Topic: Corporate Culture

Alan Mulally

Renowned for his strategic and operational leadership and working together, Alan Mulally transformed a struggling Ford Motor Company into one of the world’s leading automobile companies and the #1 automobile brand in the United States. Mulally led the transformation of Boeing into the #1 commercial airplane company and aerospace company in the world.

Named #3 on FORTUNE’s  list of “World’s Greatest Leaders,” and one of “The World’s Most Influential People” by TIME  magazine, Alan Mulally’s leadership as president and CEO of The Ford Motor Company has been hailed by consumers and industry experts alike. In 2006, Ford suffered a 12.7 billion dollar loss and a significant degradation in their stock-value. With Mulally’s leadership to formulate a compelling vision, comprehensive strategy, and a relentless implementation plan, Ford was able to develop a world class product line of cars and trucks with ever increasing productivity, and to deliver profitable growth for all the company’s stakeholders. Today, Ford is one of the world’s leading automobile companies and the #1 automobile brand in the United States.

Prior to joining Ford, Mulally served as executive president of The Boeing Company, president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes and of Boeing Information, Space, and Defense Systems.

Mulally examines strategic and operational leadership and “working together” teamwork principles, practices and management system. Mulally encourages them to explore their own set of working together skills as applicable to their industry and particular organization.

He has additionally been named one of the 30 “World’s Best CEO’s” by Barrons’  magazine, and “Chief Executive of the Year” by Chief Executive  magazine. Mulally has been honored with the American Society for Quality’s medal for executive leadership, the “Automotive Executive of the Year”, and the “Thomas Edison Achievement Award”. In 2016, Mulally was inducted into The Automotive Hall of Fame. Mulally previously served on President Obama’s United States Export Council.

René Carayol

Rene Carayol is one of the world’s leading executive coaches, working with some of the Fortune 500’s and FTSE 100’s top Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and their executive teams.

He speaks with the authority and confidence of the expert and leader who has seen and experienced it all before. René draws much from his own unique experiences as Managing Director at IPC Magazines and serving on a variety of boards including Pepsi, IPC Media and the Inland Revenue.

Rene Carayol has acquired a reputation for providing first-hand advice and support for a series of successful CEOs in the Fortune 500, FTSE 100 and all around the world. Many may claim to have worked at the ‘sharp end’ with CEOs, but in actual fact very few have. He has worked closely with Jim Yong Kim (President, The World Bank), Antony Jenkins (CEO, Barclays Bank), Mario Greco (CEO, Generali) and Maria Ramos (CEO, Absa Bank). Hardly any can match his sustained track record of success.

The CEO is the most important and most challenging job in the business. On day one, it is all brand new to the incumbent, and there is no one around to show them what needs to be done. It is the role that rarely has an appropriate job description and even rarer is there any form of handover. It is, without a doubt, the toughest job in the world but with the right team around them everyone flourishes.

As the world of work faces a period of transformation, driven by the increase in racial and social awareness, our CEOs and our businesses have to meet the demands of a new generation that places Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) at their hearts. Recently we have seen an increase in interest for Rene Carayol to address both ‘Leading Through a Crisis’ and cultural transformation brought by the Black Lives Matter movement. This provides leadership teams with straightforward, compelling advice and guidance to inspire change and improve their own corporate culture.

From sitting in the boardrooms to coaching world leaders, René’s extensive experience in business has provided him with case studies and stories from the frontline. There are exciting adventures, emotional anecdotes, and enough C-suite drama to excite any audience. René delivers learning wrapped up as unforgettable stories told by a master storyteller. You will want to hear them again and again.

René specialises in delivering performances that show precisely how contemporary leaders can electrify a crowd through a passionate and authentic connection. He demonstrates just how captivating an emotionally intelligent approach can be. He is never about theory – it is all about actions and behaviours that we can adopt that will make us more powerful when we come together. Everyone remembers how his sessions made them feel. René is an accomplished visiting professor at Cass Business School. His critically acclaimed latest book, ‘Spike – What are you great at?’, enables all of us to unleash our inherent strengths and realise our true potential. As René says, “If you accept your limitations, you go beyond them”.

John Kotter

Dr. John P. Kotter (born 1947) is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, a New York Times best-selling author, the chairman of Kotter International (a management consulting firm based in Seattle and Boston), and a well-known thought leader in the fields of business, leadership, and change.

Professor Kotter’s MIT and Harvard education laid the foundation for his life-long passion for educating, motivating and helping people. He became a member of the Harvard Business School faculty in 1972. By 1980, at the age of 33, Kotter was given tenure and a full Professorship—the youngest person ever to have received that award at the Business School.

