Leadership

Why organisations work with Joy Poole Joy addresses a gap most leadership development programmes leave entirely open: not what leaders should do under pressure, but how they actually operate internally when clarity is scarce, the stakes are high, and the team is watching. Her background at Meta, in large-scale consulting environments, and across high-growth technology companies gives her a working knowledge of the specific pressures that senior audiences are navigating. As a credentialed executive coach with a practice built around leaders under sustained load, she brings a level of depth and practical tool-transfer that most leadership keynote speakers cannot replicate from the stage. The sailing narrative, crewing an ocean circumnavigation as part of a team, is not an adventure story bolted onto a leadership talk. It provides an environment in which the same principles about self-leadership under pressure have been tested and proven. Joy customises her engagements as a matter of principle. A leadership team at a fintech navigating rapid growth is not the same audience as a professional services firm managing restructuring, and she treats them accordingly. Biography highlights 20 years in senior sales, consulting and leadership roles across Google, Facebook/Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen Certified Professional Coach, Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC); Master Practitioner of the Energy Leadership Index; Transitions Dynamics Specialist Executive Programme certificates from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics Speaker at internal leadership forums for Meta and at industry conferences across technology, media, and financial services Completed a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation – her second parallel environment for testing how leaders perform when conditions are extreme Biography Senior leadership in fast-moving technology and consulting organisations teaches you a great deal about performance under pressure. It teaches you rather less about what is actually happening inside a leader while all of that performance is required. Joy Poole spent two decades at the centre of that tension in senior roles at Meta, Capgemini, and Arthur Andersen, before building a practice around the gap she identified. Her core argument is precise: when organisations face uncertainty, change, or sustained pressure, the variable that most determines leadership quality is not expertise or experience alone. It is how clearly and calmly a leader can operate within themselves; how they think when the picture is incomplete, how they make decisions when there is no clean answer, and how they show up for their teams while also carrying their own uncertainty. This is self-leadership, and she treats it as a practical capability, not a motivational concept. Joy holds executive credentials from the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics alongside certification from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching. She brings to the stage what most leadership speakers cannot: a decade of operational experience at genuine scale, combined with years of coaching senior executives through exactly the internal dynamics she speaks about. An unusual secondary proof point sits alongside her professional record. Joy is currently completing a round-the-world sailing circumnavigation; an environment that applies the same conditions her leadership audiences face, stripped to their essentials. The lessons from both settings reinforce the same argument: what determines performance under pressure is not position or preparation. It is the quality of self-leadership. Key speaking topics Self-leadership under pressure and uncertainty Decision-making in ambiguous conditions Composure and credibility under sustained organisational load Leadership during restructuring and change Confidence and presence for senior leaders Trust as a leadership capability Ideal for HR and L&D directors commissioning leadership development sessions for offsites, internal forums, or away-days during periods of significant organisational change: restructuring, reorganisation, or high-growth phases Executive and senior leadership programme managers looking for a session that is grounded and practical rather than motivational Senior leadership teams in technology, financial services, professional services, and consulting where pace and pressure are structural features of the environment Audience outcomes A clearer, more honest account of how they actually operate under pressure, not how they think they should operate Practical tools for improving self-leadership composure in high-stakes situations that can be applied immediately A reframe of uncertainty and incomplete information as conditions to be navigated rather than problems to be solved Greater understanding of how their own internal state affects team performance and organisational credibility A shared vocabulary for a leadership conversation that most organisations do not currently have language for

Why organisations work with Kit Symons and Holly Sedlacek A genuine dual lens on performance under pressure. A former Wales international and Fulham manager works alongside a chartered organisational psychologist, delivered as a two-voice session. Sport shows up as evidence. Symons speaks from the dressing room of a Premier League club, and Sedlacek translates what happened there through psychology a board will recognise. Content that moves past cliche on the topics leadership teams quietly struggle with: imposter feelings at executive level, handling failure in public, and the emotional cost of transitions. Formats built for different rooms: motivational keynote, fireside conversation, masterclass, and follow-up team coaching through Know Your Pace. Biography highlights Kit Symons: 36 caps for Wales; 100+ league appearances each at Portsmouth, Manchester City, and Fulham. Kit Symons: Fulham manager from October 2014; assistant to Chris Coleman with the Wales national team from January 2012. Holly Sedlacek: MA in Industrial and Organisational Psychology; ICF ACC coach. Holly Sedlacek: certified in Hogan, EQi 2.0, DiSC, and Transactional Analysis. Holly Sedlacek: 14+ years in Learning and Talent Development across consulting, insurance, and asset management before founding Know Your Pace. Co-founders of Know Your Pace, a London-based leadership coaching practice working with leaders in sport and business. Biography Elite football teams are not built by talent alone. They are built by how a group handles the week after a bad result, the player who loses form, the dressing room conversation no one wants to have. That is the same territory executive teams live in, and it is where Kit Symons and Holly Sedlacek work. Symons spent more than two decades inside professional football, with more than 300 league appearances across Portsmouth, Manchester City, and Fulham, and 36 caps for Wales. He went on to manage Fulham and to coach the Wales national team alongside Chris Coleman. He speaks from the dressing room. Sedlacek brings the discipline that makes the sport insight transferable. She holds an MA in Industrial and Organisational Psychology, an ICF coaching credential, and certifications in Hogan, EQi 2.0, DiSC, and Transactional Analysis. Before founding Know Your Pace, she spent 14 years in talent and leadership development inside consulting, insurance, and asset management. Together they work with leadership teams on the parts of performance that rarely sit on an org chart: belonging, self-doubt, emotional range, what happens after a mistake. The format is deliberately two-voice, a practitioner and a psychologist in the same room, and that structure is what lets a session move past anecdote into behaviour change. Key speaking topics Resilient leadership in adversity High-performing teams Culture of belonging Emotional capacity in leadership Authentic connection and trust Self-doubt and imposter syndrome at senior levels Learning from mistakes and failure The emotional process of career and organisational transitions Ideal for Executive teams and C-suite offsites CHROs and people leaders investing in leadership development Managers of high-stakes, high-scrutiny teams Sport and performance organisations looking at leadership and culture Audience outcomes A sharper read on how individual and team behaviour shifts under pressure, and what to do about it. Practical language for the emotional work of leadership: trust, belonging, failure, transition. A shared reference point for senior teams to discuss performance without reverting to sport cliches or wellness tropes. Tools drawn from recognised psychometric frames (Hogan, EQi 2.0, DiSC) that sit alongside existing leadership programmes.

