Gestion du changement

Why organisations work with George Kohlrieser He turns a literal high-stakes discipline into a leadership method. The negotiation techniques he teaches carry a documented 95% resolution rate in real hostage situations, and he shows leaders how the same bonding and dialogue skills resolve conflict in a boardroom. He gives leaders the “secure base” model: a tested account, grounded in attachment theory and neuroscience, of how a leader can provide both safety and challenge so that teams take risks instead of protecting themselves. He teaches the specific act most leaders avoid: naming a difficult issue out loud. His “put the fish on the table” approach gives executives a repeatable way to surface conflict before it rots a team from the inside. His authority is built on two decades of senior-executive teaching at IMD, where he created and still directs its flagship High Performance Leadership programme, not on a single book or talk. He works on the leader’s internal state first. His doctoral research on physiological recovery after high-stress events underpins practical methods for staying composed when a situation is escalating. Biography highlights Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at IMD, Lausanne, and creator and director of its High Performance Leadership and Advanced High Performance Leadership programmes. Author of the international bestseller Hostage at the Table, winner of Best Business Book in France and Best Management Book in Germany, with a revised second edition published in 2025. Co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership, part of the Warren Bennis leadership series and named among Soundview’s best business books of 2013. Organizational and clinical psychologist with a doctorate from Ohio State University; veteran police psychologist and hostage negotiator taken hostage four times in the course of his work. Has trained the FBI, the Los Angeles Police and Sheriff’s Departments, and police academies in France, the Netherlands and Germany in crisis negotiation. Has worked with leaders in over 100 countries for clients including Cisco, Coca-Cola, IBM, Roche, Santander, Toyota and UBS; featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times and Forbes. Biography Most leadership advice about conflict tells people to manage it. Kohlrieser’s career began somewhere far less comfortable: as a police psychologist and hostage negotiator who was himself taken hostage four times, once in a hospital emergency room and three times in homes during domestic violence calls. He came out of each by building a bond with the person holding him. That experience became the foundation of his work. At IMD in Lausanne, where he is Distinguished Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, he turned it into method. He created and still directs the school’s High Performance Leadership programme, an intensive course for senior executives, and built his teaching on a counterintuitive claim: hostage negotiators succeed roughly 95% of the time not by force but by forming a genuine connection with someone they have every reason to despise. The same capability, he argues, separates leaders who can challenge their teams from those who only pressure them. His books gave the method its structure. Hostage at the Table applies negotiation psychology to ordinary business conflict and won best-book awards in France and Germany. Care to Dare set out the “secure base” idea, drawn from attachment theory and neuroscience: a leader who provides both care and challenge frees people to take risks rather than protect themselves. The practical core is an act most executives dodge, what he calls putting the fish on the table, naming a difficult issue openly so it can be cleaned rather than left to rot. What gives the work its weight is the evidence behind the soft language. His doctoral research measured how law enforcement leaders physically recover after high-stress events, and that grounding in self-mastery runs through everything he teaches. He has trained the FBI and police academies across Europe, and advised leaders at Cisco, IBM, Roche and UBS in more than 100 countries, but the through-line is consistent: the hardest part of leadership is emotional, and it can be learned. Key speaking topics Conflict management and resolution Negotiation and influence under pressure Secure base leadership and trust High performance leadership and teams Self-mastery and composure in high-stress situations Leading through change and uncertainty Dialogue and high-impact communication Ideal for C-suite and senior executives responsible for leading teams through high-stakes or adversarial situations Leadership development and HPL-style executive programmes Boards and senior teams facing entrenched internal conflict or stalled negotiations CHROs and people leaders building trust and psychological safety as a performance lever Audience outcomes A working method for surfacing and resolving conflict instead of avoiding it Negotiation and bonding techniques drawn from real hostage situations, adapted for business relationships A clear model for becoming a “secure base” who combines care and challenge to lift team performance Practical ways to stay composed and make sound decisions when a situation is escalating A sharper read on how trust, emotion and dialogue drive results their teams will not deliver otherwise

Why organisations work with George Nagle He built his innovation method inside oil and gas water chemistry, one of the most conservative industrial sectors there is, and used it to launch 19 products in 14 months across a portfolio worth more than $352 million. His Breakthrough Thinking series gives leadership teams a named, codified methodology to use after the keynote, not a set of slogans to remember. He is a certified FORTH method instructor with black and green belt credentials in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. The toolset is academically accredited, not invented for the stage. He has applied the same approach across more than 24 industries, which makes him a credible voice for boards and executive teams that want innovation discipline transferred into their context, not borrowed from a single sector. Biography highlights Former global executive and strategy lead at a multi-billion-dollar industrial services company, with portfolio responsibility above $352 million. Launched 19 products in 14 months in the oil and gas water chemistry sector. Founder of The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, LLC, and author of the Breakthrough Thinking series. MS in Biology and MBA in Marketing and Management from Duquesne University; BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh. Certified online instructor in the FORTH method; black belt and multiple green belt certifications in academically accredited innovation systems. Published interviews with Authority Magazine on communication, attention, and creative habits. Biography Innovation in heavy industry is hard for a reason. The cultures are engineered for safety, repeatability, and risk avoidance, which are exactly the traits that make new ideas die quietly in a meeting. George Nagle spent his executive career inside that environment, in oil and gas water chemistry, and built a method to move past it. As a global executive, he carried a portfolio of more than $352 million and led the launch of 19 products in 14 months in a sector where most launches take years. That operating record sits behind everything else he does. He went on to found The Ideation Emporium of Creativity, codifying the approach into the Breakthrough Thinking series, including “The Five Letter F Word”, “Miserable At Work? Why? You Don’t Have To Be”, and “How Are Kids Innovating Faster Than You?”