Organizational Agility

Why organisations work with Steven D’Souza The «Not Knowing» framework gives organisations a precise and credible language for something most leadership programmes refuse to address directly: that the expectation of certainty from leaders is itself a liability in complex environments. That reframe changes how organisations design capability programmes. His intellectual approach – drawing on Gestalt psychology, Theory U, Adaptive Leadership and Eastern wisdom traditions – produces a more durable intervention than conventional leadership tools. Organisations working on long-term leadership capability find it gives senior executives a framework rather than a set of techniques. His practitioner background spans Senior Client Partner of Leadership & Professional Development at Korn Ferry in London and Riyadh, Global Head of Leadership at Philip Morris International, VP of Leadership and Talent Management at Merrill Lynch, and Head of Diversity at Santander UK. That breadth of first-hand experience in high-stakes leadership contexts makes him unusually credible at board and C-suite level. His published body of work now spans six books – Not Knowing, Not Doing, Not Being, Shadows at Work, Brilliant Networking and Made in Britain – giving organisations a cumulative architecture for multi-year leadership development that moves from navigating uncertainty, to purposeful restraint, to identity transformation, to the unconscious patterns that derail capable leaders. A CMI Management Book of the Year and a Thinkers50 Radar recognition give senior buyers independently validated signals of intellectual credibility, reducing the due-diligence burden when positioning a leadership development investment internally. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Liminal Edge Consulting (UAE), and Senior Fellow and Executive in Residence at the Centre for the Future of Organisation, Drucker School of Management Author of Not Knowing – CMI Management Book of the Year, translated into ten languages – and the broader Not trilogy: Not Knowing, Not Doing, Not Being, published by LID Author of Made in Britain and Brilliant Networking by Pearson. Author of Shadows at Work (2026) – on unconscious behaviour, the leadership shadow, and how hidden traits shape organisational culture Named on the Thinkers50 Radar among management thinkers most likely to change the future of leadership thinking Named in HR Magazine’s Top 30 Most Influential Thinkers Guest faculty, Adaptive Leadership programme, Harvard Kennedy School; Associate Fellow, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford; Executive Fellow and Associate Professor, IE Business School Work featured in Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, BBC, The Guardian and The Sunday Times Previous leadership roles: Senior Client Partner, Leadership and Professional Development practice, Korn Ferry London and Riyadh; Global Head of Leadership and Executive Development, Philip Morris International; VP Leadership and Talent Management, Merrill Lynch; Head of Diversity, Santander UK; Director of Programmes, FT/IE Corporate Learning Alliance Biography Not Knowing – co-authored with Diana Renner and published by LID – won the CMI Management Book of the Year and has since been translated into ten languages. Its central argument is that the pressure on leaders to perform certainty is itself a liability when the environment is genuinely ambiguous. That argument proved durable enough to generate two sequels: Not Doing, on the discipline of purposeful restraint in leadership, and Not Being, on identity, self-transformation and renewal. His 2026 book Shadows at Work extends that body of work into examining the leader’s shadow from the lens of psychology, biology, culture and meaning. He shows how the unconscious traits leaders repress become the behaviours that most undermine the cultures they are trying to build – and how to surface and redirect them. The trilogy draws on Gestalt psychology, Theory U, Adaptive Leadership and Eastern and Western wisdom traditions. That blend is not incidental – it is what separates D’Souza’s framework from leadership development built around models and process tools. The approach asks executives to examine how their identity as leaders shapes what they can see and do in genuinely complex situations. The practitioner credibility that anchors that philosophy is substantial. Steven was formerly a Senior Client Partner at Korn Ferry in London and Riyadh, speaking to C-suite audiences across consumer, energy, industrial and technology sectors. As Global Head of Leadership and Executive Development at Philip Morris International, he worked with the company’s top 200 leaders through a major industry transformation. As VP of Leadership and Talent Management at Merrill Lynch and Head of Diversity at Santander UK, he worked on the kind of complex, people-facing challenges that most leadership theorists observe at a distance. His academic record spans the Drucker School of Management where he is currently a Senior Fellow and Executive in Residence, Oxford’s Saïd Business School, INSEAD, IE Business School, and guest faculty status at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Adaptive Leadership programme. Thinkers50 named D’Souza among the management thinkers most likely to change the future of leadership thinking. HR Magazine included him in its Top 30 Most Influential Thinkers. His work has appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, the BBC, The Guardian and The Sunday Times. Key speaking topics Leadership under uncertainty and complexity The «Not Knowing» framework: turning ambiguity into organisational advantage Sustainable leadership and the discipline of effortless action Identity, self-transformation and leadership renewal Diversity, inclusion and social capital Leadership capability design for senior executives Contemplative and philosophy-based approaches to organisational development The leader’s shadow: unconscious behaviour, derailers and organisational culture Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers designing senior leadership development programmes Boards and C-suite teams navigating transformation, major strategic pivots or cultural change Executive education and MBA programme directors at business schools Learning and development leaders investing in long-term leadership capability at global organisations Audience outcomes A reframed relationship with uncertainty – from a condition to be managed to a resource to be developed as a leadership capacity A clear distinction between problems that respond to expertise and those that require adaptive, inquiry-led approaches – and practical tools for each Awareness of how leadership identity built on authority and answers can become a liability in genuinely ambiguous situations Practical techniques – drawn from philosophy, Gestalt psychology and organisational development – for leading with more presence, less reactivity and greater sustainability A framework for individual and team reflection on where current leadership practice is serving the organisation and where it is reinforcing defensive patterns

