Talent Retention Strategies

Why organisations work with Ravin Jesuthasan He gives boards and executive teams an actual blueprint for moving from jobs to skills, not a slide about why it matters. The Work Without Jobs framework, developed with John Boudreau, is the reference text on the subject and is taught inside MIT Sloan and Kellogg. His day job is doing this work. As Mercer’s Global Leader of Transformation Services, he advises some of the largest employers in the world on workforce redesign, so the keynote is built on live engagements, not theory. He sits where AI, automation and human capital actually intersect. His four-step framework for applying automation to work, from Reinventing Jobs, has become a standard tool for HR and operations leaders trying to decide what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave alone. He brings institutional authority that buyers can verify. World Economic Forum Steering Committee on Work and Employment, Thinkers50 Radar, FT Book of the Month, fifteen pieces in HBR and MIT Sloan Management Review. His material is built for the CHRO and the CEO in the same room. Many future-of-work speakers pitch to one or the other. He frames the work redesign question as a board-level operating decision, which is how it now needs to be sold internally. Biography highlights Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer. Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer of Executive Education, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. Author of five books including Work Without Jobs (MIT Press, 2022) and The Skills-Powered Organization (MIT Press, 2024). Wall Street Journal bestseller; Financial Times Book of the Month, October 2024. Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020; shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award 2023. World Economic Forum Steering Committee member on Work and Employment. Over 200 published articles, including 15 in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review; regular Forbes contributor. CFA charterholder and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA). Biography The job, as a unit of organisational architecture, is starting to look obsolete. Roles are static, skills inside them decay in months rather than years, and AI is now capable of doing chunks of work that used to define entire functions. Most large employers know this. Very few know what to replace the jobs-based model with. This is the territory Ravin Jesuthasan has spent two decades mapping. As Global Leader of Transformation Services at Mercer, he advises multinational employers on how to rebuild their workforce architecture around skills and tasks rather than fixed job descriptions. The same body of work runs through Work Without Jobs, written with John Boudreau and published by MIT Press in 2022, and its 2024 follow-up, The Skills-Powered Organization, written with Tanuj Kapilashrami and named Financial Times Book of the Month in October 2024. The institutional credentials match the intellectual claim. He sits on the World Economic Forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment, holds an Executive Fellow and Adjunct Lecturer appointment at the Kellogg School of Management, and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar Class of 2020 before being shortlisted for the Thinkers50 Talent Award in 2023. He has written more than 200 articles, including fifteen pieces for Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, and contributes regularly to Forbes. For boards now being asked how AI will reshape headcount, productivity and capability, his contribution is not a forecast. It is an operating model: a structured way of deciding what work gets deconstructed, which tasks get automated or augmented, and how the organisation acquires the skills it will actually need next year, not the jobs it posted last year. Key speaking topics The skills-powered organisation Reinventing jobs through automation and AI The future of work and the work operating system Workforce transformation and human capital strategy Human-AI collaboration in the enterprise The future of the Chief People Officer role Sustainable digital transformation Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers rebuilding the workforce model around skills and AI. CEOs and boards making capital-level decisions on AI, automation and headcount. Transformation, operations and strategy leaders responsible for redesigning how work gets done. Executive teams preparing for skills-based talent markets and post-jobs operating models. Audience outcomes A working definition of the skills-powered organisation and how it differs from a jobs-based model. A four-step method for deciding what to automate, what to augment, and what to leave to humans. A board-ready argument for treating work design as a strategic operating decision, not an HR programme. Specific case examples from global employers already deconstructing jobs into tasks and skills.

Why organisations work with Ram Charan The Leadership Pipeline gives boards and CHROs a six-passage diagnostic framework – built from research across more than 100 global corporations – for selecting, developing, and assessing leaders at each organizational level. Most leadership development programmes describe this kind of architecture in principle. Charan operationalized it. His co-authored book Execution made a specific argument that most organizations resist: strategy failure is a discipline failure, not a strategy failure. Spending 150 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list suggests the argument landed. The named disciplines it identifies – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability – give executive teams something to act on, not just reflect on. Client relationships at GE (approximately four decades) and DuPont (approximately three) are not testimonials. They are evidence of how a working model holds up under repeated stress at the apex of large, complex organizations. He originated business acumen as a teachable, measurable organizational capability rather than an executive personality trait. The curriculum built around What the CEO Wants You to Know has been adopted at major corporations as a tool for developing commercial judgment across all levels of leadership. His work on corporate governance, including Boards That Lead (co-authored with Dennis Carey and Michael Useem), gives directors specific tools for managing the boundary between governance and management – one of the most contested and consequential relationships in any