. His credentials are unusual for an innovation speaker. He holds an MS in Biology and an MBA from Duquesne University, a BS in Biology with honours from the University of Pittsburgh, and academically accredited certifications in Innovation and Growth Systems, Green Belt for Growth, and Value Innovations. He is also a certified FORTH method instructor. The toolkit is borrowed, tested, and labelled, not improvised. What distinguishes him is the breadth of application: more than 24 industries have used the same set of ideation tools, from industrial chemistry to consumer-facing services. For leadership teams that want innovation treated as a managed discipline rather than a creative-culture initiative, that record makes him a practical voice. Key speaking topics Innovation as a managed discipline Creative ideation and the FORTH method Commercial product launch under operating constraint Strategy communication across organisational levels Breakthrough Thinking methodology Workplace engagement and creative culture Ideal for Chief innovation officers, R&D leaders, and product portfolio executives looking to convert pilots into shipped revenue CEOs and executive teams in mature, process-heavy industries trying to install repeatable ideation Strategy and transformation leads responsible for cross-functional innovation programmes Senior HR and culture leaders pairing innovation capability with employee engagement work Audience outcomes A named, repeatable ideation method audiences can put into a project the next week A clearer view of why innovation efforts stall in conservative organisations and which mechanisms unblock them Specific tools for separating real strategic priorities from organisational noise Practical examples of how a structured innovation cadence produced 19 product launches in 14 months Language for connecting creativity, engagement, and commercial outcomes in a single business case

Why organisations work with Gordon Hewitt Direct intellectual lineage from C.K. Prahalad at Michigan Ross, applied for two decades to live board agendas at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, HSBC, Sony, and Deutsche Post/DHL. A working method that treats strategy as a thinking system for senior teams, not a planning cycle, so boards leave with sharper questions about value creation, not a deck. Demonstrated range across pharma, financial services, consumer goods, telecoms, and logistics, which lets him connect cross-industry disruption patterns most sector specialists miss. CBE for services to management and international business, plus Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, signal a level of institutional credibility boards trust at chair and CEO level. A genuine practitioner-academic: still teaching at Michigan Ross and Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School while advising sitting CEOs. Biography highlights CBE for services to management and international business, 2007 New Year Honours. Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Visiting Distinguished Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Professor of Strategy Practice, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. Distinguished Professor of Corporate Strategy, Duke Corporate Education. Long collaboration with the late C.K. Prahalad on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation. Advised CEOs and boards at Pfizer, IBM, AstraZeneca, Philips, Sony, Honeywell, PwC, Verizon, Ericsson, HSBC, Credit Suisse, Time Warner, PepsiCo, Syngenta, Biocon, and Deutsche Post/DHL. Biography Most strategy frameworks assume the rules of the industry hold still long enough for a plan to play out. They no longer do. The companies that struggle are often the ones that ran the previous playbook best. Gordon Hewitt has spent two decades helping senior leaders work in that more unstable terrain. At the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, he formed a long partnership with the late C.K. Prahalad, working at the front edge of thinking on corporate value-creation, innovation, and strategic transformation in what they described as a game-changing world. That body of work continues to anchor how he talks to boards. The list of organisations he has advised reads like a cross-industry map of where disruption hits hardest: Pfizer and AstraZeneca in pharma, IBM and Verizon in technology, HSBC and Credit Suisse in financial services, Sony, PepsiCo, and Time Warner in consumer-facing businesses, Deutsche Post/DHL in logistics. He chairs CEO and chairman peer groups in Europe and the United States on the future of corporate strategy and governance. He was awarded a CBE in 2007 for services to management and international business, and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He continues to hold appointments at Michigan Ross, Glasgow’s Adam Smith Business School, and Duke Corporate Education, which is unusual for a working board advisor and is one of the reasons CEOs treat him as a serious thinking partner rather than a speaker. Key speaking topics Strategy under industry disruption Corporate value creation in complex markets Innovation as a discipline Strategic transformation in incumbent businesses Strategic collaboration and ecosystem strategy Overcoming industry and organisational orthodoxies The CEO and board agenda in a game-changing world Ideal for CEOs, boards, and executive committees of incumbent businesses facing rule-changing competition. CSOs, heads of strategy, and transformation leads. Pharma, financial services, telecoms, consumer goods, and logistics leadership teams contending with cross-industry disruption. Senior leadership development programmes that want a serious strategy voice rather than a motivational one. Audience outcomes A sharper account of how value is created and lost when industry rules are being rewritten. A working language for separating planning from strategic thinking inside their own executive team. Cross-sector patterns of disruption they can test against their own market. A clearer view of where current orthodoxies inside their organisation are quietly working against them. Specific provocations for the next board strategy conversation, not generic frameworks.

