Kulturwandel

Why organisations work with Daniel Murray A mathematician and MBA-trained strategist who treats empathy as an operating discipline, not a soft skill, and ties it directly to team output and strategic alignment. Author of The Empathy Gap (Wiley, 2025), which gives leaders a structured vocabulary and method rather than another plea for kindness at work. Eighteen years inside financial services and corporate strategy work with organisations including Commonwealth Bank, QBE, IAG, Westpac and BHP, so the examples land with executives who have budget to defend. Known for the “Pirates and Passengers” framework for reading team dynamics, which gives managers a practical lens for diagnosing disengagement before it shows up in attrition numbers. Equally credible on the harder end of the topic: ethics, AI adoption and the trust collapse leaders face when they roll out systems their workforce does not understand. Biography highlights Founder and Director of Empathic Consulting, an Australian leadership advisory practice focused on strategic empathy, culture and performance. Author of The Empathy Gap: The Bridge to Real Connection and Lasting Influence, Wiley, 2025. Author of Aligning Culture and Strategy: How clarity, empathy and leadership drive high performance. Executive MBA and BSc in Mathematics; former internal strategy and management consultant within financial services. Keynote and leadership development work with Commonwealth Bank, IAG, QBE, Westpac, BHP, Toyota, News Corp, Allianz, Perpetual, ASX, Tyro Payments, Swiss Re and Transport for NSW. Podcast guest on The Empathy Edge, Candour Communication Podcast, XY Adviser and Your Digital Reputation. Biography Most senior leaders already believe empathy matters. The gap is between that belief and the operating habits that would make it visible in a weekly business review. Daniel Murray works on that gap, and he has spent close to two decades inside corporate strategy functions learning where it actually opens up. Murray founded Empathic Consulting after years as an internal strategy and management consultant in Australian financial services. His training is mathematical and his default is systems thinking, which is why his framing of empathy reads less like a values statement and more like a capability an executive can design for, measure, and coach. That thinking became a book in 2025, when Wiley published The Empathy Gap: The Bridge to Real Connection and Lasting Influence. The argument is that empathy is a strategic skill with a structure to it: perception, interpretation, response. Leaders who treat it that way pull better decisions out of mixed teams, reduce the hidden cost of disengagement, and hold harder conversations earlier. An earlier book, Aligning Culture and Strategy, laid the groundwork by making the case that culture only works when leaders stop treating it as a separate workstream from the strategy they are asking people to deliver. The client list is telling. Commonwealth Bank, IAG, QBE, Westpac, BHP, Toyota, News Corp, Allianz and Transport for NSW are organisations where the cost of a distracted leadership team is counted in basis points and safety incidents. That is the room Murray is useful in, and it is why his work on AI ethics and the “Pirates and Passengers” dynamic inside teams reaches people who would normally switch off the moment the word empathy entered the agenda. Key speaking topics Strategic empathy as a leadership capability Culture and strategy alignment Ethics and trust in AI adoption Team dynamics and disengagement Leadership in post-pandemic workplaces Executive decision-making under complexity Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards wrestling with culture change alongside a live strategic agenda CHROs and heads of leadership development designing senior leader programmes in financial services, infrastructure and professional services Transformation and change leaders rolling out AI or operating model shifts that require workforce trust to succeed Senior leader offsites where the brief is honest conversation and behaviour change, not another motivational keynote Audience outcomes A working definition of empathy that leaders can defend in a commercial conversation, not just an HR one A shared diagnostic language for team dynamics, including the Pirates and Passengers lens for disengagement Clearer thinking on how to introduce AI and analytics without eroding team trust Specific habits senior leaders can apply the next week in one-to-ones, escalations and town halls

Why organisations work with David Marquet The framework comes from an operational turnaround inside a high-consequence command environment. The crew of a nuclear submarine cannot afford the kind of leadership failure a corporate team can absorb, and the system Marquet built was tested against that standard. Intent-Based Leadership replaces the request for permission with a statement of intent, which is a specific behavioural change a leadership team can implement on Monday morning. It is a working method, not a philosophy. “Turn the Ship Around!” became a reference text inside US Navy submarine command, technology firms, manufacturers and healthcare systems. Adoption across that range of industries is rare for a leadership book. “Leadership is Language” gives senior leaders specific verbal moves to dismantle the industrial-age meeting culture that still produces compliant teams and over-burdened decision-makers. Stephen R. Covey studied Santa Fe directly and called it the most empowering organisation he had encountered. The endorsement carries weight because Covey rarely attached his name to operational case studies of this kind. Biography highlights Commanded USS Santa Fe (SSN-763) from 1999 to 2001, taking it from the lowest-rated submarine in the fleet to the highest in retention and operational evaluations. 1981 graduate of the US Naval Academy, top of class; 28 years of service in the US submarine force. Author of “Turn the Ship Around!” (Penguin Portfolio, 2013), foreword by Stephen R. Covey, called by Fortune “the best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” Author of “Leadership is Language” (Penguin Portfolio, 2020), setting out six leadership plays for dismantling industrial-age meeting culture. Founder of Intent-Based Leadership International, the consulting firm operationalising the framework inside corporate, healthcare and government organisations. Named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. Biography The USS Santa Fe was the lowest-rated nuclear submarine in the US fleet when David Marquet took command in 1999. Within two years it had the highest retention and operational evaluations in the force. Over the following decade, a disproportionate number of its officers were selected for submarine command of their own. The shift began with a single moment. Marquet gave an order that could not be executed on his class of submarine, and the watch officer relayed it anyway. When asked why, the answer was: because you told me to. Marquet stopped giving orders. He built a system in which crew