Leadership speakers

Why organisations work with John Mattone His Intelligent Leadership framework draws a structural distinction between the “Inner Core” of character, values and emotional maturity and the “Outer Core” of skills and competencies. Most leadership development programmes work only on the outer layer. Mattone’s argument is that this is why they underdeliver. The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory, in use since 1996 and administered to more than 10,000 leaders worldwide, quantifies the internal drivers of leadership behaviour. It gives organisations a measurable starting point for executive development rather than a qualitative one. John Mattone Global is recognised among the world’s top ten executive coaching and leadership development firms by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Business Insights. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification has produced more than 800 certified coaches across 55+ countries, so the methodology can be deployed at scale rather than through a single practitioner. Named #1 Executive Coach in the World by Global Gurus six times between 2019 and 2026, and inducted into the Corps d’Elite (Hall of Fame) in 2025 for lifetime achievement. Both are credentialled external rankings, not self-conferred titles, which gives procurement teams an independently verified benchmark when selecting executive development partners. His critique of the leadership development industry is pointed and specific: he argues that the sector systematically overinvests in outer competencies and underinvests in the inner character work that determines how leaders actually behave when stakes are high. That position gives boards and CHROs a framework for re-evaluating their existing development spend. Biography highlights Creator of the Intelligent Leadership framework and the Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory; the MLEI has been administered to more than 10,000 leaders globally since 1996 Named #1 Executive Coach in the World by Global Gurus six times between 2019 and 2026; inducted into the Corps d’Elite (Hall of Fame) in 2025 for lifetime achievement Author of 11 books, five of them bestsellers: Talent Leadership (AMACOM, 2012), Intelligent Leadership (AMACOM, 2013), Cultural Transformations (Wiley, 2016), The Intelligent Leader (Wiley, 2020), The Executive Coach’s Handbook (2022). Marshall Goldsmith wrote the forewords for Intelligent Leadership and The Intelligent Leader. The Intelligent Leader was named a Forbes #1 Holiday Book and a Soundview Best Book of 2020. Most recent contribution: Pinnacle of Influence (Global Gurus, 2024), a multi-author anthology with Marshall Goldsmith and other Global Gurus-ranked leaders Founder of John Mattone Global; the firm is recognised by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Insights Research among the world’s top ten executive coaching and leadership development firms. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification programme has produced more than 800 coaches across 55+ countries Industrial/organisational psychologist by training (MS, University of Central Florida); coaching engagements with C-suite leaders across global organisations, including the publicly documented coaching of Steve Jobs Featured in Forbes, Chief Executive, HR Magazine, and Training magazine; the John Mattone Global leadership blog has been ranked #1 in its category by Feedspot from 2017 through 2025 Biography Leadership development has a measurement problem. Organisations can assess whether a leader has the right skills; they struggle to assess whether that leader has the inner constitution to deploy those skills when conditions deteriorate. John Mattone’s work is built around that gap. His Intelligent Leadership framework distinguishes the Inner Core, a leader’s character, values, emotional maturity and self-awareness, from the Outer Core of visible competencies and behaviours. His argument, made across 11 books and four decades of executive coaching practice, is that outer performance is only as reliable as the inner foundation beneath it. Competency training without inner-core development produces leaders who look good in stable conditions and struggle in everything else. The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory, in use since 1996 and administered to more than 10,000 leaders globally, translates that argument into a quantified diagnostic; organisations get a baseline measure of leadership character, not just leadership style. The published work is more methodology than motivation. Intelligent Leadership (AMACOM, 2013) and The Intelligent Leader (Wiley, 2020), both with forewords by Marshall Goldsmith, set out the structural argument and the implementation path. Cultural Transformations (Wiley, 2016) extends it into how senior leadership character shapes organisational culture. Global Gurus has named Mattone the #1 Executive Coach in the World six times between 2019 and 2026, and inducted him into the Corps d’Elite in 2025 for lifetime achievement. Mattone is the founder of John Mattone Global, recognised by Worldwide Research Reports, STATS N DATA, and Infinity Insights Research as a top-ten executive coaching and leadership development firm. Its ICF-accredited Intelligent Leadership certification programme has produced more than 800 coaches across 55+ countries, so the IL methodology can be deployed at organisational scale rather than through a single practitioner. An industrial/organisational psychologist by training (University of Central Florida), Mattone has consulted with more than 250 organisations and directly coached over 200 senior executives, including the late Steve Jobs and former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico. For CHROs and boards reviewing leadership development strategy, Mattone offers a diagnosis of why current programmes underperform, a named alternative framework, the diagnostic instrumentation to apply it, and the certified coaching infrastructure to implement it at the individual executive level. Key speaking topics Intelligent Leadership and the Inner Core / Outer Core model Executive character and leadership sustainability Leadership development programme design Executive coaching methodology and practice Culture transformation and leadership alignment CEO and C-suite succession readiness The Mattone Leadership Enneagram Inventory (MLEI) and leadership diagnostics Internal coaching capability and certified networks Ideal for CHROs and chief people officers reviewing or redesigning executive development programmes Boards and nomination committees focused on CEO succession and senior leadership pipeline Transformation leads overseeing culture change initiatives where leadership behaviour is a critical variable Executive development teams in large organisations seeking a diagnostic-led rather than programme-led approach to leadership capability Audience outcomes A working understanding of the Inner Core / Outer Core distinction and why it reframes how organisations should design senior leadership development Familiarity with the MLEI as a diagnostic instrument and how it creates a measurable starting point for executive coaching engagements A framework for identifying which leaders in a pipeline carry the inner character foundations to perform under high-pressure conditions – and which do not Practical criteria for evaluating whether existing leadership development spend is addressing the right layer of leadership A replicable methodology, drawn from Mattone’s published books, that leadership teams can apply without ongoing dependency on external consultants

