Change Management

Why organisations work with Christopher Howell He makes creativity visible as a method, not a mood. Magic gives the audience a direct experience of being wrong about what they just saw, which is a short route into discussions of assumption, bias and fixed thinking. His Project Illusions workshops have been booked into hard commercial environments, including a session for 25 senior leaders at Linklaters, then recognised as the FT’s most innovative law firm. He combines performer craft with coaching training, which means the content lands as a workshop, not a cabaret. Participants leave with techniques they can rehearse, not a memory of a show. His client list spans regulated professional services, global consumer brands and technology, including KPMG, Google, Procter and Gamble, BBC, Volkswagen, Danone and Arup. The material travels across sector and seniority. The format is unusually memorable in a category where most innovation keynotes blur together. For audiences that have sat through too many decks on disruption, his session is the one they still quote a year later. Biography highlights Member of The Magic Circle and Equity, trained under Jeff McBride and the late Eugene Burger, two of the most influential figures in late twentieth century stage magic. Founder of Project Illusions, a creativity and innovation programme delivered to BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters. Delivered a senior leadership workshop at Linklaters during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, with a named endorsement from its Director of Strategy. Co-producer of the touring variety show Norvil and Josephine with Guinness World Record acrobat Desiree Kongerod. Performed at The Magic Castle (Hollywood), Wintergarten (Berlin), Hackney Empire and the Houses of Parliament. Holds a BA in Theatre Arts from Richmond University, London, classical singing training from Accademia Filarmonica, Bologna, and a Diploma in Life Coaching from Newcastle College. Supporter of Breathe Arts Health Research, which uses magic as occupational therapy for children with hemiplegia. Biography Creativity is the word every strategy deck asks for and every operating model quietly punishes. The gap between what leadership says it wants and what the working week actually rewards is where innovation programmes tend to die. Howell’s work starts in that gap. Project Illusions, the enterprise he founded, is built on a simple claim that is harder than it sounds: creativity is a skill, not a personality trait, and skills can be taught. The method uses magic as the teaching instrument. A trick lands because the audience held an assumption the performer quietly reframed. That mechanic, made explicit, becomes a workable model for how people get stuck on problems at work and how they get unstuck. The material has been delivered inside some of the less forgiving rooms in corporate life. BBC, Google, KPMG, Procter and Gamble, Volkswagen, Arup, Danone and Linklaters have all booked it. The Linklaters session, run for twenty-five senior leaders during the firm’s tenure as the Financial Times’ most innovative law firm, produced a named on-record endorsement from its Director of Strategy. Howell brings the training of a Magic Circle performer with mentors including Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger, a classical theatre and singing background, and a coaching qualification that keeps the sessions oriented around participant practice rather than spectacle. What separates his sessions from the usual innovation keynote is the evidence of change in the room. People who have just watched an assumption of their own dismantled in front of colleagues tend to hold their next assumption more lightly. That is the point. The magic is the teaching aid. The outcome is a group that leaves with a rehearsed way to question how they think. Key speaking topics Creativity as a trainable skill Innovation and change Problem solving under constraint Creative leadership Assumption and bias in decision making Personal and professional development Performance and presence Ideal for Senior leadership groups running innovation, transformation or strategy offsites Partners and directors in professional services firms facing commoditisation pressure Communications, marketing and brand teams looking for a culture-shifting plenary session Conferences and internal events where the brief is to make creativity stick rather than sound good Audience outcomes A working definition of creativity as a skill, with techniques that can be practised rather than admired. A shared language in the room for spotting assumptions, biases and default patterns in how teams approach problems. Specific methods for breaking fixed thinking, drawn from the craft of stage illusion and tested in coaching practice. A memorable shared experience that anchors follow-up work on innovation and change long after the session ends.