members stated intent (“I intend to surface the boat at 0300”) and the officer’s job was to certify competence and clarity, not to authorise the decision. He calls this Intent-Based Leadership. It is now used inside manufacturers, healthcare systems, technology companies, professional sports teams and government agencies that face the same structural problem: decision-makers too far from the information, and a workforce trained to wait for instruction. Stephen R. Covey spent time aboard Santa Fe and wrote about it in “The 8th Habit”, calling it the most empowering organisation he had observed. His second book, “Leadership is Language”, extends the framework into the meeting room. Marquet argues that industrial-age verbal habits (“Does anyone have any concerns?”, “Sounds good to me”) manufacture compliance and silence dissent at the moment leaders need it most. The six plays in the book give senior teams specific replacement language, tested in environments where the cost of an unchallenged bad decision is operational rather than theoretical. Key speaking topics Intent-Based Leadership Distributed decision-making in high-consequence environments Leadership language and meeting design Psychological safety and high-reliability teams Cultural transformation in command-and-control organisations Leader development and succession at scale Ideal for CEOs and senior operating leaders rebuilding decision rights after a period of centralisation COOs and operations leaders in regulated or high-consequence industries (energy, healthcare, defence, manufacturing) CHROs and chief learning officers designing leadership development programmes that change behaviour, not vocabulary Boards and executive teams reviewing why their organisation is slow to act on information the workforce already has Audience outcomes A working language for replacing requests for permission with statements of intent, usable inside the next leadership meeting. A diagnostic for where in the organisation control, competence and clarity are out of balance. The six plays from “Leadership is Language” as a structured alternative to industrial-age meeting habits. A clearer view of which decisions a senior leader should still own, and which have been hoarded by default. Evidence, drawn from a documented operational turnaround, that distributed authority improves performance under pressure rather than weakening it.

Why organisations work with David Smith His 7 Principles framework is grounded in a specific, documented corporate turnaround – Asda’s recovery from near-bankruptcy to the UK’s No.1 Sunday Times Best Place to Work – giving boards a case study with traceable outcomes rather than a theoretical model. His book “Culture Trumps Strategy” gives leadership teams a direct, contestable argument: that most organisations are investing disproportionately in strategy and structure while the cultural conditions that determine execution go unmanaged. His book “Bad Bosses,” drawn from interviews with more than 200 CEOs and senior executives, documents the specific leadership behaviours that most consistently destroy engagement – giving HR directors and transformation leads a diagnostic, not a philosophy. He spent a decade on the Executive Board of a 170,000-person, £15bn-turnover business, which means his credibility holds in a boardroom conversation, not just an HR function. As a Companion of the CIPD – the body’s highest membership grade – and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Employment Studies, he can position people practice as a serious performance variable rather than a support function. Biography highlights People and IT Director at Asda (2000-2009); Executive Board member for 10 years, responsible for a workforce of 170,000 across a £15bn-turnover business Asda named No.1 Best Place to Work in The Sunday Times Best Companies survey during his tenure; Asda’s People Team also won the Personnel Today Rebus HR Award for Best HR Strategy in Line with Business Author of four books: “Asda Magic: The 7 Principles of Building a High-Performance Culture” (2012), “Culture Trumps Strategy” (2016), “Performance Management for the 21st Century” (2018), and “Bad Bosses” (2019) Companion of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development – the highest membership grade in the UK’s principal HR professional body Former Chairman of the Board, Institute for Employment Studies; former Commissioner, Equal Opportunities Commission; former Vice President of the CIPD for Organisation and Development Recipient of the Sam Walton Award for driving Excellence in People Policies MBA, Henley Management College; BA Business, Sheffield Hallam University Biography Most large organisations treat culture as a byproduct of leadership behaviour – something that forms over time, rather than something that is actively built. David Smith’s 15 years at Asda, where the people-led turnaround from near-bankruptcy to the UK’s No.1 Best Place to Work took roughly a decade and a half, produced a different conclusion: that culture is an engineered system, and that the principles governing it are specific and reproducible. His first book, “Asda Magic: The 7 Principles of Building a High-Performance Culture” (2012), translated that experience into a practical framework. Its argument – that employee engagement is the product of specific managed behaviours, not general sentiment – gave HR directors and CEOs a diagnostic tool rather than an aspiration. “Culture Trumps Strategy” (2016) extended the thesis: that organisations consistently over-invest in strategy and structure while underinvesting in the cultural conditions that determine whether strategy executes. Two further books addressed adjacent dysfunction. “Performance Management for the 21st Century” (2018) made the case against annual review-based systems, arguing that only regular performance coaching – not periodic appraisal – actually changes behaviour at scale. “Bad Bosses” (2019) drew on interviews with more than 200 CEOs and executives to document the leadership pitfalls that consistently destroy engagement from inside an organisation. A Companion of the CIPD and former Chairman of the Board of the Institute for Employment Studies, Smith bridges executive credibility and evidence-based people practice. His audiences include CHROs, chief executives, and transformation programme leads asking why significant investment in organisational change is not translating into measurable performance. Key speaking topics High-performance culture and employee engagement Performance management and performance coaching Culture transformation and change leadership Leadership in tough times The relationship between culture and commercial performance Communication as an organisational performance lever Managing and retaining talent in a high-performance environment Ideal for CHROs and HR directors leading culture or engagement programmes CEOs and executive teams mid-transformation seeking a cultural diagnostic Board-level and C-suite leadership development programmes Senior leaders in large, complex, or multi-site organisations Audience outcomes A specific, practical framework for diagnosing the cultural gap between stated values and daily managed reality A clearer understanding of why performance management systems fail – and what a coaching-based alternative requires Named leadership behaviours that most predictably drive disengagement – and the organisational cost of tolerating them A case study with traceable outcomes that makes the business case for culture investment to a commercially focused audience Practical language for communicating culture and engagement priorities to boards and executive teams

