Executive Development

Why organisations work with Csaba Toth He runs ICQ Global, a people development business with more than 200 licensed partners across 45-plus countries, which means his methods have been pressure-tested in genuinely multicultural settings rather than theorised in one market. The Global DISC model is ICF and CPD-accredited and gives leaders one common language for personality, generation, profession, and nationality differences inside the same team. He measures and benchmarks psychological safety, motivational drivers, and cognitive diversity, so the conversation moves from cultural awareness slogans to specific data leaders can act on. His credential stack is unusually substantive: John Mattone Intelligent Leadership coach, Hofstede Insights Associate Partner, Richard Lewis-certified behavioural consultant, three Master’s degrees and an Executive MBA. He co-authored Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times with contributions from Marshall Goldsmith and John Mattone, a credibility marker for senior HR and L&D buyers familiar with that lineage. Biography highlights Founder of ICQ Global, a people development organisation with over 200 licensed partners across more than 45 countries. Developer of the Global DISC model, an ICF and CPD Standards-accredited intercultural behavioural framework. Author of Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times, with contributions from Marshall Goldsmith and John Mattone. Forbes Coaches Council member and Harvard Business Review Advisory Council member. Hofstede Insights Associate Partner and Richard Lewis Communications-certified cross-cultural trainer. Holds three Master’s degrees (Italy, UK, Hungary) and an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology. Biography Diversity strategies fail at the level of daily team interaction. People with different nationalities, professions, generations, and personalities sit in the same meeting, draw different conclusions from the same words, and lose trust in each other long before anyone names the problem. That is the gap Csaba Toth set out to close. He founded ICQ Global to make cognitive and cultural diversity measurable. The company now operates with more than 200 licensed partners across 45-plus countries, and its core asset is the Global DISC model, an ICF and CPD-accredited framework that extends the most widely used behavioural model in business with a layer for cultural intelligence. Leaders get a single language for the differences that actually slow teams down. The credentials behind the work are unusually deep. Toth is certified through John Mattone’s Intelligent Leadership programme, holds Human Synergistics accreditation, is a Hofstede Insights Associate Partner and a Richard Lewis Communications-certified behavioural consultant, with further certification in CBT, NLP, and Positive Intelligence. He sits on the Forbes Coaches Council and the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, holds three Master’s degrees from Italy, the UK and Hungary, and an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology. His book, Uncommon Sense in Unusual Times, published with contributions from Marshall Goldsmith and John Mattone, sets out how leaders stay relevant when the people around them increasingly do not think, decide, or communicate the same way they do. That is the practical question he answers in a room. Key speaking topics Cultural intelligence and the Global DISC model Psychological safety in multicultural teams Cognitive diversity and team performance Inclusive leadership across generations and nationalities Communication breakdown in global organisations Motivational drivers and behavioural difference Coaching and people development at scale Ideal for CHROs, Heads of L&D, and Heads of Talent leading global or multicultural workforces. DEI and Inclusion leads moving past awareness work into measurable team outcomes. Leadership development and coaching faculties inside multinational businesses. Senior leaders of cross-border teams where communication and trust have stalled. Audience outcomes A common vocabulary for cultural, generational, and personality differences that a team can use the next day. A clearer read on where psychological safety is breaking down inside their own teams and why. The Global DISC lens applied to a real internal dynamic the audience already recognises. Specific behavioural shifts leaders can make when working across cultures, professions, and generations. A more honest assessment of how cognitive diversity is helping or hurting performance in their organisation.