Why organisations work with Peter Fisk He brings a structured framework for business reinvention. Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes drawn from deep work with senior leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas and Patagonia. Senior teams leave with a shared model to argue from. He sits in the rare overlap between marketer and strategist. As former CEO of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and now Professor of Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School in Madrid, he treats marketing, customer thinking and innovation as parts of one growth discipline. Most organisations still split them across separate functions and budgets. He has worked with senior leaders across more than 300 companies in over 55 countries, with particular depth in Asian innovation and emerging-market growth. The case material is current and varied, not the same handful of examples a leadership team has already seen. As former Thinkers50 Global Director and founder of the annual European Business Forum, he has unusual curatorial access to the leading management thinkers in the world. Sessions draw on what is actually moving across the field. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of GeniusWorks, a London-based strategy and innovation consultancy Professor of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation at IE Business School, Madrid; academic director of the Global Advanced Management Program Former Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing Former Thinkers50 Global Director; founder of the annual Thinkers50 European Business Forum Author of nine business books, including Business Recoded, Gamechangers, and the Genius series, translated into 35 languages; Business Recoded shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year Earlier commercial career at British Airways, including responsibility for the Concorde brand Biography The Chartered Institute of Marketing is the world’s largest professional marketing organisation. Peter Fisk ran it before founding GeniusWorks. He used the role to argue that marketing, customer and innovation belong inside growth strategy, where most organisations still treat them as separate functions. That argument has shaped his work since. His career started in physics, in a superconductivity lab. He moved into commercial roles at British Airways, including managing the Concorde brand, before consulting work at PA Consulting Group and Brand Finance. After CIM he founded GeniusWorks, a London consultancy, and joined IE Business School in Madrid as Professor of Strategy and Innovation. His 2020 book Business Recoded sets out seven mindset shifts and 49 codes for reinventing how a business creates value. It is built on deep interviews with leaders at companies including Microsoft, Adidas, Patagonia and Spotify. The Financial Times reviewed it as “the book you have to read now”. It was shortlisted for the CMI Management Book of the Year. Through the Thinkers50 European Business Forum, which he founded in 2017 as Thinkers50 Global Director, he convenes the world’s leading management thinkers each year. Recent stages have brought together Michael Porter, Rita McGrath, Erin Meyer and Alex Osterwalder. That curatorial position is unusual for a working consultant. The frameworks in his sessions are continually refreshed by direct contact with the academics and practitioners writing the next generation of management ideas. Key speaking topics Growth strategy in fast-changing markets Business model reinvention Innovation strategy and execution Customer strategy and brand growth The Business Recoded framework: seven shifts for reinventing the business Asian innovation and emerging-market growth Sustainable growth and purposeful business Ideal for CEOs and boards facing slowing growth in mature markets Strategy and innovation leaders responsible for new business models or category growth CMOs and customer experience leaders rethinking how marketing connects to commercial strategy Executive leadership teams running annual strategy or transformation offsites Audience outcomes A shared vocabulary for the seven shifts that separate business reinvention from incremental change Case material from Asian innovators and global category leaders that most leadership teams will not have seen A connected view of innovation, customer and marketing strategy as one growth discipline Specific direction on where to stop investing, alongside where to grow

Why organisations work with Rahaf Harfoush Her work is anthropological, not predictive. It is grounded in fieldwork, behavioural research, and fifteen years of watching what technology does to the people who use it. That matters when leadership teams have already absorbed every version of the AI hype cycle and want something more durable. Her positions on AI move with the research, because the research is hers. What she takes into a boardroom in 2026 is not what she said in 2024, and the next book she is writing on humane productivity in the age of AI is shaping her current thinking in real time. She works across the full institutional range. The same questions she takes into board conversations on AI strategy show up in her policy work at the UN, her research at Oxford and Cambridge, and her teaching at Sciences Po. That range means she can speak credibly to executives, regulators, and creative teams in the same week. The Decoded Company thesis; that organisations should apply the same analytical rigour to understanding their talent as they apply to understanding their customers, gives CHROs and people strategy teams a precise, data-grounded argument for workforce intelligence. She brings an active body of work. The Decoded Company was a New York Times bestseller, Hustle & Float set the structural argument on productivity and creative work, a fourth book on humane productivity in the age of AI is in progress, and her weekly newsletter and original research mean she arrives at every engagement with new material rather than a fixed deck. Biography highlights Executive Director, Red Thread Institute of Digital Culture; former Associate Director, Technology Pioneer Programme, World Economic Forum, Geneva Member, UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Body on Artificial Intelligence; member, France’s National Digital Council; served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission on AI and democracy Visiting Policy Fellow, Oxford Internet Institute; Research Affiliate, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, University of Cambridge Author of Hustle & Float (2019); co-author of The Decoded Company (New York Times and USA Today bestseller; 2015 Gold Axiom Award for Best Business Technology Book) Named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award (2021); writing featured in Harvard Business Review, Wired, Financial Times, and Fast Company Faculty at Sciences Po’s School of Management and Innovation, Paris, teaching “Innovation and Emerging Business Models” Biography For the past fifteen years, the same question has run through her work. What happens to human beings when the systems they work and live inside change faster than their ability to absorb the change? That question has taken her into the early Obama campaign, the World Economic Forum, the UN, the Oxford Internet Institute, and the boardrooms of some of the largest companies in the world. The pattern she keeps finding is the same. The technology gets the attention. The behavioural and cultural consequences get ignored until they show up as a problem no one can solve with another tool. Her first book, Yes We Did, documented the digital infrastructure behind the 2008 Obama campaign from inside the war room. Her second, The Decoded Company (co-authored, and a New York Times and USA Today bestseller), argued that organisations apply rigorous analytics to their customers and intuition to their people, and pay for that mismatch in every retention number. Her third, Hustle and Float, made the case that the conflict between productivity culture and creative work is older than any of the tools we blame for it, and cannot be solved by another wellness programme. Her current research focuses on AI’s impact on human cognition and learning. This is the territory where the most urgent questions are being asked, and where the gap between what the technology can do and what organisations actually need is widest. She is writing about it, teaching about it at Sciences Po, advising on it at the UN, and bringing what she finds onto the stage as it develops. She holds research affiliations with the Oxford Internet Institute and Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. She served on President Macron’s “Enlightenment in the Digital Age” commission and on France’s National Digital Council. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Wired, the Financial Times, and Fast Company. She was named to the Thinkers50 2025 ranking and shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Innovation Award in 2021. Key speaking topics Digital culture and organisational behaviour Artificial intelligence governance and ethics The future of creative and knowledge work Human-centred AI strategy Innovation and emerging business models Leadership in technological disruption Data intelligence and talent strategy Ideal for C-suite leadership teams who want to think clearly about AI before committing to a strategy they will have to defend in eighteen months CHROs and people leaders facing the talent, learning, and creative-performance consequences of AI adoption Government, regulatory, and policy audiences working on AI governance and digital policy Innovation, foresight, and strategy functions in technology-intensive and creative industries Audience outcomes A working framework for understanding what AI is actually doing to the people in your organization, beyond productivity metrics Language for the cultural and cognitive shifts your leaders are already sensing but have not been able to name A clearer position on AI governance, grounded in research and lived policy experience at the UN and national level A sharper read on the gap between what your technology strategy assumes and what your people are experiencing

Why organisations work with Nilofer Merchant Her Onlyness framework offers a structural diagnosis for why innovation stalls inside organisations: not a confidence problem or a diversity problem, but a systemic filtering-out of unconventional ideas that the existing norms were built to do. Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) names 24 specific norms – including performance reviews, servant leadership, and “move fast and break things” – that actively undermine the conditions for great work, and provides a measurable, team-applicable alternative for each one. She holds a position few speakers occupy: genuine technology executive experience (Apple, Autodesk, Symantec; 100+ products; $18B in revenues) combined with management research that Thinkers50 cited as among the five ideas most likely to shape business for the next twenty years. She reframes the productivity and innovation conversation away from individual behaviour change – where most leadership speakers operate – and onto the systems and norms that leaders themselves control, which is a more actionable entry point for a board or senior team. Ranked by Thinkers50 as the “#1 person most likely to influence the future of management in both theory and practice,” her work carries both intellectual authority and practical application at the senior level. Biography highlights Author of four books on organisational performance and work design: The New How (O’Reilly, 2010), 11 Rules for Creating Value in the #SocialEra (Harvard Business Review, 2012), The Power of Onlyness (Viking, 2017), and Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) Thinkers50 “Future Thinker” Award, 2013; ranked #22 globally in 2017 ranking; Thinkers50 Top 50, 2021; The Power of Onlyness shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award TED mainstage speaker; “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” ranks in the top 10% of TED’s most-viewed talks Harvard Business Review contributor; media coverage includes Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Bloomberg, Fast Company, and CNN Former executive at Apple, Autodesk, and GoLive; personally launched more than 100 products generating $18 billion in revenue across 25 years in technology Teaches business strategy and collaborative management at Stanford University and Santa Clara University; MBA, Santa Clara University Founder, The Intangible Labs; top 10 HR thinker, HR Magazine Biography Nilofer Merchant starts from an observation that most organisations resist: the management tools that delivered performance in the twentieth century are actively limiting performance now. From her position as founder of The Intangible Labs and author of four books on work design, she has spent twenty-five years building an evidence base for that claim, and an alternative. Her Onlyness framework, developed in The Power of Onlyness (Viking, 2017) and cited by Thinkers50 as one of five ideas most likely to shape business for the next twenty years, holds that modern value creation flows not from hierarchy or title, but from the distinct perspective that only each individual can bring. When organisations filter out that perspective through deference, conformity, and outdated norms, they lose the one input that capital and process cannot replicate. Our Best Work (HarperBusiness, 2026) takes that argument into the operational detail boards and leadership teams can actually act on. It names 24 specific norms – from performance reviews to servant leadership to “move fast and break things” – that suppress contribution, trust, and innovation, and pairs each with a measurable alternative. The argument is structural: the problem is not the willingness of people