Why organisations work with John McCarthy First-hand authority on sustained psychological endurance, not borrowed from research but from 1,943 days in captivity in Lebanon as Britain’s longest-held hostage. A journalist’s craft applied to his own story: he can articulate what most people who survive extreme experience cannot put into words for an audience. A specific lesson rooted in cellmate friendship with Brian Keenan: how two people sustain each other’s morale, humour, and reason when the institutions around them have failed. A bestselling memoir, “Some Other Rainbow”, and a follow-up travel book with Keenan, “Between Extremes”, that gave him a long public platform beyond the captivity story itself. Honoured with a CBE in 1992 and an honorary D.Litt from the University of Hull, with subsequent BBC television and radio work that demonstrates broadcast-grade clarity in front of an audience. Biography highlights Kidnapped in Beirut on 17 April 1986 while working for United Press International Television News; released on 8 August 1991 after more than five years in captivity. Britain’s longest-held hostage in Lebanon, sharing a cell for much of that period with the Irish writer Brian Keenan. Appointed CBE in the 1992 New Year Honours List. Co-author of the bestselling memoir “Some Other Rainbow” (1993, with Jill Morrell), and of “Between Extremes” (1999, with Brian Keenan). Author of “A Ghost Upon Your Path” (2010) and “You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Palestine” (2013), both published by Transworld. BBC television and radio credits include “Island Race” with Sandi Toksvig (1995) and BBC Radio 4’s “Excess Baggage”. Patron of Freedom from Torture. Biography On 17 April 1986, a young television journalist on his first foreign posting was driving to Beirut airport when his car was stopped by gunmen. John McCarthy, working for United Press International Television News, would not be free again until 8 August 1991. He became Britain’s longest-held hostage in Lebanon. For most of those years he was held alongside the Irish writer Brian Keenan. The two men kept each other functional through humour, argument, invented routines, and a stubborn refusal to give the captors their interior lives. When McCarthy speaks to senior audiences, this is the material that lands hardest: not the abduction or the release, but the daily mechanics of how two people hold a mind together when nothing outside the cell is in their control. After release he wrote, with Jill Morrell, the bestselling memoir “Some Other Rainbow” (Bantam Press, 1993). With Keenan he later co-wrote “Between Extremes” (1999), the account of a journey through Patagonia and Chile that the two men had imagined while in captivity. Two further books followed, “A Ghost Upon Your Path” and “You Can’t Hide the Sun: A Journey Through Palestine”. He sailed around the British coastline with Sandi Toksvig for the BBC series “Island Race” and co-presented BBC Radio 4’s “Excess Baggage”. He was appointed CBE in 1992 and holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Hull. The work he is most often asked to do for organisations is not motivational in the soft sense; it is precise testimony about endurance, hope, and the difference between giving up and continuing, delivered by someone who has earned every word. Key speaking topics Resilience under prolonged pressure Hope and morale in extended uncertainty Decision-making in extreme circumstances Recovery and reintegration after crisis Friendship, humour, and survival Leadership lessons from captivity Ideal for Senior leadership audiences facing sustained, multi-year disruption rather than acute one-off crises Risk, security, and crisis management functions that need a human counterpart to their procedural training Organisations marking a milestone, anniversary, or after-dinner moment that calls for substance over showmanship Audience outcomes A clearer sense of what sustains morale and judgement when a situation will not resolve quickly A first-hand account of how relationships, humour, and small routines become survival tools under pressure Specific, memorable detail from a captivity experience that audiences will repeat to colleagues afterwards Reflection on what hope is, and what it is not, when the timeline is unknown

Why organisations work with John Nichol A first-hand account of decision-making under conditions most leaders will never face, drawn from capture, interrogation and 47 days as a prisoner of war. A Sunday Times bestselling literary catalogue, including Tornado Down, Spitfire, Lancaster and Tornado, that gives the speaking work documented depth rather than a single anecdote stretched across an hour. Sustained broadcasting authority on military affairs across Newsnight, BBC News, CNN, ITN and Sky News, which signals to senior audiences that the analysis behind the story is taken seriously by serious editors. A speaker who refuses the heroic frame. Nichol describes himself as an ordinary person who found himself in extraordinary circumstances, which lands more credibly with corporate audiences than the conventional military keynote. One book, Medic, co-written with Tony Rennell, was shortlisted for the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize, evidence that the writing is held to a literary standard, not a souvenir-of-service standard. Biography highlights Royal Air Force Tornado navigator, 1981 to 1996, Flight Lieutenant rank, with operational service in the Gulf War, Bosnia and the Falkland Islands. Shot down on 17 January 1991, the first low-level daylight raid of the Gulf War, captured and held as a prisoner of war at Abu Ghraib. Co-author of Tornado Down with pilot John Peters, a Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller. Author of Spitfire, Lancaster and Tornado, all Sunday Times bestsellers, plus The Unknown Warrior, Eject! Eject!, Tail-End Charlies, Home Run and The Last Escape. Medic, co-written with Tony Rennell, shortlisted for the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize. Presenter and consultant for Newsnight, The One Show, BBC News, CNN, ITN and Sky News, with journalism in The Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Observer and The Guardian. Biography On 17 January 1991, the first low-level daylight raid of the Gulf War, a Tornado GR1 was hit by a surface-to-air missile over Iraq. The crew ejected. Within hours the navigator, Flight Lieutenant John Nichol, was on Iraqi television, his face one of the defining images of the conflict. He spent 47 days as a prisoner of war at Abu Ghraib. What followed is the part organisations book him for. Nichol turned the experience into Tornado Down, co-written with pilot John Peters, a Number 1 Sunday Times bestseller, and then into