Executive Development

Why organisations work with James Cracknell He has won at the highest level twice in a four-person team, in Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, with crews that included Steve Redgrave and Matthew Pinsent. The lessons on team selection, internal standards and competing with teammates are first-hand. He is one of very few senior speakers who has lived through a severe traumatic brain injury and rebuilt a public-facing career afterwards. Audiences get an honest account of recovery, identity and what high performance looks like when the baseline changes. At 46 he returned to elite rowing and won the 2019 Boat Race for Cambridge, the oldest competitor in the race’s 190-year history. The story maps directly onto conversations about late-career reinvention and standards under age, fatigue and doubt. He pairs athletic authority with an academic lens: an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies from Peterhouse, Cambridge, and a working programme for business teams (Muto, co-founded with James Tansey) built on elite-performance science. Biography highlights Olympic gold medals in the coxless four at Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004, racing with Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent, Tim Foster, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles across coxless four, coxless pair and coxed pair. Appointed OBE in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to sport. MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies, Peterhouse, University of Cambridge. Oldest rower in Boat Race history at age 46, winning for Cambridge in 2019. Co-author of “The Crossing” (Atlantic Books, 2006) with Ben Fogle and “Touching Distance” (Random House, 2012) with Beverley Turner; BBC and Discovery commentator for major rowing events. Biography Two Olympic golds in the coxless four, four years apart, against different crews in different conditions. That is the core achievement. Cracknell won in Sydney 2000 alongside Steve Redgrave, Matthew Pinsent and Tim Foster, and again in Athens 2004 with Pinsent, Steve Williams and Ed Coode. Six World Championship titles sit alongside those golds. What he offers corporate audiences is the working knowledge of those crews: how selection decisions were made, how standards were held when the crew was under-performing, how a team with strong personalities agreed on what mattered and what did not. He speaks about internal competition as a tool, not a threat. The OBE, awarded in 2005 for services to sport, sits inside that record. In July 2010, while cycling across Arizona in a Los Angeles to New York endurance attempt, Cracknell was struck by the wing mirror of a fuel tanker at 65mph. He spent around ten days in an induced coma in Phoenix. The brain injury that followed, and the long rebuild through epilepsy, changed sense of smell and taste, and an altered personality, is the subject of “Touching Distance”, written with Beverley Turner. He is honest about the years that followed and what they taught him about identity under damage. The late chapter is the one that surprises audiences most. At 46, already a father of three, he enrolled at Peterhouse, Cambridge for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies and rowed in the 2019 Boat Race, becoming the oldest competitor in the event’s 190-year history and winning. He now runs Muto, an elite-performance programme for business teams co-founded with entrepreneur James Tansey, built on the argument that the mindset and habits of top athletes are learnable by senior professionals. Key speaking topics Peak performance and elite team habits Resilience and recovery after setback Team leadership under pressure High-performance culture and internal standards Mindset, motivation and reinvention Endurance, adventure and risk Ideal for Leadership teams holding delivery through a long, difficult programme or transformation CHROs and L and D leaders shaping high-performance and resilience programmes Sales, trading and operations teams where individual output and team trust both have to hold Board, executive and all-hands sessions that need a sharp, human anchor for a performance or culture message Audience outcomes A working picture of how a winning team actually selects, challenges and holds standards for each other An honest account of recovery from serious setback, usable by anyone leading through personal or organisational adversity Specific habits from elite sport that translate to corporate performance, drawn from the Muto programme Renewed appetite for late-career reinvention, grounded in the 2019 Boat Race and Cambridge MPhil

Why organisations work with Jacob Morgan His “Vulnerable Leader Equation” offers a specific, research-backed counter-argument to the dominant leadership vulnerability narrative – making the case that vulnerability without competence actively undermines trust, not builds it. Boards and CHROs get a framework they can act on, not a platitude. The research underpinning The Future Leader (140 CEO interviews, 14,000-person LinkedIn survey) gives senior audiences data that reflects their own peer group back at them – a rare source of authority in a crowded leadership development market. His founder role at Future of Work Leaders – a by-invitation CHRO community including members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego – means his frameworks are stress-tested against the most senior people leaders in the world, not just conference rooms. The Future Leader won the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, providing external, peer-validated credibility beyond self-reported authority. Organisations navigating the tension between AI adoption and human leadership capability get a framework that treats the two as interdependent – not competing priorities – grounded in his three-environment model of employee experience (culture, technology, physical workspace). Biography highlights Bestselling author of six books published by Wiley and McGraw-Hill, covering collaboration, the future of work, employee experience, leadership, and vulnerability The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020) – winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021 Research base includes 140+ CEO interviews and a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees for The Future Leader; 100+ CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees for Leading With Vulnerability Founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation global CHRO community with members from Johnson & Johnson, Dow, Lego, Northrop Grumman, and Neiman Marcus Contributed to and cited