Why organisations work with Dr Sue Mitchell Her PEP framework gives leaders a portable and memorable model for navigating uncertainty – field-tested across sectors from global pharma to policing, and consistently recalled by participants months after delivery. Her background in evolutionary ecology – studying adaptive strategies across complex, dynamic systems – informs an analytical approach to leadership that goes beyond behavioural coaching, connecting individual mindset to systemic structures. She completed training with Peter Senge in Compassionate Systems Leadership, giving her work a rigorous intellectual foundation that distinguishes her from practitioners working from applied psychology or HR frameworks alone. Her concept of “inner sustainability” reframes resilience as a proactive leadership capacity rather than a reactive stress-management tool – a distinction that senior leaders in high-change environments find practically useful. Biography highlights PhD in evolutionary ecology; post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh and a Max Planck Institute, Germany Trained in Compassionate Systems Leadership with Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline Author, The Authority Guide to Engaging Your People (SRA Books) Founder and Director, Aeona Ltd; clients include EY, Lloyds Banking Group, Bayer, Gilead Sciences, Scottish Enterprise, and Police Scotland Fellow and former Regional President (Scotland, 2019–2020), Professional Speaking Association UK & Ireland Co-founder, IDG Edinburgh Resilience Hub – applying the Inner Development Goals framework to leadership and organisational change Biography When engagement falls and burnout rises, the root cause is rarely individual. It is usually a leadership culture that was built for stability and has not been redesigned for permanent disruption. Dr Sue Mitchell has spent two decades helping organisations close that gap. Her starting point is unusual. Before moving into coaching and leadership development, she was an evolutionary ecologist, with post-doctoral research at the University of Edinburgh and a Max Planck Institute in Germany. The discipline – studying how organisms sustain effective strategies across dynamic, interconnected systems – gave her a framework for understanding organisations that is structurally different from standard behavioural models. She later trained with Peter Senge in Compassionate Systems Leadership, deepening that foundation. That systems perspective runs through her proprietary PEP framework: a practical model for helping leaders maintain clarity, commitment and adaptability under pressure. It has been delivered across a client base that includes EY, Lloyds Banking Group, Gilead Sciences, Bayer, Scottish Enterprise, and Police Scotland. More recently, she co-founded the IDG Edinburgh Resilience Hub, bringing the Inner Development Goals framework – developed as a companion to the UN Sustainable Development Goals – into leadership and organisational practice. She is the author of The Authority Guide to Engaging Your People (SRA Books) and a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK & Ireland, where she served as Regional President for Scotland. Through Aeona, her Edinburgh-based consultancy, she works across keynote speaking, executive coaching, and multiday leadership development programmes. Key speaking topics Adaptable leadership Navigating change and uncertainty Employee engagement and sustainable performance Systems thinking in organisations Organisational resilience Inner sustainability and mindset Diversity, decision-making and team dynamics Ideal for Senior leadership teams navigating restructure, sustained organisational change, or rapid growth HR directors and heads of OD commissioning leadership development programmes or all-staff development events Organisations in professional services, financial services, life sciences, or public sector seeking structured leadership development programmes Mid-to-senior management cohorts where engagement, performance, and wellbeing are competing tensions Audience outcomes A portable framework (PEP) for managing their own mindset and their team’s behaviour through uncertainty and change Clearer understanding of how unconscious mental models shape decision-making under pressure – and how to intervene A common language for discussing change, resilience and engagement across a leadership group Practical tools for sustaining performance without trading off wellbeing Greater awareness of how organisational systems and structures – not just individual behaviour – drive or undermine engagement

Why organisations work with Rita McGrath The transient advantage framework directly challenges an assumption most leadership teams still operate on: that the goal of strategy is to build and protect durable competitive positions. McGrath makes the cost of that assumption explicit, and offers a named, practitioner-tested alternative. Discovery-driven planning, co-created with Ian C. MacMillan and introduced through the Harvard Business Review, gives organisations a structured methodology for committing to uncertain growth initiatives: one that Clayton Christensen described as among the most important management tools ever developed. She holds the Thinkers50 #1 Strategy Award (2013) alongside four subsequent Thinkers50 Strategy Awards and a 2025 global ranking of #6, a record of credentials in strategy thinking that is without parallel on the conference circuit. Her Seeing Around Corners framework provides a concrete vocabulary for the specific problem boards face most acutely: detecting the leading indicators of strategic inflection before they become corporate crises. As a regular HBR contributor whose work is cited in the FT, WSJ, and New York Times, her ideas arrive in board rooms before she does: senior audiences already speak her language. Biography highlights Professor of Management and Academic Director in Executive Education, Columbia Business School; leads Leading Strategic Growth and Change executive programme Thinkers50 Distinguished Achievement Award in Strategy (2013); five-time Thinkers50 Strategy Award winner; ranked #6 globally on the Thinkers50 overall list (2025) C.K. Prahalad Award (2022), Strategic Management Society: awarded for scholarly impact on practice; inducted into the Business Excellence Hall of Fame (2022) Author of five books including The End of Competitive Advantage (HBR Press) and Seeing Around Corners (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); Discovery-Driven Growth named to Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist Co-creator of discovery-driven planning, introduced through the Harvard Business Review (1995); cited by Clayton Christensen as among the most important management and strategy tools ever developed Ph.D., Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania); honours degrees from Barnard College and Columbia School of International and Public