a long writing career: Spitfire, Lancaster, Tornado and The Unknown Warrior, all serious works of military history with national readerships. Medic, co-written with Tony Rennell, was shortlisted for the 2010 Wellcome Trust Book Prize. The broadcasting work runs in parallel. Nichol has presented and contributed to Newsnight, The One Show, BBC News, CNN, ITN and Sky News, and writes for The Times, The Mail on Sunday, The Observer and The Guardian. He is one of the UK’s most quoted commentators on military affairs. The speaking proposition is more specific than resilience. Nichol talks about what actually happens to judgement, fear and identity when control disappears, and what carries a person through. He is direct about the limits of his own example, describing himself as an ordinary person in extraordinary circumstances. That framing, paired with the literary and broadcasting record, is why his work is taken seriously by audiences that would dismiss a more conventional military keynote. Key speaking topics Resilience under extreme pressure Decision-making in fear and uncertainty Camaraderie and team cohesion Recovery from adversity Military history and remembrance After-dinner storytelling for corporate audiences Ideal for Leadership and sales conferences seeking a serious counterweight to corporate motivational content Senior leadership programmes addressing performance under sustained pressure Corporate events and after-dinner audiences who want a substantive speaker rather than a celebrity booking Remembrance and commemorative events tied to military history Audience outcomes A clearer view of how composure, judgement and team trust hold up when external conditions remove control Specific reference points for decision-making under fear, drawn from a documented event rather than a leadership model A reset on what resilience actually requires, separated from the language used in workplace wellbeing material A respect for the difference between professionally trained response to crisis and improvised response, with implications for how organisations prepare their own people

Why organisations work with John Peters A first-hand account of decision-making, fear and recovery under conditions most executives will never experience, used as a working reference for leadership behaviour rather than as a war story. Twenty years of post-RAF consultancy through Monkey Business and UPH Ltd, with engagements at board and senior-team level on leadership, strategy and cultural change. Authority on human factors and safety culture, built on MoD programme leadership that won the Flight International Aerospace Industry Award for Training and Safety. Academic standing that supports the commercial work: former Chair of the Association of MBAs, Visiting Professor at Kingston Business School, Honorary Doctorate of Education from the University of Bedfordshire. Co-author of Tornado Down, a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, and Team Tornado, with a BAFTA-nominated documentary in the same body of work. Biography highlights Former Royal Air Force Squadron Leader and Tornado GR1 pilot, shot down on the opening day of the 1991 Gulf War and held as a prisoner of war for seven weeks. Co-author of Tornado Down (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller) and Team Tornado, with John Nichol. Subject of Cutting Edge: Tornado Down, BAFTA-nominated and Independent Documentary of the Year. Founder and owner of Monkey Business, a leadership and strategy consultancy working with senior teams since 2009; founder of UPH Ltd in 2000. Former Chair of the Association of MBAs; Visiting Professor at Kingston Business School; Associate Professor at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow. Honorary Doctorate of Education, University of Bedfordshire (2022). Biography A Tornado GR1 was shot down over Iraq on the opening day of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. The two crew members, John Peters and his navigator John Nichol, were captured, interrogated and held for seven weeks. The bruised image of Peters on Iraqi state television became one of the defining pictures of the war. That experience is the entry point, not the conclusion. Peters returned to RAF service, then led Ministry of Defence work on aviation safety and human error, including a Human Factors Cultural Change Programme recognised by the Flight International Aerospace Industry Award for Training and Safety. The interest is consistent: how groups of capable people make sound decisions when stakes rise and information thins. Since leaving the RAF in 2000, Peters has worked with senior business teams on the same question, first through UPH Ltd and from 2009 through his consultancy Monkey Business. The frame is practical. Leadership behaviour, team trust and clarity of intent are treated as performance variables, observed and adjusted, not virtues to be admired. The academic work runs alongside the commercial. Peters chaired the Association of MBAs, holds a Visiting Professorship at Kingston Business School and an Associate Professorship at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, and received an Honorary Doctorate of Education from the University of Bedfordshire in 2022. Tornado Down, written with Nichol, remains a Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller and the basis of a BAFTA-nominated documentary. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Resilience and recovery after acute setbacks High-performing teams in high-stakes environments Decision-making with incomplete information Human factors and safety culture Cultural change in complex organisations Accountability and personal responsibility Ideal for Boards and executive committees taking on a major change, integration or operational risk CEOs and senior leadership teams stress-testing how they make decisions under load Heads of safety, operations and risk in regulated or safety-critical industries Leadership development and executive education programmes building resilience capability Audience outcomes A working language for what leadership actually looks like when conditions deteriorate A clearer view of how teams hold or lose their composure when judgement is under strain Specific reference points for handling fear, ambiguity and reputational exposure inside a senior team A first-hand case in human factors and safety culture that is hard to obtain from any other source Renewed conviction about the cost of avoiding hard conversations before they become forced