to perform, but the systems they are asked to perform inside. Merchant’s authority on this is grounded in operating experience. A former executive at Apple, Autodesk, and Symantec, she personally launched more than 100 products generating $18 billion in revenue. She has contributed to Harvard Business Review, been ranked #22 among the world’s top management thinkers by Thinkers50, and teaches business strategy at Stanford University and Santa Clara University. Her TED talk “Sitting Is the Smoking of Our Generation” ranks in the top 10% of TED’s most-viewed talks. Key speaking topics Organisational norms and performance systems The Onlyness framework and value creation Intangible value in modern organisations Collaborative strategy and execution Innovation and idea suppression in hierarchical structures Future of work and work design Culture change as systems change Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing or overhauling performance and culture systems CEOs and senior leadership teams asking why execution consistently falls short of strategy Chief Innovation Officers and transformation leads examining why new ideas fail to scale internally Boards and executive committees evaluating whether their management models are still fit for purpose Audience outcomes A named diagnostic framework (Onlyness) for identifying where organisational value is being systematically suppressed – and why Specific understanding of which widely adopted management practices are actively limiting innovation and contribution in their own organisations A practical model for replacing competition-based and hierarchy-based norms with trust and collaboration-based alternatives, drawn from Our Best Work‘s 24-indicator framework Language for the gap between what organisations currently measure and what actually creates value – useful for board-level and senior team conversations Concrete team-level practices applicable immediately post-session, drawn from the chapter-by-chapter practice model in Our Best Work

Why organisations work with Natalie Johnson The CultureJourney™ framework gives senior teams a working model for how culture is actually produced, organised around three named levers: energy, connection, and courage. Combines a science foundation in human performance and resilience with three decades of corporate performance coaching. Few speakers in this space work from both traditions. Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, which means buyers can book her for a keynote and for the full leadership programme from a single practitioner. Track record with organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition, including NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, and Ascension Healthcare. Biography highlights Co-founder and Chief Visionary Officer of Vidl Work, the consulting and keynote firm she leads Co-author of Leading the Culture Journey: Elevating Everyday Actions to Create Extraordinary Workplaces (Wiley, August 2026) Co-creator of the CultureJourney™ framework, used to guide culture transformation inside client organisations Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute Certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator licensed by Brené Brown’s organisation, and a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition; MSc in Wellness Promotion Co-host of the Energy, Connection & Courage at Work podcast Biography Most organisations describe their culture in terms they cannot define. Engagement scores climb and wellbeing budgets grow each year, yet senior teams still cannot explain why some groups sustain high performance while others burn out. This is the gap that the CultureJourney™ framework was built to close. Natalie Johnson developed it with her team at Vidl Work, the firm she co-founded and now leads as Chief Visionary Officer. The framework treats culture as the product of three working systems: how leaders elevate energy, how teams prioritise connection, and how leaders choose courage. The thinking is set out in Leading the Culture Journey, her 2026 book with Rebecca Johnson, published by Wiley. Her authority on the topic comes from a combination of training that few culture speakers share. Johnson holds a BSc in Human Performance and Nutrition and an MSc in Wellness Promotion. She is a Wellcoaches® Certified Coach, a Performance Coach with the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, and a certified Dare to Lead™ Facilitator. The Dare to Lead credential licenses her to deliver Brené Brown’s full leadership programme inside client organisations. Her client list spans organisations where performance under pressure is the basic operating condition: NASA, the U.S. Department of Defense, Johnson & Johnson, Deloitte, Ascension Healthcare, and the American College of Surgeons. She also sits on the board of the Kidney Cancer Association and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and culture transformation Human performance and energy management Trust and courageous conversation in teams Resilience and sustainable high performance Employee wellbeing as a performance lever Dare to Lead leadership development Ideal for Chief executives and senior leadership teams setting culture as a strategic priority CHROs and Chief People Officers running culture, engagement, and wellbeing portfolios Cross-functional teams operating under sustained change cycles: post-merger integrations, restructures, transformation programmes Leadership teams in high-pressure operating environments such as healthcare, defence, and regulated industry Organisations running Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead programme that want a licensed facilitator with deep performance science background Audience outcomes A working model for culture that names where it gets built and where it breaks down Language for linking employee wellbeing and engagement spend to commercial performance A method for holding the courageous conversations that team trust depends on, drawn from Dare to Lead Approaches for managing human energy and recovery at both individual and team level