Why organisations work with Deborah Rowland Her 2015/16 global research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries, quantified that leader inner capacities account for over half the success or failure of large complex change – a finding that directly challenges how most organisations design transformation programmes. The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model give organisations a specific diagnostic language for the leadership dimension of change: eight interconnected skills with a clear evidence base, not another generic competency framework. She spent the first half of her career inside the systems she now advises, as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide. She understands the constraints of the position, not just its theory. Four Wiley-published books, articles in the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, and papers accepted at the Academy of Management give her frameworks independent credibility beyond the consulting relationship. Her most recent book, From Ought to Is (Wiley, 2025), applies the Still Moving thinking directly to polarisation and systemic inertia – relevant to organisations managing post-merger integration, contested cultural change, or restructuring in divided environments. Biography highlights Author of Still Moving: How to Lead Mindful Change (Wiley, 2017, bestseller) and From Ought to Is: Catalysing Change and Movement in a Polarised World (Wiley, 2025); co-author with Professor Malcolm Higgs of Sustaining Change: Leadership That Works (Wiley, 2008) Named on Thinkers50 Radar 2017; ranked 31st on HR Magazine Most Influential Thinkers list 2021 Contributor to Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review; original research accepted at the 2016 Academy of Management and 2019 European Academy of Management Former VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo; Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell; People Director at BBC Worldwide; earlier senior roles at Gucci Group Founder of Still Moving change consultancy; advisory clients include RWE, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls-Royce, Diageo, Unilever and De Beers Faculty contributor at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath business schools; Advisory Board member, International Institute for Leadership and Safety Culture Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University Biography Most large-scale transformation programmes fall short not because the strategy is wrong, but because the leaders running them revert to familiar patterns when complexity peaks. Deborah Rowland has devoted three decades to studying that specific failure mode. Her research, conducted through Behavioural Event Interviews with senior leaders across industries and geographies, found that four inner capacities of the leader – staying present, responding intentionally, tuning into the system, and acknowledging the whole – explained over half the reason why big complex change either succeeds or fails. That research was not produced from the outside. Rowland spent the first half of her career as a practitioner, serving as VP of Organisational and Management Development at PepsiCo, Change Lead at Royal Dutch Shell, and People Director at BBC Worldwide, with earlier senior roles at Gucci Group. She has led major restructurings from within, and understands directly the conditions under which change leaders default to unhelpful patterns. That experience is embedded in every practical element of the Still Moving framework she subsequently developed. The intellectual architecture behind the framework spans four published Wiley books. Sustaining Change (2008, with Professor Malcolm Higgs) identified four external practices of effective change leadership. Still Moving (2017) showed that four inner capacities must precede those practices – and that this inner dimension accounted for over half the variance in change success. From Ought to Is (2025) extends the argument to address polarisation and systemic inertia as the specific obstacles leaders now face. Named on the Thinkers50 Radar in 2017 and a contributor to the Harvard Business Review and LSE Business Review, she has also taught at Henley, Imperial, Tuck and Bath. She holds a Double First in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University – a training in systemic observation that continues to shape how she reads organisations and the people leading them. Key speaking topics Large-scale organisational transformation The inner capacities of change leadership The Still Moving framework and Change Vitality model Systemic change approaches Leading through polarisation and organisational inertia Culture change and movement Executive leadership development in complex environments Ideal for Executive leadership teams and boards sponsoring or overseeing major transformation programmes CHROs and senior HR leadership communities Leaders at the top of organisations navigating post-merger integration, major restructuring, or contested cultural change Business school executive education participants on leadership and change programmes Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why leader inner state – not change methodology – is the primary driver of transformation success or failure Practical exposure to the Still Moving eight-skill framework and Change Vitality model as a leadership diagnostic tool Ability to identify specific leadership behaviours that correlate with success in large and complex change Approaches for leading systemic change without defaulting to controlling or directive patterns under pressure A more honest assessment of personal leadership habits that may be slowing organisational change