Harvard Business School Professor John Kotter is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change. His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually “do” change.

John Kotter’s international bestseller Leading Change—which outlined an actionable, eight-step process for implementing successful transformations—has become the change bible for managers around the world. Our Iceberg Is Melting, the New York Times bestseller, puts the eight-step process within an allegory, making it accessible to the broad range of people needed to effect major organizational transformations. In October 2001, Business Week magazine rated Kotter the #1 “leadership guru” in America based on a survey they conducted of 504 enterprises.

Professor Kotter is the author of eighteen books, a collection that has given him more honors and awards than any other writer on the topics of leadership and change. In addition to Buy In (2010), A Sense of Urgency (2008), Our Iceberg Is Melting (2006), and Leading Change (1996), he is the author of The Heart of Change (2002), John P. Kotter on What leaders Really Do (1999), Matsushita Leadership (1997), The New Rules (1995), Corporate Culture and Performance (1992), A Force for Change (1990), The Leadership Factor (1988), Power and Influence (1985), The General Managers (1982), and five other books published in the 1970s. Professor Kotter’s books have been printed in over 120 foreign language editions, and total sales exceed two million copies.

John Kotter’s articles in The Harvard Business Review over the past twenty years have sold more reprints than any of the hundreds of distinguished authors who have written for that publication during the same time period. His books are in the top 1% of sales from Amazon.com.

He has created three executive videos; one on “Leadership” (1991), another on “Corporate Culture” (1993), a third on “Succeeding in a Changing World” (2007) and an educational CD-ROM, “Realizing Change” (1998) based on the Leading Change book.

Professor Kotter’s honors include an Exxon Award for Innovation in Graduate Business School Curriculum Design, and a Johnson, Smith & Knisely Award for New Perspectives in Business Leadership. In 1996, Professor Kotter’s Leading Change was named the #1 management book of the year by Management General. In 1998, his Matsushita Leadership won first place in the Financial Times, Booz-Allen Global Business Book Competition for biography/autobiography. In 2003, a video version of a story from his book, The Heart of Change won a Telly Award. In 2006, Kotter received the prestigious McFeely Award for “outstanding contributions to leadership and management development.” In 2007, his video “Succeeding in a Changing World” was named best video training product of the year by Training Media Review and also won a Telly Award.

Professor Kotter talks to groups with one and only one goal: to motivate action that gets better results.

John Kotter lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Ashland, New Hampshire.

Lynda Gratton

Lynda Gratton is Professor of Management Practice at London Business School and the founder of the Hot Spots Movement, known for her work on organisational behaviour.

She is considered one of the world’s authorities on people in organizations and actively advises companies across the world.

Professor Gratton’s book Living Strategy: Putting People at the Heart of Corporate Purpose (2000), has been translated into more than 15 languages and rated by US CEOs as one of the most important books of the year. It looks at how to place employees in the context of a business with all its competing attractions, and how organisations should understand and empower staff. Her nextbook, The Democratic Enterprise: Liberating your Business with Freedom, Flexibility and Commitment, was described by Financial Times as a work of important scholarship. Her article “Integrating the Enterprise,” which examined cooperative strategies, was awarded the MIT Sloan Management Review best article of the year in 2002. Her case study of BP’s peer assist integration practices won the 2005 ECC best strategy case of the year award. In 2007 she published Hot Spots: Why Some Companies Buzz with Energy and Innovation – and Others Don't was rated by the Financial Times as one of the most important business books of 2007. It has since been translated into more than 10 languages.

Her 2009 book Glow: how to bring energy and innovation to your life gave practical exercises to enable people to become more innovative, collaborative and better connected. In 2011, Gratton published The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, which looks at the future of work and was supported by the innovative research carried out in the Future of Work Research Consortium, and in 2014 The Key – How Corporations Succeed by Solving the World's Toughest Problems.

In 2005 Lynda was appointed the Director of the Lehman Centre Women in Business.

In 2008 The Financial Times selected her as the business thinker most likely to make a real difference over the next decade. In 2011 she was ranked by The Times as one of the top 15 Business Thinkers in the world today.[4] And in 2011 she was ranked number one in Human Resources Magazine's "Top 25 HR Most Influential UK Thinkers 2011" poll.

In 2013 she was awarded the Life Time Achievement Award by HR Magazine and equally in 2013 she was amongst the 15 top thought leaders in the Thinkers50 ranking.