Why organisations work with Andy Bass His Suits & Geeks Trap framework gives leaders a named, structured diagnosis for one of the most persistent and underacknowledged barriers to growth in technology-driven businesses – the breakdown between commercial and technical functions – and a clear method for resolving it. His Start With What Works thesis (Pearson) challenges the default assumption that growth requires new investment; the argument is that most organisations are sitting on underused capabilities, relationships and knowledge that can be mobilised before new capital is sought. His C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action – Curiosity, Exploration, Ownership – gives leaders a specific, repeatable method for moving people from passive compliance to genuine ownership of strategic priorities. His PhD in Software Engineering and early career at BT Research Labs give him standing inside technical organisations that a leadership generalist cannot credibly claim – he can hold the room with engineers and commercial directors simultaneously. Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) and named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange Big Thinkers panel – external recognitions of consulting practice, earned outside the speaking circuit. Biography highlights Founder and principal of BassClusker Consulting; advisory work spanning more than 30 industries across 12 countries PhD in Software Engineering and BSc in Computer Science and Ergonomics, both from Aston University; career began at BT Research Labs, Human Factors Division Executive educator at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde Business Schools; Visiting Professor in Consulting Practice, Birmingham City University Inducted into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame (2017) by Alan Weiss Author of five books including The Suits & Geeks Trap, Start With What Works (Pearson) and Committed Action Named to Ogilvy’s #ogilvychange ‘Big Thinkers’ panel of experts Corporate clients include L’Oréal, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, KPMG and International Automotive Components Group Biography In technology-driven organisations, one of the most consistent barriers to growth is not the strategy, it is the relationship between the people who build things and the people who sell them. Andy Bass, founder of BassClusker Consulting and author of The Suits & Geeks Trap, has spent over two decades working on that specific problem: helping senior leaders diagnose and close the gap between strategic intent and organisational execution. His Suits & Geeks Trap framework identifies a pattern that recurs across industries: commercial and technical teams defaulting to stereotyping and blame, with leaders drawn into refereeing internal politics rather than facing the market. The framework, developed through advisory work with organisations ranging from Deutsche Bank and L’Oréal to mid-sized growth businesses across 12 countries, gives leaders a structured way to reverse that dynamic and redirect energy toward the customer. His parallel argument, developed in Start With What Works (Pearson), challenges what he calls one of the most persistent thinking traps in business: that growth requires new investment. Bass makes the case (supported by client work across 30 industries) that most organisations have more usable capability than they recognise. The book presents practical tools for identifying and deploying those hidden assets before leaders turn to capital-intensive alternatives. His third major framework, the C.E.O. Roadmap from Committed Action, addresses the question leaders ask most consistently: why their people do not engage with strategic priorities as fully as intended. Bass’s answer, structured around Curiosity, Exploration and Ownership, gives leaders a repeatable method for building genuine commitment rather than managed compliance. His credentials span both sides of the technical-commercial divide he studies: a PhD in Software Engineering from Aston University, an early career at BT Research Labs, executive education delivered at Oxford Saïd, Warwick, Aston and Strathclyde business schools, and induction into the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame in 2017. Key speaking topics Commercial and technical team alignment Organisational learning and execution Growth strategy using existing resources Leadership and committed action Change management and strategic engagement Organisational culture in technology-driven businesses Executive decision-making and capability development Ideal for CEOs and MDs of technology-driven, engineering-led or innovation-focused organisations managing persistent commercial-technical friction Senior leadership teams where execution consistently falls short of strategic ambition CHROs and organisational development leads working on engagement, ownership and culture in mixed commercial-technical workforces Professional services, financial services, manufacturing and growth-stage businesses navigating rapid change Audience outcomes A named framework for diagnosing commercial-technical team friction – and a clear method for resolving it before it becomes a leadership crisis Practical tools for identifying underused organisational assets and applying them to growth priorities, before seeking new capital or resource The C.E.O. Roadmap – a three-stage method for building genuine team commitment rather than surface-level compliance Sharper understanding of how leadership behaviour, not strategy alone, determines whether execution succeeds Specific questions and diagnostic approaches leaders can apply immediately to unlock stalled priorities or disengaged teams

Why organisations work with Annie Lush She has led from inside the crew on the Volvo Ocean Race and The Ocean Race Europe, where a wrong call at 3am in the Southern Ocean is not a case study, it is a survival event. Leaders hear an operator, not a commentator. She was part of Team SCA in 2015, the first all-female crew to win a leg of the Volvo Ocean Race in 25 years. The lessons on what the crew built internally to close that gap translate directly to leadership teams rebuilding performance from behind. She has raced with Offshore Team Germany in mixed international IMOCA crews, giving her concrete material on how diverse, multilingual teams actually resolve disagreement at speed, rather than in the abstract. She is a match racing world champion and a 2012 Olympian, so the content on head-to-head tactical decision-making is first-hand, not borrowed. She speaks in English and Spanish and works in European, UK and international programmes without an interpreter layer. Biography highlights London 2012 Olympian, Women’s Elliott 6m match racing (7th, with Lucy and Kate MacGregor). ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Champion, Newport 2010, with further world-champion titles earlier in her match racing career. Member of Team SCA in the 2014-15 Volvo Ocean Race; crew of the first all-female Leg 8 win (Lisbon to Lorient) in a quarter century. Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18 with Team Brunel; The Ocean Race Europe 2021 and 2025 with Offshore Team Germany aboard the IMOCA “Einstein”. Cambridge Blue in rowing, sailing and rugby; member of the Cambridge crew that won the 2001 Women’s Boat Race by the narrowest margin in the race’s history. Works in English and Spanish. Biography A Volvo Ocean Race crew is four or five sailors living inside a 65-foot boat for weeks at a time, making dozens of consequential decisions a day on half-sleep. When Team SCA crossed the line at Lorient in June 2015, it was the first leg win by an all-female crew in 25 years of the race. Annie Lush was on board. That context matters for a boardroom because the sailing is the secondary story. The primary story is how a small, mixed, multilingual crew decides together when the weather model is wrong, the rival boat has picked the other side of a front, and the person on watch has been awake for 20 hours. Lush has been inside that decision loop across four offshore campaigns, including two Volvo Ocean Races and The Ocean Race Europe in 2021 and 2025 with Offshore Team Germany. Her match racing record sharpens the tactical side. She is a world champion in the Women’s Match Racing class and a London 2012 Olympian in the Elliott 6m, a boat-on-boat discipline where the reading of the opposing skipper is as important as the boat speed. Before any of that, she was a Cambridge Blue in three sports and part of the crew that won the 2001 Women’s Boat Race by the smallest margin in its history. What leaders take from her is not a metaphor about sailing. It is a working account of how trust inside a small team is built before the pressure arrives, how followership is a skill in its own right, and how a crew handles the gap between the plan on the chart table and what the sea actually does. Key speaking topics High-performance teamwork under sustained pressure Decision-making with incomplete information Leadership and followership in small mixed teams Resilience and mental endurance in extreme environments Building trust inside a crew before it is tested Performance culture and learning from losing legs Women in elite mixed-gender professional environments Ideal for Executive committees and senior leadership teams heading into a period of sustained operational pressure Transformation leads and programme directors running long-duration, multi-country teams Sales and commercial leadership offsites where decision quality under load is the theme CHROs and culture leads working on trust, followership and mixed-team performance Audience outcomes A concrete picture of how an elite offshore crew rebuilds trust after a bad leg, transferable to a team after a missed quarter Language for the difference between leadership and followership, and why strong teams need both inside the same person A usable test for when to change plan at sea, and how that maps to changing plan mid-quarter in business A more honest view of diversity in high-pressure teams, drawn from mixed international IMOCA crews rather than policy decks Specific examples of decisions made with thin data and short sleep that senior leaders recognise from their own weeks

Why organisations work with Mick Mahoney His framework treats creativity as a recoverable organisational capability. The Creative Nudge applies behavioural science to retrain how teams generate ideas, through small repeatable steps that work in regulated, risk-averse environments where standard creativity training fails. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, featuring on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. Senior buyers booking him get a practitioner with C-suite operating experience inside global holding companies. He has commercial proof that creativity moves numbers. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months, anchored on a shared creative direction. His written work is reference material in the field. The Creative Nudge has been translated into multiple languages and ranks among the best creative thinking books; The Complete Creative Director is the first comprehensive manual for the role, published by BIS Publishers. Biography highlights Cannes Grand Prix winner for Stella Artois and One Show Best in Show winner for Johnnie Walker Former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R Co-author of The Creative Nudge (Laurence King, 2021) with Kevin Chesters and author of The Complete Creative Director (BIS Publishers, 2025) Chairman of the D&AD Film Jury, Cannes Lion film judge, and D&AD Black Pencil judge Holder of 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards across his career Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; author of The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass and a TED talk on the misinterpretation of forensic science Biography Most organisations now ask for innovation more loudly than at any point in the last two decades. They also produce less of it than they used to. The cause is structural. Risk aversion and the consensus politics of polite teams quietly close down the conditions in which original ideas form. Mick Mahoney has spent thirty years working at the point where creative ambition meets commercial reality. He has been Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy UK, Havas Worldwide London, and RKCR/Y&R, with a place on Campaign‘s annual top creative directors list at all three. At Ogilvy he turned a 35% revenue decline into a 70% increase by winning twelve new business pitches in twelve months. His books treat creativity as a discipline that can be recovered with practice. The Creative Nudge, co-written with Kevin Chesters, applies behavioural science to creative practice through small repeatable steps that survive risk-averse cultures. The Complete Creative Director, published by BIS Publishers in 2025, is the first comprehensive manual for the role. His campaign work has shaped the brand identities of Stella Artois, Johnnie Walker, Vodafone, and Land Rover. He holds 16 Cannes Lions, 32 D&AD Pencils, and over 150 industry awards. He has chaired the D&AD Film Jury and written The Guardian‘s Creativity Masterclass. He now runs M Creative Industries from London, advising boards and leadership teams in regulated and traditional industries on how to put creativity back into the operating system. Key speaking topics Creativity as an organisational capability Creative leadership and creative direction Behavioural science applied to creative practice Risk aversion and the loss of creative culture Brand and advertising effectiveness Resilience and adaptive thinking under accelerating change Ideal for CMOs and brand leaders rebuilding creative confidence inside marketing and communications teams CHROs, L&D directors, and executive development leads embedding creativity into leadership development Innovation directors and transformation leads inside regulated or traditional industries that struggle to differentiate Boards and executive teams whose growth strategy depends on differentiation but whose operating habits favour caution Audience outcomes A behavioural method, drawn from The Creative Nudge, for restoring creative thinking inside risk-averse teams A practitioner’s view of how creative leadership actually operates inside global agencies and the world’s largest brands, drawn from CCO roles at Ogilvy, Havas, and RKCR/Y&R A working definition of creativity as a commercial capability, separable from artistic talent or agency-style creative theatre Permission, with evidence, to back ideas that feel uncomfortable inside conservative organisations Direct answers to the question senior leaders most often ask: how do we get more creative output from people who say they aren’t creative?