Why organisations work with Diana Verde Nieto She has built the operating substance behind two commitments most companies treat as comms exercises. Positive Luxury and the Butterfly Mark turned sustainability claims into an audited certification with periodic re-earn cycles. Edify is now doing the same work for AI-driven capability, turning brand standards and SOPs into something frontline teams actually use. “Reimagining Luxury” (Kogan Page, 2024) is built on direct contributions from chief sustainability officers at LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. The frameworks it sets out are drawn from how the major houses actually run sustainability, not how they describe it externally. Shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. Two founded-and-exited businesses (Clownfish, sold to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008; Positive Luxury) mean her thinking on commercial strategy has been tested by real investors and real markets, not consulting decks. Through Edify Collective, she is applying the same thesis to workforce capability, embedding policies and standards into the daily flow of work rather than relying on training events that fade within weeks. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate. Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography highlights Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, an AI-native frontline performance support platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards into the daily flow of work, bridging board-level strategy and frontline execution. Co-founder of Positive Luxury (2011), creator of the Butterfly Mark, the luxury sector’s best-known independent ESG certification. Founder of Clownfish (2002), one of the world’s first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies; built to a presence in five markets and sold to Aegis-Dentsu Group in 2008. Author of Reimagining Luxury: Building a Sustainable Future for Your Brand (Kogan Page, 2024); shortlisted, Business Book Awards 2025, Change and Sustainability category. World Economic Forum Young Global Leader; degree in Global Leadership and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. Non-Executive Director, British Beauty Council and Watts 1874; former adviser to the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Biography Most organisations are excellent at deciding what needs to change. They write the policy, sign off on the strategy, brief the leadership team. The work that follows, embedding that decision into how thousands of people actually behave at the frontline, is where most of the value is either captured or lost. Diana Verde Nieto has spent two decades building businesses around this problem. In 2002 she founded Clownfish, one of the first dedicated sustainability communications consultancies, scaled it to five markets, and sold it to Aegis-Dentsu in 2008. In 2011 she co-founded Positive Luxury with Karen Hanton MBE and built the Butterfly Mark, an independent ESG certification now sought by over 100 brands across fashion, beauty, jewellery, and travel, awarded on demonstrated performance across nine criteria and re-earned every two years. Reimagining Luxury (Kogan Page, 2024), shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2025, draws directly on contributions from the chief sustainability officers of LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal, alongside Harvard’s John P. Kotter and Paul Polman. As Co-Founder and CEO of Edify Collective, she is now applying the same thesis to workforce capability. Edify is an AI-native platform that embeds policies, SOPs, and brand standards directly into the flow of frontline work, replacing fragmented training tools with a single performance support layer. The argument is the same one she has been making for 25 years, but the domain has shifted: the strategy-execution gap is now also the gap between AI ambition and AI deployment, and the same operating disciplines apply. A World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and Harvard Kennedy School graduate, she serves as a Non-Executive Director at the British Beauty Council and Watts 1874. Her previous advisory work includes the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the UN Conscious Fashion and Lifestyle Network, and La Prairie (Beiersdorf). Key speaking topics Closing the Strategy-Action Gap: From Boardroom to Frontline The AI-Native Workforce: Augmentation, Not Replacement Operationalising Purpose: Building Standards That Survive Daily Operations Lessons from Luxury: How LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal Run Sustainability as Commercial Strategy Trust as a Brand Asset: Why Operational Reality Determines Reputational Value The Entrepreneurial Journey: Building, Scaling, and Exiting Purpose-Driven Businesses Seeing Markets Before They Arrive: Strategic Foresight in Volatile Industries Ideal for CEOs and brand leaders responsible for bridging strategic intent and daily operational reality Chief Operating Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning legacy systems and workflows for an AI-native workforce Boards and Non-Executive Directors whose governance responsibilities turn on whether operational substance backs board-level commitments Founders, investors, and venture partners examining purpose-driven businesses, scale-up discipline, and exit strategy Industry associations, regulators, and policy bodies operating at the intersection of corporate strategy and standards-based oversight Audience outcomes Diana’s focus is the final mile of leadership: the work between strategy being agreed and strategy being delivered through the daily behaviour of frontline teams. Her sessions are built for senior audiences who have already named the strategic problem and need to understand how to operationalise the answer. A working definition of The Action Gap, the space between board-level commitments and frontline reality, and the operating disciplines that close it. A direct view of how LVMH, Kering, and L’Oréal turn sustainability commitments into auditable commercial strategy, drawn from her book’s primary research with their CSOs. A reframing of AI in the workforce from substitution to augmentation: what it means to put expert-level judgement into the hands of frontline workers in real time, and what that requires of the operating model. A founder’s view of scale, exit, and the discipline of building purpose-driven businesses that hold their commercial integrity through investor scrutiny and global expansion. A practical map of where brilliant strategies fail at the point of work, and what board-level leaders can do about it before the failure becomes a reputational event.

Why organisations work with Didier Marlier Co-author of Engaging Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), which set out the Logos, Ethos and Pathos framework now used inside executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode and Fundação Dom Cabral. Three decades of close work with European industrials, financial institutions and professional service firms, including BASF, Credit Suisse, Bank Julius Baer, Dow Chemical, Firmenich, KPMG and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. Founded and ran the Enablers Network for almost thirty years before donating the brand to an independent association in 2024, an unusual signal of operating from conviction rather than commercial capture. Teaches change leadership across four continents in French, English and Portuguese, with deep practical exposure to Brazilian as well as European corporate cultures. Brings the same engagement methodology into professional sports environments, where the cost of disengagement is measurable on the scoreboard, and translates those lessons back into corporate boardrooms. Biography highlights Co-author of Engaging Leadership: Three Agendas for Sustaining Achievement, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Faculty and guest professor on executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode, NEOMA and Fundação Dom Cabral. Founder of the Enablers Network, a European partnership of leadership and change practitioners, donated to the Enablers Association in 2024. MBA from IMD; law degree from Université de Lausanne. TEDx speaker and keynote at the GBTA Europe Conference 2013 in Prague. Long-standing client work with BASF, Credit Suisse, Dow Chemical, KPMG, Bank Julius Baer, Firmenich, Solvay, SAP and Total. Biography Strategy decks rarely fail on their logic. They fail because the people expected to deliver them never genuinely sign up. That gap, between the intellectual case for change and the behavioural reality of an organisation, is the territory Didier Marlier has worked in for three decades. His framework, set out with Chris Parker in Engaging Leadership (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), borrows from classical rhetoric. Logos is the strategic argument. Ethos is the behaviour and tone leaders model day to day. Pathos is the emotional commitment that turns compliance into ownership. The book argues that serious change requires all three running together, not strategy first and culture later. The client list reflects the breadth of that idea in practice: BASF, Credit Suisse, Bank Julius Baer, Dow Chemical, Firmenich, KPMG, Solvay and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer among them. He teaches the same material on executive programmes at IMD, INSEAD, Nyenrode and Fundação Dom Cabral, which gives him an unusually direct read on how European and Latin American executives experience change differently. In 2024 he donated the Enablers Network brand, which he had built over almost thirty years, to an independent association, and now works through DMD. He also applies the same engagement methodology inside professional sports teams, where disengagement shows up immediately in performance data and feeds back into how he advises corporate clients. Key speaking topics Leadership in the disruption economy Engagement through strategic, behavioural and emotional change Post-merger and post-acquisition integration Cultural transformation in multinational organisations Board and executive team effectiveness Change leadership across European and Latin American contexts Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards leading strategic, cultural or post-merger transformation CHROs and transformation leads responsible for behavioural adoption of new strategies Senior leadership programmes in multinational organisations with cross-cultural workforces Professional service firm partnerships managing change without command authority Audience outcomes A working language for diagnosing why a current change initiative is stalling A clearer line of sight between the strategic case for change and the day-to-day behaviour leaders must model Specific signals to watch for when intellectual buy-in masks emotional disengagement Cross-cultural reference points from European and Brazilian corporate practice

Why organisations work with Dorothée Töreki She has run digital transformation from the inside. Eleven years at IBM Germany and a Director of Digitalisation role at the Boysen Group give her a working understanding of how AI and digital tools actually land in industrial and corporate environments. She teaches the same material she presents on stage. Her part-time lectureship at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim covers blockchain and generative AI, which keeps the content close to the underlying mechanics rather than the marketing layer. She is one of the few German-language voices who can move an audience from technology scepticism to active engagement, in both English and German, without simplifying the substance. Her work spans the connected stack: generative AI, blockchain, Web 3.0, the Internet of Things and human-machine collaboration. That breadth lets her show executives where today’s pilots are pointing. Biography highlights Eleven years at IBM Germany in roles spanning Digital Advisor, Competitive Leader and Digital Workplace Consultant. Former Director of Digitalisation at the Boysen Group, leading cultural transformation. Founder of Denkräume im Digitalen, established 2019. Part-time lecturer in blockchain and generative AI at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim. LinkedIn Top Voice DACH 2018 and Best of IBM 2016. Co-author for Springer Gabler on generative AI and digitalisation themes. Biography Most German industrial firms can describe what generative AI is. Far fewer can describe what it changes inside their operating model. That gap, between technical literacy and operating capability, is the territory Dorothée Töreki has worked in for two decades. Her route into the subject is unusual. She trained as a civil engineer and worked on infrastructure projects including the ICE rail link between Frankfurt and Cologne, before moving into information technology. Eleven years at IBM Germany followed, in roles that ran from digital workplace consulting to competitive analysis on cloud and AI. As Director of Digitalisation at the Boysen Group, she carried that perspective into an industrial automotive supplier, designing the cultural side of digital change. In 2019 she founded Denkräume im Digitalen to focus on executive education and keynotes. The body of work spans generative AI, blockchain, Web 3.0 and human-machine collaboration. She teaches the same material at Duale Hochschule Heidenheim, which gives the content a level of technical detail most keynote speakers cannot match. Springer Gabler publishes her as a contributing author on generative AI and digital business. She is recognised as a LinkedIn Top Voice DACH and was named Best of IBM in 2016. Her delivery, in German or English, is built on turning abstract technology into specific operational consequence: what changes for marketing, for service operations, for the workplace, for the way decisions get made. Key speaking topics Generative AI in business Digital transformation in industrial organisations Blockchain and Web 3.0 Human-machine collaboration Future of work and digital workplace Internet of Things and Economy of Things Cultural change in technology adoption Ideal for CIOs, CDOs and heads of digital transformation in industrial and B2B firms. Executive committees and boards setting AI strategy. Marketing, sales and customer experience leadership teams. German-speaking corporate audiences seeking technical depth without losing accessibility. Audience outcomes A working picture of where generative AI changes specific business functions, not a generic technology overview. Clear language for the cultural and organisational shifts that decide whether digital pilots scale. A more precise read on adjacent technologies such as blockchain, Web 3.0 and IoT, and how they connect to AI strategy. The confidence to engage rather than retreat from the next wave of technology decisions.