in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, NPR, and CNN Host of Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan; featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work podcast Biography Jacob Morgan has spent more than a decade asking a question most organisations avoid: why do capable leaders so consistently fail to produce the organisations they intend? His answer, built across six books and primary research involving hundreds of CEOs and tens of thousands of employees, is both precise and uncomfortable – the model of leadership most executives were trained in was designed for a world that no longer exists. His most cited framework, the Vulnerable Leader Equation, makes a specific argument: vulnerability in isolation is not a leadership quality, it is a liability. The research underpinning Leading With Vulnerability (Wiley, 2024) – drawn from over 100 CEO interviews and a DDI-partnered survey of 14,000 employees – shows that leaders who combine openness about their gaps with clear, competence-driven responses to those gaps outperform peers on trust, engagement, and team performance. It is a direct challenge to the feel-good vulnerability conversation, and it is grounded in data. The Future Leader (Wiley, 2020), winner of the CMI Management Book of the Year 2021, applied the same research discipline to the broader question of what leading through disruption actually requires. Based on interviews with over 140 CEOs at organisations including Unilever, Mastercard, and KPMG – paired with a LinkedIn-partnered survey of nearly 14,000 employees – it identified four specific mindsets and five specific skills that define readiness for leadership in uncertain conditions. Morgan is also the founder of Future of Work Leaders, a by-invitation CHRO community whose members include Johnson & Johnson, Dow, and Lego. His work has been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, the Harvard Business Review, and MIT Sloan Management Review. He hosts the Great Leadership With Jacob Morgan podcast and has been a featured guest on the Harvard Business School Managing the Future of Work series. Key speaking topics Future-ready leadership Vulnerability and trust in organisations Employee experience strategy Leadership in the age of AI Future of work Organisational culture and performance Executive development and people strategy Ideal for CHROs and CPOs navigating the gap between leadership investment and employee outcomes Senior leadership teams preparing for AI-driven workforce transformation Boards and executive committees reviewing leadership capability and succession HR and people functions building future-ready culture frameworks Audience outcomes A named framework – the Vulnerable Leader Equation – for understanding when and how vulnerability strengthens rather than undermines leadership authority The four mindsets and five skills that Morgan’s CEO research identified as defining future-ready leaders, with practical application at individual and team level A clearer model for diagnosing where employee experience is breaking down across culture, technology, and physical environment Research-grounded perspective on how AI is reshaping the leadership role – and what human capability this places at a premium Practical tools for assessing the gap between how leaders perceive their impact and how their people experience it

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

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

Why organisations work with Gianpiero Petriglieri He gives senior teams a clinical reading of leadership. Trained as a psychiatrist before joining INSEAD, he can speak about identity, authority and anxiety inside an organisation in language that a CEO recognises and a HR director can act on. He owns a named idea. “Nomadic professionalism,” developed across his Harvard Business Review essays, gives boards a clear way to think about leading people who are deeply bonded to their work but loosely tied to the company. He directs INSEAD’s Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive development course for emerging leaders, which means his frameworks are tested every year on the next layer of senior management at global firms. He has been ranked twice in the Thinkers50 Top 50, in 2017 and 2021, and shortlisted across the Future Thinker, Leadership, Talent, and Coaching & Mentoring awards. The recognition is consistent, not a single moment. He pushes back on the wellness-industry version of leadership. His work is about humanising leadership without sentimentalising it, useful for executive teams tired of trainings that confuse care with capability. Biography highlights Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, holding the Alumni Fund Chair in Leadership Development. Director of INSEAD’s Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive education course for emerging leaders. Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist by training; has practised as an executive coach and psychotherapist. Thinkers50 Top 50 (2017, 2021); shortlisted for Future Thinker, Leadership, Talent, and Coaching & Mentoring awards. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; quoted in the Financial Times, The Economist, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, and The Guardian. Former Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership; visiting positions at Harvard Business School and Copenhagen Business School. Biography Most leadership development assumes the organisation is the stable thing and the leader is the variable. That assumption no longer holds. People build careers across firms, geographies, and modes of work, and the bond they trust most is to their craft, not their employer. The work of leading anchors itself somewhere else. This is the territory Petriglieri has spent two decades mapping at INSEAD, where he is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour and directs the Management Acceleration Programme, the school’s flagship executive education course for emerging leaders. His framing of “nomadic professionalism,” developed across essays in Harvard Business Review, gives senior teams a precise way to talk about why competent people drift, why authenticity has replaced loyalty as the language of work, and what holds them in place. The clinical training matters. Before academia, Petriglieri trained as a Medical Doctor and Psychiatrist, and has worked as an executive coach and psychotherapist. That background lets him speak about identity, authority, and anxiety inside an organisation in language that is neither clinical jargon nor corporate hygiene. His peer-reviewed research appears in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, and