Why organisations work with Sarah Furness The H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) formula gives leaders a structured, repeatable system for sustaining performance under pressure – not a set of principles, but a behavioural methodology built from combat aviation and formal human factors instruction. Her “Practise Scared” methodology reframes discomfort as a development mechanism directly addressing the conditions under which most leadership training fails to stick. Her argument in The Uni-tasking Revolution, that focus is a competitive performance variable that organisations are systematically destroying through multitasking culture, gives senior teams a specific, actionable lens for redesigning how work gets done. She brings an instructor’s precision, not only a practitioner’s story: she taught human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, which means the frameworks she delivers have been built and tested in a formal training environment, not assembled retrospectively for a speaking career. Her status as the first female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq is not a biographical detail, it is evidence of what her approach to fear, credibility, and inclusion in high-performance cultures actually looks like in practice. Biography highlights RAF Squadron Leader; approximately 20 years of service including operational combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan First female helicopter pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq Graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge University (Natural Sciences and Theology) Instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK, Shrivenham Creator of the H.A.B.I.T.S. (Healthy Automatic Behaviours In Threatening Scenarios) performance framework and the “Practise Scared” methodology Author of two Amazon no.1 bestselling books: Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution Founder of Well Be It, an executive coaching and leadership development practice (est. 2020) Qualified mindfulness coach and human factors facilitator; trained in cognitive behavioural techniques Biography Most performance under pressure research stays theoretical. Sarah Furness spent two decades testing it as a Cambridge-educated RAF helicopter pilot, then as a Squadron Leader leading combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, then as the first female pilot to fly and lead UK Special Forces missions in Iraq. That operational record informs everything she brings to organisations. But it is not the point of the work. The point is that she identified, in conditions of genuine risk, that resilience and performance under pressure are not instinctive. They are skills. And skills can be built. This observation – simple in articulation, significant in implication – is the foundation of her H.A.B.I.T.S. framework and her “Practise Scared” methodology, both of which sit at the centre of her leadership development work. Before founding Well Be It in 2020, Furness formalised that thinking as an instructor in human performance and risk management at the Defence Academy of the UK. That background gives her frameworks a rigour that distinguishes them from testimony alone: these are methods that were built in a professional military training environment before they were taken to the boardroom. Her two no.1 bestselling books, Fly Higher and The Uni-tasking Revolution, extend the argument into self-leadership and organisational focus respectively. Together, they represent a coherent intellectual position: that the gap between how capable leaders look and how they actually perform under pressure is a structural problem, and that closing it requires deliberate behavioural practice, not motivation. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Resilience and mental performance Human factors in high-stakes decision-making Focus, attention, and uni-tasking as a performance strategy Psychological safety and growth culture Inclusive leadership and leading in the new era Decision-making and gut instinct under pressure Ideal for Senior leadership teams preparing for high-stakes change or transformation CHROs and L&D leaders building performance and resilience programmes Executive development audiences where the gap between visible capability and felt confidence is a recognised issue Organisations in sectors where pressure, speed, and accountability are structural features – professional services, financial services, defence, manufacturing, engineering Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why performance under pressure is a trainable skill, not a personality trait, with a framework for developing it Practical application of the H.A.B.I.T.S. formula and “Practise Scared” methodology to real workplace conditions A concrete argument for redesigning how attention and focus are managed at team and organisational level Greater leader confidence in decision-making under time pressure and ambiguity A reframe of fear, failure, and discomfort as development data rather than performance problems

Why organisations work with Jeremy Blain He has published the operating detail behind distributed leadership, including a five-point organisational blueprint and a 90-day implementation roadmap, so the conversation moves past intent into execution. His OpenHR framework, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, gives HR and people leaders a working model for designing a workforce that blends employees, contractors, and open talent without losing coherence. Twenty-five years operating as a CEO and board officer across the UK and Asia, including seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore, mean the boardroom register is native, not learned. Recognition from credible third parties, Gold at the 2024 Global Book Awards for Unleash the Inner CEO and ACQ5 International Gamechanger of the Year 2023, confirms the work has been independently judged on substance. He brings frameworks that travel beyond the keynote, with diagnostic tools and culture-building activities organisations can take into their own leadership development programmes. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Performance Works International, advising boards and executive teams on leadership and digital transformation. Author of The Inner CEO and the second edition Unleash the Inner CEO, both award-winning titles on distributed leadership. Co-author with Dr. Rochelle Haynes of OpenHR: The Human Capital Framework for the Blended Workforce. Fellow of the Institute of Directors, London since 2003; senior board advisor to WDHB and co-founder of the Transformational Leadership Acceleration Institute. Named International Gamechanger of the Year by ACQ5 in 2023. Featured in Forbes, The Times of London, CEO Today, Dialogue by Duke CE, and Business Matters; host of the Rethink Leadership podcast. Biography Distributed leadership has been talked about for two decades. What has been missing is a working model that boards and operating committees can actually run. Jeremy Blain has spent his career building that model, first as a CEO and board officer in the UK and Asia, and now as the founder of Performance Works International. The argument is set out in The Inner CEO and its updated second edition, Unleash the Inner CEO, which