Why organisations work with Claire Harper She has run senior marketing inside three of the UK’s most scrutinised retail brands, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, and Argos, during periods of leadership change and digital pivot. She has also done the founder’s job: built IndiaCoco from a dining-table operation to an award-winning multi-channel children’s brand, with the cash-flow scars to prove it. She translates board-level brand strategy into the operating decisions marketing teams actually face the next morning, on pricing, range, channel mix, and acquisition. Her current commercial leadership at London Pulse Netball gives her live material on building a consumer brand in women’s sport, a sector under significant commercial expansion. One credential that travels: first female board director at Mamas & Papas, brought in to scale the brand domestically and internationally. Biography highlights First Head of Customer Acquisition and PR at Ocado, later Head of Marketing during the company’s grocery delivery breakthrough. Head of Online Marketing at Sainsbury’s during Justin King’s turnaround programme. First female board director at Mamas & Papas, with international brand remit. Founder of IndiaCoco childrenswear; winner of Theo Paphitis Small Business Sunday and Jacqueline Gold WOW awards. Non-Executive Director at Blue Diamond Garden Centres; former Marketing Director at Frosts Garden Centres. Currently leading commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball in the Netball Super League. Biography Ocado was a niche online grocer when Claire Harper joined at 26 as its first Head of Customer Acquisition and PR. By the time she had been promoted to Head of Marketing, the company was redrawing what UK households expected from a weekly shop. That early bet on customer behaviour, before the category had a name, set the pattern for the rest of her career. She moved into Sainsbury’s as Head of Online Marketing during Justin King’s “Make Sainsbury’s Great Again” turnaround, and into Argos during a hostile-takeover period that forced the brand to confront multi-channel reality. Both roles asked the same question: how do you keep a customer proposition coherent while the leadership and operating model are being rebuilt around it. At Mamas & Papas she became the first female board director, charged with scaling the brand internationally. She then founded IndiaCoco, a British childrenswear brand that grew from her dining room into a multi-channel business and picked up backing from Theo Paphitis and Jacqueline Gold. The founder years gave her the commercial discipline that corporate marketing budgets rarely teach. She now sits on the board at Blue Diamond Garden Centres and leads commercial and marketing for London Pulse Netball, one of the fastest-growing franchises in the Netball Super League. Audiences get a speaker who has run the brand from inside the boardroom and from inside a single-founder profit and loss, in retail categories where the customer is the only honest scoreboard. Key speaking topics Customer-led brand strategy in multi-channel retail Marketing leadership through restructure and ownership change Building consumer brands from founder stage to scale Commercial growth in women’s sport Non-executive contribution to consumer businesses Women’s leadership in retail and consumer industries Ideal for CMOs, brand directors, and customer experience leaders in consumer retail Boards and NEDs at consumer-facing businesses navigating ownership or strategic change Founders and scale-up leadership teams in DTC and consumer categories Sponsors, commercial partners, and leadership in women’s sport Audience outcomes A working view of how customer insight should sit at the centre of commercial decisions, not at the end of them Practical reference points from inside Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Argos, and Mamas & Papas during periods of strategic change A clearer sense of where founder discipline and corporate scale-marketing diverge, and what each can borrow from the other A current read on the commercial mechanics of women’s sport as a consumer category

Why organisations work with Claire Williams A rare first-hand credential: one of only two women to have ever led a Formula 1 team, with seven years of operational accountability across a 1,800-person organisation. She negotiated the 2020 sale of Williams Racing to Dorilton Capital, securing the team’s future at a point when commercial terms and the pandemic were squeezing independent teams out of the sport. A commercial track record with specific deals attached, including a reported £65M sponsorship with Unilever and the growth of what became WAE Technologies, later acquired by Fortescue. A demonstrable record on representation: during her tenure, the proportion of women at Williams reached 17.6%, the highest in the F1 paddock, and she gave Susie Wolff her first F1 race weekend drive by a woman since 1992. Currently a recurring expert analyst on Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which keeps her commentary connected to the races and decisions audiences already follow. Biography highlights Deputy Team Principal of Williams Racing, 2013 to 2020, with day-to-day operational control of the Formula 1 team. Led Williams to consecutive third-place finishes in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and 2015, the team’s best results since 2003. Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to Formula 1, awarded in the 2016 Birthday Honours. Brand Ambassador for Fortescue WAE (formerly Williams Advanced Engineering), the green-technologies business she helped grow during her tenure. Vice President of the Spinal Injuries Association; founded the Sir Frank Williams Academy for spinal cord injury care in April 2023. Recurring expert analyst on Netflix’s Drive to Survive, including the 2024 and 2025 editions. Biography The Formula 1 paddock runs on non-negotiable deadlines and live public scrutiny. Every operational decision lands against a fixed calendar of race weekends, with 1,800 staff to align and investors watching results on Sunday. Claire Williams ran Williams Racing in this environment for seven seasons as Deputy Team Principal, from 2013 to 2020. She took over day-to-day operation from her father, Sir Frank Williams, in 2013. The team had just come through some of the weakest years in its history. She replaced the race drivers, restructured the engineering department, switched to Mercedes engines, and secured the sponsorship deals that funded the rebuild. Williams finished third in the Constructors’ Championship in 2014 and again in 2015, its best results since 2003. Fortescue WAE grew under her watch from an internal sustainability unit into a commercial R&D business later acquired by Fortescue. The proportion of