Affairs Work covered by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, CNN Business, and NPR Marketplace; one of HBR’s most frequent contributors Biography Competitive advantage used to be the organising idea behind business strategy. Build it, protect it, sustain it. In markets defined by rapid technology cycles, boundary-free competition, and compressing product lifecycles, that idea has become a liability, and most organisations do not realise it until the decision has already been made for them. Rita Gunther McGrath has spent three decades at Columbia Business School building the alternative. Her framework of transient advantage, set out in The End of Competitive Advantage, argues that the objective of strategy must shift from sustaining positions to developing the organisational capacity to find, exploit, and exit advantages on the organisation’s own terms. Discovery-driven planning provides the operational methodology: a structured process for committing to growth initiatives under uncertainty without betting the business on invalid assumptions. Her intellectual standing in strategy is well-documented. Thinkers50 awarded her the #1 Strategy Award in 2013 and has continued to recognise her work across four subsequent award cycles, ranking her sixth globally in 2025. The Strategic Management Society’s C.K. Prahalad Award (2022) recognised her scholarly impact on practice, a distinction that acknowledges both rigour and application. Clayton Christensen placed her discovery-driven growth tools among the most important management tools ever developed. McGrath directs Columbia’s Leading Strategic Growth and Change executive programme and founded Valize, a platform that operationalises the discovery-driven methodology for organisations at scale. Her advisory work runs into the C-suites of Fortune 1,000 companies: helping boards and senior leadership teams navigate the specific transition her research describes: from the strategy they were trained to run, to one that fits the market they are actually in. Key speaking topics Transient advantage and the limits of competitive positioning Strategic inflection points and early warning signals Discovery-driven planning and growth under uncertainty Business model evolution and renewal Organisational agility in volatile markets Strategic decision-making under ambiguity Innovation as a managed, repeatable discipline Ideal for CEOs, CSOs, and board members wrestling with strategy refresh in disrupted or fast-moving sectors Strategy and corporate development teams whose existing planning frameworks are producing diminishing returns Senior leadership teams in large incumbents facing the transition from mature to declining competitive positions Executive education participants on leadership programmes where strategic thinking is the primary development objective Audience outcomes A clear understanding of why durable competitive advantage is an increasingly dangerous strategic objective, and what to replace it with Practical command of the discovery-driven planning process for evaluating and resourcing uncertain growth initiatives A named framework for identifying strategic inflection points before they become visible to the wider market Language and tools to initiate an honest internal conversation about which parts of the current business model are in decline Sharpened criteria for strategic resource allocation when outcomes cannot be forecast with confidence

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

Why organisations work with Graeme Codrington The TIDES framework (Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values) gives leadership teams a named, structured lens for distinguishing structural disruption from short-term noise, something generic trend-watching rarely provides. His research on generational dynamics, anchored in Mind the Gap (Penguin), is one of the most analytically grounded treatments of multigenerational workforce tension available to leadership teams: it goes beyond labelling generations to explaining the mechanisms that drive the differences. Keynote insight does not stop at the room door: through TomorrowToday Global, organisations can move directly from a session to structured consulting and implementation, which means the analysis has a clear pathway to operational change. He is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: in South Africa and the UK/Ireland – an independently verified measure of sustained content quality across different professional and cultural contexts. His Seven Grey Elephants model and antifragility framework give boards a structured vocabulary for confronting the major forces that most organisations acknowledge but rarely analyse with discipline. Biography highlights Co-founder and lead futurist, TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm operating across 150-plus countries Author of multiple Penguin bestsellers, including Mind the Gap (with Sue Grant-Marshall) and Leading in a Changing World (with Keith Coats) Guest lecturer at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science Only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame: Southern Africa and UK/Ireland (Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence) Global Certified Speaking Professional, Global Speakers Federation; Fellow and Honorary Fellow, Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland TEDx Top Picks 2021; speaks to approximately 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries Biography Graeme Codrington has spent over two decades arguing that most organisations are solving the wrong problem. The disruptions they face are not technical challenges requiring better execution, they are adaptive challenges requiring entirely new thinking. His co-founded firm TomorrowToday Global was built around that distinction, and around helping organisations act on it. Codrington is co-founder and lead futurist of TomorrowToday Global, a research and strategy firm tracking the disruptive forces shaping organisations since the early 2000s. His TIDES model maps five forces: Technology, Institutional change, Demographics, Environment, and Social values that drive disruption across any sector. His book Mind the Gap, published by Penguin, applied this thinking to generational dynamics and became a widely used text in leadership development programmes internationally. He lectures at London Business School, Duke Corporate Education, Cornell, and the Gordon Institute of Business Science, and speaks to roughly 100,000 people annually across more than 20 countries. His frameworks have expanded to include the Seven Grey Elephants (a structured analysis of the major forces leaders tend to acknowledge but avoid confronting directly) and an antifragility model that helps organisations move beyond resilience to building systems that actually strengthen under pressure. Codrington is the only professional speaker inducted into two international speaking Halls of Fame, in South Africa and the UK. He holds the Global Certified Speaking Professional designation from the Global Speakers Federation and is a Fellow and Honorary Fellow of the Professional Speakers Association of UK and Northern Ireland. For organisations wanting to move beyond a single session, TomorrowToday Global’s consulting team provides structured follow-through from keynote insight to practical implementation. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and futurist methodology Future of work and workforce transformation Multigenerational leadership and generational dynamics Adaptive leadership in disruptive environments Organisational antifragility and resilience Innovation culture and next practice approaches The TIDES framework and disruptive forces mapping Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders building adaptive strategy for permanent disruption CHROs and people leaders managing multigenerational workforce complexity Transformation leads and strategy teams moving beyond traditional planning horizons Executive development programmes at business schools and corporate leadership academies Audience outcomes A working understanding of the distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges, and practical tools for identifying which they are facing Familiarity with the TIDES framework for mapping the disruptive forces most relevant to their sector and strategic context Concrete methods for scanning the business environment for weak signals and translating them into actionable strategy Clarity on what the future of work means for their organisation’s people strategy, including multigenerational dynamics and AI integration A framework for building antifragility into their team or organisation, moving beyond survival-mode resilience

Why organisations work with Dean van Leeuwen His Grey Elephant framework gives boards a named, structured radar for seven megatrends – distinguishing the forces that demand a strategic response from background noise and positioning leaders to act before disruption arrives, not after His McKinsey consulting background means the output of his foresight work is strategic choices, not predictions – he applies commercial strategy discipline to futures thinking in a way that most futurists do not His book “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” codifies a three-quality leadership model drawn from case research on high-performing organisations, giving teams a shared model they can apply after the event He teaches in executive leadership programmes at Saïd Business School, Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau – his frameworks are tested against senior leadership cohorts, not developed solely for conference stages He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast, a named monthly research output that applies the Grey Elephant framework to live signals – keeping his content current and substantiated rather than recycled from a fixed talk Biography highlights Co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, a futurist and strategy consultancy operating across more than 50 countries; founder of TomorrowToday UK Former consultant at McKinsey and Company, with work that included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger Executive lecturer at Saïd Business School (University of Oxford), Henley Business School, and CEDEP, Fontainebleau Author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century” (self-published, available on Amazon) TEDx speaker MSc in Business Strategy, Henley Management College; undergraduate background in economics and law Named clients include L’Oreal, Anglo American, BNP Paribas, GSK, John Lewis Partnership, and Deloitte Biography Most organisations have access to trend data. What they are missing is a structured way to turn that data into decisions their boards will commit to and their teams will execute. Dean van Leeuwen, co-founder of TomorrowToday Global, has spent two decades building exactly that – a practical bridge between foresight and strategic action. His most distinctive intellectual contribution is the Grey Elephant framework, a proprietary megatrend radar developed by TomorrowToday and built around seven named forces identified as highly probable, high-impact, and consistently underacted upon. The framework helps leadership teams name the forces they can already see coming and design responses before the window closes. He also applies the BANI diagnostic – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible – as a lens for teams operating in conditions where cause and effect no longer follow predictable patterns. Earlier in his career, he worked at McKinsey and Company, where his work included advising on South Africa’s largest bank merger. That grounding in commercial strategy discipline is what separates his foresight practice from abstract futurism where the output is decisions and trade-offs, not trend catalogues. He now teaches in senior executive programmes at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, Henley Business School, and CEDEP in Fontainebleau. He is the author of “Quest: Competitive Advantage and the Art of Leadership in the 21st Century,” which decodes what leaders at high-performing organisations actually do through a three-quality model grounded in case research. He co-hosts the “Elephants in the Boardroom” podcast with Graeme Codrington, applying the Grey Elephant framework monthly to live signals across geopolitics, technology, and the global economy. Key speaking topics Strategic foresight and megatrend analysis Leadership decision-making under uncertainty Innovation as organisational capability Strategic transformation and competitive advantage The BANI operating environment Antifragility and organisational resilience Human-technology collaboration Ideal for Boards and C-suite leadership teams facing strategic inflection points, technology shifts, or competitive disruption Strategy, transformation, and innovation directors responsible for long-range planning Organisations navigating sector disruption, regulatory change, or structural market shifts Executive education cohorts focused on future-ready leadership and strategic foresight Audience outcomes A named framework for distinguishing megatrends that demand a strategic response from trends that can safely be monitored Shared language for leading teams in conditions where cause and effect are nonlinear and outcomes are hard to predict Practical tools for converting trend intelligence into decisions that commit direction and resources A clearer view of the specific forces most likely to reshape their competitive environment in the near and medium term Improved confidence in making strategic choices under uncertainty without waiting for conditions to stabilise

