The Evolving Leader

Are you clear as to what your personal or organisation’s purpose is? In this episode of the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Harvard Business School Professor Ranjay Gulati. Professor Gulati’s research around purpose focusses on why it has become increasingly important for organisations. In his book ‘Purpose, the heart and soul of high performance companies’, Ranjay Gulati argues that a deeper engagement with purpose can serve as a radically new operating system, enhancing performance while also delivering meaningful benefits to society.

‘Deep Purpose, the Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies’ (Ranjay Gulati, Penguin, 2022)

0.00 Introduction

2.17 Could you start by giving us a brief tour of your career and tell us what sparks your curiosity?

5.43 Why do you think purpose has become such a key focus for organisations in the last decade? 

8.26 How do you define purpose and how might some people be misconstruing what purpose is? 

12.31 You’ve said that pursuing a purposeful course means maintaining a difficult balance between meeting the expectations of old and new stakeholders, something that you refer to as walking the razor’s edge. Can you describe what that entails? 

16.32 How might organisations that do not have an embodied sense of purpose start to build that?

19.16 Can you talk us through the ‘four levers that you need to pull’ in order to align purpose with performance? 

24.58 You talk about purpose being rooted in organisational history. How does having this connection with the past give people more clarity about the future, especially in a world that is changing so quickly?

27.50 How can purpose help an organisation face quite considerable disruption more ethically?

33.39 When you start talking in these terms, you are inviting greater scrutiny on your organisation, and that can be really helpful can’t it?

36.32 Have there been any companies that you’ve spoken to that have left you deeply inspired?

38.15 Do you see (in your students particularly) a shift in interest towards this area? How has the values of the generations you are working with influenced the future in this respect?

40.07 You also say that purpose is fragile….

43.16 What impact has this work had on you personally, how has it changed your sense of purpose?

46.47 What’s next for you?

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Can you measure and track how successfully your organisation is innovating? This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes talk to Dan Toma, co-author of ‘Innovation Accounting‘, who says that the traditional management tools available to leaders wanting to understand investments in innovation are lacking, instead proposing a new set of frameworks and tools that go beyond just financial indicators. 

Innovation Accounting – A Practical Guide for Measuring Your Innovation Ecosystem’s Performance (BIS, 2021)

0.00 Introduction

2.05 Could you start by sharing your journey?

4.55 Could you tell us why it’s important for an organisation to develop its own innovation ecosystem? 

7.24 Is that approach being adopted by organisations or are many sticking with the traditional ‘small innovation team’ approach? 

9.23 What are the biggest pitfalls for corporates when they start to adopt this?

13.40 Could you give us a working definition of innovation accounting and also some of your ideas around the different types of innovation and what they look like?

16.34 Can you take us through an example of how an innovation accounting system could be built using the tools and frameworks you provide in your book? 

19.42 What mindset shifts does an organisation need to make in order to embrace innovation accounting? 

24.30 What is the most useful starting point in order to establish the common ground between finance and innovation teams?

27.09 How do people who are prone to big picture large innovation thinking take those ideas forwards in pragmatic, not over romanticised ways?

30.45 When you go into an organisation that might be lacking creativity and imagination (where the focus is on maintaining past success), what can you do to start them valuing that from an innovation accounting perspective?

33.43 What single piece of advice can you give to our listeners, whether or not they are in formal innovation roles?

35.37 What’s next for you, what are you working on now?

37.25 If an organisation adopts innovation accounting, what looks different and what’s happening in the organisation that’s not happening today?

38.24 How did Covid impact innovation in organisations?

Social:
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Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader, co-hosts Jean and Scott talk to Professor Stephen Fleming, one of the world’s leading neuroscientists whose life’s work is the study of metacognition (the ability to think about thinking).  How does this influence our self-awareness and our ability to make good judgements? Find out in this fascinating episode. 

Know Thyself - The New Science of Self-Awareness (Hachette, 2021)

 0.00 Introduction

2.35 Could you start by giving us a definition of metacognition?

4.38 What’s the difference between conscious and unconscious metacognition? 

7.11 In your book Know Thyself, you write about how our brains are constantly trying to solve inverse problems, trying to understand the root causes of things. Can you help us understand this concept?

11.08 How might we sense metacognition?

15.46 What kinds of experiments are you looking at that help to see when unconscious awareness and explicit awareness are at odds?

19.14 Can you talk to us about how metacognition (as an attribute) can be developed?

21.50 You’ve said that recognising people with low metacognition can be one of the best predictors in identifying people who are more dogmatic. Can you tell us about some of the work that you’ve done around this and what you’ve learnt? 

28.52 How can metacognition help us to understand other people more?

32.51 What are the breakthroughs that you are making and how might they inform artificial intelligence?

36.32 When we start to embrace more embedded technology in human beings, how does metacognition work when it’s directly integrated into our bodies? 