women at Williams reached 17.6%, the highest in the paddock. In 2014, Susie Wolff drove a Williams in a practice session, the first F1 race weekend drive by a woman since 1992. The OBE followed in 2016, for services to the sport. The final chapter was the hardest to execute. Faced with commercial terms that favoured the top teams and the financial impact of the pandemic, she negotiated the sale of Williams Racing to Dorilton Capital in August 2020. She stepped down after the Italian Grand Prix the following month. The sale secured the team’s future under new ownership after more than four decades of Williams family leadership in the sport. Key speaking topics Leadership in high-pressure, high-scrutiny environments High-performance team culture at scale Elite decision-making and operational accountability Commercial turnaround and succession Women in leadership in traditionally closed sectors Safety, risk, and learning cultures Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and boards running organisations under sustained public scrutiny Senior leadership teams in high-stakes or heavily regulated sectors (financial services, sport, energy, aerospace) CHROs and heads of talent building high-performance cultures or advancing gender representation in traditionally closed sectors Transformation leaders and programme sponsors running commercial rebuilds or succession-stage handovers Audience outcomes A first-hand view of leadership inside a Formula 1 team under constant competitive and commercial pressure Reference points from elite-sport operations on accountability and how high-performing teams handle failure at scale A sharper read on what a commercial rebuild followed by a distressed exit requires from the person at the top A credible account of how representation is built in a closed sector, told through named decisions and measurable results

Why organisations work with Sir Clive Woodward Built the same culture system in two radically different contexts. In rugby, England moved from sixth in the world to World Cup winners. Across Team GB’s 26 Olympic sports he contributed to the country’s most successful modern Games at London 2012. The framework travels. His “Teamship” model is a written operational system. England’s Black Book ran to roughly 240 rules across 35 sections, drafted and owned by the players themselves. Audiences work with a documented method they can apply. One of the very few elite sports coaches to have codified his own methodology into an enterprise learning platform. As founder and former chairman of Hive Learning, built with digital venture builder Blenheim Chalcot in 2012, he grew a client base that included Sky, Deloitte, Jaguar Land Rover, PepsiCo, Halma and the International Olympic Committee. Named tools audiences can use: Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials. Each is a specific leadership discipline with a defined practice. Biography highlights Head Coach of the England men’s rugby union team from 1997 to 2004, winning the 2003 Rugby World Cup. England reached world number one during his tenure and remain the only Northern Hemisphere side to have won a World Cup. Director of Sport at the British Olympic Association, supporting Team GB across the Beijing, Vancouver and London Olympic Games. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. Head Coach of the British & Irish Lions for their 2005 tour to New Zealand. Founder and former chairman of Hive Learning, the digital learning platform he built with Blenheim Chalcot in 2012, whose clients have included Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover. Author of Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019), both setting out the Teamship methodology. Awarded an OBE for services to rugby in 2002 and knighted in the 2004 New Year Honours, and a World Rugby Hall of Fame inductee; currently a member of the IOC Entourage Commission and Director of Sport at the APEX2100 International Ski Academy in Tignes. A former England international and British & Irish Lion: 21 England caps between 1980 and 1984, a member of the 1980 Grand Slam side, and a Lions tourist in 1980 and 1983. Biography England rugby were sixth in the world when Woodward took the head coach’s role in 1997. Six years later the team lifted the Rugby World Cup in Sydney, holding the world number one ranking and an unbeaten home record at Twickenham. England remain the only Northern Hemisphere team to have won the tournament. The underlying framework was what Woodward called Teamship: a written, player-owned set of behavioural standards covering everything from punctuality to media conduct. The Black Book that held these rules ran to roughly 240 entries across 35 sections. Its premise was that values only matter when they translate into specific daily behaviours, and that the team should write those rules itself. He took the same approach into the British Olympic Association from 2006, serving as Team GB’s Director of Sport through the Beijing, Vancouver and London cycles. London 2012 produced Britain’s most successful modern Games by medal count. The task across 26 Olympic sports was closer to running a diversified business than to coaching a single squad. In 2012 he founded Hive Learning with Blenheim Chalcot, codifying the Teamship approach into an enterprise learning platform whose clients came to include Sky, Deloitte and Jaguar Land Rover. His books Winning! (2004) and How to Win (2019) document the same method in full. The underlying conviction: culture is a design problem, and the rules that sustain it should be written down. Key speaking topics High-performance culture Leadership under pressure Team performance and behavioural standards Building winning teams Learning cultures Performance in elite environments Culture change across large, federated organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards treating culture as a measurable performance lever CEOs, CPOs and heads of learning leading organisation-wide behaviour and capability programmes Leadership teams integrating businesses after mergers or major reorganisations Organisations operating in high-stakes environments where team cohesion directly affects outcomes Audience outcomes A working method for writing behavioural standards that teams author and enforce themselves, drawn directly from England’s Black Book Specific language for diagnosing culture problems in behavioural terms A framework for running performance culture change across large, federated organisations where no single leader commands the whole system Perspective on building through setbacks, grounded in the six-year arc between the 1999 and 2003 Rugby World Cup campaigns Named leadership tools including Teamship, TCUP (thinking correctly under pressure), the DNA of a Champion and critical non-essentials