He is the author of ‘Accelerating Excellence’ that analyses the fundamental principles outlier individuals and organisations have leveraged to achieve and sustain superior performance. James has presented case studies on his work for the MBA programmes at the University of Oxford, Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). James is a motivational, energetic and inspiring speaker who will provide you with a tangible roadmap so you can immediately put the words to work. As an advisory King employs a robust principle based methodology for operationalizing the unrelenting pursuit of excellence guiding organisations on how to identify, develop and technically prepare outlier performers to deliver on demand and under pressure. What is unique about James King: Infectious passion and energy Highly actionable principles Worked in environments very few others have Has delivered tangible results in those organizations (not just a quick talk)

Why organisations work with Andrew Bannon The Self-Developer philosophy is structurally unavailable elsewhere in English: Bannon holds sole authorisation from its creator, Jens Corssen, making this engagement genuinely exclusive rather than merely differentiated from comparable self-leadership speakers. He addresses the specific failure point that most leadership development misses – the gap between insight and habitual behaviour – using a named, four-tool framework that leaders can apply immediately and return to independently. His delivery in both English and German makes him one of very few speakers able to bring rigorous self-leadership content consistently to DACH and internationally operating European organisations without dilution across language boundaries. His position on the CAS Senior Management Programme at the University of St. Gallen signals that the methodology meets the expectations of senior executive audiences – not a motivation seminar, but a substantive leadership development intervention. Engagements leave teams with a shared internal language – the four Self-Developer tools – which makes individual behavioural development operational at team and leadership cohort level. Biography highlights Sole globally authorised trainer to teach Jens Corssen’s Self-Developer philosophy; holds personal certification from Corssen active since 2013 Lecturer on the CAS Senior Management Programme, University of St. Gallen (Institute of Business Administration, IFB-HSG) MSc in Coaching for Behavioural Change, Henley Business School / University of Reading BA in Economics, University of Surrey Corporate delivery for Siemens, Bosch, Hilti, Lufthansa, Roche, and Lilly Adapted and performed the English-language audiobook The Way of the Self-Developer (co-credited with Jens Corssen, ISBN 9783000435706) Delivers in English and German; Munich-based for over two decades Biography Leadership performance rarely breaks down because leaders lack knowledge. Under sustained pressure – restructuring, fast-paced change, complex stakeholder demands – it breaks down because default behaviour takes over. Reactive patterns replace intentional ones. Avoidance displaces accountability. The Self-Developer philosophy, developed by German psychologist Jens Corssen, was built to address exactly this: a structured four-tool framework for interrupting automatic behaviour and restoring conscious choice. Andrew Bannon is the only trainer globally authorised by Corssen to teach this methodology in English. Since 2013, he has delivered the Self-Developer philosophy to management teams and executive cohorts across Europe – at organisations including Siemens, Bosch, Hilti, Lufthansa, Roche, and Lilly – and as a module lecturer on the CAS Senior Management Programme at the University of St. Gallen. His academic grounding combines economics at the University of Surrey with an MSc in Coaching for Behavioural Change from Henley Business School. The four tools – Self-Awareness, Self-Responsibility, Self-Confidence, and Self-Conquest – give leaders a repeatable internal framework rather than a motivational prompt. Bannon’s specific contribution is making this framework operational for international audiences: he delivers in English and German, brings two decades of experience embedded in German-speaking corporate culture, and adapted the methodology for English-speaking audiences in the audiobook The Way of the Self-Developer, co-credited with Corssen. The methodology has been tested across both open executive education at the University of St. Gallen and deep corporate programmes with global organisations – evidence that it holds across seniority, sector, and language. For leadership cohorts navigating high-pressure periods of change, the Self-Developer tools give behavioural development real operational traction. Key speaking topics Self-leadership and behavioural change The Self-Developer philosophy and four-tool framework Personal accountability in leadership Mindset and inner dialogue under pressure Resilience and self-management Intercultural leadership in European and DACH contexts Growth mindset in organisations Ideal for Senior leaders and C-suite executives navigating organisational change or cultural transformation Leadership development programme participants at upper-management and executive level CHROs and L&D leads seeking behavioural change frameworks that operate across language and cultural contexts Executive education audiences in DACH-region and internationally operating European organisations Audience outcomes A shared language for self-leadership: the four Self-Developer tools (Self-Awareness, Self-Responsibility, Self-Confidence, Self-Conquest) Practical ability to distinguish between objective circumstance and subjective interpretation when under pressure Methods for interrupting reactive behavioural patterns and replacing them with conscious, intentional choice Clearer understanding of how avoidance and procrastination erode leadership confidence over time A repeatable inner framework that supports sustained performance during periods of change and uncertainty

Why organisations work with Jennifer Jordan Her seven tensions framework, built from surveys of more than 1,000 senior executives and published in Harvard Business Review with Michael Wade, gives leadership teams a shared language for the contradictions that actually slow them down. She directs IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes, so the work she brings to a boardroom is the same work she runs with executive cohorts every month. Her doctoral training at Yale in social psychology means the advice on power, influence, and ethical lapse rests on peer-reviewed research, not anecdote. She translates academic findings into operational decisions: when to slow a leader down, when to add a shadow board, when a decision should be made by data and when by judgment. Recognised by Poets&Quants on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list and the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year, she sits in the small group of leadership researchers whose work senior executives are actively asking for. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Director of IMD’s Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. PhD in Psychology, Yale University; postdoctoral fellow at Kellogg School of Management and Tuck School of Business. Co-author with Michael Wade of “Every Leader Needs to Navigate These 7 Tensions,” Harvard Business Review, 2020. Named by Poets&Quants to its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list and nominated to the Thinkers50 Radar in the same year. Research published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, Journal of Management, and Business Ethics Quarterly. Biography Most leadership advice still asks executives to pick a side. Be visionary or be operational. Trust the data or trust your gut. Hold authority or share it. The senior leaders Jennifer Jordan studies do not have that luxury, and her research is built around the cost of pretending they do. Jordan is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD in Lausanne, where she directs the Leading Digital Execution and Leadership Essentials programmes. Her 2020 Harvard Business Review piece with Michael Wade, drawn from surveys of more than 1,000 senior leaders, set out seven tensions that define the modern executive role, from expert to learner, from controller to architect, from constant to adaptor. The framework is now used inside leadership development at major firms. Trained as a social psychologist at Yale, she works on the harder edge of the leadership question: power, influence, and the conditions under which capable people make ethical mistakes. That research is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Management, and it underpins her work on leadership transitions, family business succession, and women on boards. Her recognition is concrete. Poets&Quants placed her on its 2019 Best 40 Under 40 list of business school professors, citing close to 1,500 academic citations of her work. Thinkers50 named her to its Radar list of management thinkers to watch in the same year. With Mahwesh Khan, she has argued in HBR for shadow boards as a structural answer to generational distance at the top of organisations, a recommendation that several large European firms have since adopted. Key speaking topics Leadership in the digital age Power, influence, and ethics Leadership transitions and succession Decision-making under contradiction Women on boards and inclusive leadership Family business leadership Shadow boards and intergenerational governance Ideal for CEOs and executive committees are navigating contradictory strategic demands. CHROs and heads of leadership development are designing senior leader programmes. Board chairs and nominating committees are working on succession and governance. Family business principals and next-generation leaders are preparing to take over. Audience outcomes A direct read on the seven tensions that define senior leadership today, with practical tests for which behaviour each situation calls for. A clearer view of how power changes a leader’s judgement, and the routines that keep that change in check. Sharper questions for succession and leadership transitions, including how shadow boards and reverse mentoring change board-level perspective. A research-grounded account of why digital execution stalls at the top of organisations, and what senior leaders can do about it.

Why organisations work with Sir Dave Brailsford His named “aggregation of marginal gains” framework is documented in the Harvard Business Review and has been formally referenced beyond sport – including in UK government education policy – giving it cross-sector credibility that sports performance anecdotes alone do not carry. British Cycling under his direction won eight Olympic golds at Beijing and eight more at London. The results are publicly verifiable, tracked to a specific method, and not attributable to a single talented athlete – which is precisely the argument he makes to senior leaders. He built Team Sky from scratch in a sport where no British rider had ever won the Tour de France, then guided three different British riders to six victories in seven years. The case is not that he managed winners – it is that he built the system that produced them. His MBA from Sheffield Hallam University and degree in Sports Science and Psychology mean his performance framework connects explicitly to business concepts leaders already know – including Kaizen and continuous improvement theory – but tested in conditions of measurable outcomes and full public scrutiny. As Director of Sport at INEOS, he has applied his performance architecture across multiple elite sport organisations and disciplines, testing where the method transfers and where it meets its limits – giving his cross-context perspective a rigour that pure sporting nostalgia does not. Biography highlights Performance Director, British Cycling, 2003-2014; Great Britain led the Olympic cycling medal table at both Beijing 2008 (8 golds) and London 2012 (8 golds) under his direction Founding Team Principal, Team Sky (2010), later INEOS Grenadiers; the team won six Tour de France titles in seven years, with Bradley Wiggins, Chris Froome, and Geraint Thomas Knighted in 2013, Queen’s New Year Honours, for services to cycling and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games Featured in Harvard Business Review (October 2015): “How 1% Performance Improvements Led to Olympic Gold” BSc Sport and Exercise Sciences and Psychology, Chester College of Higher Education; MBA, Sheffield Hallam University BBC Sports Personality of the Year – Coach Award (referenced across multiple bureau profiles for the 2008 and 2012 successes); inducted into the British Cycling Hall of Fame Director of Sport, INEOS, from December 2021 Biography British Cycling in 2003 was a programme with one Olympic gold medal to its name in 76 years. Dave Brailsford arrived as Performance Director that year, bringing an MBA from Sheffield Hallam University and a degree in Sports Science and Psychology to a discipline that had been managed largely on instinct. Within five years, the team won eight gold medals at the Beijing Olympics. The method he named the aggregation of marginal gains was built on a simple logic. Break down every element that contributes to performance, improve each by one per cent, and the compound effect becomes significant. In a Harvard Business Review interview in 2015, he described the underlying architecture as three Podium Principles – strategy, human performance rooted in behavioural psychology, and continuous improvement. The framework was designed to be systematic, not inspirational. He founded Team Sky as Team Principal in 2010, in a sport where no British rider had ever won the Tour de France. The team produced six Tour victories in seven years, each achieved by a different British rider. It became one of the most closely documented examples of system-driven, sustained performance in elite sport. Brailsford was knighted in 2013 for services to cycling and the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. He was appointed Director of Sport at INEOS in 2021, extending his performance framework across multiple elite sport organisations. His argument to senior leaders has remained consistent: the distance between ambition and execution is almost always a systems problem, and systems can be designed. Key speaking topics Aggregation of marginal gains High-performance leadership systems Performance standards and organisational culture Continuous improvement at scale Building and