Why organisations work with John Ridding He ran the playbook the rest of the news industry copied. The FT moved to a paywall in 2002, a metered model in 2007, and trial-led subscriptions in 2015, reaching one million subscribers in 2019 and 2.9 million paying users by 2023. He brings the inside view of a cross-border acquisition that worked. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei is one of the cleanest examples of a Japanese parent acquiring a Western media asset without breaking it. He has signed the first UK national publisher licensing deal with OpenAI, which gives him a current operator perspective on how content businesses negotiate with foundation model companies, not a commentator’s view. He spent 35 years inside one institution and ran it for almost 20. That tenure is unusual at his level and gives him a coherent argument about long-horizon transformation rather than a sequence of quarterly bets. Biography highlights Chief Executive Officer of the FT Group, May 2006 to June 2025. Special Executive Director of Nikkei, parent company of the Financial Times since 2015. Honorary Chairman of the Financial Times following his transition from CEO. Previously Publisher of FT Asia and Chairman of Pearson Asia, 2003 to 2006. Foreign correspondent for the FT in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong, with reporting from China, Japan, India and Indonesia. First-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, Oxford University. Biography The reader-revenue model now treated as orthodoxy across global news media did not exist as a serious commercial strategy when the Financial Times began charging for online journalism in 2002. The decision was contested inside the building and dismissed outside it. Two decades later, it is the model the New York Times, the Washington Post and most of the European broadsheets have adopted in some form. John Ridding ran that experiment to scale. As CEO of the FT Group from 2006 to 2025, he took the paper from print-led economics to a paying audience of 2.9 million and revenues of GBP 500m, with more than two-thirds of revenue from digital subscriptions. The headline numbers matter, but the operating choices behind them are what executives in other sectors find useful: how to price confidently when the market expects free, how to redesign the product around habit rather than transactions, how to build a direct data relationship with a reader. He also managed two structural events most CEOs never face. The 2015 sale of the FT from Pearson to Nikkei moved a British editorial institution into Japanese ownership without disturbing the journalism. In April 2024 the FT became the first UK national publisher to license its content to OpenAI, an early test of how content owners negotiate with foundation model companies on terms rather than waiting to be scraped. Before running the business he reported from it. Postings in Seoul, Paris and Hong Kong covered the Asian financial crisis, the rise of China as a commercial power, and the early years of the Eurozone. That reporter background is the throughline. He talks about the digital subscription business the way a foreign correspondent talks about a country, in specifics, not abstractions. Key speaking topics Subscription and reader-revenue business models Digital transformation of legacy businesses AI and the future of content, media and intellectual property Cross-border M&A and post-acquisition integration Global business through the lens of news and capital flows Leadership of long-horizon transformation The economics of trust in a fragmented information market Ideal for CEOs and CFOs of subscription, media, publishing and content businesses Boards of legacy companies designing direct customer-revenue strategies Chief Strategy and Chief Commercial Officers wrestling with pricing in commoditising markets Senior teams negotiating content, IP or data licensing terms with AI platforms Audience outcomes A clear account of how a legacy business shifted from advertising to direct customer revenue, with the sequencing decisions that made it work A framework for thinking about pricing, product and data as one operating system rather than three departments An informed read on what content owners are actually negotiating with foundation model companies, beyond the headlines A view on cross-border integration that treats culture and editorial autonomy as commercial assets, not soft factors

Why organisations work with John Volanthen He has operated at the point where a wrong call costs lives, and can describe the actual mechanics of how a small team made decisions inside Tham Luang when the engineered solutions had run out. George Medal recipient and one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year: the credentials behind his keynote are not anecdotal, they are state-recognised and internationally documented. His thinking is engineered, not motivational. A working IT consultant who designs his own rebreathers and mapping kit, he treats risk, redundancy and failure modes the way a serious technologist does. Author of “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives,” a structured account of the rescue built around principles that map directly onto leadership, risk and team performance. Useful in rooms where the leadership question is concrete: how a team builds trust fast across strangers, agencies and disciplines, and keeps making rational decisions when the cost of error is no longer abstract. Biography highlights George Medal, 2019 New Year Honours, for the Tham Luang cave rescue. Named, with the rescue dive team, as one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year. Royal Humane Society Bronze, Silver and Stanhope Gold medals; Scout Association Bronze Cross; Pride of Britain award. Honorary degree from the University of Bristol, awarded jointly with Rick Stanton in July 2022. World record holder for longest cave penetration dive at 8,800m in the Pozo Azul system, Spain. Author of “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives: The Thai Cave Rescue” (Aurum Press, 2021). Biography On 2 July 2018, two British cave divers reached an air pocket nine days into a search inside the flooded Tham Luang cave system in northern Thailand. The voice on the now well-known footage, asking “How many of you?”, is John Volanthen’s. Twelve boys and their coach were alive. What happened next is taught in business schools as a case study in cross-agency coordination under extreme constraint. The rescue involved Thai Navy SEALs, foreign militaries, technical cave divers and medical specialists, working through a problem nobody had previously solved. Volanthen and his long-time partner Rick Stanton were the divers who carried children out, one at a time, through kilometres of submerged passage. The technical depth behind that decision-making is not accidental. Volanthen runs an IT consultancy in Bristol, has built and sold two technology businesses, and designs his own rebreathers, underwater mapping devices and communications systems. He approaches survival the way an engineer approaches a system: identify the failure modes, reduce them, accept the residual risk consciously. His book “Thirteen Lessons that Saved Thirteen Lives,” published by Aurum Press in 2021, frames the rescue as a sequence of decisions rather than a feat of nerve. He holds the George Medal, the highest civilian bravery award outside human conflict, alongside Royal Humane Society Bronze, Silver and Stanhope Gold medals. He was named one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year, and received an honorary degree from the University of Bristol in 2022. He still cave-dives. He still does rescues, as a volunteer. Key speaking topics Decision-making under extreme constraint Risk, redundancy and failure modes Team trust across strangers and disciplines Crisis leadership in real conditions Performance under pressure Cross-agency coordination Ideal for Boards and executive teams preparing for genuinely high-stakes scenarios where preparation, not improvisation, is the deciding factor. CROs, heads of safety, and operational leaders who own consequences when systems fail. Senior leadership offsites focused on trust, judgement and decision quality under pressure. Audience outcomes A concrete account of how a small team made rational decisions inside Tham Luang when standard protocols had run out. A working model for thinking about risk, redundancy and acceptable failure modes that leaders can apply to their own operations. A clearer view of what builds trust quickly between people who have not worked together before. A reset on the difference between motivational courage and engineered preparation.

