Culture and purpose are powerful tools when you are challenged to turn around a business that isn't reaching its full potential. CEO Kevin Davidson used both to successfully turn around Norman Broadbent plc, the London-based executive search and recruitment firm.

This year the firm announced its best financial results in over a decade, with a 41 per cent increase in revenues.

Kevin Davidson discusses how he did it, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Messenger RNA and personalised medicine promise to transform how we prevent and treat disease.

Darius Hughes, General Manager in the UK and Ireland for Moderna, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology company, wants the UK to lead the way.

Learn how he uses the company’s purpose to attract and keep the talented professionals he needs to achieve that ambition, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist. #moderna

Social impact is the driving force behind Shea Yeleen, a skincare products company that supports an African supply chain employing more than 800 women who earn five times the local minimum wage.

Her latest venture is the Yeleen Beauty Makerspace, a hybrid teaching lab and manufacturing space in Washington DC designed to support women and founders of color in the beauty industry.

Learn how she does it on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

https://yeleenbeauty.com/

https://sheayeleen.com/

A meaningful purpose will guide the behaviour of everybody in your business.

First Mile, a UK-based B-Corporation, defines its purpose as “to revolutionise business sustainability, starting with waste and recycling.” CEO Bruce Bratley uses three core values to help everyone in the business embody that purpose.

Listen to how he does it on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

No single doctor attends all your medical appointments. But you do. That makes you, the patient, the de facto integrator of the healthcare system.

That insight led Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli to found Patients Know Best (PKB), Europe’s largest Personal Health Record and patient engagement platform. PKB’s purpose is to give every person the ability to access their personal health record, control who can see it and use this information to manage their health and care.

Listen to how he does it on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist

What happens when a business achieves its original purpose? Where does it go from there?

Find out how Nej Gakenyi, CEO and founder of GRM Digital, faced that unusual challenge in the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

When a business connects its purpose and values to the way it wants its people to behave, the resulting clarity and focus helps drive growth and success. But how do you achieve that?

David Liddle, CEO of The TCM Group, did it by engaging his organisation in an inclusive process to develop a values and behaviours framework.

Learn how on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Words matter when you talk about purpose. Doubly so when you lead an organisation focused on language and communication. But what if that organisation is not comfortable discussing purpose and strategy?

That was the dilemma facing Sara Crofts when she became CEO of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the UK professional body for translators and interpreters.

Learn how she solved it in this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Loss of momentum can be fatal to any organisational change project. But committed leadership can keep the cause alive. Three years into an ongoing initiative to bring Matrix’s purpose to life, CEO Mark Inskip and his team doubled the company’s size by acquiring another business.

Despite this welcome complication, the purpose is taking root inside the organisation, employee engagement is high, and the leadership team have embarked on an inclusive initiative to develop a set of values that support the purpose.

Learn how Mark and team managed through the distractions, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

The founders of Office Space In Town (OSIT) set out to build a company that “reflects who we are as people and the ethics and morals that we live by.” Their goal was to be a provider of boutique, design-led workspaces where businesses thrive and people are inspired, focused and happy.

Co-Founder and CEO Niki Fuchs and Georgia Sandom, Director of Operations and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) explain how the company’s purpose has helped the business grow in a tough marketplace.

Listen to their story on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

In its quest to become the most trusted personalised service business in the world, the global concierge company Ten Lifestyle Group has kept its purpose and its revenue streams closely aligned.

The result is a remarkably resilient organisation, that has survived some very testing times to deliver long-term success.

Alex Cheatle, co-founder and CEO of Ten, reveals how sticking to the purpose, and consulting with an invisible customer, keeps the business growing. Learn more on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Sometimes commercial success can cause an organisation’s original purpose to dim over time. . That was the challenge facing Mike Astell, CEO of FCDO Services, an executive agency and trading fund owned by Britain’s Foreign Office, with customers in both the public and private sectors around the world.