large organization. Biography highlights Harvard Business School MBA and DBA; graduated Baker Scholar with high distinction Former faculty member at Harvard Business School, Northwestern University (Kellogg School of Management), Wharton School, and GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute Co-author of Execution (with Larry Bossidy, 2002) – number 1 Wall Street Journal bestseller and New York Times bestseller for 150 weeks Author and co-author of more than 30 books with over 4 million copies sold in more than twelve languages; publisher record via ram-charan.com Distinguished Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources Contributor to Harvard Business Review, Fortune, BusinessWeek, Time, and Chief Executive; listed on Thinkers50 Long-term advisor to GE, DuPont, Bank of America, KLM, Verizon, Novartis, 3M, and the Tata and Aditya Birla Groups Biography Most organizations can articulate their strategy clearly. Fewer can explain why it consistently fails to arrive at the front line. Ram Charan has spent four decades working inside that gap – as an advisor to CEOs and boards at GE, DuPont, Bank of America, and some forty other major corporations across multiple continents. His 2002 book Execution, co-authored with former Honeywell CEO Larry Bossidy, made an argument that is still unsettling to senior teams: the problem is not the strategy, it is the absence of named disciplines for making it real. The book identified three of those disciplines – talent selection, operating reviews, and decision accountability at the CEO level – and spent 150 consecutive weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. The Leadership Pipeline, developed with Stephen Drotter and James Noel, pressed the argument further. It defined six discrete passages through which leaders must develop, with distinct skills, time allocation, and values required at each stage. The model is now used as a standard succession architecture at major corporations worldwide. Charan trained at Harvard Business School, graduating Baker Scholar with high distinction before joining its faculty. He later taught at Northwestern’s Kellogg School, at Wharton, and at GE’s Crotonville Leadership Institute. He left full-time academia in 1978 to consult – a decision shaped by a conviction, present from the start, that the real problems of business are not solved in classrooms but inside the operating decisions that organizations make every day. His body of work – more than thirty books, including What the CEO Wants You to Know, Boards That Lead, and Global Tilt – is structured around a single question: what does it actually take to build an organization that delivers? Directors, CHROs, and CEO teams use his frameworks not because they are theoretically elegant but because they name things that were previously unnameable – and give senior leaders something concrete to do on Monday morning. Key speaking topics Execution as organizational discipline Leadership Pipeline and succession architecture Business acumen as a teachable capability Corporate governance and board-CEO relationship Growth strategy and profitability fundamentals Global competition and emerging market strategy Talent development and leadership readiness Ideal for CEOs and board directors working on succession planning, governance accountability, or the gap between strategic intent and operational performance CHROs and talent leaders designing or overhauling leadership development and succession frameworks Senior executive teams where strategy is consistently better-articulated than delivered Leadership development programmes at global corporations seeking an established, research-backed architecture Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where the leadership pipeline is blocked and what specific actions unblock it A clear distinction between strategy and execution, and the named disciplines – talent, decision-making, and operating process – that close the gap Practical tools for assessing leadership readiness at each stage of the organizational hierarchy A framework for structuring the board-CEO relationship and understanding when governance becomes leadership An understanding of business acumen as a measurable, developable skill applicable across organizational levels – not just at the top

Why organisations work with Mike Forde His vantage point is inside the building. As Director of Football Operations at Chelsea FC, he ran recruitment, contracts, sport science and team operations across the club’s most successful era: the Champions League, the Europa League, the Premier League and three FA Cups inside six years. Few advisors work credibly across the EPL and the major US leagues. Sportsology, the firm he founded in 2014, has long-running client relationships with the Philadelphia Eagles, Atlanta Falcons, Brooklyn Nets and San Antonio Spurs alongside European football clubs. He has been the architect of senior appointments that have shaped franchises. The Brooklyn Nets hired him in 2016 to lead their general manager search and he placed Sean Marks, who rebuilt the roster around Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. The Sacramento Kings retained him for the same purpose in 2020. His co-authored book Quiet Leadership (Portfolio Penguin, 2016), written with Carlo Ancelotti and Chris Brady, gives him a developed framework on leading talented egos. It has sold over 100,000 copies and is read well outside professional sport. Biography highlights Founder and Executive Chairman of Sportsology Group, an advisory firm based in New York and London with clients across European football, the NFL, NBA and MLB Director of Football Operations and Executive Club Director at Chelsea FC, 2007 to 2013, the most successful era in the club’s history Performance Director at Bolton Wanderers FC, 1999 to 2007 Co-author of Quiet Leadership: Winning Hearts, Minds and Matches with Carlo Ancelotti and Chris Brady (Portfolio Penguin, 2016) Led the general manager searches for the Brooklyn Nets (placing Sean Marks in 2016) and the Sacramento Kings (2020) BSc Sport Science, Liverpool John Moores University; MSc Psychology and Sport, San Diego State University Biography Chelsea FC won everything in sight between 2007 and 2013: the Champions League, the Europa League, the Premier League and three FA Cups. Mike Forde sat inside the building for that entire run as Director of Football Operations and Executive Club Director. He had spent the previous seven years at Bolton Wanderers FC as Performance Director. The Chelsea role professionalised