Why organisations work with John Weeks He treats culture as a leadership problem, not an HR programme. The work focuses on what executives say and do in the room, not on values posters or engagement scores. His ethnographic training gives him a method most leadership speakers do not have. He reads organisations the way an anthropologist reads a community, then translates what he sees into specific behavioural choices senior leaders can make. He co-directs IMD’s High Performance Leadership programme, the institution’s flagship six-day senior leadership course, which means his material is tested every year against the questions actual CEOs and senior executives bring to Lausanne. His book Unpopular Culture, a study of why a British bank could not change despite years of trying, gives him a sharp argument about why most culture-change efforts fail and what a serious one looks like. He is fluent in the executive’s other reality, the board. Service on the LEO Pharma board means he speaks from inside the governance and accountability structures his audiences operate within. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD Business School since 2007. Co-director of IMD’s High Performance Leadership programme, the school’s flagship senior leadership course. Author of Unpopular Culture: The Ritual of Complaint in a British Bank, University of Chicago Press, reviewed in the Financial Times, The Economist, The Guardian, BBC Radio 4, and the American Journal of Sociology. Contributor to Harvard Business Review, with articles including “Designing the Hybrid Office” and “Who Moved My Cubes?”, and to the Academy of Management Review and Organization Studies. Eleven years on the faculty of INSEAD before IMD, with three nominations for “Best Teacher”. Former member of the Board of Directors of LEO Pharma. PhD in Management, MIT Sloan; MPhil in Management, Oxford; BA in Computer Science, UC Berkeley. Biography Culture, on the working definition Weeks uses with senior leaders, is what people say and do when they think their bosses are not looking. That sentence does most of the work. It moves the conversation away from values statements and engagement scores and onto the behaviours senior executives actually model, often without noticing. His route into the question is unusual. A computer science degree from Berkeley, an MPhil at Oxford, a PhD at MIT Sloan, and then training as an organizational ethnographer, the discipline of watching what people in a workplace really do rather than what they say they do. That method is the spine of Unpopular Culture, his University of Chicago Press book about a British bank where everyone complained about the culture, no one liked the way things were done, and yet nothing fundamentally changed. The Financial Times, The Economist, BBC Radio 4, and the American Journal of Sociology all engaged with it; the argument has shaped how he reads every organisation since. At IMD, where he has been Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior since 2007, he co-directs the High Performance Leadership programme, the school’s flagship six-day course for senior leaders. Eleven years at INSEAD preceded that, including three nominations for the institution’s Best Teacher award. His Harvard Business Review work on hybrid offices and on the design of physical workspace sits alongside more academic publications in the Academy of Management Review and Organization Studies. Service on the LEO Pharma board gives him the other half of the executive’s view, the side that sees governance, accountability, and the consequences of culture rather than only its rhetoric. The result is a speaker who can sit with a CEO at the level of behaviour and at the level of the board agenda, and connect the two. Key speaking topics Organisational culture and leadership behaviour Self-management for senior leaders Culture change in established organisations High performance leadership Hybrid work and the design of organisational space Ethnographic reading of organisations Ideal for CEOs, executive committees, and senior leadership teams setting or resetting culture CHROs and chief people officers running senior leadership development Boards examining culture, governance, and the gap between stated and lived values Leadership academies and flagship internal programmes for high-potential executives Audience outcomes A direct, working definition of culture that leaders can use the next morning A clear view of how their own daily behaviour creates or undermines the culture they say they want A frame for diagnosing why previous culture-change efforts have stalled A sharper sense of what self-management looks like for people running organisations Specific behavioural choices, drawn from research and from senior executive practice, that move culture more reliably than declarative interventions

Why organisations work with Jonas Ridderstrale He gives leadership teams a serious framework for the talent-versus-capital question, drawn from “Funky Business,” a title ranked No. 16 in Bloomsbury’s survey of the best business books and translated into more than 30 languages. He is one of a small group of European thinkers who have held a Thinkers50 European Top 5 position across multiple cycles, which gives senior buyers confidence that the underlying ideas have stood up to peer scrutiny. His argument cuts directly at strategic mimicry: why most differentiation programmes fail because organisations copy each other faster than they can build genuine identity, and what to do about it. He brings the academic spine of a Stockholm School of Economics PhD together with sustained advisory work at Ashridge and IE Business School, so the ideas land with both rigour and commercial framing. He is co-owner and chairman of Mgruppen, a Swedish management training company, which keeps his material connected to live executive development practice rather than archived theory. Biography highlights PhD in International Business and MBA, Stockholm School of Economics. Visiting professor at Ashridge Business School (UK) and IE Business School (Spain). Co-author of “Funky Business” (2000), “Karaoke Capitalism” (2004) and “Funky Business Forever” (2007) with Kjell A. Nordstrom. Co-author of “Re-energizing the Corporation” with Mark Wilcox and “Fast/Forward” with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School. Ranked No. 23 globally and Top 