Why organisations work with Colleen Francis She reframes where growth actually comes from. Her Right on the Money thesis argues that the installed base, not the prospecting funnel, is the primary engine of bold growth, and gives revenue leaders a playbook for acting on it. She closes the gap between sales strategy and sales behaviour. Her work with Chevron, Merck, Royal Bank, John Deere and Dow is focused on what frontline sellers and managers actually do differently on Monday morning. She brings a full-cycle pipeline discipline rather than a single tactic. Nonstop Sales Boom is built around ending the boom-and-bust cycle through continuous engagement, qualification shared with the buyer, and disciplined prioritisation. She carries the credentials that senior audiences expect without leaning on them. Induction into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame and the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame is the signal; the room is there for the argument. Biography highlights Founder and President, Engage Selling Solutions. Author of Right on the Money: New Principles for Bold Growth (Morgan James, 2022), Nonstop Sales Boom, and Honesty Sells. Inductee, Professional Speakers Hall of Fame. Inductee, Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame, and past President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers. Named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales. Keynote speaker at Dreamforce and MDRT Experience, with client work across Chevron, John Deere, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, Dow, Adobe and Salesforce. Biography Most B2B organisations still build their growth model around new-logo acquisition. The numbers tell a different story. The accounts already inside the house are usually under-penetrated, under-priced, and handed off to service teams the moment the contract signs. Colleen Francis has spent more than twenty years arguing that this is where bold growth is actually hiding, and building the systems that let revenue leaders reach it. That argument is the spine of Right on the Money, published by Morgan James in 2022, and the thread that runs through Engage Selling Solutions, the firm she founded and leads. Her earlier book, Nonstop Sales Boom, sets out the other half of the discipline: ending the boom-and-bust quarter by treating pipeline generation, deal progression, customer retention and account expansion as one connected system, not four competing ones. The work is built on client evidence, not theory. Engage Selling has run programmes with Chevron, John Deere, Merck, Abbott, Experian, Royal Bank, Dow, Adobe and Salesforce, among others. Francis speaks on the main stages these clients attend, including Dreamforce and MDRT Experience, and has been named a LinkedIn Top Voice for Sales. The credentials are there – induction into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame and the Canadian Speaking Hall of Fame, past President of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers – but the reason senior revenue leaders book her is simpler. She tells a sales organisation what to stop doing, with specifics, and then what to do instead. Key speaking topics Sales strategy and commercial growth Account expansion and customer retention Pipeline discipline and revenue predictability Sales leadership and frontline management Buyer behaviour and modern B2B selling Sales transformation in mature businesses Ideal for Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Sales Officers and VPs of Sales running large distributed sales organisations. Senior sales leadership audiences inside B2B businesses where retention and expansion matter more than new-logo volume. Partner, channel and enterprise account leaders responsible for growing inside existing customers. Sales kickoffs and annual conferences looking for a commercial keynote with a practical, named methodology. Audience outcomes A clear commercial case for treating the installed customer base as the primary growth engine, with the metrics to defend it. Named behaviours that separate consistent sales teams from boom-and-bust ones, at both rep and manager level. A sharper view of where pipeline is leaking – qualification, handoff, account planning – and which of those to fix first. Language senior sales leaders can take straight into their next QBR on retention, expansion and forecast discipline.

Why organisations work with Connie Dieken The Influence360° assessment is the only validated psychometric instrument built specifically to measure how individual leaders influence stakeholders. Organisations gain hard data on a capability they have previously only been able to assess anecdotally – or not at all. The Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, developed through more than 15 years of research with over 20,000 participants, gives leadership teams a shared, actionable language for a problem most organisations misdiagnose as a personality issue rather than a learnable skill gap. Twenty years interviewing presidents and global CEOs for ABC and NBC gave Dieken direct observational data on how influence operates under pressure and at scale. That empirical foundation is not available from the executive coaching mainstream. Her training programmes are licensed in corporate universities worldwide and both her Wiley books reached No. 1 on Amazon and Audible – which means her frameworks carry weight in the room before she enters it. Membership of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, a highly selective global practitioner community, places her within the most rigorously vetted executive coaching cohort in the world and signals peer-level recognition, not self-designation. Biography highlights Founder of Influence360°, a validated leadership influence assessment, and The Dieken Group, a C-suite executive advisory firm operating on five continents Author of two Wiley bestsellers: Talk Less, Say More (Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology) and Become the Real Deal (Three Layers of Presence and Return on Influence® framework) Five-time Emmy Award winner and inductee of the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame Named Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches (2019) Guest lecturer in executive education and MBA programmes at Case Western University, Indiana University, and Ohio State University Thought leadership featured in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times Biography Most leaders believe they are more persuasive than others experience them. Connie Dieken, a broadcast journalist for ABC and NBC for two decades, built her career on closing that gap. Interviewing presidents and global CEOs, she identified the patterns that divided leaders who drove genuine action from those who merely spoke at people. That observation became