Why organisations work with Dr Alan O’Neill The 7-Steps to Profit is a named, proprietary framework built from a multi-year consulting engagement at Selfridges, where annual profit grew from £45m to £200m. Audiences leave with a structured path they can map to their own organisation, not a set of principles they have to interpret. His central argument, that culture and customer experience are a single commercial mechanism, not parallel HR and marketing initiatives, gives boards a specific reframing of a decision they are typically making in silos. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he draws content from active client engagements across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector. The material is current, not archival. Four published books provide a body of work that extends well beyond the session: “Premium Is the New Black” on customer experience as competitive differentiation; “Culture Matters” on the four values that underpin high performance; “Show Me the Lid on the Box” on reducing change resistance; and “The Leader’s Six-Pack” on balancing leadership competencies with emotional intelligence A business columnist for the Sunday Independent and Gulf based publications, his frameworks are tested continuously against live commercial situations across multiple sectors and geographies. Biography highlights Founder and Managing Director, Kara Change Management Creator of the 7-Steps to Profit framework; deployed across client organisations including Selfridges, Toyota, Intel, Primark, Moët Hennessy, Dubai Duty Free, Getty Images, and the United Nations Author of three books: Premium Is the New Black, Culture Matters, and Show Me the Lid on the Box Business columnist, Sunday Independent (Ireland) and Gulf Business Non-executive director across multiple sectors in Europe and the Middle East 30+ years of consulting practice spanning retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, manufacturing, and public sector organisations across EMEA Biography Selfridges’ annual profit grew from £45m to £200m across several years of structured transformation, and the business went on to win multiple ‘Best Department Store in the World’ awards. The consulting framework behind that journey, Dr Alan O’Neill’s 7-Steps to Profit, is what organisations now bring him in to share. The 7-Steps to Profit is built on a specific argument: that culture, customer experience, and commercial performance are not parallel workstreams but a single, interdependent system. Culture is not the backdrop to strategy, it is the delivery mechanism. O’Neill formalised this thinking across three books: Premium Is the New Black addresses customer experience as competitive differentiation; Culture Matters defines the four values (Customer Centricity, Respect, Accountability, and Agility) that underpin a high-performance culture; Show Me the Lid on the Box provides a framework for leading change with reduced resistance. As Managing Director of Kara Change Management, he has applied the framework with organisations across retail, hospitality, FMCG, financial services, and the public sector, from Toyota and Intel to Dubai Duty Free and the United Nations. The Selfridges story transfers well: the structural argument it illustrates is as relevant to a B2B services firm or a public institution as it is to a department store. O’Neill continues to practise as an active consultant and non-executive director. He writes regular business commentary for the Sunday Independent and Gulf Business, keeping his frameworks in direct conversation with the commercial challenges organisations are currently navigating. Key speaking topics Change management and organisational transformation Culture as commercial strategy Customer experience and service excellence The 7-Steps to Profit Premium brand positioning and margin protection Values-led leadership Retail reinvention and the future of physical retail Ideal for CEOs and senior leadership teams managing a cultural transformation alongside a commercial or strategic pivot Chief Customer Officers and Chief Marketing Officers seeking to embed customer-centric behaviour across the full organisation CHROs and HR Directors designing culture programmes that connect directly to business performance Executive conferences in retail, hospitality, consumer goods, and financial services Audience outcomes A working understanding of the 7-Steps to Profit framework and how to map its logic to their own organisational context A reframing of culture and customer experience as a single commercial lever, not separate functional priorities Concrete examples drawn from the Selfridges engagement and other named client organisations that show how the framework operates under real conditions Greater clarity on where resistance to change typically originates and how structured approaches reduce it at scale A sharper diagnostic lens for identifying the gap between leadership intent and frontline behaviour

Why organisations work with Dr Gaia Grant A working University of Sydney Business School researcher whose doctoral thesis on sustainable innovation drew on 70+ global leader interviews and 4,000+ survey responses, so the frameworks she presents are tested data, not opinion. Two Wiley-published books, “The Innovation Race” and “Who Killed Creativity?”, that give buyers a defined intellectual position they can preview before booking. Proprietary diagnostics, the Innovative Change Leader Profile (iCLi) and the Polar Positioning tool, that let an executive team locate where their own innovation culture is breaking down rather than receive a generic talk. Two decades of advisory work with Google, JP Morgan, Visa, Salesforce, Boeing, Deloitte Digital and KPMG, which means the examples in the room land at the level senior teams operate at. A specific argument on ambidextrous leadership, the discipline of running today’s business and tomorrow’s at the same time, which is the actual problem most innovation programmes fail on. Biography highlights Researcher and lecturer in innovation, University of Sydney Business School, Discipline of Strategy, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Co-author of “The Innovation Race” (Wiley, 2016) and the international bestseller “Who Killed Creativity?” (Wiley). Executive Director of Tirian, an international consultancy with client work across more than 30 countries. Creator of the Innovative Change Leader Profile (iCLi) and the Polar Positioning (PoP) tool, used inside corporate innovation and leadership programmes. Featured in Harvard Business Review, BBC, ABC TV, Reuters, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Speaker and facilitator for Salesforce, Gartner Symposium, the World Presidents Organization, Google, JP Morgan, Boeing, KPMG and Deloitte Digital. Biography Innovation budgets keep rising while breakthrough output keeps falling. The gap is not a creativity problem; it is a culture and leadership problem, and that is the territory Dr Gaia Grant has spent her career mapping. Her doctoral research at the University of Sydney Business School, drawing on more than 70 interviews with global innovation leaders and over 4,000 survey responses, set out to identify what actually makes innovation sustainable inside large organisations. The work produced a set of diagnostics, the Innovative Change Leader Profile (iCLi) and the Polar Positioning tool, that locate where a leadership team is collapsing into one mode (efficiency, control, short-term certainty) at the expense of the other (exploration, risk, long-horizon bets). That argument runs through her two Wiley books. “Who Killed Creativity?”, co-authored with Andrew Grant, became an international bestseller by treating the loss of creative capacity as an organisational and cultural diagnosis rather than a personal failing. “The Innovation Race” extends the analysis to whole companies and economies, framing the central problem as ambidextrous leadership: the practical discipline of running the existing business and the next one at the same time. As Executive Director of Tirian, she works with Google, JP Morgan, Visa, Salesforce, Boeing, Deloitte Digital and KPMG, which gives her the rarer asset in this field: live evidence of where the published frameworks hold up under operating pressure and where they have to be retuned. Her commentary and research have appeared in Harvard Business Review, BBC, Reuters, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Key speaking topics Innovation leadership and culture Ambidextrous leadership and the explore/exploit tension Sustainable innovation and purpose-driven growth Creative thinking inside large organisations Change leadership and cultural transformation Responsible decision-making about new technologies, including AI Future-proofing leadership for digital transformation Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and innovation leads commissioning enterprise innovation programmes that need to move past pilot stage. CHROs and chief learning officers building leadership development around adaptive and ambidextrous capability. Boards and executive teams confronting the trade-off between core-business performance and long-horizon investment. Transformation and culture leads inside professional services, financial services and technology firms. Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of where their own organisation’s innovation culture is breaking down, framed against the iCLi and Polar Positioning models. A working vocabulary for the explore/exploit trade-off that leadership teams can apply to specific portfolio decisions. Evidence-based examples from Google, JP Morgan, Salesforce, Boeing and similar firms on what works and what fails. A defensible position on responsible adoption of new technologies, including AI, inside an existing operating culture. Confidence to challenge the assumption that “more creativity training” will fix what is fundamentally a leadership and structural problem.