5 in Europe on the 2009 Thinkers50 list, with continued European Top 5 placement in 2011. Italian Nobels Colloquia award for “Leadership in Business and Economic Thinking” (2007). Biography Capital is no longer the binding constraint on most large companies. Talent is, ideas are, and identity is. That shift, set out in “Funky Business” with Kjell A. Nordstrom in 2000, became one of the most widely translated business arguments of the last quarter century, sold over 300,000 copies in the original edition and reached more than 30 languages. The work behind the argument is academic. Ridderstrale completed his MBA and PhD in International Business at Stockholm School of Economics, with a doctoral thesis on global innovation in multinational corporations. He spent his early career at the Centre for Advanced Studies of Leadership there before moving into visiting professor roles at Ashridge in the UK and IE Business School in Spain. The follow-on books extended the thesis rather than restating it. “Karaoke Capitalism” tackled strategic mimicry in copycat markets. “Funky Business Forever” pressed on the human stakes. “Re-energizing the Corporation,” with Mark Wilcox, addressed the question of how leaders convert a different idea into actual organisational change. “Fast/Forward,” with Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School, sharpened the link to execution. The Thinkers50 ranking placed him at No. 23 globally in 2009 and inside the European Top 5 across multiple cycles, alongside the Italian Nobels Colloquia award in 2007. Today he chairs Mgruppen, a Swedish management training company, which keeps the material grounded in the executive development brief rather than the lecture circuit. Key speaking topics Strategy under commoditisation Talent and human capital advantage Innovation and corporate identity Leadership of organisational change Competitive differentiation in copycat markets Building corporate “tribes” and culture The future firm Ideal for Boards and executive teams setting strategy in markets where products and processes have converged. CHROs and Chief Talent Officers reframing the link between people strategy and competitive advantage. Innovation and strategy leads tasked with moving the business off cost-led competition. Leadership development programmes for senior managers in transformation-heavy industries. Audience outcomes A sharper read on why most differentiation efforts default to imitation, and how to break that pattern. Language for the talent-versus-capital question that lands with both finance and HR audiences. A practical view of how identity, culture and “tribe” become commercial assets, not soft factors. Concrete prompts for senior teams on what their organisation looks like when capital advantages run out.

Why organisations work with Jonathan Edwards A world record that has stood since 1995 gives him a rare authority on what it actually takes to perform at the top of a discipline, not a generic story about effort. He is a working broadcaster, not a retired athlete reading from cue cards. His BBC and Eurosport background carries directly into hosting awards nights, conferences and panel discussions with credibility on camera and on stage. His career arc covers Olympic gold, Olympic silver, a long stretch of injury and doubt, and a full second career in media. That gives him real material on the difference between winning once and staying competitive. He has worked at the centre of major institutional sport, from the LOCOG board for London 2012 to his current ambassador role with The R&A, which makes him comfortable in front of senior, formal audiences. Biography highlights Olympic triple jump gold medallist, Sydney 2000, and Olympic silver medallist, Atlanta 1996. World Championship gold, Gothenburg 1995, where he broke the world record twice in a single competition. Triple jump world record holder at 18.29m, set on 7 August 1995, still unbeaten three decades later. BBC Sports Personality of the Year 1995. CBE in 2001, MBE in 1996. BBC athletics commentator and presenter, anchoring the BBC’s athletics coverage at the London 2012 Olympic Games before joining Eurosport. London 2012 Olympic Ambassador and athletes’ representative on the London Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Global Development Ambassador for The R&A, with an active public role around The Open Championship. Biography The triple jump world record fell twice in twenty minutes at the 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg. Both jumps were Jonathan Edwards’s. The second, 18.29m, has not been beaten in more than thirty years and is one of the longest-standing records in track and field. What sits underneath that mark is more useful for a business audience than the mark itself. Edwards spent years as a quietly talented British triple jumper who refused to compete on Sundays on religious grounds and seemed unlikely to convert that talent into titles. The breakthrough came late, sustained execution came later still, and Olympic gold in Sydney arrived in 2000, five years after the world record. The arc from talent to record to gold was not a straight line, and he is direct about that. The second career matters as much as the first for the way organisations use him. As a BBC athletics commentator he anchored the corporation’s coverage of London 2012, and his broadcasting work has continued at Eurosport. That experience translates directly into the hosting, moderating and on-stage interviewing brief that most clients book him for. He is comfortable in front of a live, senior audience because he has done it for two decades on television. He has also held formal roles at the centre of British and global sport. He sat on the LOCOG board as the athletes’ representative for London 2012, served as an Olympic Ambassador for the Games, and currently works as a Global Development Ambassador for The R&A around The Open Championship. The result is a speaker who carries the weight of an undefeated world record, the polish of a working broadcaster, and the institutional credibility of long service inside major sporting bodies. Key speaking topics Peak performance under pressure Mental approach to competition Sustained excellence across a career Hosting and moderating major business events Awards presenting and after-dinner speaking Olympic and elite sport insight Resilience through setback and reinvention Ideal for Corporate awards nights, gala dinners and conferences needing a recognisable host with broadcast experience. Leadership offsites and sales kick-offs that want a credible peak performance keynote rather than a generic motivational slot. Boards and senior teams looking to interview a world-class performer on stage, with a moderator who can carry the room. Audience outcomes A clear sense of what world-class performance actually demands, told through one of athletics’ most-studied careers. Concrete language for talking about pressure, preparation and the gap between training and competition. A useful frame for thinking about long careers, where the second act often matters more than the first. A polished, professionally hosted event when he is engaged in a moderating or presenting capacity.