that work at scale: recruitment, contracts, sport science, performance analysis and team operations under public pressure. He founded Sportsology Group in 2014 to do similar work outside one club. The firm now operates from New York and London, advising franchise owners, leagues and institutional capital across European football, the NFL, NBA and MLB. Sportsology has worked with the Philadelphia Eagles, Atlanta Falcons, Brooklyn Nets, San Antonio Spurs and LA Rams. The firm also runs senior leadership searches: Forde placed Sean Marks at the Brooklyn Nets in 2016 and was retained by the Sacramento Kings in 2020. His co-authored book Quiet Leadership (Portfolio Penguin, 2016) sets out the methods Carlo Ancelotti used to lead talented egos at AC Milan, Chelsea, PSG and Real Madrid. It has sold over 100,000 copies and is cited regularly by senior managers far outside professional sport. The Ringer profiled Forde in 2021 as the consultant NBA owners call when a general manager search begins. Key speaking topics High performance team culture Talent identification and development Leadership of high ego performers Operating systems behind sustained winning Lessons from elite sport for corporate leaders Senior executive search and assessment Multi cultural team management Ideal for CHROs, CPOs and heads of talent rebuilding the systems behind spotting and keeping high performers CEOs and senior leadership teams setting cultural standards that outlast personnel change Senior partner and managing director audiences in professional and financial services firms Sales leadership and customer facing kickoff events focused on team performance Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for what separates winning teams from the rest, drawn from clubs that win under public scrutiny Direct examples of how Carlo Ancelotti, Sir Dave Brailsford and other elite sport leaders manage difficult egos and protect culture through change A sharper diagnosis of where their own talent and culture systems are weakest, with reference points from the NFL, NBA and European football Tools they can apply directly to hiring decisions and talent reviews

Why organisations work with Michael Grade He has run three of the most scrutinised cultural institutions in Britain and turned each one around under public, political, and shareholder pressure. Few business leaders have a comparable record of operating in the spotlight. He brings the rare combination of operator and regulator. Having sat on both sides of the table at the BBC, Channel 4, ITV, and Ofcom, he can talk credibly to a board about how regulators actually think. He is a working authority on talent-led businesses. Grade built his career around commissioning, retaining, and managing creative talent at LWT, Channel 4, and ITV, and that perspective transfers directly to professional services and knowledge-economy firms. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Grade of Yarmouth and chairs Ofcom, giving him a current view of the regulatory pressures shaping media, technology, and competition policy in the UK. He is a recognised figure of the Royal Television Society, a Fellow since 1991, and one of the most quoted commentators on the British broadcasting industry across four decades. Biography highlights Chairman of Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, since May 2022. Executive Chairman of ITV plc, 2007 to 2009, brought in to restructure the company through the financial crisis. Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, 2004 to 2006, appointed in the aftermath of the Hutton Report. Chief Executive of Channel 4, 1988 to 1997, where he commissioned and acquired hits including Friends, Frasier, and ER. Controller of BBC One, 1984 to 1986, and Director of Programmes at London Weekend Television before that. Non-executive Chairman of Pinewood Shepperton Film Studios from 2000 to 2016, and Chairman of Camelot Group from 2002 to 2004. Created Baron Grade of Yarmouth in 2011, appointed CBE in 1998, and Fellow of the Royal Television Society since 1991. Author of the 1999 autobiography “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time” (Macmillan). Biography The BBC was bruised, ITV was losing money in a recession, and Channel 4 was a young challenger looking for a commercial identity. At different points across forty years, Michael Grade was asked to fix each one. He is the only person to have run all three of Britain’s major public-service broadcasters and then ended up chairing their regulator, Ofcom. His operating record is specific. As Chief Executive of Channel 4 from 1988 to 1997, he gave the channel a commercial spine while protecting its public-service brief, acquiring Friends, Frasier, and ER and building the schedule that defined its 1990s identity. As Chairman of the BBC from 2004, he steadied an organisation under political fire after the Hutton Report. As Executive Chairman of ITV from 2007, he restructured the company through the financial crisis. The thread is the same: large, scrutinised, talent-driven organisations under pressure to perform commercially without losing legitimacy. That tension, between brand, regulator, shareholder, and creative workforce, is now the standard operating environment for many sectors beyond media. Grade has lived inside it for four decades. He sits in the House of Lords as Baron Grade of Yarmouth, was appointed CBE in 1998, became a Fellow of the Royal Television Society in 1991, and chairs Ofcom on a four-year term running to April 2026. His autobiography, “It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,” was published by Macmillan in 1999. Key speaking topics Leadership of large institutions under public scrutiny Managing talent-driven businesses Media, broadcasting, and the regulatory landscape Crisis leadership and corporate restructuring The future of British public-service broadcasting Boardroom strategy in regulated industries Ideal for Chairs and CEOs of regulated, brand-sensitive businesses (financial services, media, telecoms, utilities) Boards facing reputational, political, or regulatory pressure Leadership audiences in talent-led professional services firms Audience outcomes A working frame for leading organisations whose performance is judged in public, not only on the P&L. A practitioner’s view of how regulators read a company, from someone who now sits in that chair. Concrete lessons from three of the most-watched corporate turnarounds in British media. A clear-eyed account of how to manage talent-driven cultures without losing commercial discipline.