Why organisations work with Lucy Cooke She brings primary-source evolutionary biology into leadership conversations that usually run on management frameworks, giving senior teams a different evidence base for talking about dominance, hierarchy and cooperation. Her Bitch thesis, that female biology has been systematically misread by science, gives organisations a serious, research-led entry point into conversations about gender and authority that often default to slogan. The Oxford zoology training under Richard Dawkins, the National Geographic Explorer designation and the Royal Society Science Book Prize shortlist for The Truth About Animals together establish a level of scientific credibility unusual on a corporate stage. She is a working broadcaster with credits across BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery, which translates into stage craft that holds large audiences on technical material without losing them. Biography highlights Master’s in zoology, New College, Oxford, studying under Richard Dawkins. National Geographic Explorer. Author of Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, a New York Times bestseller and one of the Telegraph’s 50 best books of 2022. Author of The Truth About Animals, shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize. TED speaker; documentary presenter and producer for BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery. Founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society and regular contributor on BBC Radio 4 programmes including The Infinite Monkey Cage and Woman’s Hour. Biography The alpha leader, the lone silverback, the dominant male at the top of the troop: these are the images management writing has borrowed from animal behaviour for a century. Most of them turn out to be wrong. Newer evolutionary biology shows cooperation, female agency and flexible hierarchy doing more of the work that organisations actually want their leaders to do. Lucy Cooke is the speaker who carries that research into the boardroom. She trained as a zoologist at New College, Oxford under Richard Dawkins, became a National Geographic Explorer, and built a parallel career as a documentary maker and writer, with credits across BBC, Channel 4, National Geographic, PBS, Animal Planet and Discovery. Her book Bitch: A Revolutionary Guide to Sex, Evolution and the Female Animal, a New York Times bestseller and one of the Telegraph’s 50 best books of 2022, rewrites a great deal of received wisdom about female biology and what evolution actually selects for. The Truth About Animals, shortlisted for the Royal Society Science Book Prize, applies the same scrutiny to the popular myths organisations still tell themselves about wolves, alphas and pecking orders. On stage she works the gap between the popular story and the peer-reviewed one. Bonobo societies run on female coalitions and conflict resolution, not dominance displays. Wolf packs are family units, not tournaments. The science is sharper than the management metaphor, and a serious audience leaves able to defend a different model of leadership than the one they walked in with. Key speaking topics Leadership beyond the alpha model Evolutionary biology and human cooperation Gender, biology and authority Teamwork and collective intelligence in animal societies Science communication and storytelling Female leadership through an evolutionary lens Ideal for Senior leadership and executive team offsites where the brief is to reset assumptions about authority and dominance. HR, DEI and culture leads looking for an evidence-based external voice on gender and leadership that sits outside the usual frameworks. Conferences seeking a science-led keynote that lands with both technical and general audiences. Audience outcomes A fact-based critique of the alpha-leader model and why it does not hold up against current animal behaviour research. A new vocabulary for talking about cooperation, female authority and group decision-making at work, drawn from named species and named studies. Memorable case material from the animal kingdom that senior leaders can use in their own conversations and communications. A sharper, science-grounded view of what evolution actually selects for in successful social groups.

Why organisations work with Mike Evans He gives an audience a defence plan for AI disruption, not a forecast. The 7-Sided Pincer Movement maps the forces reshaping work, and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence sets out the capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace. He has worked these forces since the 1990s, inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, which puts three decades of change practice behind a topic most speakers picked up after 2023. He built and tested the frameworks inside 34 of the Fortune 50, with named results such as shorter decision cycles at Intel and a rebuilt pilot training pipeline at the US Army Aviation Center. He builds each keynote backward from a structured discovery call with the client, so the room gets its own challenges addressed rather than a stock talk. His Kryptonite Scorecard, a 30-behaviour diagnostic, and the distributed ownership thesis in Achieve with Accountability give a leadership team a way to keep working the plan after the session. Biography highlights Author of two books: Distinct or Extinct: Future-Proofing People and Organizations in the Age of AI (Pincer Press, 2026) and Achieve with Accountability (Wiley). Founder of Pincer Press; works full-time as a keynote speaker and author. Former senior consultant at Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company, working alongside John Kotter, Stephen Covey, and Tom Peters. Clients include 34 of the Fortune 50, among them Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, Caterpillar, Cargill, Capital One, and Pfizer. Developer of the 7-Sided Pincer Movement and the 5-Ingredient Kryptonite Defence, with the Kryptonite Scorecard diagnostic. Biography Seven forces are reshaping how organisations work at the same time: software, robotics, globalisation, outsourcing, digital transformation, disruptive competition, and AI as the accelerant that multiplies the rest. Most organisations defend one flank while the other six go unguarded. Mike Evans has worked these forces since the 1990s, well before AI made them urgent. He built his frameworks inside Kotter International, FranklinCovey, and Tom Peters Company. He worked directly with John Kotter on change acceleration, with Stephen Covey on personal effectiveness, and with Tom Peters on operational excellence. His 2026 book, Distinct or Extinct, turns that history into a method. It argues that people and organisations survive disruption by becoming hard to replace, through five capabilities: ideas, speed, talent, distinction, and leadership at all levels. Evans founded Pincer Press to publish it, choosing speed to market over a traditional deal so it reached leaders inside the 2026 disruption window. The frameworks were tested inside 34 of the Fortune 50, including Intel, Apple, PepsiCo, and the US Army Aviation Center. His Wiley book, Achieve with Accountability, supplies the execution layer beneath them, the distributed ownership that lets a workforce act on a plan rather than receive one. At Intel the work shortened decision cycles; at the US Army Aviation Center it rebuilt a pilot training pipeline under a constrained budget. Key speaking topics AI