Why organisations work with Jonathan Morgan He took Leicester City Women from a regional fourth tier into the FA Women’s Super League, a multi-season programme of promotion and culture change that maps directly onto how organisations actually move performance. He carries the LMA Championship Manager of the Year award for the 2020–21 season, a peer-judged recognition from the body that governs professional football management in England. He speaks from the manager’s chair rather than the player’s, which is unusual in the sport-to-business category and more useful to executives running teams of their own. His media work for BBC Radio Leicester and Sky Sports has trained him to deliver tactical analysis in plain language to non-specialist audiences, which carries directly into corporate stages. Biography highlights Head coach, Sheffield United Women (2023–2024). Head coach, Burnley Women (2022–2023); team unbeaten for the first 16 league matches of the season. Head coach, Leicester City Women (2014–2021); led the club from FA Women’s Midlands Division One into the FA Women’s Super League for 2021–22. LMA Championship Manager of the Year, 2020–21. UEFA A Licence holder; UEFA Pro Licence candidate. Co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and pundit work for Sky Sports. Biography Leicester City Women were a regional side outside the top three tiers of English football when Jonathan Morgan took over as head coach in 2014. Seven seasons later they were in the FA Women’s Super League for the first time, with Morgan named LMA Championship Manager of the Year for the 2020–21 promotion campaign. That arc is the substance of what he carries into a business room. Building a senior team across a long programme of promotions, in a sport where budgets, scrutiny and the public scoreline all move at the same time, is closer to what most executives are trying to do than a single championship-winning season tends to be. He has held head coach roles since at Burnley Women, where his side began the 2022–23 campaign on a 16-match unbeaten league run, and at Sheffield United Women. Alongside the coaching career he has worked as a co-commentator for BBC Radio Leicester and as a Sky Sports pundit, which shapes the way he speaks on stage: a manager’s read of the game in language a non-specialist can follow. The corporate brief he handles best is leadership under pressure: how to hold a group together through losing periods, how to absorb scrutiny without losing the room, and how to plan a multi-year build when the league table will not wait for you. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure Building a high-performing team from a low base Culture and standards inside elite sport Managing scrutiny and external noise Decision-making in losing periods Long-cycle programmes and promotion campaigns Communication and man-management Ideal for Sales and operational leaders running teams through long performance cycles. Executive offsites and conferences where leadership is the headline theme. After-dinner audiences at sector conferences and customer events. HR and people directors examining culture-building inside high-pressure teams. Audience outcomes A working picture of how an elite coach handles losing weeks, public criticism and squad morale at the same time. Specific examples from an FA Women’s Super League promotion campaign, with the decisions and trade-offs named. A usable language for talking about standards and culture inside a team, rather than as a slogan on a wall. A view of leadership from the manager’s seat, not the player’s, that translates more directly to the audience’s own roles.