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 Jeff Grout Operator-grade leadership content. He ran Robert Half UK as Managing Director through a period in which the business grew from 12 staff to over 360, which gives his account of leadership and recruitment a grounding that most speakers on the same topic cannot offer. Inside access to an elite sporting campaign. As business manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, he saw England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup preparation and performance culture from the inside, which translates into specific examples rather than generic sporting analogies. One of the senior interviewers on the UK circuit. His public interview work includes Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Dave Brailsford, Charles Handy, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke, and he is regularly booked as conference chair where a board-level audience needs a senior host. Eight books on leadership, performance and recruitment, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007) and The Adventure Capitalists. The work is published, not just performed on the stage. A repeat client list that includes Amazon, BT, British Airways, HSBC, Barclays, LinkedIn, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Harrods and UK Sport. Biography highlights Former UK Managing Director of Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy. Built the UK business from two offices and 12 staff to £65 million turnover, 19 offices and over 360 staff during a 21-year tenure. Business Manager to Sir Clive Woodward from 2002 to 2006, spanning England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. Graduate of the London School of Economics. Co-author of eight business books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? (Capstone, 2007), The Adventure Capitalists (Kogan Page), Mind Games, Recruiting Excellence and What You Need to Know About Leadership. Public interviewer of senior figures including Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Sir Steve Redgrave, Dame Stella Rimington, Sir Stuart Rose and Greg Dyke. Collaborated with the BBC to produce an interview training video, and has delivered leadership and executive skills workshops for clients including BT, HSBC, British Airways, Virgin, Harrods, Amazon, LinkedIn, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Biography Plenty has been written about what makes a good leader. Much less has been written about what leaders do on the day a quarter misses, or on the morning after a senior resignation. The working reality of leadership is where most senior teams need help, and where generic advice tends to fail. That working reality is the ground Jeff Grout has operated on for most of his career. He spent 21 years inside Robert Half International, the world’s largest specialist recruitment consultancy, eventually running its UK business as Managing Director until 2000. Under his leadership, the operation grew from two offices and 12 staff to a £65 million business with 19 offices and more than 360 staff. That is the grounding behind his current work with senior teams on leadership, recruitment and high-performance culture. From 2002 to 2006, he was business manager to Sir Clive Woodward, through the years surrounding England’s 2003 Rugby World Cup victory and the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour. That sustained access to an elite sporting campaign at its peak gives his work on high-performance culture a different weight. He saw the detail of how a winning environment is built and defended, up close and over time, not as a single anecdote deployed for colour. For senior buyers, he is typically booked either as a keynote speaker on leadership and high performance, or as the conference chair and interviewer who can hold a board-level room. His written work spans eight books, including What Do Leaders Really Do? and The Adventure Capitalists. His interview subjects have included Lord Sugar, Sir Richard Branson, Charles Handy, Sir Dave Brailsford, Sir Terence Conran, Dame Stella Rimington and Greg Dyke. Key speaking topics Leadership in practice Building high-performance teams Peak performance lessons from elite sport Leading change Recruitment, retention and talent strategy Executive interviewing and conference chairing The characteristics of success Ideal for Senior leadership teams who want a practical, operator-grounded account of leadership rather than an academic framework CHROs, talent directors and senior HR leaders focused on recruitment, retention and high-performance team design Conference organisers who need a senior chair or public interviewer for a board-level audience Sales leadership and high-performance culture off-sites Audience outcomes A sharper vocabulary for describing what effective leaders actually do day to day Specific examples, drawn from elite business and sporting environments, of how high-performance teams get built and held together under pressure New questions to ask about recruitment and retention, from an operator who ran a 360-person business A more confident view of the behaviours that separate consistent performers from occasional ones

Why organisations work with Imran Rehman He runs a working team-measurement platform, Kokoro, so his sessions draw on live data from teams rather than abstract models. His thesis reframes the problem: fix the environment, not the individual. That shift gives HR and transformation leaders a more tractable lever than personality interventions. He combines executive coaching practice with product building, which gives senior teams a rare mix of one-to-one diagnostic instinct and systems thinking in the same room. He works fluently in English and German and operates across European corporate and multinational contexts, which suits international leadership audiences. His book “Sum of Many” gives the work a named, published argument leaders can reference after the session. Biography highlights Co-founder of Kokoro (Kokoro GmbH, Vienna), a real-time team and leadership analytics platform founded in 2018. Author of “Sum of Many,” featured on the Chapters Of My Life podcast (Life Book 45). Certified business and executive coach, European Business School (EBS). Bilingual working languages: English and German; based in Vienna, Austria. Signature talks include “The Science of Great Teams,” “The Myths of Measuring Humans,” and “Preventing Team Burnout: 6 Evidence-Based Actions for Success.” Professional coaching practice spanning multiple sectors and geographies, with a focus on senior leadership teams and organisational development. Biography Most teams are not underperforming because the people in them are weak. They are underperforming because the environment around them quietly punishes candour, overload is treated as a personal resilience problem, and the signals that matter are read too late. This is the terrain Imran Rehman works in. He is co-founder of Kokoro, a Vienna-based platform that measures psychological safety, belonging, and the conditions of healthy high performance in real time. Kokoro was founded in 2018, and the product sits behind his speaking: the data he references is the data his clients are generating, not borrowed survey research. His book “Sum of Many” argues the same point in long form. Stop trying to fix individuals. Build environments where ordinary people can do unusually good work together. It is a direct challenge to a lot of standard leadership development, and it gives his keynotes a single, testable claim rather than a list of tips. He is a certified executive coach through the European Business