disruption and the future of work Future-proofing people and organisations The 7-Sided Pincer Movement and converging disruptive forces Distributed accountability and execution discipline Change leadership under permanent disruption Personal and organisational distinctiveness Resilience under repeated disruption Ideal for Boards and executive teams deciding how AI changes their workforce and operating model Chief People Officers and Chief Transformation Officers redesigning roles and accountability for an AI-shaped workforce Leadership conferences, annual meetings, and sales kickoffs in sectors under pressure from AI, such as financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, pharma, and technology Associations running “future of the industry” programmes where members are anxious about staying relevant Audience outcomes A map of the seven forces hitting their organisation at once, and which ones they are currently leaving unguarded The five capabilities that keep people and teams hard to replace as AI absorbs routine work A working model for distributing accountability so a workforce can act on the plan rather than receive it Specific changes leaders can put in motion within the week, beyond general AI awareness Shared language senior teams can use after the session to hold momentum

Why organisations work with Paul Gibbons His Adaptive Adoption model – a seven-pillar behavioral science framework for AI adoption – and its companion diagnostic, the Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index (AAMI), give leaders a structured tool for assessing and addressing the human conditions that determine whether an AI investment delivers returns or stalls. This kind of named, built IP is rare in this topic area. «The Science of Organizational Change» is cited by Google’s change team and Microsoft’s internal culture group as having reoriented how they approach transformation: an unusual form of verification that the intellectual framework holds up under real operational pressure, not just in consulting engagements. He will tell an organisation what is wrong with its change thinking. The Chairman of KPMG described the experience as hearing «what we needed to hear, not what we wanted to hear», a quality that becomes valuable when senior leaders have quietly invested in approaches that are not working. His practitioner career spans founding one of Europe’s leading leadership consulting firms (Future Considerations), serving as Partner at IBM Consulting, and developing change management methodology in PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice, meaning the frameworks have been stress-tested in exactly the large, complex organisations that attend senior leadership events. His academic breadth spanning neurochemistry, economics, neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral science – allows him to draw on disciplines rarely applied to organizational transformation, and to name and debunk the pseudoscience that fills a field where, as Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer has noted publicly, charlatanism is common. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Future Considerations (2001), one of Europe’s leading leadership and culture change consulting firms, with named clients including Shell, BP, HSBC, Barclays, and KPMG Former Partner at IBM Consulting (Talent and Transformation); former senior strategist at PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice, where he developed its change management and corporate transformation methodologies Author of eight books including «The Science of Organizational Change» – named among the top change management texts of all time – and «Adopting AI: The People-First Approach» (2025) Ranked #5 globally in organizational culture change by Global Gurus; named among the top 52 globally in AI in 2026 (London Speaker Bureau) Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA); Adjunct Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Denver (2015-2018); member of the American Philosophical Association and the U.S. Academy of Management Council Writing featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and The Guardian; endorsed by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford Business School) and Simon Collins (Chairman, KPMG) Biography Most organisations know their AI and transformation investments are underperforming. The harder question is why and the honest answer, in most cases, is that the behavioural and cultural architecture of the organisation was never redesigned alongside the technology. Paul Gibbons has spent three decades building the evidence base that explains this failure, and the frameworks that help leaders act on it. His intellectual contribution begins with a provocation. In «The Science of Organizational Change,» Gibbons argues that most change management frameworks are built on myth and untested pop psychology, and replaces them with approaches grounded in behavioural economics, neuroscience, and complexity theory. Google’s change team and Microsoft’s internal culture group both credited the book with reorienting how they approach transformation. Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford Business School praised his work for bringing scientific rigour to what he described as a field riddled with pseudoscience. That critique evolved into a constructive framework for the AI era. His Adaptive Adoption model, a seven-pillar approach grounded in behavioral science, offers leaders a structured alternative to applying conventional change management to AI transformation. Its companion diagnostic, the Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index, helps organisations assess where they actually stand. The model draws on three decades of board and C-suite advisory work, including founding Future Considerations, one of Europe’s leading leadership consulting firms, serving as Partner at IBM Consulting, and developing change methodology in PwC’s Strategy, Innovation and Change practice. Gibbons is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is ranked among the top five globally in organizational culture change by Global Gurus, and among the top 52 globally in AI in 2026. He has taught business ethics and leadership at the University of Denver, serves on the board of Denver’s Institute for Enterprise Ethics, and hosts the Think Bigger Think Better podcast, which explores the intersection of AI, behavioral science, and organizational leadership. Key speaking topics Behavioral science and organizational change AI adoption and workforce transformation Culture change and behavior design Change management myths and evidence-based practice AI ethics and organizational governance Leadership in complex and uncertain environments The future of work and human-machine collaboration Ideal for CHROs and people transformation leaders navigating technology-driven organizational change Boards and C-suite leaders making AI adoption and governance decisions Organizational development and change management practitioners Digital and technology transformation leaders in large, complex organizations Audience outcomes A clear framework for understanding why culture change and AI adoption efforts typically fail, grounded in behavioral science rather than convention Practical tools for diagnosing where behavioral and cultural gaps are undermining technology investments A more rigorous basis for evaluating AI adoption strategies and distinguishing credible signals from market noise Language and framing for board and C-suite conversations about the organizational conditions required for successful transformation Familiarity with the Adaptive Adoption framework and Adaptive Adoption Maturity Index as structured, evidence-based alternatives to conventional change management applied to AI