Re-grounding the organisation in its original purpose unlocked a surprising amount of enthusiasm and revealed unexpected potential. The initiative also led to a new business strategy and a more effective way of communicating with the executive and the board.

Listen to Mike Astell tell Belden Menkus how he and his team did it.

https://www.fcdoservices.gov.uk/about/

Do not put an end date on your strategy, teach your team how to say “no” and use Purpose and Ambition instead of mission and vision. So says Ben Peachey, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

Learn how these beliefs, and the use Theory of Change maps, are key to refreshing and implementing the institute’s purpose-driven strategy. On this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

#ciehf #humanfactors #ergonomics

Purpose is presenting business leaders with the biggest opportunity in the past 200 years, according to Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business. And it’s going to happen fast.

But how do you change business to serve society better, while still acknowledging the need to make money? That’s the question that Sarah is helping the senior leaders of large businesses to answer.

Learn how she has evolved her own organisation’s purpose and used it to help her leadership team co-create a new adaptive strategy, designed to focus the organisation’s resources and cope with the chaos and uncertainty of today’s business environment. All in the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

A purpose that serves an organisation well for over 260 years deserves respect. But can you stay true to it while developing a business strategy that tackles today’s reality? And can you keep that plan so short and clear that almost 90 per cent of the organisation’s people say they understand the strategy and where they fit in it?

That is what Tom Willis, CEO of the UK’s bustling Shoreham Port, has done. Learn how in this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Sarah McMath, CEO of MOSL, used purpose as a tool to transform her organisation’s performance. Learn how her inclusive approach to developing a shared organisational purpose helped the UK’s retail water market operator for business customers shape a new strategy, grow the organisation’s capabilities, craft practical operating principles, and turn around employee engagement.

Ben Quinn had a different view of what a restaurant could be, how it could work, and the impact it could have on a community and the lives of their guests.  Hear how he built a business based on positive memories for guests, while addressing the toxic culture that exists in the industry and creating a safer and more equal environment for women – and men.  And, do check out the amazing photos on their website of outdoor events they have catered: really long tables in beautiful locations.

Links  www.canteencornwall.com

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Sophie Carr, the founder and Director of Bays Consulting.  She shares with us how she grew her firm by tapping into and developing a hidden workforce that is able to use maths to solve tough problems and then make the maths explainable.  Join me for a fun and informative discussion about maths, crowds, predictions, and the school gate. 

https://baysconsulting.co.uk/

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Melissa Quinn, General Manager of Slingshot UK / Seradata.  Melissa wants to make sure space is an asset we can continue to use, even as it becomes more crowded. Join me for an education in the business of space, strategy development in a high-tech global startup, and the components of resilient leadership.  

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Elizabeth Muller, CEO of Deep Isolation.  Liz wants to unlock the potential of nuclear power to address global warming.  Join me for an informative and inspiring discussion about what it takes to bring a breakthrough idea into the world. 

How do you stand out as a service provider and a place to work? Jo Farmer and Rich Miskella, Joint Managing Partners of law firm Lewis Silkin, share their views on how they do that.

#lewissilkin

Sara Bailey shares her path to find the real reason Trowers & Hamlins needed to grow.  It wasn’t just for the money…

Does doing the right thing environmentally have to be a tradeoff or can it create financially sustainable investments? Andrew Wordsworth thinks it can.  He’s the Managing Partner of Sustainable Ventures, a business that’s based on this idea.  Hear how they navigate the issues of purpose and strategy, while developing sustainability clusters across the UK.

Employers and health-and-safety professionals face an increasingly complex array of challenges as they try to make workplaces physically and psychologically safe.

Vanessa Harwood-Whitcher is Chief Executive of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. Listen as she explains how IOSH is equipping employers and health-and-safety professionals to deal with their ever-widening remit, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Claire Clarke, Managing Director of law firm Mills & Reeve, for 20 years one of the UK’s best companies to work for, shares how they moved beyond focusing on what they do to get at the why – and the new challenges that brings. 