Why organisations work with Susan Hetrick A working operating model for toxic culture, not a moral framing of it. Her four-stage progression gives a board language to discuss what stage they are in, before deciding what to do. The RESPECT framework as a remediation sequence, used inside her book and consultancy at zuhra. It anchors the conversation in specific leadership behaviours rather than values posters. Practitioner credibility from senior HR roles at the World Bank Group, RBS, HSBC, Aegon and Deloitte, paired with a doctorate from City University Business School. She has run the function she is now critiquing. A published, peer-reviewed thesis (Routledge, 2023; 2024 Business Book Awards finalist) that gives the room a single, citable reference point rather than a deck of opinions. Biography highlights Author, Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership: How to Build and Sustain a Healthy Workplace (Routledge, 2023). 2024 Business Book Awards finalist. Co-author with Professor Graeme Martin, Corporate Reputations, Branding and People Management: A Strategic Approach to HR. Doctorate in Organisational Psychology, City University Business School. Senior HR leadership roles inside the World Bank Group, RBS Group, HSBC, Aegon, Arab Banking Corporation and Deloitte. Academic appointments at the Universities of Aberdeen, Glasgow and London, Birkbeck College and Helsinki School of Economics. Founder of zuhra consulting; Chair of the Board, Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre. Keynote, CIPD Annual Conference 2023, to an audience of 600+ HR professionals. Biography Most organisations describe culture as something they have, not something they do. That language is what allows toxic patterns to harden inside otherwise functional companies, often for years before the board treats them as a strategic risk. Susan Hetrick’s work is built around closing that gap. Her book Toxic Organizational Cultures and Leadership (Routledge, 2023) sets out a four-stage account of how cultures degrade and a remediation sequence she calls the RESPECT framework. The book reached the 2024 Business Book Awards shortlist and is now used by HR leaders looking for a structured way to brief their executive committees. She brings 35 years of senior HR practice to the argument, including roles inside the World Bank Group, RBS, HSBC, Aegon, Arab Banking Corporation and Deloitte. Her doctorate in Organisational Psychology is from City University Business School, with academic appointments at Aberdeen, Glasgow, London, Birkbeck and Helsinki School of Economics. Today she runs zuhra consulting, a specialist culture practice, and chairs the boards of Dundee Rep and Scottish Dance Theatre. The combination matters because it gives senior teams a counterpart who has sat in their seat, written the academic case, and is now operating the remedy with paying clients. Key speaking topics Toxic organisational cultures Healthy workplace culture design Leadership behaviour and culture risk Corporate reputation and HR strategy Culture transformation in regulated industries Board oversight of people risk Organisational psychology in practice Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders facing engagement, attrition or conduct concerns Boards and audit/risk committees treating culture as a governance risk Executive teams entering or recovering from restructure, acquisition or scandal Regulated sector leadership groups (financial services, professional services, public bodies) Audience outcomes A four-stage diagnostic that lets a leadership team locate where their culture currently sits The RESPECT sequence as a practical guide to leadership behaviours that repair, rather than mask, cultural damage A clearer board-level language for naming culture risk before it becomes legal or reputational exposure A reading of how HR, legal and executive functions need to operate together to prevent toxicity recurring

Why organisations work with Dr Ted James His concurrent roles – co-directing a Harvard Medical School executive programme and leading enterprise transformation across an 8-hospital health system – mean the frameworks he delivers are being tested in live operational conditions, not drawn from retrospective case studies. He holds a Master of Science in Healthcare Management from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health alongside a surgical oncology career, which means he translates between clinical and executive registers without simplifying either. His advisory work with biotech and medical device companies, including a fractional CMO role at Perimeter Medical Imaging AI guiding FDA strategy for AI-enabled surgical technology, gives him a vendor-facing perspective that most health system speakers cannot offer. He built an NIH-funded research portfolio while simultaneously holding senior clinical governance roles at a Harvard-affiliated academic medical centre. His Harvard Global Health Care Leaders Program draws participants from more than 200 countries, which means his analysis of healthcare leadership is genuinely comparative rather than US-centric. Biography highlights System Physician Executive, Endeavor Health Cancer Institute, leading clinical strategy and care transformation across an 8-hospital integrated health system Co-Director, Global Health Care Leaders Program, Harvard Medical School Executive Education which draws participants from more than 200 countries Faculty, Harvard Medical School; former Associate Professor of Surgery Former Chief of Breast Surgical Oncology, Vice Chair of Academic Affairs in Surgery, and Medical Director of the Breast Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Fractional Chief Medical Officer, Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, guiding medical and regulatory strategy for AI-enabled breast cancer surgery technology Master of Science in Healthcare Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Co-author, The OAS CAHPS Compendium: A Guidebook for Improving Patient Experience and Outcomes Across the Ambulatory Surgery Continuum Biography Ted James spent the first part of his executive career doing something most physician leaders are never asked to do at the same time: running a nationally accredited multidisciplinary breast programme, leading academic affairs for a surgery department, and building an NIH-funded research portfolio – all within a Harvard-affiliated academic health system. That compression of roles at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is the biographical fact most relevant to why health organisations bring him in. He has worked the intersection of clinical governance, academic leadership, and service-line management from the inside. He is now System Physician Executive for the Endeavor Health Cancer Institute, responsible for clinical strategy and enterprise-wide