key takeaways:
- What BANI adds beyond VUCA and how it changes the demands on leadership decision-making
- Practical approaches to reducing fragility in systems, teams, and plans
- How to keep teams focused and effective when cause and effect have decoupled
A strategy talk applying the Grey Elephant framework to the seven named megatrends creating compounding strategic risk for organisations that see them but choose not to act.
Key takeaways:
- A structured view of the seven Grey Elephants and how their convergence creates second-order risk and opportunity
- How to distinguish forces that require strategic commitment from those that can be monitored
- A leadership discipline for naming uncomfortable truths early and turning them into boardroom decisions
A leadership-focused session on the mindset, capabilities, and practices that allow senior leaders to anticipate change, make strategic choices, and act with confidence before conditions force their hand.
Key takeaways:
- How effective leaders distinguish early signals from noise and avoid overreacting to both
- The specific capabilities required for future-focused leadership – judgement, learning speed, and team alignment
- How to convert an uncertain outlook into a plan that teams can understand and execute
Videos
Testimonials
Books
Fees
| EUR | GBP | USD | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home Country | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Asia Pacific | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Europe | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Middle East & Africa | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| South America | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| United Kingdom | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US East Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| US West Coast | €12000 to €40000 | £10,001 - £35,000 | $15000 - $50000 |
| Virtual | Under €12000 | Under £10,000 | Under $15000 |