School and works fluently in English and German across European and multinational organisations. The coaching practice and the product are not separate lives. One informs the other, which is why his sessions land with HR directors and operating leaders who have already sat through the generic version of this topic. Key speaking topics Psychological safety in teams Belonging and team dynamics Data-informed team performance Healthy high performance and burnout prevention Leadership development and coaching Organisational development and culture Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and heads of organisational development responsible for team effectiveness at scale Senior leadership teams preparing for a step-change in performance expectations Transformation and change leaders who need measurable people indicators alongside operational ones International and German-speaking leadership audiences in multinational corporate settings Audience outcomes A working definition of psychological safety that is specific enough to act on, not just reference A shift in framing from individual performance fixes to environmental design A view of what can and cannot be usefully measured in team behaviour, and why most surveys fail Evidence-based moves for preventing team burnout before it shows up in attrition figures A shared language for senior teams to diagnose their own dynamics in the weeks after the session

Her «neurosignature diversity» framework, developed in The Brain-Friendly Workplace, gives leadership teams a precise, science-based explanation for why talent attrition persists after conventional DEI investment – and a specific mechanism to address it. She names the «neurogap» – the structural drift toward dopamine- and testosterone-dominant personality profiles at the top of organisations – and provides a testable diagnostic for closing it, rather than a general aspiration toward inclusion. Her background spans neuroscience research at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and management consulting at McKinsey and Company – a combination that gives her credibility in two domains that most neuroleadership speakers claim from only one. Audiences leave with four mapped neurosignatures linked to specific workplace behaviours, stress responses, and collaboration styles – a concrete tool, not a mindset shift. Her frameworks are published and peer-accessible: a Harvard Business Review article and a Wall Street Journal bestselling book reduce the internal scepticism that evidence-oriented leadership teams typically bring to behavioural science. Biography highlights Neuroscientist trained at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research; alumna of McKinsey and Company Lead author of The Leading Brain: Neuroscience Hacks to Work Smarter, Better, Happier (Random House) – named a Best Management Book by strategy+business Author of The Brain-Friendly Workplace: Why Talented People Quit and How to Get Them to Stay – Wall Street Journal bestseller Harvard Business Review contributor; work featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Newsweek, and CNBC Member of the socio-political council of acatech, The German Academy for Technology, advising the German government on technology, digitalisation, and AI Advisory board member, NeuroColor; LinkedIn Top Voice Biography At the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Friederike Fabritius studied what actually happens inside the brain under pressure. At McKinsey and Company, she saw what organisations actually do – and how rarely those two things match. The gap between them is the problem her work is built to close. Her central argument, developed across two books and field-tested with organisations including EY, BCG, and Google, is specific: most leadership teams over-represent dopamine- and testosterone-dominant personality types, selecting for stress tolerance in ways that systematically exclude other cognitive profiles. She calls this the neurogap. It explains why talented people leave not because of poor managers but because of poorly calibrated environments – and why retention problems persist despite sustained DEI investment. In The Brain-Friendly Workplace – a Wall Street Journal bestseller – Fabritius maps four neurosignatures tied to distinct workplace behaviours, stress responses, and communication preferences. The framework gives HR and leadership teams a diagnostic built on brain chemistry rather than demographic proxies. Her Harvard Business Review article on neurosignature diversity brought the argument to a practitioner audience; her earlier book, The Leading Brain (named a Best Management Book by strategy+business), established the scientific credibility underpinning it. She serves on the socio-political council of acatech, The German Academy for Technology, which advises the German government on digitalisation and AI – a role that reflects the applied, policy-facing dimension of her science. For boards and senior teams wrestling with sustained performance, retention, and culture, she offers something distinctive: a testable causal model, not a call for behavioural change without a structural explanation. Key speaking topics Neurosignature diversity and talent retention Brain-based leadership and decision-making Peak performance and the neuroscience of flow Cognitive diversity and inclusion Neuroscience of change, uncertainty, and resilience Trust, collaboration, and the social brain Learning, neuroplasticity, and habit formation at work Ideal for CHROs and people leaders responsible for talent strategy and retention outcomes Senior leadership and executive teams seeking evidence-based frameworks for culture design Learning and development leaders building performance or cognitive diversity programmes Boards and transformation leads navigating hybrid work, workforce change, and sustained engagement Audience outcomes A named framework – neurosignature diversity – for diagnosing why current culture drives attrition, with specific, actionable steps to address the neurogap Practical understanding of how brain chemistry shapes performance, stress tolerance, collaboration style, and communication preference across a team Clearer grasp of how to design environments that support cognitive diversity beyond demographic targets Concrete approaches to managing hybrid and distributed teams in line with how different brain types actually work best under pressure Evidence-based perspective on why DEI initiatives stall at the neurological layer – and how to move past aspiration to structural change