governing elite teams Translating elite sport architecture to organisational contexts Ideal for CEOs and senior executive teams responsible for sustained organisational performance Boards and transformation leads working on closing the gap between strategic ambition and consistent execution Leadership development programmes seeking a systems-level, evidence-based framework for high performance Organisations undergoing significant performance reset, where standards, accountability, and culture are being rebuilt Audience outcomes A working understanding of the aggregation of marginal gains as a leadership framework – what it actually requires from an organisation, not just as a motivational concept A replicable architecture for the Podium Principles (strategy, human performance, continuous improvement) and how they apply outside elite sport A more precise language for the relationship between leadership standards, organisational culture, and consistent execution Specific insight into the limits of talent-based thinking and the structural advantages of systems-based approaches to performance A reference case for how a performance transformation is engineered, with results that are publicly documented and directly traceable to method

Why organisations work with Peter Vogel He holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD, one of the only dedicated academic chairs in Europe focused on how wealthy families turn giving into strategy rather than reputation management. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, function as operating manuals for principals and advisors, and the philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. He directs the IMD Global Family Business Center, which gives him a live view across hundreds of enterprising families and their governance, succession, and investment decisions. He is also an operator: founder and non-executive Chairman of Delta Venture Partners, which means founder and family-office audiences hear practitioner judgement, not only academic frameworks. Family Capital ranked him among the Top 100 Family Influencers globally, and Poets&Quants named him to its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors list. Biography highlights Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship, IMD Business School, Lausanne. Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and Director, IMD Global Family Business Center. Co-author of Family Philanthropy Navigator (Axiom Business Book Awards Silver Medal) and Family Office Navigator. Author of Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan) on the youth employment crisis. Founder and non-executive Chairman, Delta Venture Partners AG; Associate Partner, Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame (2024); Poets&Quants Best 40 Under 40 business school professors (2022). Biography Most family businesses do not survive the second generation, and most family offices are built reactively, after a liquidity event, with little design behind them. The work that decides whether enterprising families compound capital or destroy it happens in governance, succession, and philanthropy, areas treated as private until they go wrong in public. Peter Vogel’s research and teaching at IMD sit precisely there. At IMD Business School in Lausanne, he holds the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy and directs the Global Family Business Center, which works with principals, next-generation owners, and their advisors across continents. The chair, funded by the Debiopharm Group, is one of very few dedicated academic posts in Europe focused on how families convert wealth into strategic giving rather than reputational signalling. His two reference books, Family Philanthropy Navigator and Family Office Navigator, are used by family principals and their advisors as practical operating guides. The philanthropy title won the Axiom Business Book Awards silver medal. Before the family-enterprise work, he wrote Generation Jobless? (Palgrave Macmillan), a global analysis of youth unemployment built on interviews with policymakers, employers, and young entrepreneurs. He is also a practitioner. He founded and chairs Delta Venture Partners, an early-stage investment firm, and is an Associate Partner of the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. Family Capital has named him to its Top 100 Family Influencers list; Poets&Quants placed him among its Best 40 Under 40 business school professors; and in 2024 he was inducted into the Family Business Hall of Fame. Key speaking topics Family business governance and succession Family office design and operating models Strategic philanthropy for enterprising families Next-generation ownership and leadership Entrepreneurship inside family enterprises Multi-generational wealth and capital allocation Ideal for Principals and next-generation members of family-owned businesses and family offices Advisors to enterprising families: private banks, wealth managers, multi-family offices, legal and tax counsel Boards of family-controlled companies considering succession, governance reform, or philanthropic strategy Foundation trustees and philanthropy leaders inside enterprising families Audience outcomes A clearer view of what separates family enterprises that survive transitions from those that fragment A vocabulary for the three connected systems in an enterprising family: the operating business, the family office, and the philanthropy Practical reference points for governance design, ownership succession, and next-generation engagement A sharper sense of where philanthropy belongs in family strategy and where it does not

Why organisations work with Mark Williams He brings the evidence base that most performance and leadership content lacks. His research on perceptual-cognitive skill, decision-making and expertise is among the most cited in the field worldwide. He has translated that science into practice at the highest level of sport, advising FIFA, UEFA, the IOC, The FA, and teams across the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. The lessons travel directly into how executives think about talent and pressure. His book with Tim Wigmore, “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made”, gives leaders a shared language for what separates the very best from the merely good, built on interviews with athletes like Steph Curry, Pete Sampras and Marcus Rashford. He is Editor-in-Chief of three of the discipline’s leading journals, including the Journal of Sports Sciences. When he tells a board what the research says, it is not a summary of someone else’s work. He is unusually direct for an academic of his standing. The science is rigorous, the delivery is plain. Biography highlights Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC); formerly Professor and Chair, Department of Health, Kinesiology and Recreation, University of Utah. Co-author of “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made” (2020), with Telegraph and New York Times sports writer Tim Wigmore. Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sports Sciences, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, and Human Movement Science. Distinguished Scholar Awards from the International Society of Sport Psychology and the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity. Consultant to FIFA, UEFA, the IOC, The FA, and professional teams in the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. Fellow of the British Psychological Society, the National Academy of Kinesiology, and the European College of Sport Science. Biography The reason one team performs under pressure and another collapses is rarely the talent on the pitch. It is what was built into the players, the coaching staff and the decisions long before kick-off. Mark Williams has spent more than three decades studying that question, and turning the answers into something coaches, federations and executives can use. His research focuses on the neural and psychological mechanisms behind expertise: how perception, decision-making and motor skill develop, and what separates a world-class performer from a very good one. The work has shaped programmes at FIFA, UEFA, the IOC and The FA, and inside teams across the Premier League, NBA, NFL and MLB. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Sports Sciences, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, and Human Movement Science. His book with Tim Wigmore, “The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made”, brought that body of research to a wider audience through interviews with figures including Steph Curry, Pete Sampras, Kurt Warner and Marcus Rashford. The argument is built on evidence rather than anecdote: the conditions that produce sustained excellence can be described, designed and reproduced. For senior leaders, the value is the translation. The science of how people learn complex skills, hold their nerve in unfamiliar conditions and make better decisions under time pressure does not stop at the touchline. It is the same problem a board faces when it asks why a strategy works for one team and not for the next. Key speaking topics The science of expertise and skill acquisition Talent identification and development Decision-making under pressure Building high-performing teams The psychology of excellence Coaching, learning environments and instructional design Ideal for Executive teams and CHROs designing leadership and talent pipelines Learning and development leaders rebuilding how the organisation teaches complex skills Board and senior conferences focused on performance, culture and decision-making Sports federations, performance directors and coaching staff Audience outcomes A clearer view of what the evidence actually says about how expertise is built, and where most talent programmes go wrong. Specific cues for spotting the perceptual and decision-making skills that distinguish top performers from the rest. Practical principles for designing learning environments that produce skill, not just activity. A shared vocabulary for talking about pressure, decision-making and team performance that holds up under scrutiny.

Why organisations work with Arnaud Chevallier His “Frame, Explore, Decide” process – the core of Solvable (Pearson, 2022) – gives leadership teams a shared language for problem diagnosis that reduces the organisational cost of premature solution-jumping; this is a named, teachable framework, not a consulting philosophy. His research on the five types of strategic questions – published in Harvard Business Review (May-June 2024) and selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – gives executives a tool they can apply immediately to ambiguous, high-stakes discussions. His PhD in nonlinear stochastic mechanics, combined with strategy consulting at Accenture, produces frameworks that are simultaneously more rigorous in their evidence base and more usable in practice than most management academic alternatives. He has worked on genuinely complex, high-ambiguity problem-solving with the International Committee of the Red Cross, Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), and Tetra Pak – organisations whose decision environments require structured diagnosis, not generic strategy advice. As director of IMD’s Global Management Foundations program and its Complex Problem Solving program, he brings institutional proof that serious executive audiences return to his frameworks at multiple career stages. Biography highlights Professor of Strategy, IMD Business School; joined in 2018 Author, Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) Co-author, Solvable: A Simple Solution to Complex Problems (Pearson FT, 2022), with Albrecht Enders Contributor to Harvard Business Review; “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions” (May-June 2024) selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 Director, IMD Global Management Foundations program; Director, MSc Sustainable Management and Technology (IMD/EPFL/University of Lausanne); Co-Director, IMD Complex Problem Solving program Former Accenture strategist (Houston and London); former Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Rice University; former graduate dean, University of Monterrey PhD in mechanical engineering, Rice University; engineering degrees, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Biography Arnaud Chevallier began teaching strategic thinking to engineers at Rice University – a combination that turned out to be revealing. Technically sophisticated minds, trained in rigorous analysis, still defaulted to the same error: they solved problems they had never properly defined. That observation has driven his work at IMD Business School, where he is now Professor of Strategy. His two books – Strategic Thinking in Complex Problem Solving (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Solvable (Pearson FT, 2022, co-authored with Albrecht Enders) – give executives a cross-disciplinary framework for navigating complexity: Frame, Explore, Decide. Both make the same foundational argument. Most strategic failures are framing failures. Organisations commit to solutions before the actual problem is understood. His research on decision quality extends to the questions executives ask. His article “The Art of Asking Smarter Questions,” published in Harvard Business Review in May-June 2024 and co-authored with Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, identifies five types of strategic inquiry that consistently improve decision outcomes. The piece was selected for HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2026 – an editorial signal that the question of how leaders think has moved to the centre of the management agenda. At IMD, Chevallier directs the Global Management Foundations and Complex Problem Solving programs. His consulting work includes Shell, the United Nations, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance) – organisations whose challenges require structured diagnosis before any solution can be considered. Before entering academia, he worked in Accenture’s Strategy and Business Architecture practice across Houston and London, a background that grounds the frameworks in the reality of high-pressure institutional decisions. Key speaking topics Complex problem-solving frameworks Strategic decision-making under uncertainty Problem framing and diagnosis Cognitive bias and de-biasing in executive decisions Structured questioning for strategic clarity T-shaped thinking and cross-disciplinary problem-solving Evidence-based reasoning in organisations Ideal for Chief Strategy Officers and senior leadership teams navigating high-ambiguity decisions Transformation leads and strategy functions working through complex, multi-stakeholder challenges Engineering and technical leaders transitioning into general management or executive roles Executive MBA cohorts and senior leadership development programmes Audience outcomes A named, deployable framework – Frame, Explore, Decide – for structuring complex, ill-defined problems in real organisational contexts Practical tools for identifying problem misframing before resources and credibility are committed to the wrong solution A working method for recognising and reducing cognitive bias in high-stakes group decisions The five types of strategic question to apply in ambiguous, politically charged, or time-pressured discussions Sharper habits of structured reasoning that can be applied independently after the session