Why organisations work with Jonny Wilkinson A first-person account of what elite pressure does to judgement, body, and identity, drawn from the kick that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup and the years that followed it. Authority on performance and mental health that comes with a CBE, World Rugby Hall of Fame induction, and 91 England caps, not a consultant’s reframing of athlete clichés. A founder’s perspective from One Living, the B Corp drinks business he built around his own recovery, giving the talk commercial substance beyond the sporting story. Long-form work on presence and human potential through the I Am… podcast and two books, which means the content is developed, not improvised on stage. Biography highlights 91 caps for England, two British and Irish Lions tours, scorer of the drop goal that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup final against Australia. BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2003; IRB International Player of the Year 2003; OBE 2003; CBE 2015. Inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. Author of Jonny: My Autobiography and Tackling Life, the latter co-authored with long-time mentor Steve Black. Founder of One Living, a B Corp certified kombucha and functional drinks business stocked nationally in Tesco. Host of the I Am… With Jonny Wilkinson podcast, in conversation with thought leaders on performance, presence and mental health since 2022. Biography The drop goal that won the 2003 Rugby World Cup is one of the most replayed sporting moments in British memory. The man who struck it spent the next decade trying to explain to himself why it did not feel like the answer. Wilkinson’s body broke down through repeated injury, and the perfectionism that had driven the career became the thing he had to dismantle to live well. That second act is what gives his speaking content its weight. He writes and talks about presence, fear, and the relationship between high performance and mental health, drawing on his own recovery rather than secondhand frameworks. Tackling Life, written with his long-time mentor Steve Black, set the early ground. The I Am… podcast, running since 2022, has extended it into a body of conversation with global thinkers on potential and self-awareness. The credentials are not in doubt. 91 England caps, two Lions tours, the 2003 BBC Sports Personality award, the 2003 IRB International Player of the Year, an OBE the same year, a CBE in 2015, and induction into the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2016. As a founder he has built One Living, a B Corp certified drinks brand born directly out of his own work on gut health, mental health and recovery. For a corporate audience, the value sits in the honesty about what elite pressure costs and how composure is rebuilt afterwards. The story is recognisable to anyone responsible for performance under public scrutiny, and the takeaways are practical rather than motivational. Key speaking topics Performing under pressure Mental health and recovery after high performance Presence and self-leadership Resilience and reinvention after a defining career Founder lessons from One Living Mindset, fear and the cost of perfectionism Ideal for Senior leadership offsites where composure under pressure is the practical theme CHRO and people director audiences focused on mental health, wellbeing and high-performing cultures Sales kickoffs and annual conferences seeking a credible performance keynote with intellectual depth Awards dinners, panel moderation and after-dinner appearances where rugby authority and on-stage authenticity carry the room Audience outcomes A grounded account of what perfectionism and fear do to performance at the top, and how that pattern is changed Specific habits Wilkinson uses for presence, focus and recovery, drawn from his own practice rather than a generic framework A reframing of mental health as a leadership capability, not an HR concern Permission to talk openly about the gap between visible success and private cost

Why organisations work with Jose Manuel Calderon Fourteen NBA seasons across seven franchises, each requiring a different role, system, and relationship with coaching staff. Few speakers can describe reinvention at that frequency from inside the experience. Captained the Spain national team through its most decorated era, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. Holds the NBA single-season free throw record at 98.05 percent. The story behind that statistic is a precise account of preparation, repetition, and composure that translates directly to high-stakes performance. Now operates inside the business of sport as Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to technology firm Sngular, and co-founder of sport technology venture OWQLO. The post-playing view is operational, not nostalgic. Biography highlights 14 NBA seasons with Toronto Raptors, Detroit Pistons, Dallas Mavericks, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Atlanta Hawks, and Cleveland Cavaliers. NBA single-season free throw record holder at 98.05 percent (2008-09, Toronto Raptors). 2006 FIBA World Cup champion and 2011 EuroBasket champion with Spain. Three Olympic medals with Spain: silver in 2008, silver in 2012, bronze in 2016. Special Assistant to the Executive Director at the National Basketball Players Association from 2019. Special Advisor to the Cleveland Cavaliers, strategic advisor to Sngular, co-founder of OWQLO, UNICEF Ambassador. Biography Fourteen seasons in the NBA is not a tenure. It is seven different working environments, seven coaching philosophies, and a constant negotiation of role. Across Toronto, Detroit, Dallas, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Cleveland, the work was the same every season: arrive, read the room, and become useful to a group of people who did not pick you. That career line is the substance behind Jose Manuel Calderon’s speaking. He captained the Spain national team through the most decorated period in its history, winning the 2006 FIBA World Cup, the 2011 EuroBasket, and three Olympic medals across 2008, 2012, and 2016. The Spanish “golden generation” is studied because it sustained excellence across more than a decade, with changing coaches, ageing key players, and rising rivals. Calderon was a central figure in how that group held together. The detail that travels well into corporate rooms is his free throw record. In 2008-09 he made 151 of 154 attempts, a 98.05 percent season that still stands as the NBA’s highest. The talk that emerges from it is about repeatable performance, not natural talent, and it lands cleanly with audiences who are measured on consistency rather than peaks. After retiring, Calderon moved directly into the business of sport. He served as Special Assistant to the Executive Director of the NBA Players Association from 2019, advises the Cleveland Cavaliers, sits on the advisory board of Spanish technology firm Sngular, and co-founded sport technology venture OWQLO. He is also a UNICEF Ambassador. The result is a speaker who can speak to senior teams in the language they use, drawing on a playing career that is genuinely rare at the level it reached. Key speaking topics Leadership under sustained pressure Team performance across changing line-ups High-stakes decision-making Captaincy and standards Inclusion and identity in elite sport Reinvention across cultures and systems The business of professional sport Ideal for Senior leadership teams under prolonged performance pressure CHROs and people leaders building cohesion across changing structures Sales and commercial leaders who manage on consistency rather than peaks Board and executive offsites looking for a credible outside voice on team dynamics Audience outcomes A practical account of how elite teams hold standards through line-up change, coaching turnover, and external scrutiny. A clear picture of what daily preparation looks like at the level that produces records, not anecdotes about motivation. A working language for captaincy, the responsibility of senior players inside a team, and how that maps to senior leaders inside an organisation. A perspective on inclusion built from a long career across multiple national, cultural, and locker-room contexts.