Organization Studies; his commentary appears in the Financial Times, The Economist, the BBC and the New York Times. He chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership and has been ranked in the Thinkers50 Top 50 in 2017 and 2021. The argument that runs through all of it is that leadership is not a set of behaviours bolted on top of a career. It is what makes a person trustworthy enough to hold authority in a workplace that no longer holds itself together. Key speaking topics Leadership development in an age of mobile careers Nomadic professionalism and meaningful work Trustworthy leadership and authority in low-trust workplaces Authenticity, identity and the practice of leading Humanising leadership in the digital age Executive development and the role of HR Self-awareness as a leadership discipline Ideal for CEOs, executive committees and boards setting leadership direction during sustained organisational change. CHROs, CLOs and heads of executive development designing senior leadership pipelines. High-potential cohorts and emerging leader programmes inside global firms. Talent and culture leaders rebuilding the relationship between the firm and people who think of themselves as professionals first. Audience outcomes A named frame, nomadic professionalism, for diagnosing why competent people stay, leave, or drift. Sharper language for talking about authority, authenticity, and trust at the top of an organisation. A more clinical view of what leadership development is actually doing to the people inside it. A useful argument against treating wellbeing programmes as a substitute for trustworthy leadership. A clearer set of questions for senior teams designing the next generation of leaders.

Why organisations work with Geoff Colvin Four decades of reporting inside Fortune on how the best-run companies actually change, not a consultant’s framework imported from outside the room. The thesis behind Talent Is Overrated, a WSJ, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, gives leadership teams a concrete answer to a question most duck: how do you actually build world-class performers instead of hoping you hire them. Humans Are Underrated reframes the AI conversation for executives. The argument is that empathy, group problem-solving and storytelling become the commercial differentiator, and it lands with boards that are tired of abstract automation talks. A career’s worth of on-stage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson at the Fortune Global Forum translates directly into panel moderation and onstage CEO interviews that audiences remember. Read in dozens of languages and heard daily on CBS Radio, he arrives with an unusual combination of reach and specificity that senior audiences trust on first encounter. Biography highlights Senior Editor-at-Large at Fortune, where he has written the Value Driven column and covered leadership, economics and competition for four decades. Author of Talent Is Overrated, Humans Are Underrated, The Upside of the Downturn, and co-author of Angel Customers and Demon Customers. The Upside of the Downturn named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. Former co-anchor of Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS. Daily business commentator on the CBS Radio Network, with more than 10,000 broadcasts. Lead moderator at the Fortune Global Forum, with onstage interviews of CEOs, heads of state and central bankers including Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan and Janet Yellen. Biography Most organisations say they want world-class performance, and most fund it with selection rather than development. Talent Is Overrated took that contradiction apart. Drawing on research into elite performers across sport, music, chess and business, Colvin argued that what separates the best is deliberate practice, the willingness to work at the edge of capability, under feedback, for years. The book became a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek and New York Times bestseller, and gave boards and chief people officers a language for building executive capability rather than buying it. Humans Are Underrated extended the argument into the automation decade. As machines absorbed more analytical and predictable work, Colvin’s case was that the commercial premium would shift to empathy, group problem-solving and persuasion, the deep human skills most leadership pipelines still treat as soft. Both books have shaped how serious HR and strategy functions think about what to develop in senior leaders. The credibility behind that writing is institutional. Colvin has spent his career at Fortune, currently as Senior Editor-at-Large, writing the Value Driven column and covering the forces reshaping competition. He co-anchored Wall Street Week with Fortune on PBS, and has broadcast daily for CBS Radio with well over 10,000 segments on air. The Upside of the Downturn, his book on operating through recession, was named Best Management Book of the Year by Strategy+Business. On stage, the work shows up differently. As lead moderator of the Fortune Global Forum he has conducted onstage interviews with Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher, Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, Janet Yellen and Henry Paulson, among many others. That experience is what corporate clients hire when they need a keynote that sets the terms of a CEO summit, or a moderator who can hold a room of chief executives to the substance. Key speaking topics Leadership in continuous disruption Executive performance and deliberate practice The human skills economy in an age of AI Business model reinvention Global economic outlook and competitive strategy Panel moderation and CEO onstage interviews Future of work and talent development Ideal for CEO, CHRO and chief learning officer audiences rethinking how senior leadership capability is built rather than bought. Boards and executive committees grappling with where automation leaves human advantage in their business model. Fortune-style CEO summits, leadership conferences and global forums that need a moderator with genuine authority across economics, technology and governance. Audience outcomes A defensible answer to how their organisation develops world-class performers, not just identifies them. A sharper read on which parts of the business automation makes cheaper, and which parts become more valuable as a result. Language for talking to boards and investors about human capability as a commercial asset, not an HR line item. Perspective from inside four decades of Fortune reporting on which leadership responses to disruption have actually worked.