Why organisations work with Graeme Codrington The TIDES framework (Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values) gives leadership teams a named, structured lens for distinguishing structural disruption from short-term noise, something generic trend-watching rarely provides. His research on generational dynamics, anchored in Mind the Gap (Penguin), is one of the most analytically grounded treatments of multigenerational workforce tension available to leadership teams: it goes beyond labelling generations to explaining the mechanisms that drive the differences. Keynote insight does not stop at the room door: through TomorrowToday Global, organisations can move directly from a session to structured consulting and implementation, which means the analysis has a clear pathway to operational change. He is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: in South Africa and the UK/Ireland – an independently verified measure of sustained content quality across different professional and cultural contexts. His Seven Grey Elephants model and antifragility framework give boards a structured vocabulary for confronting the major forces that most organisations acknowledge but rarely analyse with discipline. Biography highlights Co-founder and lead futurist, TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm operating across 150-plus countries Author of multiple Penguin bestsellers, including Mind the Gap (with Sue Grant-Marshall) and Leading in a Changing World (with Keith Coats) Guest lecturer at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science Only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: Southern Africa and UK/Ireland (Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence) Global Certified Speaking Professional, Global Speakers Federation; Fellow and Honorary Fellow, Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland TEDx Top Picks 2021; speaks to approximately 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries Biography Graeme Codrington has spent over two decades arguing that most organisations are solving the wrong problem. The disruptions they face are not technical challenges requiring better execution, they are adaptive challenges requiring entirely new thinking. His co-founded firm TomorrowToday Global was built around that distinction, and around helping organisations act on it. Codrington is co-founder and lead futurist of TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm tracking the disruptive forces shaping organisations since the early 2000s. His TIDES model maps five forces: Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values that drive disruption across any sector. His book Mind the Gap, published by Penguin, applied this thinking to generational dynamics and became a widely used text in leadership development programmes internationally. He lectures at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and speaks to roughly 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries. His frameworks have expanded to include the Seven Grey Elephants (a structured analysis of the major forces leaders tend to acknowledge but avoid confronting directly) and an antifragility model that helps organisations move beyond resilience to building systems that actually strengthen under pressure. Codrington is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame, in South Africa and the UK. He holds the Global Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Global Speakers Federation and is a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland. For organisations wanting to move beyond a single session, TomorrowToday Global’s consulting team provides structured follow-through from keynote insight to practical implementation. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futurist methodology Future of work and workforce transformation Multigenerational leadership and generational dynamics Adaptive leadership in disruptive environments Organisational antifragility and resilience Innovation culture and next practice approaches The TIDES framework and disruptive forces mapping Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders building adaptive strategy for permanent disruption CHROs and people leaders managing multigenerational workforce complexity Transformation leads and strategy teams moving beyond traditional planning horizons Executive development programmes at business schools and corporate leadership academies Audience outcomes A working understanding of the distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, and practical tools for identifying which they are facing Familiarity with the TIDES framework for mapping the disruptive forces most relevant to their sector and strategic context Concrete methods for scanning the business environment for weak signals and translating them into actionable strategy Clarity on what the future of work means for their organisation’s people strategy, including multigenerational dynamics and AI integration A framework for building antifragility into their team or organisation, moving beyond survival-mode resilience

Why organisations work with Sir Graham Brady He held the formal mechanism by which four UK Prime Ministers came to office and, in several cases, by which they left it. Few speakers can describe leadership transition from inside the room rather than from press coverage of it. He spent fourteen years as the trusted channel between a parliamentary party and its leader, the longest tenure in the role’s history. That is a working case study in managing upward confidence and discretion at the top of a fractious organisation. His memoir “Kingmaker” was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Times Book of the Year, giving audiences a published, on-the-record reference point for the arguments he makes from the platform. He is one of a small group of public figures who can speak credibly about how political risk, party fragility and government instability translate into the operating environment that boards and executive teams now have to plan against. Biography highlights Member of Parliament for Altrincham and Sale West, 1997 to 2024 Chairman of the 1922 Committee, 2010 to 2024, the longest-serving in that role Created Baron Brady of Altrincham; sits in the House of Lords from August 2024 Knight Bachelor (2018); Privy Counsellor (2023); Freedom of the City of London (2023) Author of “Kingmaker: Secrets, Lies, and the Truth about Five Prime Ministers” (Bonnier Books, 2024), Sunday Times bestseller Deputy Chairman, Centre for Policy Studies Biography The 1922 Committee is the body inside the Conservative Party through which backbench MPs hold their leader to account, and