Why organisations work with Whitney Johnson A field-tested model, the S Curve of Learning, that gives executives a shared language for placing every team member on a developmental trajectory rather than an annual performance grid. A track record of applying disruptive innovation theory to capital allocation, including co-founding the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Clayton Christensen and leading the seed investment in Coupang. A No. 8 Thinkers50 ranking in 2021 and consecutive listings since 2015, signalling sustained credibility with the same boards her audiences sit on. Direct relevance to succession planning, post-merger integration, and the talent risk inside transformation programmes, drawn from Fortune 500 advisory work with Kraft Heinz, Intermountain Health, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon. A Wall Street equity-analyst background that lets her speak to commercial leaders in their own language about return on people, not just culture. Biography highlights CEO and co-founder of Disruption Advisors, advising Fortune 500 companies, private equity portfolios, and scale-ups on leadership and team development. Co-founder with Clayton Christensen of the Disruptive Innovation Fund at Rose Park Advisors; led the seed round in Coupang. Ranked No. 8 on Thinkers50 in 2021, with continuous listings since 2015. Author of Smart Growth (Harvard Business Press, 2022), a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller and a Thinkers50 Best New Management Book. Author of Disrupt Yourself, Build an A-Team, and Dare, Dream, Do. LinkedIn Top Voice and host of the Disrupt Yourself podcast, with guests including Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Stanley McChrystal. Biography Most companies treat leadership development as a calendar of programmes. The harder question is where each senior leader sits on a learning curve, and what the organisation does when too many of them are stalled at the top of the same one. That is the question Whitney Johnson built a career around. Before founding Disruption Advisors, Johnson spent eight consecutive years as an Institutional Investor-ranked equity analyst on Wall Street. She then partnered with Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen to co-found the Disruptive Innovation Fund at Rose Park Advisors, where she served as President from 2007 to 2012 and led the seed round in what is now Coupang. Her shift from capital allocation to people allocation is the through line of her work. The S Curve of Learning, adapted from Everett Rogers and applied through her January-February 2022 Harvard Business Review article and the book Smart Growth, gives executives a way to manage their organisations as a portfolio of learning curves. It reframes engagement, retention, and succession as the same problem looked at from three angles. That argument has earned her a No. 8 Thinkers50 ranking in 2021 and a consistent place on the list since 2015. Her client roster includes Kraft Heinz, Intermountain Health, Morgan Stanley, and Amazon, and her Disrupt Yourself podcast features sustained conversations with figures including Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Susan Cain, and Stanley McChrystal. Key speaking topics Disruptive innovation applied to people and teams The S Curve of Learning as a development framework Succession planning and talent portfolio management Building and leading high-performing teams Personal disruption and reinvention for senior leaders Smart growth and organisational scaling Coaching cultures inside Fortune 500 companies Ideal for CEOs and executive committees rebuilding the bench beneath them CHROs and chief talent officers redesigning succession and development Private equity operating partners pressure-testing portfolio leadership Boards reviewing CEO succession and senior team capability Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for placing every senior leader on a learning curve, with implications for retention and succession A clearer view of when high performers are about to plateau and what to move them toward A practical link between team composition and commercial performance, drawn from her investment-fund experience Specific moves to disrupt their own roles before circumstances disrupt them Examples from named Fortune 500 engagements they can stress-test against their own organisation

Why organisations work with Vlatka Hlupic A single, evidence-led model of organisational transformation, built from more than a decade of research and field application across companies including GlaxoSmithKline, BP, SAP, Burberry, and the European Commission A measurable diagnostic, 6 Box Leadership, that lets a leadership team baseline its current culture, identify the constraints holding performance back, and track shift over time The intellectual authority of an academic who chairs a faculty position at Hult Ashridge and has published in Harvard Business Review, paired with the practitioner credibility of a CEO running her own consultancy A clear position on what comes after command-and-control management, set out in two books that have been recognised by Forbes, the Axiom Business Book Awards, and the CMI Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Transformation, Hult Ashridge Executive Education Founder and CEO, Management Shift Solutions Ltd; Founder, Drucker Society London Author of “The Management Shift” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “Humane Capital” (Bloomsbury) “The Management Shift” listed by Forbes among the top eight business books of 2014; winner of the Axiom Business Book Award and CMI Management Articles of the Year 2015 Damehood awarded 2025 for contribution to humanising business; Think Global People “80 Outstanding Global Women 2025” Featured in Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, and at the Global Peter Drucker Forum Biography Most large organisations are still managed through assumptions that were set in a different industrial cycle. Hierarchy, central control, and extrinsic incentives delivered scale in the twentieth century, but they produce diminishing returns when the work is knowledge-intensive and the workforce expects autonomy. Hlupic’s research argues that the gap between how leaders say they want their organisations to behave and how those organisations actually operate is the single largest drag on engagement and innovation today. Her response is the Management Shift, a five-level model