40.20 What’s really exciting you right now? What are the standout things that you are working on?

44.17 Can you paint a picture for us as to what it’s like to work in your lab. What’s going on?

49.06 What are the important take-aways from your work for leaders to consider?

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Ron Carucci, experienced strategy, organization and leadership transformation expert, co-founder and managing partner at leadership consultancy Navalent and author of eight bestselling books.

To Be Honest: Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice and Purpose (Kogan Page, 2021)

0.00 Introduction

3.04 Can you give us an overview of your approach to helping grow and develop leaders?

4.47 You talk about the language you use at Navalent, specifically within, between and among. Can you give us some context or an example of what it looks like to go in and raise awareness around those three components? 

7.39 In a situation where people are deeply embedded, but when forced to change both the individual and organisation find themselves facing a crisis as they are out of step with the market reality, what’s your learning from that situation?

12.56 What’s the biggest trap that you find yourself in that might actually reinforce the problem?

14.58 In your 2014 book ‘Rising To Power’, you state that 50% of leaders rising up to new formal levels of influence within the organisation fail within 18 months. From your perspective, why is this and what can someone do to avoid becoming part of that statistic?

21.31 In your latest book ‘To be honest’, you identify four factors that have a profound impact on honesty, justice and purpose within an organisation. However if these factors are missing or are dysfunctional, the organisational conditions compel employees to choose dishonesty and self-interest. Can you unpack that for us?

28.41 What’s the delta between organisations that think they have these attributes and are living them versus organisations that actually do have them?

33.55 You’ve referenced your research in neuroscience, and both Scott and I are particularly interested in the science of mindset and self-awareness. What have you learnt that’s changed your thinking in recent years?

36.47 What’s your next big project?

40.19 Who has inspired you as a leader or organisation?

Social:
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 LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
 Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to one of the world’s leading moral philosophers Professor Susan Neiman. Professor Neiman is currently the director of the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, and the former professor of philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv Universities. Her books include ‘Moral Clarity, A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists’ and ‘Why Grow Up, Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age’.

 
0.00 Introduction

2.02 Can you start by sharing some of the experience that shaped your world view, and the role that they played in forming the central ideas that sit at the heart of your work.

6.16 Can we turn to ‘Moral Clarity’, which centres on the failure of our culture to meet our moral needs and the problems that this creates in society. Can you take us through some of the central arguments.

15.08 I’m really interested in this loss of moral language in the progressive parts of society. Is there something else that was going on with relativism etc that started to make it hard for that group of people to talk about it?

23.58 Since you wrote moral clarity we’ve had a number of shock points including the Trump Presidency, Brexit and the growing influence of social media. How have these moments evolved your thinking?

37.19 In your book ‘Why Group Up’ you address the widespread infantilism that you feel pervades so much of society. Why do you think that’s happened?

Social:
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 LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
 Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to business anthropologist Simon Roberts. In addition to being a co-founder of Stripe Partners, Simon founded the UKs first dedicated ethnographic research company in 2001, he’s run an innovation lab at Intel and is currently board president of the EPIC community. In 2020 his book The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them was published.

 The Power of Not Thinking: How Our Bodies Learn and Why We Should Trust Them

 
0.00 Introduction

2.27 How are you feeling?

3.22 Can you start by telling us about your background?

5.59 Can you explain what an anthropologist involved in ethnographic research does and how you do it? 

8.29 Can you give us some of the practical techniques that you might use to actually uncover what’s going on?  

12.17 In your book you break down the idea of embodied knowledge. Can you give us an overview of what that is and why we should trust our bodies more? 

14.05 How do we delineate between the brain’s ability to create habit vs the body knowledge?

18.34 Could you talk us through the context for your book?

26.07 In your book you list five features of embodied knowledge. Could you give us a high level overview of what those are?

32.27 How would somebody get more connected to the embodied sense of an empathetic experience in their daily lives?

36.39 An increasing number of industries are relying more and more on proxies because data is so attractive, but you talk about the dangers of building businesses in that way. What are we missing when we do that? 

41.09 Which organisations have you seen that are best at maintaining that continuous connection with the world in the way that you are describing? 

44.15 Can you share your thoughts on embodied knowledge for policy makers?

47.50 How do you enhance your own ability to trust and apply embodied knowledge?

52.04 You’ve talked about discomfort. What’s the experience that created the most discomfort in you?

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, Jean Gomes talks to Monika Bielskyte. Monika previously appeared on the podcast back in season 3, episode 10 and we invited her back to get a picture beyond the news feed about Ukraine. In this very special episode, Monika provides a visceral picture of what’s currently happening to the country and its people and why. 

0.00 Introduction

1.25 What are your connections to Ukraine?

11.12 What are we (in the West) missing regarding the situation in Ukraine?

23.43 What’s the shared hope held by many of the generation who have never grown up under an authoritarian regime? 

34.08 What’s your take on President Zelenskiy and his leadership? 

Social:
Instagram           @evolvingleader
LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on the Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are joined by Professor Marcus du Sautoy. Marcus is Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Fellow of New College, Oxford, author of multiple popular science and mathematics books and he is a regular contributor on television, radio and to both The Times and The Guardian. He is also passionate about public engagement on topics that include creativity and artificial intelligence.   