through which leadership contests are run. For fourteen years its chair was Graham Brady. Four prime ministers, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, came into office through processes he oversaw. Several left the same way. That is an unusual vantage point. Most political memoirs are written by the principals; Brady’s account is written by the person who counted the letters, took the calls, and decided when a leader’s position had become untenable. “Kingmaker”, published by Bonnier Books in September 2024, was a Sunday Times bestseller and a Times Book of the Year, and it sets out in detail what those moments looked like from inside. For corporate audiences the value is not the political gossip. It is the structure of how confidence at the top of an organisation actually operates. When does a leader lose authority before they lose the title. How does a senior cohort below the leader signal that the line has been crossed. What does discretion cost, and what does it buy. Brady spent fourteen years in the practical mechanics of those questions, longer than anyone else has held the role. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Brady of Altrincham, having been knighted in 2018 and appointed to the Privy Council in 2023. He is Deputy Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies. He read law at Durham and entered the Commons in 1997 at the age of 29. The political career is the credential. The substantive offer to a serious audience is the mechanism behind it. Key speaking topics Leadership transitions and the loss of authority The mechanics of political risk in the UK Trust, discretion and confidence at the top of an organisation Westminster, Whitehall and the operating environment for business Conservative Party history and the post-2010 leadership cycle The role of intermediaries between leaders and the led Ideal for Boards and chairs navigating CEO succession or contested leadership change Executive committees and senior partner groups that need a frank account of how authority is won and lost Corporate affairs and public policy audiences working on UK political risk Membership organisations, associations and professional firms with a senior audience drawn from regulated industries Audience outcomes A clearer mental model of how leadership confidence is actually measured and signalled inside an organisation A first-hand account of four UK Prime Ministerial transitions and what each one reveals about leadership under pressure A working sense of how UK political instability is likely to affect the operating environment over the next parliament The texture of how discretion, loyalty and dissent are managed at the top of a fractious institution

Why organisations work with Hal Gregersen A specific, teachable method for recasting strategic problems: the four-minute “Question Burst,” published in Harvard Business Review and used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” with Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, the foundational research identifying the five behaviours, including questioning, that separate disruptive innovators from ordinary executives. A perspective shaped by 200-plus structured interviews with catalytic questioners, including founders and CEOs, plus a behavioural database of more than 25,000 leaders. MIT Sloan and former MIT Leadership Center director credentials that give his frameworks weight in C-suite and board settings, not just innovation labs. Ranked on the Thinkers50 list across five cycles, peaking at #16, and winner of the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership. Biography highlights Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies, MIT Sloan School of Management. Former Executive Director, MIT Leadership Center. Co-author of “The Innovator’s DNA” (Harvard Business Review Press) and author of “Questions Are the Answer” (Harper Business, 2018). 2017 Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership; ranked Thinkers50 #16 in 2019. Senior Fellow at Innosight; co-founder of the Innovator’s DNA consulting group. Previous faculty roles at INSEAD, London Business School, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and Aalto University. Biography The most consequential strategic mistakes rarely come from missing data. They come from accepting a flawed framing of the problem. The leaders who break that pattern share a behavioural habit, asking catalytic questions, that can be researched, isolated, and taught. That argument runs through twenty years of work at MIT Sloan, where Hal Gregersen serves as Senior Lecturer in Work and Organization Studies and previously led the MIT Leadership Center. With Clayton Christensen and Jeff Dyer, he co-authored “The Innovator’s DNA,” the research project that identified the five discovery skills, including questioning, observing, and experimenting, that separate disruptive innovators from competent operators. His subsequent book, “Questions Are the Answer,” drew on more than 200 interviews to formalise the practice. Out of that work came the “Question Burst,” a four-minute structured method published in Harvard Business Review’s “Better Brainstorming” and now used inside organisations from Disney/Pixar to Patagonia to reframe stuck problems before solutions are debated. The Thinkers50 ranking, peaking at #16 globally in 2019, and the 2017 Distinguished Achievement Award for Leadership reflect what senior teams actually take from his sessions: a transferable discipline for changing the questions in the room before changing the strategy. Key speaking topics Inquiry-driven leadership The Innovator’s DNA and the five discovery skills The Question Burst methodology Building cultures of constructive questioning Disruptive innovation as a leadership behaviour AI and the future of catalytic inquiry Leading through transitions Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams setting strategy under deep uncertainty. Chief Innovation Officers, Chief Strategy Officers, and transformation leads building innovation capability beyond pilot programmes. Boards and leadership development programmes seeking a research-grounded behavioural framework rather than a values statement. Audience outcomes A working command of the Question Burst method, applied live to a real organisational problem. The five Innovator’s DNA behaviours mapped onto the audience’s own roles, with a clear view of where they default to answering rather than questioning. A diagnostic for spotting the questions a leadership team is currently avoiding, and the strategic cost of that avoidance. Concrete language for embedding catalytic questioning into operating rhythms, board reviews, and innovation portfolios.