Why organisations work with Gary Pisano He gives leaders a framework for diagnosing why innovation investment is not compounding, and a language for fixing it at the level of strategy rather than process. His work on industrial commons, developed with Willy Shih in Producing Prosperity, explains how manufacturing and R and D decisions shape long-term competitive capacity, a lens most strategy advisors do not carry. The thesis of Creative Construction reframes scale as a potential innovation asset, which is directly relevant to incumbents under pressure from smaller, faster rivals. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper he co-authored is foundational reading in corporate strategy; buyers get the person whose ideas their strategy team has already been citing. Board experience at Axcella Health and Celixir, plus advisory work across aerospace, biotech, pharma, medical devices, semiconductors and financial services, grounds the academic argument in operator reality. Biography highlights Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School; on faculty since 1988. Former Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Promotion and Tenure at HBS (2018 to 2023). Author of Creative Construction: The DNA of Sustained Innovation (PublicAffairs, 2019) and Science Business (HBS Press, 2006); co-author of Producing Prosperity (HBS Press, 2012). Won the 2009 McKinsey Award for best HBR article for Restoring American Competitiveness with Willy Shih. Co-author of Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management (1997), one of the most cited papers in the management literature. PhD from UC Berkeley; BA in Economics from Yale. Biography Innovation spend in large organisations often grows faster than any measurable return on it. The reason is rarely a failure of execution. It is a failure to define what innovation is supposed to do for the business in the first place. This is the problem Gary Pisano has spent three decades unpicking at Harvard Business School. As the Harry E. Figgie, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Pisano has published over 100 scholarly articles and case studies and written six books. Creative Construction, his 2019 book, argues that large firms are not condemned to be outrun by start-ups. Scale is an asset when strategy, systems, and culture are set up to use it. The argument cuts directly against the disruption orthodoxy that has shaped a generation of boardroom thinking. His earlier work reaches further back into the industrial architecture of competitiveness. Producing Prosperity, co-written with Willy Shih, shows how outsourced manufacturing hollows out the capability to invent. Science Business, his study of biotech, explains why a whole industry built on extraordinary science has struggled to translate it into sustained commercial performance. The 1997 Dynamic Capabilities paper, written with David Teece and Amy Shuen, is one of the most cited in the history of strategic management. That research base is matched by three decades of direct advisory work across aerospace, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, semiconductors, software, and financial services, plus board seats at Axcella Health and Celixir. Leaders come to him when the innovation portfolio looks busy but the competitive position is not improving, and they leave with a sharper account of why. Key speaking topics Innovation strategy Sustained innovation in large organisations Competitive strategy and dynamic capabilities Growth and the limits of scale Manufacturing, industrial commons and national competitiveness Science-based business models R and D and intellectual property strategy Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and heads of strategy in incumbent firms losing ground on innovation Boards overseeing large R and D portfolios that are not compounding into advantage Executive teams in biotech, pharma, medical devices and advanced manufacturing Policy and industry leaders working on national competitiveness and supply chain capability Audience outcomes A sharper diagnosis of why innovation spending is not producing durable advantage A working definition of innovation strategy that ties R and D choices to business strategy An argument for when scale helps innovation and when it quietly kills it A clear view of how manufacturing and process capability feed, or starve, future product innovation Language senior teams can use to challenge an innovation portfolio without defaulting to start-up envy

Why organisations work with Gary McGann He has run the playbook, not studied it: a cross-border merger with Kappa Packaging in 2005, a 2007 Euronext IPO, and thirteen years as CEO of a global listed packaging multinational. He brings chair-level governance experience from Flutter Entertainment, Aryzta, Allegro.eu, Aon Ireland and Sicon, which is a rare spread across gambling, food, e-commerce, insurance and construction. His view of the Irish and European business environment is informed by direct roles: former President of IBEC, former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, and current Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board. He is credible with both boards and operators because he has sat on both sides, including through the Anglo Irish Bank period and the post-2008 rebuild of Irish corporate confidence. Organisations book him when the brief is honest conversation about leadership judgment, not motivational framing. Biography highlights Group CEO of Smurfit Kappa, November 2002 to August 2015, including the 2005 Smurfit-Kappa merger and 2007 IPO on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam. Former CEO of Aer Lingus Group and former CEO of Gilbeys of Ireland. Former