a research project. Fifteen years of structured study involving more than 20,000 participants produced the Influence360° assessment, a validated instrument for measuring how leaders influence stakeholders. Two Wiley bestsellers followed: Talk Less, Say More, built on the Connect-Convey-Convince® methodology, and Become the Real Deal, which introduced the Three Layers of Presence and the Return on Influence® concept. The Dieken Group now advises C-suite executives at organisations including Coca-Cola, HP, Nestlé, BNP Paribas, and The Cleveland Clinic. Her influence training programmes are licensed in corporate universities on five continents. She is a guest lecturer in executive education at Case Western, Indiana, and Ohio State universities, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. Dieken has been inducted into the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame, the National Speakers Association Speakers Hall of Fame, and the Million Dollar Consulting Hall of Fame. She has been named a Top 10 Executive Coach globally by the Global Gurus organisation and has delivered keynotes on four continents to audiences numbering in the thousands. Key speaking topics Leadership influence and stakeholder commitment Executive presence and authentic authority Influential communication under pressure Change leadership and stakeholder buy-in Human influence and decision-making in AI-shaped organisations Presentation strategy and persuasion Leadership assessment and behavioural diagnostics Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating change, mergers, or strategic realignment where stakeholder buy-in is the critical variable CHROs and talent leaders designing executive development programmes where influence and presence are identified capability gaps Sales leadership and commercial functions where the ability to earn commitment is a direct performance driver Boards and executive committees seeking a research-grounded framework for developing leadership effectiveness at the top Audience outcomes A clear diagnostic of their personal influence pattern, including where they are most likely to lose stakeholder commitment and why A three-step methodology – Connect, Convey, Convince – they can apply immediately to high-stakes conversations, presentations, and change initiatives Understanding of the Three Layers of Presence and how inner, outer, and verbal presence affect their credibility with senior stakeholders Frameworks to distinguish between genuine influence and manipulation, and to lead without coercion or compliance-seeking Practical tools for navigating resistance from difficult stakeholders, including those who are dominant, anxious, or disengaged

Why organisations work with Corinna Pommerening Specific authority in the German Mittelstand and regional banking layer, where most international leadership speakers have no credible footprint. Two Springer Gabler and GABAL books arguing a structured thesis on leadership change inside the financial sector, not a generic leadership platform applied to banking. Treats employer brand and leadership culture as one programme rather than two HR projects, which is how regional banks actually experience the talent problem. Customer advisory seat at HASPA, Germany’s largest savings bank, anchors the work in a real institutional setting rather than a consultancy abstraction. Delivers in German and English, with formats from keynote to working session, suited to bank executive committees and supervisory-board offsites. Biography highlights Author of “New Leadership im Finanzsektor,” Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022. Author of “Digitale Regionalokonomie,” GABAL Verlag, 2023. Host of “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast, 140+ episodes. Co-founder of Ecosystems 4 Business AG. Member of the customer advisory board, Hamburger Sparkasse (HASPA). Certified employer brand manager; guest lecturer at the University of Wismar; Industry Insider with trend-research firm TRENDONE. Biography Most regional banks in Germany are running two redesigns at once. The business model is being rebuilt around digital and platform competition, and the workforce that has to deliver that rebuild is harder to keep and harder to recruit than at any point in the sector’s history. Treating those as separate projects is why so many programmes stall. Corinna Pommerening’s argument, set out in “New Leadership im Finanzsektor” (Springer Gabler, 2020; second edition 2022), is that leadership culture and employer brand are the same problem in a regional bank. Courage and responsibility have to move down from the executive layer, silo working has to give way to networked teams, and the institution has to become legible to the talent it wants. Her second book, “Digitale Regionalokonomie” (GABAL Verlag, 2023), extends the case to the regional economy these banks sit inside. The work has institutional grounding. She sits on the customer advisory board of Hamburger Sparkasse, Germany’s largest savings bank, co-founded Ecosystems 4 Business AG, and runs the “Leadership neu gedacht!” podcast across more than 140 episodes with senior practitioners in the financial sector. A certified employer brand manager and guest lecturer at the University of Wismar, she works in German and English, with formats running from board-level keynote to executive working session. What she gives a Sparkassen, Volksbank, or Mittelstand executive team is rare in the wider speaker market: an authoritative outside voice that already understands the regulatory, cultural and talent context they operate in, and that has written the book on the leadership shift the institution has to make. Key speaking topics New leadership in the financial sector Leadership culture in mid-market and regional banks Employer branding for the Mittelstand Future skills and workforce capability Digital and cultural transformation in regional economies Distributed responsibility and networked working Ideal for Executive boards and supervisory boards of Sparkassen, cooperative banks and regional commercial banks CHROs and HR directors in mid-market financial institutions Mittelstand CEOs running combined leadership and talent agendas Regional economic development bodies and bank-association events Audience outcomes A clearer read on why leadership culture and employer brand fail when run as separate programmes A working model for moving responsibility and decision-making down through a bank’s hierarchy Specific positions to take on future skills, lifelong learning and knowledge-sharing inside the institution A view of the regional bank as part of a regional economic ecosystem, not an isolated operator Language that supervisory boards and executive committees can use to align on the leadership shift