 #AchieveMore.Together  #Purpose   #LegalServices

Twitter: @MillsandReeve

How does the oldest UK law firm in operation make change happen? Sarah Henwood, Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Snell & Passmore, shares their approach to ensuring their strategy doesn’t end up being just a document on a shelf.

#thomsonsnellpassmore #sarahhenwood #lawcareers #strategy #purpose #socialpurpose #ESG #leadership

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome David Frise, CEO of BESA, the Building Engineering Services Association.  David describes how they’ve made their strategy more purposeful, as well as outlining a vision of how construction could become faster, safer, and greener, and less disruptive.

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome back David Hall, CEO now of Peritum Group, which is the holding company of Totalkare. David describes how they have been able to maintain their culture and the high level of customer service their strategy is based on, while growing at almost 50% annually. 

Adrian Bettridge shares how Baringa has grown to become a global consulting business and the leading energy, climate change, net zero consulting firm in the world, while also being a top 10 Great Place to Work for the last 15 years – and recently becoming a B Corp. 

Lorin Gresser of DemDX had an idea.  Turned out it was a bigger idea than she thought.  Join me for an interesting and fun exploration of how they are changing the most important part of the health care system: the point of first contact. And, of course, we get into the “how” of their strategy and purpose – what they are doing to work on both.

https://www.demdx.com/

linkedin.com/in/dr-lorin-gresser-b8166069

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Denise Massey, Managing Director of EIC, a platform where great businesses big and small can innovate together to create a safe, affordable, and decarbonised energy system. She shares the first thing a CEO needs to do in developing an effective purpose and describes the role their values played in building the organisation. 

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Steve Ford, CEO of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists.  Steve shares how listening was the key to developing their new strategy.  He also talks about the practical steps they have taken to turn the strategy into action – including some of the difficult choices they had to make.  Towards the end of the episode, we touch on why and how professional bodies need to change to remain relevant in the future.    

­­­­Dena McCallum of Eden McCallum shares how they have pursued a core purpose over more than 20 years, using a disruptive business model in a very traditional industry: management consulting. 

How do you prepare for long term success? Mike Carragher, CEO of VHB, returns to share with us what they have been doing to ensure their “generational” company thrives long into the future.  As someone at the top of his game in an industry that’s pivotal to creating a world we will want to live in, Mike provides a special view of the current CEO challenges and how to address them. 

Tap water must be safe, reliable and high-quality. The purpose of the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) is to ensure that public water supplies in England and Wales meets those standards.

Delivering on that purpose has required solving a set of complex interrelated challenges, and developing a new approach to regulation.

Marcus Rink, Chief Inspector at the DWI, describes the journey on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

#drinkingwater #drinkingwaterinspectorate #regulation

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Harry Drajpuch, CEO of Amware Fullfilment.   Harry delivers a masterclass on how to identify a company's purpose, create a clear strategy, and build a strong company culture.   He provides memorable examples and simple rules that everyone can understand and use to guide what they do day-to-day.  This episode is a must-listen for any CEO looking to further improve their leadership and management skills.

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Eric Ressler, Founder and Creative Director of Cosmic, a creative agency that is exploring how digital experiences can spark real world change.   They empower social impact organizations by helping them nail their impact story, build brand awareness, and inspire action. Eric shares what it takes to embrace and stick with a new purpose and strategy – and why doing so was both the toughest and best thing they’ve ever done. 

In this episode, I’m joined by Dave Edwards,  Chief Executive of the Royal Aeronautical Society. We explore the challenges of keeping a 157 year-old organisation relevant in a changing digital world, while engaging younger generations and addressing environmental challenges.