Why organisations work with Hamish Taylor Operator authority across three unrelated industries at CEO level: aviation brand at British Airways, cross-border rail at Eurostar, and retail banking at Sainsbury’s Bank, all reached before he turned 40. A specific innovation method, not a generic call to think differently. The “Masterthief” approach pairs a defined business problem with an unrelated sector that has already solved a structurally similar problem, then translates the mechanism back. Concrete cross-sector transfers he can talk through end to end: yacht interior designers brought into British Airways cabin design, Disney queue management applied to airport experience, rugby refereeing brought into banking risk and compliance. Senior advisory standing that matches the room. Chairs the EMEA advisory board for Emory University, Non-Executive Director of Chartered Brands, Trustee of the Robert T Jones scholarship, and recipient of Emory’s Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award. Works the full audience range, from board and CEO level to frontline operating staff, with the same material translated for each layer rather than a single fixed deck. Biography highlights Former CEO of Eurostar Group, having joined as Managing Director of Eurostar (UK) Ltd in 1997 with a remit to reverse heavy losses. Former CEO of Sainsbury’s Bank, the joint venture between J Sainsbury plc and the Bank of Scotland. Former Head of Brand Management at British Airways, responsible for First, Club World, Club Europe, Concorde and Shuttle, including the introduction of flat beds. Rail Professional Business Manager of the Year, 1998, for results at Eurostar. Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award, Emory University; Chair of Emory’s EMEA advisory board. Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Transport. Biography Eurostar was three years old and losing money heavily when Hamish Taylor took over as Managing Director of the UK business in 1997. Within two years he was running the Eurostar Group across the UK, France and Belgium, and had been named Rail Professional Business Manager of the Year. At 36, he had already been Head of Brand Management at British Airways, where the relaunch of Club World, Club Europe and First Class included the introduction of flat beds. By the end of 1999 he had moved again, this time to run Sainsbury’s Bank as CEO, the joint venture between J Sainsbury and the Bank of Scotland. Three industries, three CEO-level remits, all before he turned 40. The pattern across them was the same: an organisation that had stopped looking outside its own sector for answers, and a customer proposition that had drifted from what the customer actually valued. That pattern is the basis of his current work. The Inspired Leaders Network titled him “Masterthief” for the way he runs innovation as a translation exercise. Yacht interior designers helped redesign aircraft cabins. Disney’s queue management informed airport experience. Rugby refereeing logic was applied to banking risk and compliance. Each transfer was a structural match between a problem and a sector that had already solved something equivalent. Today he advises corporations and governments on innovation, customer focus and people leadership, chairs the EMEA advisory board for Emory University, sits as a Non-Executive Director of Chartered Brands, and is a Trustee of the Robert T Jones memorial scholarship. Emory has recognised the work with its Sheth Distinguished International Alumnus Award. Key speaking topics Cross-sector innovation and idea transfer Customer-led business transformation Brand strategy and customer proposition design Leadership of organisational change Service innovation in regulated industries Growth strategy after a turnaround Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding a customer proposition after a structural shift in their market CMOs, brand and customer experience leaders translating strategy into operating reality Innovation, transformation and strategy leads who need a working method, not a culture talk Boards in regulated sectors looking for an external operator’s view on customer and growth Audience outcomes A specific technique for sourcing innovation from outside the sector, with worked examples from aviation, rail and banking. A clearer view of where their organisation’s customer proposition has drifted from the customer’s actual definition of value. Concrete language to describe the difference between sector benchmarking and structural problem matching. Reference cases from BA, Eurostar and Sainsbury’s Bank that translate into their own context rather than sit as anecdotes.

