Deutsche Bahn
Cut a nine-week planning cycle to eleven days across four teams.
Speaker · Advisor · Writer
Nadia
Okonjo
I help large organisations make decisions faster without making them worse.
WiredShopifyThe EconomistNordeaSXSWDeutsche BahnMonzoWeb SummitFinancial TimesSlushWiredShopifyThe EconomistNordeaSXSWDeutsche BahnMonzoWeb SummitFinancial TimesSlush
What I do
01
Speaking
Keynotes and closing talks on decision-making, organisational speed and the cost of consensus. Around twenty a year, half of them in Europe.
See talks02
Advising
Two-day workshops with leadership teams who are stuck between too much data and too little nerve. Six engagements a year, no more.
How it works03
Writing
A book, a fortnightly letter to 24,000 people, and occasional essays for people who pay properly.
Read the letterWhat I speak about.
The Consensus Tax
Why agreement costs more than conflict, and how to price it.
Deciding at Speed
A practical method for making reversible decisions in under an hour.
The Meeting That Should Have Been Three
On organisational scar tissue and how to cut it.
Nobody Reads the Strategy
What leaders think they communicated versus what landed.
Recent engagements.
Monzo
Two-day decision workshop with the leadership team before a product reorganisation.
The Economist
Closing keynote, Innovation Summit 2026.
Shopify
Advisory retainer on internal decision frameworks, twelve months.
Selected writing
- The Consensus TaxBook, Penguin Business2025
- Your strategy deck is a coping mechanismFinancial Times2026
- Speed is a culture problem, not a process oneWired2026
- What I got wrong about flat teamsPersonal essay2025
- The case against the quarterly cycleThe Economist2025
- How to disagree in writingPersonal essay2024
180
Talks given
31
Countries
140,000
People in the room
62,000
Books sold
“She closed a conference of four thousand people and the corridor conversation afterwards was still about her talk two days later.”
Marta Lindqvist, Programme Director, Slush
About Nadia.
I spent eleven years inside large organisations watching good decisions die in committee. In 2021 I left to work on the problem from outside, and I have been doing it ever since.
My work sits between organisational design and plain stubbornness. I am not a motivational speaker. I do not do fireside chats about resilience. I come with a method, and I expect the room to use it.
I live in Lisbon, speak English, Portuguese and Igbo, and answer my own email.
Let’s talk about the room.
Tell me the date, the city, the audience size and what the previous speaker got wrong. That last one is genuinely the most useful thing you can include.
Fees typically £8,000–£18,000 depending on travel and format. Reduced rates for education and non-profits, always.