care transformation across eight hospitals. Alongside that operational role, he co-directs the Global Health Care Leaders Program at Harvard Medical School: a flagship executive education programme with a global participant base spanning more than 200 countries. His Harvard-based work focuses on the mechanics of how healthcare leaders design care models, adopt digital health technology, and lead transformation in systems that resist it. His commercial advisory work adds a third register. As fractional Chief Medical Officer at Perimeter Medical Imaging AI, he is helping advance AI-enabled surgical imaging technology toward FDA approval; work that gives him first-hand knowledge of how healthcare technology moves from clinical concept to operational deployment. It is a vantage point most hospital executives simply do not have. His co-authored book, The OAS CAHPS Compendium, anchors the academic dimension of his work in something measurable: patient experience and outcomes in ambulatory surgery. The through-line across all three roles is the same question: how do you build organisations in which clinical excellence and operational performance reinforce each other rather than compete? Key speaking topics Healthcare transformation and system leadership Physician and clinical leadership development Organisational culture in complex health systems Digital health strategy and technology adoption Cancer care innovation and oncology strategy Patient experience and quality improvement Clinician resilience and workforce performance Ideal for Hospital and health system CEOs, CMOs, and boards navigating transformation programmes Physician and clinical leaders developing executive capability Biotech, medical device, and digital health organisations seeking clinical strategic credibility Academic medical centre leadership teams managing the tension between research, education, and care delivery Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where clinical culture is enabling or blocking organisational change Practical tools for developing physician leaders within complex, resource-constrained systems Clarity on evaluating and deploying digital health and AI-enabled technology against real clinical workflows An understanding of how academic, operational, and innovation goals can be aligned within a single leadership approach Approaches for addressing clinician burnout while maintaining performance standards

Why organisations work with Duena Blomstrom She names a specific, measurable liability most boards do not currently track. Human Debt sits underneath stalled transformations and lets a leadership team see why their roadmap keeps slipping for non-technical reasons. Her argument lands with engineering and product audiences who tune out conventional wellbeing language. Framing safety as a debt that compounds against velocity gives operators a vocabulary they will actually use. She built the diagnostic, not just the theory. PeopleNotTech turns the framework into measurement, which means a keynote can connect to real follow-on team data rather than ending at inspiration. Three books across Palgrave Macmillan, Bloomsbury Business, and Kogan Page give her argument continuity from FinTech culture (Emotional Banking) through team safety (People Before Tech) to enterprise transformation (Tech-Led Culture). She speaks publicly as a neurodivergent founder, which gives substance to inclusion conversations that are otherwise abstract for senior audiences. Biography highlights Author of Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan), People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business), and Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page). CEO and co-founder of PeopleNotTech, a psychological safety measurement platform. Originator of the Human Debt concept and the Emotional Banking framework. LinkedIn Top Voice on leadership and psychological safety with a large newsletter readership. Former Forbes contributor; host of the “people AND tech” and “Tales from the FinTech Crypt” podcasts. Background spanning C-level roles in startups and major technology companies before founding PeopleNotTech. Biography Most digital transformation programmes do not fail on the technology. They fail on whether the team running them can disagree, recover from a bad decision, and tell the truth about a slipping deadline. That is the territory Duena Blomstrom has spent the last decade making operational. Her central concept, Human Debt, reframes psychological safety as a balance sheet item. Teams accrue interest every time a candid conversation is avoided, every time a senior leader rewards optics over honesty, every time fatigue is left unaddressed. Tech debt gets the spreadsheet. Human Debt rarely does, and the cost shows up in stalled roadmaps, attrition, and AI rollouts that never reach production. She built three books out of this argument. Emotional Banking (Palgrave Macmillan) treated culture as the missing variable in retail banking transformation. People Before Tech (Bloomsbury Business) made the case for safety as a precondition of high performance. Tech-Led Culture (Kogan Page) extended the work into enterprise change. Alongside the writing, she co-founded PeopleNotTech to turn the diagnosis into measurement, so the conversation about team health does not stop at the keynote. Audiences also get a founder who writes openly about being neurodivergent and what that means for leadership in practice. That makes inclusion a substantive thread in her work rather than a section header. Key speaking topics Psychological safety as a measurable team capability Human Debt and the hidden cost of low-trust teams Culture inside digital and AI transformation FinTech, retail banking, and Emotional Banking Neurodiversity and inclusive leadership Future of work and agile team practice Ideal for CHROs, chief people officers, and heads of organisational development running culture or engagement programmes alongside major technology change. CIOs, CTOs, and transformation leads whose roadmaps depend on team behaviour, not just delivery capacity. Banking, FinTech, and financial services leadership teams working through digital and AI rollouts. Boards and ExCos commissioning a serious conversation about why transformation programmes are underperforming. Audience outcomes A working definition of Human Debt that a leadership team can apply to its own organisation the next morning. A clearer line between team-level psychological safety and the commercial outcomes a board cares about. A vocabulary that lands with technical audiences who normally resist culture conversations. Specific signals to look for in teams where transformation, AI adoption, or restructuring is in flight. A frank account of what gets lost when neurodivergent leaders are managed for compliance rather than contribution.