Chairman of Flutter Entertainment plc (formerly Paddy Power Betfair), 2016 to 2023. Former Chairman of Aryzta AG, 2016 to 2020, and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries. Former President of IBEC, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Senior Advisor and Chairman of Teneo’s Ireland Advisory Board; current Chairman of Aon Ireland Investment Holdings, Sicon Ltd and Allegro.eu SA. Named Business and Finance “Business Person of the Year” 2008; UCD Alumni Business Award 2014. Biography Jefferson Smurfit and Kappa Packaging announced their merger in 2005 and completed it that December. Gary McGann was Group CEO. Two years later, he took the combined Smurfit Kappa public on Euronext Dublin and Amsterdam, raising net proceeds of around 1.3 billion euros. That sequence, executed through the run-up to and aftermath of the financial crisis, is the core of his operating record. Before Smurfit Kappa he ran Aer Lingus Group and, earlier, Gilbeys of Ireland. Three very different businesses: aviation in deregulation, a drinks operation inside a global brand owner, and a packaging giant listed in two markets. The common thread is running companies through periods when the external conditions refuse to hold still. The post-executive chapter is largely about governance. He chaired Flutter Entertainment through its transformation into a global gambling group, chaired Aryzta through a Swiss food business in distress, and now chairs Aon Ireland, Sicon and Allegro.eu alongside the Teneo Ireland Advisory Board. As a former President of IBEC and former Chairman of the Confederation of European Paper Industries, he has also operated at the industry and policy level in Ireland and across Europe. What makes his perspective valuable to a senior audience is the unglamorous part of the record. A merger that actually integrated. An IPO that priced and cleared. A board career shaped by Anglo Irish Bank, Aryzta’s restructuring and Flutter’s scale-up, which is to say shaped by the moments when governance either holds or does not. Key speaking topics Leadership through mergers, IPOs and post-crisis recovery Board governance and the chair-CEO relationship Corporate strategy in listed multinationals Ireland and European business environment Turnaround and restructuring in complex organisations Long-horizon succession and leadership development Ideal for Boards, chairs and non-executive directors navigating restructuring, succession or M and A integration CEO and executive committee offsites where the brief is leadership judgment under pressure, not functional training Senior leadership audiences in packaging, aviation, consumer goods, financial services and gambling Irish and European business and policy audiences, including IBEC-style industry gatherings Audience outcomes A grounded account of what boards and CEOs actually do during a merger, IPO or downturn, from someone who has run each Sharper thinking on the chair-CEO relationship and where it breaks A clearer read on the Irish and European corporate operating environment from inside the room Practical reference points for governance decisions in distressed or transitional businesses Language for talking about leadership that avoids the usual vocabulary of resilience and transformation

Why organisations work with Freek Vermeulen He has built a specific, named argument that “best practices” are frequently bad practices in disguise. Leaders leave with a method for stress-testing the practices their company has stopped questioning. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, is built on empirical research across industries from newspapers to IVF clinics to West End theatre. The examples carry, because they are not from the usual case-study roster. He bridges academic rigour and operating language better than most. Published in Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science and Strategic Management Journal, but read in the boardrooms of Bosch, BP, Goldman Sachs, Maersk and Vodafone. He was the first recipient of LBS’s Excellence in Teaching Award and named to the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar. The audience signal: he is among the management thinkers actively shaping how strategy is taught at senior level. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School. PhD, Tilburg University. Author of Breaking Bad Habits (Harvard Business Review Press) and Business Exposed (FT Prentice-Hall). Translated into seven languages. Named to the Thinkers50 Radar list, 2016. First recipient of the LBS Excellence in Teaching Award; also recipient of the school’s Best Teacher Award. Regular contributor to Harvard Business Review; one of his 2025 HBR articles was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Award; INFORMS/ISA Best Paper Award; Vienna University of Economics and Business Theory-to-Practice Award. Biography Industries inherit habits. A newspaper prints on broadsheet because newspapers print on broadsheet. A consultancy charges by the day because that is what consultancies do. Most of these habits started with a reason. Most have outlived the reason. Almost none are questioned, because everyone in the industry is still doing them. This is the territory Freek Vermeulen has spent his academic career mapping. His book Breaking Bad Habits, published by Harvard Business Review Press, argues that the most damaging strategic mistakes are not bold moves that fail. They are conventions that nobody is auditing. The same logic appears across his Harvard Business Review writing, where he has been a regular contributor, including a 2025 piece with a London Business School colleague that was named among HBR’s Most Popular Articles of 2025. Vermeulen is Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School, where he has chaired the Strategy and Entrepreneurship department and served on the school’s Management Board and Board of Governors. He was the first person to receive the school’s Excellence in Teaching Award, and the 2016 Thinkers50 Radar list identified him as one of the management thinkers most likely to shape the next decade of organisational practice. The work is academic in origin, with Best Paper Awards from the Academy of Management Journal and INFORMS, and it has translated into a client list that includes Bosch, BP, GE, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Lufthansa, Maersk, Novartis, Roche, Toshiba and Vodafone. The reason for the breadth is the angle. Vermeulen does not tell senior leaders what to do next. He tells them which of the things they are already doing have stopped earning their place. Key speaking topics Strategic innovation and corporate transformation Why “best practices” become bad practices Strategy execution and making strategy happen Profitable growth and international expansion Acquisitions, alliances and corporate scope Organisational learning and industry evolution Ideal for CEOs, CSOs and corporate strategy teams in mature industries facing flatlining growth Board and ExCo audiences re-examining what their company does because it has always done it M&A, post-acquisition integration and corporate development leaders Strategy and transformation conferences at multinational scale Audience outcomes A specific method for distinguishing practices that create value from practices that have simply been inherited A sharper view of how industry conventions form, persist and quietly damage performance Worked examples drawn from research across multiple industries, not the usual handful of case studies A frame for strategy execution that treats the deletion of bad habits as seriously as the launch of new initiatives

Why organisations work with Fons Trompenaars His Seven Dimensions of Culture model gives boards and integration teams a shared vocabulary for diagnosing where global strategies break down, drawn from research across more than a hundred thousand managers. Dilemma reconciliation moves leaders past the false choice between universal standards and local adaptation, which is the recurring failure mode in M&A integration, joint ventures, and global rollouts. Thinkers50 Hall of Fame status places him in the same tier as Drucker, Porter, and Peters, useful credibility when the audience is a sceptical executive committee. Three decades of advisory work with Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, General Motors, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer mean the case material is operational, not academic. He is one of the few cultural theorists whose framework is built around action: every dimension comes with a method for resolving the tension, not just naming it. That method now runs inside AI-enabled tools, including a Dilemma Solver trained on a proprietary database of more than 60,000 leadership dilemmas. Biography highlights PhD in social systems sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1983. Co-founder of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner with Charles Hampden-Turner in 1989; acquired by KPMG in 1998. Author of Riding the Waves of Culture, named to the Thinkers50 top ten Management Classics list in 2024 and translated into more than twenty languages. Co-author of Nine Visions of Capitalism, 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Building Cross-Cultural Competence, and Servant Leadership Across Cultures. Co-authoring Tension to Traction with Bas Kemme, a forthcoming book built on CEO interviews that extends the reconciliation argument of “21 Leaders for the 21st Century.” Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017; ranked among the most influential management thinkers in 2011, 2013, and 2015. Recipient of the ASTD International Professional Practice Area Research Award (1991) and the WFPMA George Petitpas Award (2023). Biography Most cross-cultural frameworks describe difference. They tell leaders that the Dutch are direct and the Japanese are deferential, then leave the leader to work out what to do about it. Trompenaars’ contribution is the next step: a method for reconciling competing cultural values rather than choosing between them. The Seven Dimensions of Culture, developed with Charles Hampden-Turner over a decade of empirical research, identifies the underlying tensions that surface when global organisations try to operate as one. Universal rules against particular relationships. Individual achievement against collective ascription. Sequential time against synchronous time. The model is built on data from over a hundred thousand managers and has anchored consulting engagements at Shell, BP, Heineken, Philips, Nike, IBM, Johnson and Johnson, and Pfizer. The intellectual foundation runs deep. A doctorate from Wharton, nine years inside Shell across nine countries, and the 1989 founding of the consultancy that became Trompenaars Hampden-Turner, later acquired by KPMG. “Riding the Waves of Culture” is a Thinkers50 Management Classic. The Hall of Fame induction in 2017 placed him alongside Drucker, Porter, and Peters. What makes the work commercially useful is dilemma reconciliation. Competing values, results and relationships, standards and local fit, individual and collective, are not trade-offs to be balanced but tensions to be integrated. For boards working through merger integration, global expansion, or post-acquisition culture programmes, that shift in framing is what turns cultural awareness into operational performance. The method now runs inside AI-enabled tools and