Why organisations work with Costas Andriopoulos He has built one of the most cited academic foundations for organisational ambidexterity, the discipline of running exploitation and exploration in parallel, and translates it into language a leadership team can act on rather than admire. His 2009 Organization Science paper with Marianne Lewis is on most senior reading lists in the field, which gives the boardroom conversation a defensible reference point when innovation budgets come under pressure. “Purposeful Curiosity” gives leaders a working method for the awkward middle of an innovation cycle, where the question is not whether to explore but how to keep the inquiry productive when results are slow. As founder of Bayes X, he runs a live research programme on disruption with corporate partners, so the case material he brings to a session is current rather than historical. He has acted as thematic advisor on the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF, giving him a working view of how capital markets currently price the very disruption that operating leaders are trying to manage. Biography highlights Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Bayes Business School, City, University of London Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, Bayes Business School Founder and Director, Bayes X, the school’s Research Centre for Innovation and Disruption Director, Avyssos Advisors Ltd., innovation management consultancy Author, “Purposeful Curiosity” (Yellow Kite/Hachette, 2022), endorsed by Adam Grant Co-author, “Managing Change, Creativity and Innovation” (5th edition, Sage, 2024) Research published in Organization Science, Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, and California Management Review Thematic advisor to the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF Biography The hardest problem inside an established firm is not whether to innovate. It is how to keep the innovation agenda alive against the gravitational pull of the existing business. Costas Andriopoulos has spent two decades building the academic and practical answer to that question. His 2009 paper with Marianne Lewis in Organization Science set out how ambidextrous firms hold exploitation and exploration in productive tension rather than collapsing one into the other. The work has become a reference point for how senior teams discuss the paradox of running today’s business while building tomorrow’s. He has continued that line of research through articles in Human Relations, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning and California Management Review. At Bayes Business School he holds the chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, serves as Associate Dean for MBA Programmes, and founded the Bayes X Centre for Innovation and Disruption. Through Avyssos Advisors he works with founders and corporate leadership teams; through the Amundi (Lyxor) MSCI Disruptive Technology ETF advisory work he sees the same disruption priced by capital markets. “Purposeful Curiosity,” published by Yellow Kite in 2022 and endorsed by Adam Grant, took that research base to a wider audience. Its argument is operational rather than inspirational: curiosity becomes useful only when it is structured, directed, and protected against the day-to-day demands that crowd it out. That is the brief he brings into a leadership room. Key speaking topics Organisational ambidexterity Disruptive innovation in established firms Purposeful curiosity as a leadership discipline Innovation portfolio management Entrepreneurial mindset inside corporates Leading creative teams The paradox of exploitation and exploration Ideal for CEOs and executive committees holding both a profitability and a growth mandate Chief Innovation Officers and heads of R&D under board pressure to show returns from exploration CHROs and learning leaders building leadership development programmes that include innovation capability Founders and senior leadership teams of scale-ups moving from a single product to a portfolio Audience outcomes A clear vocabulary for the paradox of running today’s business while building the next one A defensible reference framework, drawn from peer-reviewed research, for protecting the exploration agenda inside an established firm A working method for converting individual curiosity into a managed organisational practice Examples of how ambidextrous firms structure decisions, incentives and team design to hold both modes at once

Why organisations work with David Marquet The framework comes from an operational turnaround inside a high-consequence command environment. The crew of a nuclear submarine cannot afford the kind of leadership failure a corporate team can absorb, and the system Marquet built was tested against that standard. Intent-Based Leadership replaces the request for permission with a statement of intent, which is a specific behavioural change a leadership team can implement on Monday morning. It is a working method, not a philosophy. “Turn the Ship Around!” became a reference text inside US Navy submarine command, technology firms, manufacturers and healthcare systems. Adoption across that range of industries is rare for a leadership book. “Leadership is Language” gives senior leaders specific verbal moves to dismantle the industrial-age meeting culture that still produces compliant teams and over-burdened decision-makers. Stephen R. Covey studied Santa Fe directly and called it the most empowering organisation he had encountered. The endorsement carries weight because Covey rarely attached his name to operational case studies of this kind. Biography highlights Commanded USS Santa Fe (SSN-763) from 1999 to 2001, taking it from the lowest-rated submarine in the fleet to the highest in retention and operational evaluations. 