won Gold in the Business Leadership category at the 2024 Global Book Awards. The book offers a five-point blueprint for the conditions, structures, and processes that make distributed leadership operational, plus a 90-day roadmap for managers and individual contributors. It is closer to an implementation manual than a thesis. A second strand of the work, OpenHR, co-authored with Dr. Rochelle Haynes, addresses what happens when the workforce itself is no longer a single category. As organisations blend employees, contractors, freelancers, and open talent, traditional human capital systems strain. OpenHR offers a framework, glossary, and templates for designing people strategy across that mix. The credibility behind the frameworks is operational. Seven years running an international consultancy from Singapore. Twenty-five years in corporate learning and human capital. Senior board roles at WDHB and the Intercontinental School of Economics and Applied Sciences. ACQ5 named him International Gamechanger of the Year in 2023, and his commentary appears in Forbes, The Times of London, and Dialogue by Duke CE. Boards work with him because the prescriptions come with the receipts. Key speaking topics Distributed leadership as an operating model Digital and AI transformation for boards and executive teams Human capital strategy for the blended workforce Empowerment and accountability at scale Leadership development across multinational and multi-generational teams Culture and capability for hybrid, AI-enabled organisations Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and executive committees rewiring decision rights and accountability across the organisation CHROs and chief people officers designing for a workforce that combines full-time, contract, and open talent Boards reviewing the leadership and culture preconditions for digital and AI transformation Transformation, change, and leadership development leads building scalable programmes across regions Audience outcomes A clearer view of where authority and accountability are misaligned in their own organisation A practical reference model for distributing leadership without losing strategic coherence A framework for designing human capital strategy across employees, contractors, and open talent Specific diagnostic questions to take into the next executive committee or board agenda Language for confronting the gap between stated leadership values and observed leadership behaviour

Why organisations work with Nikki Bhamra Her frameworks for identifying blind spots and challenging assumptions come directly from twenty years of investigative work in human trafficking and serious organised crime – professional contexts where flawed judgement had irreversible consequences, not theoretical ones. She makes a specific, teachable argument: that most leadership failures are not information problems but reasoning problems caused by how leaders question, filter, and challenge what they already know. As a certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner, she combines forensic thinking with structured behavioural profiling, enabling her to work at depth on team dynamics and communication, not only from the keynote stage. Her work has been applied in regulated, high-accountability environments: the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and financial services: organisations where decision quality and trust are operational risks, not soft skills. She has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme, applying her investigative-informed approach to decision quality and trust to senior leadership development. Biography highlights Senior Crime Investigator for over two decades, leading complex operations into human trafficking and serious organised crime in UK law enforcement Founder and CEO of Peak Potential Group, a bespoke leadership development company Certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner CIPD-qualified; member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the Professional Speaking Association Has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme TEDx speaker; Highly Commended, Speaker Bookers Choice, Speaker Awards Clients include Metro Bank, the NHS, and the Crown Prosecution Service Biography Nikki Bhamra spent over two decades as a Senior Crime Investigator in UK law enforcement, leading operations into human trafficking and serious organised crime. In that environment, an unchallenged assumption or a question left unasked could have irreversible consequences. The discipline required to surface the truth – not the convenient version – is the foundation of everything she now brings to organisations. Her central argument is precise and useful: most leadership errors are not caused by a lack of information. They are caused by how leaders question, filter, and challenge the information already in front of them. Blind spots, confirmation bias, and the absence of psychological safety allow flawed thinking to compound quietly, in everyday conversations, not only in moments of obvious crisis. The cost shows up in decisions, culture, and trust. Bhamra is a certified Insights Discovery psychometric practitioner and CIPD-qualified, which means she operates at both the conceptual and structural levels: forensic questioning frameworks alongside behavioural profiling, tailored to the specific dynamics of a leadership team. She is Founder and CEO of Peak Potential Group, through which she delivers bespoke leadership programmes as well as keynotes. Her work has been applied in regulated, high-accountability environments: the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service, and financial services. She has delivered sessions on the University of Cambridge Master’s in Leadership programme. She is a TEDx speaker and was recognised as Highly Commended in the Speaker Bookers Choice category at the Speaker Awards. Key speaking topics Leadership decision-making under pressure Blind spots, bias, and judgement errors Forensic questioning and evidence-based reasoning Trust-building in high-stakes environments Psychological safety and speaking up High-performance team dynamics Communication in complex and regulated environments Ideal for Senior leadership teams and executive cohorts in high-pressure, complex, or regulated industries Risk, compliance, and governance functions where decision quality and trust are operationally critical CHROs and L&D leaders building leadership capability programmes with a behavioural science foundation Boards and transformation leads treating decision quality and leadership culture as measurable strategic risks Audience outcomes A practical framework for identifying blind spots and surfacing unchecked assumptions before they affect decisions or culture Structured questioning techniques drawn from investigative practice, applicable immediately to leadership conversations and team dynamics Greater understanding of how confirmation bias, selective attention, and faulty assumption affect judgement – and what to do about it Concrete approaches to building psychological safety and trust in teams, grounded in behavioural evidence rather than aspiration Increased awareness of the everyday communication patterns that either strengthen or erode credibility and leadership effectiveness under pressure