underpins Tension to Traction, a forthcoming book with Bas Kemme on how CEOs turn competing pressures into a path forward. Key speaking topics Cross-cultural leadership and global team effectiveness Dilemma reconciliation as a leadership method Cultural due diligence in mergers and acquisitions The Seven Dimensions of Culture Leading change across multinational organisations Servant leadership across cultures Cultural reconciliation in the age of AI and polarisation Ideal for Executive committees and boards leading multinational integration, joint ventures, or post-acquisition culture work CHROs and global HR leaders responsible for leadership development across multiple regions Transformation leads running global change programmes where local resistance is the recurring blocker Leadership development programmes for newly international senior leaders Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for the seven cultural tensions that surface inside global teams A method for reconciling competing values rather than defaulting to head office standards Diagnostic clarity on why specific global initiatives have stalled or fragmented Case material from Shell, Heineken, Philips, and other multinationals that can be applied to the audience’s own integration challenges

Why organisations work with Dominique Turpin He has led two of the most internationally respected business schools, IMD and CEIBS, which gives him a rare operational read on how senior teams actually make commercial decisions under pressure. His case library, ranked by The Case Centre among the top 50 bestselling globally for several consecutive years, is taught inside the MBA programmes of the companies that buy his counsel. He combines a PhD from Sophia University Tokyo with decades of client work across Japan, China and Southeast Asia, useful to any European or North American board navigating Asian market entry or partnership. He works from named case material, not generic frameworks: Nespresso, Jollibee, Ducati, Toyota KINTO, among others, each linked to a specific brand or customer-centricity argument. His writing for Financial Times, MIT Sloan Management Review and European Business Forum gives executive audiences a concrete reference point for the arguments he develops on stage. Biography highlights Professor Emeritus of Marketing Strategy, IMD; former President and Nestle Professor, 2010 to 2016. President Emeritus of CEIBS; served as President (European) based out of the Zurich campus. PhD in Economics, Sophia University, Tokyo; MSc from ESSCA, France. Author of more than 100 books, articles and case studies, including The Essential Book of Business and Life Quotations (Anthem Press). Ranked on The Case Centre Top 50 Bestselling Case Authors for multiple consecutive years. Chairman of DAA Capital Partners; advisory and board roles across listed companies and educational institutions including Stockholm School of Economics and Waseda Business School. Biography Most global brands still describe themselves as customer-centric. Very few can show a senior leader what that actually changes inside a weekly country review. That gap between brand statement and operating behaviour is where Dominique Turpin has spent almost four decades of teaching and advisory work. Turpin joined IMD in 1986 after several years in Tokyo representing a French firm in Japan. He went on to hold the Dentsu Chair in Marketing, direct the MBA programme and serve as IMD President and Nestle Professor from 2010 to 2016. In 2022 he was appointed President (European) of CEIBS, the China Europe International Business School, a role he held until late 2025. He is now Professor Emeritus at IMD and President Emeritus at CEIBS. His case studies, taught inside companies as much as in classrooms, sit behind this body of work. Nespresso, Jollibee, Ducati, Toyota KINTO. Each uses a named company to argue a specific point about brand coherence, pricing power or customer design. The Case Centre has listed him among its top 50 bestselling case authors for several consecutive years, which is unusual longevity in a field dominated by one-off hits. The Japan and Asia dimension matters in his advisory work. Clients have included Coca-Cola, Danone, Nestle, Philips, KAO, Mondelez and Panasonic, and much of his applied research has examined how Asian firms build and defend brand equity in markets where European playbooks stall. He is Chairman of DAA Capital Partners, a Geneva-based private equity firm, and sits on boards and advisory councils including Stockholm School of Economics and Waseda Business School. Key speaking topics Brand management and brand strategy Customer centricity in multinational organisations Global marketing strategy Marketing leadership in Asia, with focus on Japan and China Corporate communications strategy Case-led executive development in commercial functions Ideal for CMOs and brand presidents inside consumer, industrial and healthcare multinationals. CEOs and group leadership teams setting Asia entry, partnership or expansion strategy. Executive development programmes for commercial and country-leadership populations. Boards and investment committees assessing brand-led businesses or consumer-facing acquisitions. Audience outcomes A working definition of customer centricity that survives contact with a country P and L. Named case examples senior teams can immediately apply to their own brand or pricing questions. A clearer view of how Japanese and Chinese firms build and defend brand equity, and what Western firms miss. Direct questions to ask marketing leadership about brand discipline, positioning and investment allocation. A vocabulary for talking about brand and customer strategy that aligns CEO, CFO and CMO.