In this episode, I’m joined by Philip Goodwin, CEO of VSO, an organisation whose purpose is to create a fair world for everyone.  As you will hear, he’s thought deeply about how to develop and use strategy effectively in very uncertain environments, and about the type of leadership needed when you have big ambitions but it’s not clear how you will achieve them. Join me for this episode full of wisdom and practical advice.  

https://www.vsointernational.org/

linkedin.com/in/philip-goodwin-41022210

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome 3 innovative CEOs, Helen Rippon, Mark Walley, and Julian Mund, to explore how collaboration helps their relatively small organisations effectively pursue huge ambitions.  There are valuable lessons here for leaders of organisations of all types and sizes. 

Colin Fyfe, CEO of the Hinkley & Rugby Building Society talks about how they serve customers that can be underrepresented by larger organisations, what external support they had in their work on purpose, and how they demonstrate their purpose – not just talk about it. 

Learn why RYA Chief Executive Sara Sutcliffe is putting inclusion and the environment at the heart of their new strategy. She talks about the journey she and her team went on to develop a fundamentally different strategy that shouldn’t come as a big surprise to their staff and key stakeholders.

In this episode, I’m joined by Stephen Mann, CEO of the IFoA, the Institute and Facility of Actuaries. Steven and I explore why they felt they needed to explicitly define their purpose and the role that newly defined purpose has had in creating connection and change. Please join me for an episode full of provocative points of view and practical advice. 

https://actuaries.org.uk/

linkedin.com/in/stephenajmann

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Sarah Turner, CEO of Angel Academe, the UKs most active and longest-established female-focussed network of angel investors. Sarah describes the problem she wanted to fix, why she chose a business as her platform for doing something with a big philanthropic element, how they contributed to changing the conversation around gender in tech startups and startup funding, and what her long term ambition is. Join me for this informative and practical episode. 

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Fiona Czerniawska, CEO of Source Global Research.  I’ve known Fiona since before she founded Source and have enjoyed watching it grow over the years, becoming the definitive source of data and insight on the consulting industry and professional services more broadly.  Fiona talks about how they knew they needed to think more deeply about their purpose and how they went about it. She also describes their fast, flexible approach to strategy implementation – an approach directly linked to their purpose, which many organisations could use.  Join me for an informative, engaging, and insightful discussion.

Purpose can unlock the potential of Artificial Intelligence coupled with the Internet of Things, to help businesses reach their sustainability goals.

That’s according to Dr Elisabetta Castiglioni, CEO of A1 Digital, the European technology services provider. A1 helps companies globally to translate digital potential into business results.

Learn how the belief in digitisation as a force for good powers her organisation’s purpose, in this episode of The Purposeful Strategist

I’m very pleased to welcome Alyson Watson, CEO of Woodard and Curran.  In this episode, Alyson shares with us their journey to articulate their purpose and then use that to develop a strategy that responds to the deep uncertainty businesses are facing.  She describes the inclusive approach they took to get understanding and buy in, as well as some of the challenges in taking this approach.  She also describes the way they embedded the strategy into the organisation, which required a few unexpected changes.  Join me for this informative and inspiring episode. 

CEO Maddy Phipps-Taylor describes the challenges Eva Health Technologies faces as an innovator and disruptor in the medical records space.  She talks about how she navigates the potential tensions between her personal purpose, the organisation’s purpose, and the expectations of their various stakeholders. She also discusses the practical impact for their customers and themselves of moving their technology to the cloud. 

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Richard Wazacz, CEO of Travelex.  In addition to describing how he sees the links between shareholders, purpose, and culture, he discusses their different approach to transformation, which combines the speed and agility of a start-up with the scale and impact of global player.  He also talks about how he ensures he stays on track with their strategy. Join me for a frank, pointed, and informative discussion. 

linkedin.com/in/wazacz

https://www.travelex.co.uk/

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Marcia Philbin, CEO of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine. She takes us “behind the curtain” to describe the engaging process and practical tools she used to involve multiple stakeholder groups in developing a new purpose and values for the organisation.  She also talks about how this has contributed to her own personal and professional growth and development.