0.00 Introduction

2.23 Where does your love of mathematics originate?

6.11 What is mathematics really about for you?

8.35 Can you explain what zeta functions are, and why symmetry and the function of groups is important to learn more about.

12.24 What did you draw from the moment that DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol?

16.12 What are your thoughts around the possibility that AI can be creative, so taking us down a path where consciousness may not be the thing that actually happens, but we might actually get something totally new that doesn’t exist in our minds or reckoning at the moment? 

18.35 How do we prevent ourselves from having something that we don’t understand governing our lives? 

20.44 In your book ‘What We Cannot Know’, you explored if there are questions that we may never have the answer to, and therefore our living with the unknown. Could you elaborate on that idea for us?  

25.52 You’ve written about the conflict between physics and mathematics, and also your idea that mathematics exists outside of humans so it’s not a human construction and would exist without us. Could you elaborate on those two points?

33.13 Tell us about your latest book ‘Thinking Better’ where you search for short cuts, not just in mathematics but also other fields.

36.14 A lot of people think of maths as being hard. However, you can use maths, the concepts and frameworks without being an expert mathematician. Can you bring that to life for us?

43.09 Tell us about the work you’ve been doing to bring Douglas Hofstadter’s life story to the Barbican in London. 

48.28 You’ve said that we can’t fully know something when we’re stuck in a system whether consciously or unconsciously. What is the leadership lesson or opportunity that we can take from that?

53.06 When was the last time you had a real ‘aha’ moment, and what’s the biggest challenge that you are working on at the moment?

Social:
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 Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Kicking off season 4 of the Evolving Leader podcast is a discussion that co-hosts Scott Allender and Jean Gomes had with BCG Henderson Institute chairman and author Martin Reeves. The Henderson Institute is BCG’s think tank dedicated to exploring and developing new insights from business, technology, economics and science by embracing the powerful technology of ideas.

Sit back and listen as Martin unpacks how imagination works and how organisations can keep it alive and harness it in a systematic way.

‘The Imagination Machine – How to Spark New Ideas and Create Your Company’s Future’ (Jack Fuller and Martin Reeves, 2021, Harvard Business Review Press)

Please complete the Evolving Leader listener survey. Thank you.

0.00 Introduction

2.22 Can we start with your background, and what inspired you to write ‘The Imagination Machine’

4.01 Why do you think there appears to be an absence of imagination in so many large organisations? 

5.55 It’s easy to think about imagination as being solely a psychological process, but your research has revealed something else. What have you found and what does it mean in terms of how that notion should be challenged?

8.23 Can we delve into some of the neuroscience and research that you have uncovered that underpins your thinking.

15.50  Are organisations set up (almost) as surprise mitigation machines, so repressing new mindsets that would potentially unlock new business models?

17.55 Can you outline the six step process that you describe in your book around harnessing and scaling imagination and creativity in a systemised way?

24.41 How can we get better at this? What could a listener do in their organisation to adopt some of these strategies? 

30.43 You talk about play as being de-risked accelerated learning. Talk to us about the importance of play and where you are seeing it being adopted.

37.27 You have mentioned that crisis can be an inflection point for reimagination. What have you observed during the pandemic?

42.34 Is there a link between capacity for imagination and sense making?

45.56 What role will/does technology play in organisations that are reimagining themselves? 

52.11 What should leaders be prioritising? What are the specific things that they should be doing more of that they’re not to imbue their organisations with a greater sense of imagination at both a cultural and capability level?

Social:
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 Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.

As we close season 3 of the Evolving Leader podcast, it’s time to reflect on some of our highlights from the last 18 episodes. We continue to learn so much from our incredible guests who not only give us their valuable time, but are also so willing to share their expertise and current thinking which in turn helps us to develop our own thinking around what being an evolving leader really means. 

The Evolving Leader podcast will return in March with the start of season 4, but in the mean time sit back and listen as we talk to Rita Gunther McGrath, Kevin Kelly, Tim Lomas, Will Page, Todd Kashdan, Steve Ingham, Leanne Infante, Monika Bielskyte, Anil Seth, Rob Murray, Steve Killelea, Azeem Azhar and Annie Murphy Paul.

0.00     Introduction
2.01     Rita Gunther McGrath
5.03     Kevin Kelly 
7.05     Tim Lomas
9.49     Will Page
14.16     Todd Kashdan
17.46     Steve Ingham
18.47     Leanne Infante
21.43     Monika Bielskyte
24.25     Anil Seth
26.23     Rob Murray
27.58     Steve Killelea
29.24     Azeem Azhar
32.57     Annie Murphy Paul

Social:
 Instagram           @evolvingleader
 LinkedIn             The Evolving Leader Podcast
 Twitter               @Evolving_Leader

The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

Send a message to The Evolving Leader team

After more than 5 years of hosting The Evolving Leader, Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are launching their new show The Mindset Economy in January 2026. The new show will explore how to live better, work smarter and be connected in a more uncertain world where machines can think. 

Available wherever you get your podcasts.