of organisational culture developed across more than a decade of academic and field research and set out in two books, “The Management Shift” (Palgrave Macmillan) and “Humane Capital” (Bloomsbury). The model describes the steps an organisation moves through as it leaves command-and-control behind, and it sits on top of a diagnostic, 6 Box Leadership, that senior teams use to measure where they actually are. The credentials sit behind the argument, not in front of it. Hlupic is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Transformation at Hult Ashridge, Founder and CEO of Management Shift Solutions, and Founder of the Drucker Society London. Her work has been applied inside organisations including GlaxoSmithKline, BP, SAP, Burberry, the European Commission, and the House of Commons. She has contributed to Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, The Economist, Forbes, and the Global Peter Drucker Forum. In 2025 she was awarded a Damehood for her contribution to humanising business. Forbes listed “The Management Shift” among the top eight business books of 2014, and the work has since picked up the Axiom Business Book Award and the CMI Management Articles of the Year. The throughline across the academic publications, the books, and the client work is the same: a board that wants better engagement, better innovation, and a more durable culture has to change how it leads, and there is now a tested way to do that. Key speaking topics Leadership 4.0 and the post-command-and-control organisation The Management Shift framework Organisational culture transformation Employee engagement and human-centric leadership Innovation in knowledge-intensive organisations Future of work and digital transformation Humane capitalism and purpose-driven business Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and boards re-examining their operating model after restructure, merger, or digital transformation CHROs and chief people officers leading culture change at enterprise scale Senior leadership teams using diagnostic instruments to baseline culture before and after major change programmes Executive education and leadership development functions in large multinationals Audience outcomes A clear five-level map of organisational culture and where their own organisation currently sits on it Specific behaviours that move a team from compliance-driven to engagement-driven performance Evidence from multinationals that have used the Management Shift approach, and what it changed in measurable terms A view of leadership beyond authority, drawn from her HBR work and longitudinal research Language and frame to take into their own executive conversations on culture, engagement, and innovation

Why organisations work with Suzy Walton Triple-chartered credentials (Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist, Chartered Scientist) that few governance speakers in the UK can match, paired with active board service across more than fifteen organisations. Direct Whitehall experience, including the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, and a 2025 Cabinet Office policy appointment by the Prime Minister. Operational military psychology background, including PhD research on suicide within the Armed Forces and lecturing at NATO events on terrorist profiling and behaviour under extreme stress. Nearly a decade as the longest-serving board member of the Institute of Directors, now a strategic advisor and chair of the IoD Accreditation and Standards Committee, giving boards a benchmark voice on director standards. A perspective on resilience grounded in real biographical fact: long-term widowhood, raising seven children, and a career rebuilt from the West End stage through to the Cabinet Office. Biography highlights Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist. PhD, Cranfield University, on suicide within the Armed Forces. Former senior civil servant: Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office, Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Vice-President, Combat Stress; former Vice-President, Royal Society of Medicine (2019 to 2021). Longest-serving member on the Institute of Directors main board, 2013 to 2022; current strategic advisor. Honorary Doctorate, University of Hertfordshire, 2026; BSc and MSc in Psychology from the same institution. Former West End actress (Children of a Lesser God), BBC Television presenter and Sky News reporter. Biography The standard governance speaker tends to come from one track: City, Big Four, executive search. Suzy Walton arrives at four. She is a Chartered Director, Chartered Occupational Psychologist and Chartered Scientist, qualifications usually distributed across three different professions, and she has used all three in active board service. Her doctorate, awarded by Cranfield University, was on suicide within the Armed Forces and was initially classified. As a serving military psychologist, she designed Resistance to Interrogation training, built recruitment systems for classified roles, and lectured at NATO events on terrorist profiling and human behaviour under extreme stress. Senior civil service postings in the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit followed, and in 2025, the Prime Minister appointed her to a fresh policy role in the Cabinet Office. The board record is long and substantive. She was the longest-serving member of the main board of the Institute of Directors, from 2013 to 2022, and now sits as strategic advisor and chair of its Accreditation and Standards Committee. She has held positions at ACCA, Birmingham Children’s Hospital, the Royal Society of Arts, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Internet Watch Foundation, the University of Westminster, the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, the Social Security Advisory Committee and the State Honours Committee. She is Vice-President of Combat Stress. What she draws on in front of a senior audience is the unusual width of that record set against an unusual personal one: a former West End actress in Children of a Lesser God, BBC and Sky News broadcaster, mother of seven, widowed for many years. Boards interested in honest governance and serious resilience tend to be the ones that book her. Key speaking topics Corporate governance and board effectiveness Director of Standards and Chartered Practice Resilience and behaviour under extreme stress Women on boards and inclusive governance Public service leadership and civil service strategy Veterans’ mental health and Combat Stress Multi-role careers and reinvention Ideal for Boards, NEDs and chairs raising the standard of director practice Senior civil service, regulatory and public-sector leadership audiences CHROs, talent and inclusion leads working on women into board roles Healthcare, professional body and charity leadership audiences Audience outcomes A clearer benchmark for what good director conduct looks like, drawn from a chartered framework. A direct view of how Whitehall actually makes policy decisions, from someone who has been in the room. A grounded model of resilience that is not motivational but operational, built from military psychology and personal biography. Practical reference points for boards trying to take women, diversity and governance standards seriously at the same time.