Why organisations work with Costas Markides His “Fast Second” argument runs directly counter to first-mover advantage orthodoxy: established firms should let small entrepreneurial companies take the risk of discovering new markets, then move in as consolidators once a market has been validated. That counter-intuitive thesis – developed with Paul Geroski and shortlisted for the FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year – changes how organisations think about where to place innovation investment. His framework for “playing two business models at the same time” addresses a structural problem that most strategy advice sidesteps: how a firm competes in its existing market while also contesting the model that is disrupting it. He identifies specific conditions under which this works, and the organisational reasons why it usually fails. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact case study credits his work as the first to identify the “business model” as a concept distinct from product innovation – a distinction that gives organisations a more precise lens for analysing competitive threats and deciding which type of response a given disruption actually demands. His ideas on business model innovation have been formally adopted by Nestlé, Roche, and If Insurance as the basis for executive transformation programmes – documented in the REF 2014 public record, not claimed from a speaker circuit. He has appeared on the Thinkers50 list of the world’s top management thinkers every year since 2005, and was ranked 31st in 2011 – a sustained peer recognition that reflects a body of work rather than a single book cycle. Biography highlights Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership; Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School (since 1990) MBA and DBA, Harvard Business School; BA (Distinction) and MA in Economics, Boston University Thinkers50 listing every year since 2005; ranked 31st in 2011; named in Forbes.com “Most Influential Management Gurus” 2009 Author of six books including Fast Second (shortlisted FT/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year 2005) and All the Right Moves (shortlisted Igor Ansoff Strategic Management Award 2000) Published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Academy of Management Journal Board of Directors, Strategic Management Society; World Economic Forum participant, Davos Biography The hardest question for an established company facing disruption is not whether to respond – it is which response will not destroy the model that made it successful. Costas Markides has spent three decades at London Business School studying exactly that problem, building a body of research that challenges the accepted wisdom on disruption at almost every point. His most counter-intuitive contribution is the “Fast Second” thesis, developed with Paul Geroski: large established companies are structurally poor at discovering radical new markets and should not try to be first. Their role is to move in once a market has been validated – as consolidators, not pioneers. That argument, shortlisted for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Management Book of the Year, reframes how organisations think about where innovation investment belongs. His subsequent research sharpened the strategic question further. Game-Changing Strategies (2008) and Business Model Innovation (2023) identify the conditions under which an established firm can disrupt its own disruptor – and the structural reasons most firms fail when they try. A UK Research Excellence Framework impact assessment credits his work as the first to distinguish “business model innovation” from product innovation as a separate strategic concept – a distinction now embedded in how companies like Nestlé and Roche have approached their own transformation programmes. Markides holds the Robert P. Bauman Chair of Strategic Leadership and has held a faculty position at LBS since 1990. His appearance on the Thinkers50 list every year since 2005 reflects continuity of contribution rather than a single publication; his most recent book, Diversification in the World of Data and AI (2025), extends his long-running framework into the context of AI-driven market change. Key speaking topics Business model innovation for established firms Strategic response to disruption Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation culture Strategic innovation and new market creation Growth strategy for incumbents Managing two business models simultaneously Diversification strategy in the age of AI Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and strategy leadership teams at large established companies facing competitive disruption Boards and senior executive teams evaluating major decisions about business model change or market entry Executive education cohorts focused on corporate strategy, innovation leadership, and competitive positioning Transformation leads and heads of innovation at organisations initiating enterprise-wide strategic renewal Audience outcomes A framework for categorising the type of disruption the organisation faces and the range of available responses Understanding of why the most commonly reached-for responses to disruption tend to fail, based on documented research rather than case-study selection bias A practical structure for assessing when and how to pursue two business models simultaneously without fracturing the existing one Clearer distinction between business model innovation and product innovation as strategic challenges requiring different organisational approaches A more accurate mental model of when large established firms can realistically pioneer new markets – and when they should not try

Why organisations work with Cy Wakeman She quantifies the cost of workplace drama in hours and dollars, giving HR and operations leaders a financial case for cultural change that executive committees actually fund. Her Reality-Based Leadership method directly contradicts the dominant engagement-survey playbook, which makes her useful to organisations whose engagement scores rise while performance does not. Four books, including the New York Times bestseller The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, give her a coherent body of work that scales beyond the keynote into manager training, coaching, and certification. She has been ranked the world’s #1 leadership guru on the Global Gurus list for three consecutive years and is a 2024 inductee into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame, placing her in the top tier of professional platform speakers globally. Her client roster spans Google, Meta, Pfizer, NASA, Bank of America, NBCUniversal, and major US health systems, which gives her language credibility across both highly regulated and high-growth environments. Biography highlights Founder of Reality-Based Leadership, an