Why organisations work with Heather Moyse She has competed at Olympic level in three sports she did not start as a child, including learning bobsleigh from scratch and winning gold in her first Games. That gives her a credible voice on rapid capability acquisition under high stakes. Her occupational therapy training (Master’s, University of Toronto) gives her a clinical frame for human performance rather than the standard motivational-athlete narrative. She talks about the mechanics of resilience, not the feeling of it. She is the first Canadian woman inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame and one of only two Canadians inducted. The credential is rare enough to anchor a senior audience that has heard many Olympic stories. She has worked with senior corporate audiences including CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, and the Canadian Armed Forces, so the translation from sport to commercial leadership is already calibrated. Biography highlights Two-time Olympic gold medallist in women’s bobsleigh (Vancouver 2010, Sochi 2014, pilot Kaillie Humphries). Four-time Olympian. World Rugby Hall of Fame, inducted 2016. First Canadian woman, second Canadian overall. Master’s in Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto. BSc (Honours Kinesiology), University of Waterloo. Author, Redefining ‘Realistic’ (2017), with foreword by John C. Maxwell. Order of Prince Edward Island (2014); inaugural Randy Starkman Olympian Humanitarian Award (2014). Biography Bobsleigh is not a sport you take up casually. Heather Moyse was recruited into the Canadian programme as an adult, learned the discipline from a standing start, and won Olympic gold in Vancouver in 2010 with pilot Kaillie Humphries. Four years later, in Sochi, the same pair defended the title. She is also a World Rugby Hall of Famer, one of two Canadians ever inducted, and competed internationally in track cycling after taking up the sport during a rugby injury recovery. Three sports, all picked up later than the orthodox path allows, all carried to international level. The story is not about innate talent. It is about how a person decides what is realistic. That decision sits at the centre of her work with organisations. Her keynote and coaching content draws on a Master’s in Occupational Therapy from the University of Toronto, which gives her a clinical vocabulary for performance most athletes do not have. She talks about how leaders narrow their own range of options under pressure, how recovery is engineered rather than waited for, and how the gap between current capability and the next required capability is closed in practice. Her book Redefining ‘Realistic’ sets out the argument in long form, with a foreword by John C. Maxwell. The corporate work, with audiences at CIBC, BMW, Sun Life Financial, Fidelity Investments, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Canadian Armed Forces and others, applies it to leaders who are being asked to recalibrate their assumptions about what their teams can do, and how quickly. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure High-performance mindset and recovery Resilience as an operational discipline Goal-setting and capability acquisition Leading through uncertainty and setback Personal accountability and authentic leadership Ideal for Executive leadership teams facing prolonged change or post-restructure recovery Sales and commercial leadership audiences where sustained performance under pressure is the central question Senior women’s leadership programmes and high-potential development cohorts Conferences where the closing keynote needs an authority voice on composure and reinvention Audience outcomes A direct account of how elite performers manage themselves before, during, and after high-stakes moments A working definition of what counts as “realistic” and how that judgment limits or extends what teams attempt Specific tools for breaking large objectives into the next executable step under time pressure A clearer view of how recovery and preparation interact, drawn from Olympic-level practice rather than metaphor

Why organisations work with Dr Helena Boschi She brings neuroscience into the room with the credibility of someone who has sat on the executive side of HR. Senior roles at Shire Pharmaceuticals and Serono SA mean she speaks to leadership problems from inside, not from a lab. Her book Why We Do What We Do (Wiley, 2020) gives leadership teams a shared vocabulary for why people behave as they do under pressure, which lasts beyond the event. She works at the intersection of chronic stress and cognitive performance, an area most leadership speakers skim and few treat as a board-level risk. She is a member of the British Psychological Society and has built Chequered Leopard Ltd since 2004 specifically to translate peer-reviewed research into operational practice, not keynote theatre. She is unusually sharp on the behavioural cost of hybrid working: trust erosion, risk attitudes, attention, empathy. Useful for any leadership team still making assumptions about what remote does to a workforce. Biography highlights Founder of Chequered Leopard Ltd (since 2004), a consultancy applying neuroscience to leadership, change and workplace behaviour. Author of Why We Do What We Do: Understanding Our Brain to Get the Best Out of Ourselves and Others (Wiley, 2020). Former Vice President of Talent Management at Shire Pharmaceuticals. Former Corporate Director and Head of Global Organisation Development at Serono SA (now part of Merck KGaA). Member of the British Psychological Society. Research interests include the impact of chronic, work-induced stress on cognitive ability in the workplace. Biography Most change programmes fail on the same fault line. Leaders model behaviour as a matter of willingness, when the brain is actually running on threat detection, bias and habit. Helena Boschi has built a twenty-year practice around closing that gap, translating applied neuroscience into the decisions senior teams actually have to make. Her consultancy, Chequered Leopard Ltd, was founded in 2004 after senior corporate roles inside Shire Pharmaceuticals, where she was Vice President of Talent Management, and Serono SA, where she led global organisation development. That sequence matters. She is not a researcher who later discovered business. She ran the people function at scale in listed multinationals and turned to neuroscience because the tools available to her were not explaining what she was seeing. Her book Why We Do What We Do, published by Wiley in 2020, sets out how the brain communicates, remembers, attends, leads and decides, and what organisations can do to stop working against it. The work that sits beneath it, including her interest in chronic work-induced stress and cognitive function, informs keynotes on change, cognitive bias, psychological safety, hybrid working and innovation. She is a member of the British Psychological Society. The argument she leaves in the room is specific. Most of what organisations call a culture problem is a biology problem being asked to behave. Once leaders see that, the interventions change. Key speaking topics Applied neuroscience at work The neuroscience of change Cognitive bias and decision-making Psychological safety and fear at work Trust, risk and hybrid working The neuroscience of innovation Chronic stress and cognitive performance Neuroplasticity and cognitive agility in an AI-driven world Ideal for CEOs, executive teams and boards working through sustained change or transformation programmes. CHROs, CPOs and senior HR, talent and organisation development leaders. Leadership development and learning teams designing programmes for senior cohorts. Cross-cultural and international leadership groups operating in hybrid conditions. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of why people resist, withdraw or underperform during change, grounded in how the brain responds to uncertainty. Named cognitive biases leaders can spot in their own decisions and in the decisions their teams make for them. A practical read on what hybrid working is doing to trust, empathy and risk appetite inside their organisation. Specific behavioural levers for psychological safety, rather than slogans. Language and evidence leaders can take back into their own teams without needing to cite academic research.