Why organisations work with Dave Ulrich The four-domain architecture of human capability, talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function, is Ulrich’s own framework. It gives business and HR leaders a single integrated taxonomy for what is otherwise a sprawl of disconnected people and organisation initiatives, and a structured way to decide which investments will actually move stakeholder outcomes. The Human Resource Competency Study, now in its eighth round across 35 years, has cumulatively drawn on more than 100,000 respondents. Round 7 produced the headline finding that organisational capability has four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 sharpens the picture: HR department capability and the organisational capabilities HR helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich brings these findings into the room directly, not via a citation. Ulrich is the originator of the HR Business Partner model that most large organisations still operate today. Engaging him is not external validation of the existing model. It is access to the next-generation architecture, including the Organization Guidance System diagnostic that has now been run inside more than 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index reframes leadership quality as a measurable asset that investors and boards can rate the way Moody’s rates credit. For boards under increasing pressure to disclose human capital substance, not narrative, this is one of the few frameworks built explicitly for that conversation. Induction into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, alongside HR Magazine’s «father of modern HR» designation and recognition as the most influential HR thinker of the decade, places him among the small group of figures who have demonstrably shaped a field rather than contributed to one. Biography highlights Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan Co-founder and partner, The RBL Group Author of more than 30 books including Human Resource Champions (Harvard Business School Press, 1997), The Leadership Capital Index (Berrett-Koehler, 2015), Victory Through Organization (McGraw-Hill, 2017), and Reinventing the Organization (Harvard Business Review Press, 2019) Editor, Human Resource Management journal, 1990 to 1999; Distinguished Fellow, National Academy of Human Resources Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame, 2017; HR Magazine Lifetime Achievement Award, 2012, source of the «father of modern HR» designation; named most influential HR thinker of the decade by HR Magazine Lead architect of the Human Resource Competency Study (eight rounds, 35-plus years, more than 100,000 cumulative respondents) and the Organization Guidance System diagnostic (more than 500 organisations) Active global platform: more than 400,000 LinkedIn followers and a weekly newsletter with more than 230,000 subscribers, with weekly posts routinely reaching 50,000 to 70,000 views Biography HR is not about HR. The phrase is Ulrich’s own. It captures the through-line of three decades of work: that the HR function exists to deliver value to every stakeholder the organisation touches, not to perfect its own processes. Employees and executives inside. Customers, investors, and communities outside. The discipline he calls human capability is the architecture that connects them. That architecture has four domains, each backed by its own research base. Talent covers how organisations acquire, develop, and retain full contributors, now framed by Ulrich as Talent Advantage = AI × HI, artificial intelligence multiplied by human ingenuity. Organisation treats the company as a set of capabilities: agility, culture, innovation, strategic clarity, collaboration, and customer connection. These can be prioritised through the Organization Guidance System, now deployed in more than 500 companies. Leadership draws on the Leadership Code research with more than 30,000 respondents, and on the Leadership Capital Index, which gives boards and investors a measurable framework for leadership quality. The HR function rests on the 35-year Human Resource Competency Study, with more than 100,000 cumulative respondents, and shapes the operating models, practices, and competencies HR uses today. The practical consequences of this work have shaped how HR is organised. Human Resource Champions (1997) introduced the four-role model, strategic partner, change agent, administrative expert, and employee champion, that became the template for HR business partnering inside Fortune 500 organisations. The Leadership Capital Index (2015) made the case that leadership quality can be rated the way credit is rated. Victory Through Organization (2017) was the empirical headline: organisational capability has roughly four times the business impact of individual talent. Round 8 of the HRCS sharpens that further: the HR department and the organisational capabilities it helps build have six to eight times the business impact of individual HR competencies. Ulrich is the Rensis Likert Professor Emeritus at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan, and a partner at The RBL Group. He has worked with more than half of the Fortune 200 across more than 80 countries. He was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2017, and was named «father of modern HR» by HR Magazine in its 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award. His weekly LinkedIn posts reach more than 400,000 followers and 230,000 newsletter subscribers. That audience is how much of the global HR and business community engages with his current work in real time. Key speaking topics Stakeholder value through human capability The four domains of HR: talent, leadership, organisation, and the HR function HR transformation and the next-generation HR Business Partner model Organisational capability as competitive advantage Leadership Capital Index and leadership as a board-level asset The HR inflection point: AI, analytics, and the future of the HR function Culture transformation and organisational design Ideal for CEOs and executive teams looking for a single integrated language across talent, leadership, organisational capability, and the HR function CHROs and senior HR teams whose remit now spans stakeholder outcomes across employees, customers, investors, and communities Boards and investors who need a measurable framework for the human capability behind market value Transformation leads redesigning the HR operating model and the cross-functional accountabilities that sit alongside it across business leaders, HR, and employees Audience outcomes The four-domain human capability framework as a single integrated language for talent, leadership, organisation, and HR investment, replacing the disconnected list of HR programmes most teams are working from The empirical case for why organisational and capability investments outperform individual talent investments, drawn directly from HRCS and OGS findings A diagnostic logic for deciding which human capability investments will move customer share, investor confidence, and community standing, not just employee engagement scores A practical model for measuring leadership quality that can be defended in an investor or board conversation A clear position from which CHROs and CEOs can present HR as a leading indicator of business performance rather than a lagging cost

Why organisations work with Chester Elton His frameworks are grounded in the largest empirical base of any comparable culture speaker: studies of more than one million working adults, anchored by a 300,000-person study conducted with Towers Watson for All In – giving boards and HR leaders data they can defend internally. The Carrot Principle and Anxiety at Work sit at opposite ends of the engagement challenge; his ability to address both recognition strategy and workplace anxiety within a single coherent body of work means organisations do not need two different conversations. As a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner and member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, his executive coaching practice carries independent third-party validation that extends his value beyond the main stage. His work provides a specific, operational diagnosis – the breakdown between what leaders say they value and what managers actually do day to day – and a toolkit that works at every level of the organisation, not just the C-suite. Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts and consistently ranked among the world’s top organisational culture authorities by Global Gurus (2017–2025), his standing is validated by named external bodies rather than self-reported credentials. Biography highlights Co-author of five New York Times bestselling books, including The Carrot Principle, All In, Leading with Gratitude, and Anxiety at Work (Harper Business), co-written with Adrian Gostick Books sold nearly 2 million copies worldwide; translated into more than 30 languages Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner; member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership (SCL) Certified Executive Coach Global Gurus research organisation: ranked consistently among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts, 2017–2025 Named to Inc.’s 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts (October 2025) Co-founder, The Culture Works, a global leadership and culture consultancy Media: NBC Today, CBS 60 Minutes, CNN, ABC; quoted in Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fast Company, Financial Times Biography Culture does not fail organisations because leaders lack values. It fails because most managers do not know how to make those values visible in the daily behaviours of their teams. Chester Elton has spent more than two decades building the research base that explains this gap, and identifying what high-performing organisations do differently. His work draws on studies of more than one million working adults, compiled across several large-scale research partnerships. The Carrot Principle established the direct, measurable link between purposeful employee recognition and business outcomes including retention, productivity, and customer satisfaction. All In, produced with research firm Towers Watson, drew on a 300,000-person study to identify the seven practices that generate genuine organisational buy-in. Anxiety at Work – published by Harper Business and the most recent of his five New York Times bestsellers – addressed the other side of the same equation: what happens when uncertainty goes unmanaged and workplace anxiety erodes the culture leaders worked to build. Taken together, these books form one of the most evidence-based frameworks available to executives on how culture is created, sustained, and recovered. Elton is a Thinkers50 Coaching Award winner, a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches, and a Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership certified executive coach. Global Gurus has ranked him among the world’s top leadership and organisational culture experts every year from 2017 to 2025. Inc. named him to its 2025 Top 50 Leadership & Management Experts list. He is co-founder of The Culture Works and has consulted with organisations including American Express, The World Bank, and the New Jersey Devils. What distinguishes him is the range the research covers. Most speakers in this space address either motivation or stress. Elton’s body of work addresses both, and the connection between them. Key speaking topics Employee recognition and culture-building Organisational culture and high-performance teams Workplace anxiety and psychological safety Leading with gratitude Employee engagement strategy Multigenerational workforce leadership Manager capability and team trust Ideal for CHROs and People leaders designing, resetting, or embedding organisational culture programmes CEOs and senior leadership teams navigating workforce anxiety, change, or post-transformation culture repair Talent and leadership development functions seeking research-grounded frameworks for manager effectiveness HR and management associations and industry conferences where practitioner credibility and data-backed content are audience expectations Audience outcomes A diagnostic framework for identifying where culture commitment breaks down between leadership intent and frontline management behaviour Recognition practices tied directly to engagement and retention outcomes, grounded in large-scale empirical research rather than anecdote Practical strategies for identifying workplace anxiety early – before it affects team performance, absenteeism, or attrition A shared organisational vocabulary for discussing culture, gratitude, and psychological safety in operational rather than abstract terms Immediate, actionable steps that managers at any level can apply to strengthen trust and discretionary effort within their teams

Why organisations work with Arsène Wenger He is the only senior practitioner in any field who built and led a team through an entire unbeaten top-flight league season – a 38-game case study in what sustained, system-level performance actually requires, fully documented and independently verifiable. His most instructive period for organisations is arguably not the Invincibles season but the decade that followed: leading under financial constraint, serial talent loss, and rivals with structurally larger budgets, while still maintaining Champions League qualification and winning trophies. This is the pressure most organisations recognise. His framework for leadership – distinguishing clearly between the structural long-term work of the manager and the motivational short-term work of the coach, and insisting both must operate simultaneously – gives senior leaders a concrete architecture for their own role, not a motivational analogy. Cross-cultural management experience across France, Japan, and England, combined with an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, means his account of how performance systems are built is structural and comparative, not anecdotal. His current role at FIFA – overseeing global coaching standards, the IFAB rules-making body, and technical analysis of international tournaments – extends his perspective from club performance to institutional design and global governance, a dimension no other speaker in this market shares. Biography highlights Managed Arsenal for 22 years (1996-2018) – the longest tenure in the club’s history and in the history of the Premier League; won 3 Premier League titles and a then-record 7 FA Cups Architect of the 2003-04 Arsenal “Invincibles” – the only team to complete an unbeaten top-flight English league season in the modern era (38 matches) Previously managed AS Monaco (Ligue 1 title 1988; Coupe de France 1991) and Nagoya Grampus Eight, Japan (Emperor’s Cup; J-League Manager of the Year, 1995) Three-time Premier League Manager of the Season (1997-98, 2001-02, 2003-04) FIFA Chief of Global Football Development (appointed 2019); chairs the FIFA Technical Study Group and oversees IFAB and global coaching education Awarded the Légion d’honneur (2002) and an Honorary OBE (2003); inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame (2006) Autobiography My Life in Red and White (Orion, 2020) – Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller; the second football manager ever to reach No. 1 overall Economics degree, University of Strasbourg; fluent in six languages Biography The 2003-04 Arsenal season – 38 Premier League matches, zero defeats – remains the only unbeaten campaign in English football’s modern era. What made it possible was not an exceptional squad alone, but a system: nutritional standards that transformed player fitness, analytical scouting methods, and a culture whose values were defined by players and coaching staff together at the start of each season. Arsène Wenger’s career was cross-cultural long before that was a leadership virtue. He won the French league title with AS Monaco in 1988, then moved deliberately to Japan – taking Nagoya Grampus Eight to the Emperor’s Cup and the J-League Manager of the Year award in 1995. Managing across France, Japan, and England gave him a comparative framework for what in performance systems is universal, and what depends on context. At Arsenal, the decade after the Invincibles season is often more