executive coaching and culture consultancy operating since 2001. Author of Reality-Based Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2010), New York Times bestseller The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace (2013), No Ego (2017), and Life’s Messy, Live Happy (2022). Ranked #1 on the Global Gurus Top 30 Leadership Professionals list in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Certified Speaking Professional and 2024 inductee into the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame via the Council of Peers Award of Excellence. Regular contributor to Forbes, Success, Huffington Post, and Thrive Global; featured in The New York Times, Business Insider, and SHRM. Clients include Google, Meta, Pfizer, NASA, NBCUniversal, Bank of America, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford Health Care. Biography Most organisations treat engagement as the answer to cultural underperformance. Wakeman’s research argues the opposite. Engagement without accountability produces entitlement, and the cost shows up as emotional waste: gossip, venting, resistance, and rehearsed grievance that her work estimates at roughly two and a half hours per employee per day. That framing is the spine of Reality-Based Leadership, the consultancy she founded in 2001 and the title of her 2010 Jossey-Bass book. The follow-up, The Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace, reached the New York Times bestseller list in 2013. No Ego in 2017 sharpened the argument: leaders should stop arguing with reality on behalf of their teams and start coaching people to work within it. Her client roster covers the full span where this argument lands hardest. Google, Meta, and NBCUniversal on the high-growth side. Pfizer, NASA, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford Health Care on the regulated and mission-driven side. The work tends to follow a familiar pattern: senior teams that have invested heavily in culture programmes, with strong engagement scores and stubbornly weak performance, retention, or change-readiness. Recognition has tracked the substance. The Global Gurus list ranked her #1 leadership professional in 2021, 2022, and 2023. In 2024 the National Speakers Association inducted her into its Hall of Fame through the Council of Peers Award of Excellence, a designation held by fewer than 300 speakers worldwide. Key speaking topics Reality-Based Leadership Workplace drama and emotional waste Accountability cultures Employee engagement that produces results Change readiness No-ego leadership Ideal for CHROs and heads of culture working on the gap between engagement scores and performance. Senior operating leaders dealing with change fatigue and low accountability in their teams. Healthcare, financial services, and regulated-sector executives managing retention and frontline morale at scale. Manager populations being trained out of conflict-avoidance and into direct, accountable conversations. Audience outcomes A concrete language for naming and pricing the cost of workplace drama in their own teams. Practical tools to redirect employee energy from grievance into contribution. A working distinction between engagement and accountability, and why most cultural investment confuses the two. A coaching approach for managers facing resistance to change without escalating conflict. Permission to stop arguing with reality on behalf of their teams and start leading inside it.

Why organisations work with Damon Hill His championship was not won from a position of privilege or natural advantage. Hill self-financed his junior career, started F1 with a team that folded mid-season, and was dismissed by Williams on the day he became World Champion. The argument for persistence and composure under adversity is the literal story of his career, not a theme applied to it afterwards. Across three consecutive seasons his primary rival was Michael Schumacher. In two of them, the championship was settled at the final race. That direct, tested experience of executing under maximum competitive scrutiny, when everything is at stake and a better-resourced rival is closing, is specific to him and cannot be replicated by other speakers in this topic area. As one of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to win the title themselves, Hill brings a distinctive perspective on performing under inherited expectation, legacy pressure, and public scrutiny; a dynamic immediately recognisable to second-generation business leaders, acquired organisations, and teams carrying institutional reputations. His autobiography, Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), disclosed post-retirement depression with unusual candour for an elite sportsperson of his generation. That frankness about the psychological cost of sustained high performance gives him credibility in discussions about mental resilience that most athlete speakers avoid. His tenure as BRDC President (2006-2011) required institutional leadership in a complex stakeholder environment, including negotiating the 17-year contract that secured the British Grand Prix at Silverstone. It is a demonstrable leadership record beyond the cockpit, relevant to audiences dealing with governance, stakeholder management, and long-term institutional decisions. Biography highlights 1996 FIA F1 World Drivers’ Champion with Williams; 22 Grand Prix victories across eight seasons One of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to win the title themselves Twice named BBC Sports Personality of the Year (1994 and 1996) BRDC President (2006-2011), succeeding Sir Jackie Stewart; negotiated the 17-year contract securing the British Grand Prix at Silverstone Author of Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), a candid account of elite performance, grief, and post-career depression Sky Sports F1 pundit for 13 seasons (2012-2024); appointed Williams F1 Ambassador in February 2026 Biography The 1996 Formula One Drivers’ Championship was not won by the most naturally gifted driver on the grid. Hill self-financed his junior career, started F1 with a team that folded mid-season, and was told his services were no longer required by Williams on the day he became champion. The title was built through persistence, technical precision, and composure under conditions designed to break both. What gives Hill’s perspective organisational value is the specificity of those conditions. Across three consecutive seasons, his primary rival was Michael Schumacher. In two of them the championship was decided at the final race, including the notorious 1994 finale in Adelaide. Maintaining judgment and execution quality when pressure is at its most extreme is the argument his career makes, and it maps directly to what organisations face in genuinely competitive markets. After retirement, Hill