1981 graduate of the US Naval Academy, top of class; 28 years of service in the US submarine force. Author of “Turn the Ship Around!” (Penguin Portfolio, 2013), foreword by Stephen R. Covey, called by Fortune “the best how-to manual anywhere for managers on delegating, training, and driving flawless execution.” Author of “Leadership is Language” (Penguin Portfolio, 2020), setting out six leadership plays for dismantling industrial-age meeting culture. Founder of Intent-Based Leadership International, the consulting firm operationalising the framework inside corporate, healthcare and government organisations. Named to Inc. Magazine’s Top 100 Leadership Speakers. Biography The USS Santa Fe was the lowest-rated nuclear submarine in the US fleet when David Marquet took command in 1999. Within two years it had the highest retention and operational evaluations in the force. Over the following decade, a disproportionate number of its officers were selected for submarine command of their own. The shift began with a single moment. Marquet gave an order that could not be executed on his class of submarine, and the watch officer relayed it anyway. When asked why, the answer was: because you told me to. Marquet stopped giving orders. He built a system in which crew members stated intent (“I intend to surface the boat at 0300”) and the officer’s job was to certify competence and clarity, not to authorise the decision. He calls this Intent-Based Leadership. It is now used inside manufacturers, healthcare systems, technology companies, professional sports teams and government agencies that face the same structural problem: decision-makers too far from the information, and a workforce trained to wait for instruction. Stephen R. Covey spent time aboard Santa Fe and wrote about it in “The 8th Habit”, calling it the most empowering organisation he had observed. His second book, “Leadership is Language”, extends the framework into the meeting room. Marquet argues that industrial-age verbal habits (“Does anyone have any concerns?”, “Sounds good to me”) manufacture compliance and silence dissent at the moment leaders need it most. The six plays in the book give senior teams specific replacement language, tested in environments where the cost of an unchallenged bad decision is operational rather than theoretical. Key speaking topics Intent-Based Leadership Distributed decision-making in high-consequence environments Leadership language and meeting design Psychological safety and high-reliability teams Cultural transformation in command-and-control organisations Leader development and succession at scale Ideal for CEOs and senior operating leaders rebuilding decision rights after a period of centralisation COOs and operations leaders in regulated or high-consequence industries (energy, healthcare, defence, manufacturing) CHROs and chief learning officers designing leadership development programmes that change behaviour, not vocabulary Boards and executive teams reviewing why their organisation is slow to act on information the workforce already has Audience outcomes A working language for replacing requests for permission with statements of intent, usable inside the next leadership meeting. A diagnostic for where in the organisation control, competence and clarity are out of balance. The six plays from “Leadership is Language” as a structured alternative to industrial-age meeting habits. A clearer view of which decisions a senior leader should still own, and which have been hoarded by default. Evidence, drawn from a documented operational turnaround, that distributed authority improves performance under pressure rather than weakening it.

Why organisations work with Jeff de Kleijn Two decades inside HP and Canon across Asia Pacific and Europe, including running HP’s Large Format Printing business for APJ, gives him operating credibility with senior leaders who have lived through global restructures. Works fluently across Western systems thinking and Chinese strategic philosophy, useful for European and US executive teams navigating Asia exposure without simplifying it. Frames leadership as an operating system question, where decision rights, rhythm and supervisory clarity are the variables, not personality or style. Brings a working executive’s vantage point through his current role leading Dilaco, so the room hears a peer, not a retired commentator. Biography highlights Former General Manager, Large Format Printing Division, HP Asia Pacific and Japan. Senior executive roles at Canon across Europe and Asia. Chief Executive of Dilaco Group since 2019. Founder of Cortlandt Gulch, his leadership advisory and writing platform. Forthcoming book, Postmodern Leadership: Navigating Crises and Complexity in the Information Era. Trained in theatre and improvisation at the Bruges Conservatory of Music & Arts; works in English, Dutch and Chinese. Biography Most large organisations are still wired to push decisions up and instructions down. That structure is breaking against the speed and interdependence of the systems leaders now operate in. Jeff de Kleijn’s work begins from that mismatch, and from the specific question of how senior teams behave once they accept it. His authority on the subject is operational, not theoretical. He spent two decades in senior roles at HP and Canon, including running HP’s Large Format Printing business across Asia Pacific and Japan, before taking over Dilaco, a Belgian IT services group, in 2019. The throughline is leading commercial organisations through restructure, geographic complexity and technology shifts while the formal authority structure was always slightly behind events. He writes and advises through Cortlandt Gulch, and is finishing a book, Postmodern Leadership: Navigating Crises and Complexity in the Information Era, that sets out his core argument. Power inside large organisations has already moved from position to network connectivity. The leaders who are getting traction are the ones rebuilding their operating rhythm, supervisory cadence and decision rights around that fact, rather than working harder inside the old chart. What he brings to a room is the combination of a sitting executive’s vocabulary, exposure to both European and Asian operating cultures, and a stage discipline shaped by training in theatre at the Bruges Conservatory. Senior audiences leave with a sharper view of where their own authority architecture is misfiring, and a vocabulary for fixing it. Key speaking topics Networked and decentralised leadership Decision rights and supervisory clarity in complex organisations Leadership operating models under systemic uncertainty AI as an institutional, not technological, force Eastern and Western strategic thought in executive practice Restructuring and post-transformation leadership Ideal for Boards and executive committees redesigning how authority and decision rights operate post-restructure CEOs and group MDs of multi-region businesses with significant Asia exposure Private equity portfolio leadership teams under pressure to operate with fewer layers Transformation and strategy leads working on the leadership operating model, not just structure Audience outcomes A clearer read on where their current authority structure is the bottleneck, not the workload Specific language for separating control, coordination and supervision as distinct leadership tasks A working frame for combining Western strategic analysis with Chinese strategic thinking in real decisions A more honest internal conversation about what their organisation actually needs from its top team