instructive for organisations than the unbeaten campaign itself. Wenger sustained Champions League qualification and FA Cup success while operating under severe financial constraint and losing key talent to better-funded rivals – conditions organisations recognise more readily than an anomalous trophy season. His autobiography, My Life in Red and White (Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller, 2020), and public appearances – including at the Bank of America Global Investor Summit and the Gartner IT Symposium – return consistently to a single structural argument: effective leadership requires the manager’s long-term, institutional work and the coach’s short-term, motivational work to operate simultaneously, not in sequence. Since 2019, Wenger has served as FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, overseeing global coaching education, the IFAB rules-making panel, and technical analysis of international tournaments. He holds an economics degree from the University of Strasbourg, France’s Légion d’honneur, an Honorary OBE, and a place in the English Football Hall of Fame. His perspective on competitive sustainability is drawn from specific, verifiable decisions made under extreme and sustained pressure – which is precisely what distinguishes it. Key speaking topics Sustained high performance and competitive advantage Talent identification, development, and succession systems Organisational culture and values-based leadership Long-term strategy under short-term performance pressure Cross-cultural team management Performance science and the modernisation of professional sport Global football governance and institutional development Ideal for C-suite and board-level leaders accountable for long-term competitive positioning CHROs and people directors designing talent development and succession pipelines Senior leadership conferences in financial services, professional services, and sport Transformation leaders managing performance culture through periods of resource constraint or competitive disruption Audience outcomes A clear, applicable distinction between managing (structural, long-term) and coaching (motivational, short-term) – and why both must run in parallel rather than sequence A concrete, verified case study in what sustained competitive advantage looks like in practice: the talent, culture, and decision-making systems behind it Practical perspectives on leading through constraint and transition – not just peak success – drawn from a decade of performing under significant competitive disadvantage An understanding of how cross-cultural experience informs more resilient, adaptive performance systems A framework for building culture from the inside: how shared values, standards, and accountability are established, maintained, and renewed across successive generations of people

Why organisations work with Michael Watkins He owns the global category of leadership transitions. The First 90 Days is the methodology Fortune 500 HR functions, executive coaches, and onboarding programs build around, with over a million copies in print across more than twenty languages. His 2024 book, The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking, gives senior teams a named, teachable framework for the cognitive work executives are expected to do but rarely trained in: pattern recognition, systems perspective, mental agility, structured problem-solving, visioning, and political savvy. The Thinkers50 Hall of Fame induction in 2023 places him alongside the small group of management thinkers whose work has shaped how large organisations actually develop leaders, not just how they talk about leadership. He has run the playbook inside companies as well as written it. Through Genesis Advisers, the consultancy he co-founded, his frameworks are embedded in transition coaching programs at major multinationals. Buyers get a speaker who has taught the same audience inside IMD, Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School. The content is built for senior leaders, not adapted down to them. Biography highlights Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change at IMD Business School since 2007. Author of The First 90 Days, named by The Economist as “the onboarding bible” and selected by Amazon editors as one of 100 leadership books to read in a lifetime. Author of The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking (Harper Business, 2024) and Master Your Next Move, the structured companion to The First 90 Days covering eight common executive transition types. Inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame in 2023; previously ranked on the Thinkers50 list in 2019 and 2021. Co-founder and chairman of Genesis Advisers, a leadership-transition consultancy. Former associate professor at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School; PhD in Decision Sciences from Harvard University. Biography The First 90 Days began as a study of why senior hires fail and grew into the operating manual that most large organisations now use to onboard executives. The Economist called it the onboarding bible. More than a million copies are in print across more than twenty languages, and the framework is embedded in transition coaching at multinationals worldwide. Michael Watkins built the methodology while teaching at Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School, refined it at INSEAD, and has anchored it at IMD since 2007 as Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change. He directs IMD’s First 90 Days open program and co-directs the Transition to Business Leadership executive program. The same body of work runs through Genesis Advisers, the consultancy he co-founded, where the playbook is delivered inside companies rather than written about from outside. In 2024, he extended the work upward with The Six Disciplines of Strategic Thinking, which names the cognitive disciplines executives are expected to demonstrate at the top of an organisation: pattern recognition, systems perspective, mental agility, structured problem-solving, visioning, and political savvy. The argument is that strategic thinking is not a personality trait but a teachable craft, and most senior teams have never been taught it. The Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inducted him in November 2023, recognising two decades of work that has demonstrably shaped how large organisations develop their leaders rather than how they describe doing so. Key speaking topics Leadership transitions and executive onboarding Strategic thinking for senior leaders Team leadership and top-team effectiveness Organisational change and culture Negotiation and decision-making Career strategy for senior executives Ideal for CHROs, heads of leadership development, and chief learning officers designing transition and onboarding programs. CEOs and executive committees who want their top team trained in strategic thinking as a discipline. Boards and nomination committees preparing successors for enterprise-leadership roles. High-potential leadership cohorts moving into first general-management or P&L roles. Audience outcomes A named methodology, The First 90 Days, that senior leaders can apply to their next transition rather than a set of principles to remember. Six concrete strategic-thinking disciplines that a top team can use as a shared language inside the business. A clearer view of why most senior-hire failures are predictable, and which interventions in the first ninety days actually change the outcome. Direct access to the thinking of a Thinkers50 Hall of Fame inductee whose work is taught inside HBS, INSEAD, and IMD curricula.