served as President of the British Racing Drivers’ Club from 2006 to 2011, succeeding Sir Jackie Stewart. He negotiated the 17-year contract that secured the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and oversaw the circuit’s major redevelopment. It was institutional leadership in a complex stakeholder environment – a different dimension to the individual performance story, and a credible one. Hill’s autobiography, Watching the Wheels (Pan Macmillan, 2016), disclosed post-retirement depression with unusual candour for an elite sportsperson of his generation. That frankness about the psychological cost of sustained performance gives him a credibility that statistics alone cannot. And as one of only two sons of an F1 World Champion to have won the title, his perspective on legacy, expectation, and self-determination is specific to him. Key speaking topics High performance under competitive pressure Leadership and decision-making in extreme conditions Resilience and recovery from sustained adversity Team performance and composure under scrutiny Risk management in high-stakes environments Performance culture in elite sport Institutional leadership and stakeholder negotiation Ideal for Senior leadership and C-suite teams preparing for periods of intense competitive pressure or strategic inflection Sales, trading, and performance-led organisations benchmarking mindset and execution against elite standards HR, talent, and organisational development leaders working on resilience, psychological safety, and sustained performance Financial services, professional services, and corporate conference audiences seeking leadership insight grounded in direct competitive experience Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding how composure and judgment quality, not raw capability, determine outcomes when competitive pressure is highest Practical insight into how elite performers and teams sustain execution quality through adversity, loss, and periods of institutional change A model for distinguishing between risk aversion and disciplined risk management, drawn from direct competitive experience in an unforgiving environment Greater awareness of the psychological dimensions of peak performance and the personal cost of sustained high achievement Specific lessons applicable to performance culture, team alignment, and decision-making under pressure in corporate contexts

Why organisations work with Dan Edwards He has actually led a large public-sector workforce through a sustained cultural rebuild, including pandemic-era disruption, rather than describing the work from a consultancy seat. His talks come with named, road-tested models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts among them, that translate cleanly out of education into any large operational workforce. He is one of the few credible male voices speaking publicly about psychological safety and male mental health in front-line teams, through his MENtal Health talk. The delivery is performer-grade. He has a stand-up and stage background that keeps a senior audience with him through difficult material on wellbeing and morale. His creative business, the Fibre studio space, is built around working creative communities, which gives him direct operating experience of inclusion and creativity as workforce outcomes rather than values statements. Biography highlights Founder of Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, live events, and creative production. Former Principal of a large inner-city primary school in Leicester; prior Executive school leadership roles. Drama teacher background in inner-city secondary schools; entered teaching as a mature trainee via night school after leaving school with two GCSEs. Speaker at the SSAT Primary Conference 2021 on leading a school community through the coronavirus pandemic; international training work includes The Sultan’s School in Oman. Writes ‘Brief Reflections On…’, a newsletter of essays on leadership, culture, and community. Stage performer and writer; “The Sound of Muzak” was nominated for the Audience Choice Award at the 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival. Biography Large workforces have absorbed five years of change, and the cultural cost is now visible in engagement scores, sickness data, and middle-management churn. Edwards spent the worst of that period running a large inner-city primary school in Leicester, holding a staff body and parent community together when the national playbook for leadership had stopped working. That job, and the executive school leadership work that followed, is the substance behind his keynote material. The 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts are not theoretical frameworks; they are the models he built to keep a school improving while wellbeing was collapsing. The translation into corporate settings is direct, because the underlying tension, leading people through sustained pressure without burning them out, is the same. Edwards now runs Fibre, a warehouse studio in Leicester for film, photography, and live events, built around a working creative community. The work has also travelled, including school culture and leadership training at The Sultan’s School in Oman. Running a live creative space gives him a current operating vantage point on culture and creative discipline, which keeps the talks from drifting into nostalgia for the education world. The delivery is the differentiator at the senior end. A stand-up and theatre background, including a 2024 Leicester Comedy Festival nomination for “The Sound of Muzak”, means his keynotes on staff mental health and male psychological safety land in front of audiences that have heard the standard wellbeing pitch too many times. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and staff wellbeing Authentic and humane leadership Male mental health and psychological safety at work Creativity beyond the creative industries People development and change leadership Inclusion and belonging at work Belonging and engagement in large workforces Ideal for HR and people directors in large, change-fatigued workforces CEOs and executive leadership teams rebuilding culture after restructure or sustained disruption Leadership development programmes and middle-management conferences Public sector, education and healthcare leadership audiences Audience outcomes A working language for the difference between performative wellbeing and substantive cultural change. Two named models, the 5Cs of Improvement and Repositioning Doughnuts, applied to their own organisational context. A more honest internal conversation about male mental health and psychological safety on the front line. Specific reference points for leading a workforce through prolonged pressure without losing it.

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