Why organisations work with Suzannah Baum She brings a published methodology, not a personality. The Diamond Speech Structure is a named framework that teams can apply after the engagement ends, which means the investment compounds beyond a single keynote or coaching block. Her client roster is operationally serious: Roche Pharmaceuticals, BMO Capital Markets, the International Civil Aviation Organization, the National Film Board of Canada. These are environments where a misjudged presentation has real commercial or regulatory consequences. She is one of a very small number of speakers who hold both a CAPS national board credential and a published book on the subject they coach in. The standard is set by her peers, not by her own marketing. She works in both keynote and coaching modes, which lets organisations deploy her against either a large internal audience or a specific senior individual preparing for a high-stakes moment. Biography highlights Author, From Nervous to Nailed It! (2022), Amazon listing ISBN 9781778222900 Past President, CAPS Montreal; former National Director, Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (2021 to 2022) Recipient, CAPS E1-R1 Ambassador of the Year Award B.Comm, McGill University; M.A., Carleton University Former public speaking instructor, McGill University DISC Certified Human Behaviour Consultant; eSpeakers Certified Virtual Presenter Named client engagements include Roche Pharmaceuticals, BMO Capital Markets, Service Canada, International Civil Aviation Organization, National Film Board of Canada Media contributor and featured expert: Huffington Post, Montreal Gazette, Elle Canada, Global TV News, CJAD Montreal Biography A senior leader walks into a board meeting with twenty years of operational judgement and twenty minutes to convey it. What happens in those twenty minutes decides whether the room moves with them. This is the territory Suzannah Baum has spent her career inside, and the reason her work shows up in pharmaceutical, banking, and aviation environments where the cost of an unclear presentation is measured in money or licence. Her published methodology, the Diamond Speech Structure, gives senior speakers a repeatable flowchart for building presentations that hold their shape under pressure. The framework sits at the centre of her book From Nervous to Nailed It!, released in 2022, and her online programme used by speakers preparing for high-stakes audiences. The structure is teachable, which is the point. Coaching that depends on the coach is not coaching, it is a dependency. Her institutional credentials carry weight in her own profession. She is a past President of CAPS Montreal, served as a National Director on the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers board, and was awarded the CAPS E1-R1 Ambassador of the Year. She has taught public speaking at McGill University, where she also earned her B.Comm, and holds an M.A. from Carleton. She is a DISC Certified Human Behaviour Consultant, which she uses to adapt her work to the communication style of the individual leader in the room. Her named client engagements run through Roche Pharmaceuticals, BMO Capital Markets, Service Canada, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and the National Film Board of Canada. These are organisations where the gap between a leader’s authority and their audience’s reception is not a soft problem. It is the problem. Key speaking topics Executive presence and presentation credibility Presentation structure for senior leaders Sales and client-facing communication Speaking under high stakes and visible pressure Storytelling for business audiences Building confidence in newer speakers Virtual and hybrid presentation craft Ideal for Senior leaders preparing for investor days, board addresses, or industry keynotes Leadership development programmes for newly promoted executives Sales and client-facing teams in regulated or technical industries Communications, marketing, and HR functions investing in presentation capability across leadership benches Audience outcomes A repeatable structure for building presentations under time pressure, using the Diamond Speech Structure Specific techniques for managing visible nerves in front of senior audiences Sharper editorial discipline in how a leader frames the central message of a talk Practical tools for adapting delivery to different audience types, drawn from the DISC behavioural model A clearer sense of what separates a presentation that gets through from one that lands