Why organisations work with Dominic Alldis His sessions place executives inside a live orchestra or jazz band, making the dynamics of leadership – alignment, trust, listening under pressure – physically felt rather than conceptually described. No other leadership format uses professional live performance as the working medium in this way. The classical-vs-jazz framework gives organisations a precise vocabulary for a problem most struggle to name: when to follow the score and when to improvise – the alignment-versus-autonomy tension that runs through every complex team. The Orchestra Experience has been part of Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008, with endorsement from the programme’s Kravis Professor of Business – giving his approach academic standing alongside conference-format delivery. As an active professional musician and faculty member at the Royal Academy of Music since 1991, he brings current, first-person experience of high-performance ensembles – not a career retrospective applied to business. His client base runs from Microsoft, Google and Deutsche Bank to the United Nations, with executive education work at INSEAD, IMD Lausanne, London Business School and Columbia – evidence of trust from serious institutions across sectors and formats. Biography highlights Jazz pianist, orchestral conductor, arranger and singer; professional career began in Paris in 1982 and spans jazz clubs, concert halls and festival stages internationally Founder and Director of Music & Management, delivering music-based leadership development programmes for corporations and business schools worldwide Faculty member at the Royal Academy of Music in London since 1991, teaching jazz improvisation to classical pianists and opera singers; Honorary Associate since 2000; Steinway Artist since 2010 Music & Management has delivered the Orchestra Experience to Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008; executive education work also includes INSEAD/CEDEP, IMD Lausanne and London Business School Corporate clients include senior teams at Microsoft, WPP, Google, eBay, Deutsche Bank, LVMH, Barclays, Morgan Stanley, BCG, PwC, Mandarin Oriental and the United Nations Author of two books published by Hal Leonard Corporation: «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony» and «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Improvisation» Founder of the Canzona Chamber Orchestra (2010), performing classical repertoire and jazz crossover projects Biography The tension between structure and spontaneity runs through every high-performing team. An orchestra delivers the score with precision; a jazz band improvises around shared norms. Dominic Alldis is a jazz pianist, conductor, and founder of Music & Management and has spent more than two decades translating this contrast into a direct learning experience for executives. The question he brings to business audiences is concrete: when should a team follow the score, and when should it improvise? His framework draws from a professional career that spans both traditions. Alldis studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, played jazz residencies in Paris and London, conducted orchestras across four continents, and has taught improvisation to classical pianists and opera singers at the Royal Academy of Music in London (where he holds the title of Honorary Associate) since 1991. That dual expertise is the engine of his practice: not music as illustration, but musical performance as a live laboratory for the dynamics organisations actually need to develop. Music & Management has embedded the Orchestra Experience in Columbia Business School’s Senior Executive Program since 2008 – endorsed by Paul Ingram, Kravis Professor of Business. Corporate clients include senior teams at Microsoft, WPP, Google, Deutsche Bank, LVMH and the United Nations. His executive education work spans INSEAD, IMD Lausanne and London Business School. Testimonials from CHROs, managing partners and CEOs consistently name the sessions as the most memorable leadership experience their organisations have produced. His books – «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Harmony» and «A Classical Approach to Jazz Piano Improvisation», both published by Hal Leonard Corporation – reflect the same bridging instinct: rigorous musical thinking made accessible to practitioners who come from a different tradition. Key speaking topics Leadership through musical performance Classical and jazz models of organisational alignment Collaboration and collective decision-making Listening as a leadership competency Creativity and improvisation in organisations Change and adaptability in complex environments Team dynamics and organisational trust Ideal for Senior executive teams at strategic off-sites, leadership summits, and cultural transformation programmes CHROs and L&D Directors designing experiential leadership development at executive level Business schools and executive education programmes seeking immersive, non-traditional learning formats CEOs and boards seeking a high-impact, memorable format that connects music, leadership, and organisational performance Audience outcomes A direct, experiential encounter with how alignment, trust, and collective decision-making operate in real time – not as concepts, but as felt dynamics A working vocabulary for the tension between structured coordination and creative autonomy in teams Greater awareness of listening as an operational leadership practice, not only a communication skill New perspective on how change and improvisation can be navigated without losing coherent direction Personal observations about their own leadership behaviour, prompted by the musical experience rather than delivered through instruction