Why organisations work with Henry Timms He has operated at the top of two of the most scrutinised cultural institutions in the United States, Lincoln Center and 92nd Street Y, and can speak to legacy transformation from inside the seat, not from a consulting deck. “New Power,” co-written with Jeremy Heimans, was a Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year finalist and is now one of the standard references for leaders thinking about participatory influence. Buyers get the author, not a secondary interpreter. He built GivingTuesday from a single idea at 92Y into a movement operating in 100 countries that has generated over $13 billion in giving. That is hard evidence of how the framework works in practice. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on exactly the reputational and influence problems the framework was built to address, which keeps the material current rather than retrospective. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer, Brunswick Group (2024 to present) President and CEO, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (2019 to 2024); oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall Co-founder of GivingTuesday (2012), active in 100 countries Co-author, “New Power” (2018, Doubleday), Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year shortlist Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts and to philanthropy (2022) Hauser Leader, Harvard Kennedy School; Senior Fellow, Stanford University and the United Nations Foundation; member, Council on Foreign Relations Biography Most legacy institutions are not structured for participation. They are structured for authority that flows one way, from the board and the executive outward, and that structure is now breaking in public. The problem Henry Timms works on is what leaders do about it. Timms and Jeremy Heimans gave the shift a name in their 2018 book “New Power,” shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year. Old power, in their argument, is held like a currency: hoarded, closed, pushed down. New power operates like a current: open, participatory, shaped by the many. The point is not that one replaces the other. It is that serious leaders now have to run both systems at once. He has done this in practice. At 92nd Street Y he co-founded GivingTuesday in 2012, a movement that now operates in 100 countries and has generated over $13 billion for charitable causes. At Lincoln Center, where he was President and CEO from 2019 to 2024, he oversaw the $550 million renovation of David Geffen Hall and repositioned one of America’s most visible cultural institutions for a more participatory era. As CEO of Brunswick Group, he now advises global boards and CEOs on reputation, influence and institutional trust, with affiliations at Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford, Oxford and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for services to the arts and to philanthropy. Key speaking topics New power and the shift in how influence operates Leading legacy institutions through transformation Building and scaling participatory movements Reputation and trust in a networked era AI and the future of institutional authority Philanthropy, purpose and stakeholder engagement Ideal for CEOs and boards of legacy institutions facing relevance or trust challenges Chief communications, marketing and brand officers rethinking stakeholder influence Foundation and nonprofit leadership teams designing participatory programmes Senior leadership offsites on culture, reputation and institutional change Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for distinguishing old power and new power inside their own organisation Named examples of how global institutions have built participatory strategies without surrendering discipline A clearer read on where their organisation’s authority is eroding and where it can be rebuilt Practical reference points from GivingTuesday, Lincoln Center and Brunswick client work

Why organisations work with Herminia Ibarra She supplies the missing operating manual for executive transitions. Her research names the specific trap, clinging to a proven identity, that causes capable leaders to stall in bigger roles. She owns a published, citable framework. “Outsight”, the principle that leaders think their way into new behaviours by acting first, gives a leadership team a shared vocabulary it can actually use on a Monday morning. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” reframed a live boardroom debate. It is one of the few pieces of leadership writing that gives senior teams permission to experiment with styles that do not yet feel like “them”. She sits at the top of the field by external measure, not self-description. Fellow of the British Academy, multi-cycle Thinkers50 listee, 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, Charles Handy Chair at LBS. She speaks to succession, sponsorship, and women’s advancement with the same empirical grounding, which matters for organisations running serious talent and inclusion agendas rather than performative ones. Biography highlights Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour, London Business School; prior faculty posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. Fellow of the British Academy (elected 2019). Multi-cycle Thinkers50 ranked thinker; winner of the Thinkers50 Leadership Award, 2013. Author of Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press) and Working Identity (Harvard Business Press), translated into 16 languages. Judge, Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award; member, World Economic Forum Expert Network; Governor of London Business School. Ph.D. in Organisational Behaviour, Yale University (National Science Fellow). Biography Capable executives often stall in their first genuinely senior role. The research by Herminia Ibarra explains why: they try to think their way into the new job from the inside, when the only reliable route is the opposite. Act first, reflect later, and let the new behaviours gradually reshape how you see yourself. That argument, captured in her book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader and in the “outsight” principle, is what most distinguishes her work. Her HBR article “The Authenticity Paradox” extended the case into one of the thorniest topics in executive development, how leaders can experiment with unfamiliar styles without feeling like frauds. Working Identity, her earlier book, has been translated into 16 languages and sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics list. Ibarra holds the Charles Handy Chair at London Business School, with prior tenured posts at INSEAD and Harvard Business School. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, a multi-cycle Thinkers50 honoree, winner of the 2013 Thinkers50 Leadership Award, and a Governor of LBS. She also judges the Financial Times Business Book of the Year and sits in the World Economic Forum Expert Network. For a leadership team wrestling with succession, executive transitions, or the gap between the leader a company has and the leader it now needs, few academics anywhere offer a more precise diagnosis or a more usable set of moves. Key speaking topics Executive transitions and stepping up to bigger roles Leadership identity and the authenticity paradox Career reinvention and the “outsight” principle Leadership in the age of AI Sponsorship, succession, and women’s advancement Authentic leadership development Organisational reinvention under change Ideal for CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning executive development and succession pipelines CEOs and boards planning leadership transitions at the top team Senior leaders stepping into enterprise-wide or first-time general management roles Inclusion, sponsorship, and high-potential programmes for underrepresented senior talent Audience outcomes A clear diagnosis of why smart executives stall in bigger roles and what to do about it Language and examples for leading through a change in identity, not just a change in strategy A usable principle, “outsight”, that senior leaders can apply to their own weekly calendar A sharper view of authenticity that replaces “be yourself” with a more workable standard for growth Practical cues for building sponsorship and succession conversations that actually move careers

Why organisations work with Howard Webb His concept of «anonymously competent», the trained reflex to seek invisibility rather than make the decisive, visible call, names a leadership trap that senior audiences recognise on first hearing as a live problem in their own organisations – not a sports metaphor, but a precise description of how their institutions reward the wrong behaviour. His career after the pitch, spanning Technical Director at PGMOL, General Manager at the Professional Referee Organization in North America, and now Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL, is itself a case study in reforming institutional standards under sustained public pressure. Most sports speakers offer a performing career; Webb offers both. He led the rollout of VAR in North American soccer and returned to England to reform how the Premier League applies the same technology, giving him direct cross-jurisdictional experience in managing the gap between contested innovation and stakeholder trust. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013, his credentials hold in any boardroom that includes serious sports people, which makes the leadership translation sharper and harder to dismiss. His direct experience of a governance model where every decision is publicly logged, graded, and contested translates to regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply to senior leaders. Biography highlights The only referee in history to officiate both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year (2010) Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013; MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to football First-ever Chief Refereeing Officer, PGMOL (2022), responsible for more than 600 match officials across English professional football Former General Manager, Professional Referee Organization (PRO), leading the match official programme across Major League Soccer and North American football, including the introduction of VAR Approximately 296 Premier League matches as a professional referee (2003-2014); FIFA international referee across nine major tournaments including two FIFA World Cups Former sergeant, South Yorkshire Police; broadcast analyst with BT Sport and ITV Biography Howard Webb became a Premier League referee in 2003 and a FIFA international referee two years later. By 2010, he had officiated both the UEFA Champions League Final and the FIFA World Cup Final in the same year. No referee in the sport’s history had achieved that combination before, or has since. His career after the pitch is equally instructive. As Technical Director at PGMOL and then General Manager of the Professional Referee Organization in North America, Webb led the introduction of VAR across Major League Soccer, managing the institutional resistance, stakeholder scepticism, and communication challenges that accompany contested technological change in any professional environment. His appointment in 2022 as the first-ever Chief Refereeing Officer at PGMOL placed him at the head of a reform programme for more than 600 match officials across the English professional game. Named IFFHS World’s Best Referee in 2010 and 2013 and awarded an MBE in the 2011 New Year Honours, his on-field record gives credibility to the broader argument. His concept of «anonymously competent», the trap of seeking invisibility over decisive action, names a tension that senior leadership audiences recognise immediately in their own organisations. Webb has spoken at forums including the HR Directors Business Summit. The direct parallel is between officiating, where every decision is logged, graded, and publicly contested, and leadership in regulated, media-facing organisations where the same conditions increasingly apply. Key speaking topics Decision-making under pressure Leadership under public scrutiny Accountability and governance in professional organisations High-performance team standards Institutional reform and standards development Technology adoption and stakeholder trust Ideal for Senior leadership teams and C-suite forums in regulated industries including financial services, healthcare, and professional services Boards and governance committees addressing public accountability and decision-making under scrutiny HR and L&D leaders building executive development programmes Sports organisations and governing bodies addressing officiating standards, governance, and reform Audience outcomes A concrete framework for understanding the gap between private competence and public accountability Practical perspective on what it means to make decisive calls when decisions are irreversible and publicly visible Insight into building institutional cultures that sustain performance under contested, public scrutiny A transferable case study in introducing contested technology into a resistant professional community The «anonymously competent» concept as a diagnostic for identifying leadership cultures that reward invisibility over action