The New P & L - Principles and Leadership in Business

Authenticity, integrity and trust are key characteristics of an ‘enlightened leader’. However, all of these leadership characteristics require a healthy dose of self-awareness first – the ability to clearly recognise the impact of your actions upon others and to empathise so you can motivate. These key characteristics also require a leader to keep their ego in check, on the right side of excess - the side that delivers quiet confidence rather than brash arrogance.

This week, The New P&L speaks to Mary Gregory, leadership coach and author of Bestselling book 'Ego - get over yourself and lead!'. We discuss with Mary the many challenges facing the modern business leader and how more self-awareness can address these challenges more effectively; what leadership looks like in a more virtual world and how we can create micro-climates of positivity within an organisation to re-engage and motivate employees.

For more information go to: https://www.marygregory.com/

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Creativity is part of the essence of who we are. It excites us, moves us, and encourages us to ask more of ourselves. It is also a mission-critical asset in business; one that is, however, often undervalued and frequently misunderstood.

This week we had the privilege of welcoming internationally respected social entrepreneur, humanitarian and creativity thought leader, Firdaus Kharas to The New P&L podcast series.

Firdaus is founder and chairman of the multi-award-winning Chocolate Moose Media, which has built a enviable worldwide reputation for producing some of the most innovative and creative global social information advertising campaigns of the last 25 years. Firdaus’s love of creativity has also led him this year to publish the brilliant book, CREATIVITY: The Key to a Remarkable Life.

Firdaus believes that creativity is not only key to human growth but also survival. As an activist, he has conducted in-country research for his humanitarian projects including talking to hundreds of mass rape victims, children’s rights activists, torture survivors, and doctors in small villages coping with epidemics. He has worked in war zones in Central America, refugee camps in South-East Asia, and medical facilities, NGOs, and youth centers throughout Europe and Africa. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, he was named one of the world’s “50 Most Talented Social Innovators” and has received more than 112 awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award.

We discuss with Firdaus his definition of creativity, the importance of purpose in business, how leaders can use creativity to rebuild their business after the pandemic, as well as those moments and people who have had a profound impact on his work and his life.

Talking about ‘Purpose’ – a brand’s Purpose - is increasingly de rigueur within the business community today. However, sometimes a large gulf exists between a brand vocalising commitment to its defined Purpose and it then authentically and enthusiastically weaving it into the heart of its culture and delivering on it every day.

This week, The New P&L speaks to Markus Kramer, Managing Partner at Brand Affairs and co-author of ‘The Guiding Purpose Strategy – a Navigational Code for Growth’. Markus has built a career working with some of the most well-known and respected global brands including Aston Martin, Harley-Davidson and Ferrari - helping them to deliver brand and commercial value through rediscovering and aligning their Purpose.

We discuss with Markus what defines ‘Purpose’ in a business context, how you measure the depth of a brand’s and its employees’ commitment to its Purpose and the commercial business case for it; as well as whether Purpose can play a positive role in helping to reignite genuine technological innovation as we move into the fourth industrial revolution.

To find out more or order a copy of 'The Guiding Purpose Strategy' go to: www.markuskramer.net

Achieving success in anything you do in life – professionally or personally, relies on ‘mastering your mind’; creating positive habits in your thinking and your actions, and refining and minimising those negative habits that exist within all of us. This week, The New P&L spoke to TEDx Speaker, #1 Bestselling author of The Six Habits and Life Mastery Coach, Laura DiBenedetto.

After retiring at just 37 from her role as founder and CEO of award-winning and hugely successful Boston-based marketing agency, Vision Advertising, Laura set off on her own personal road of radical self-discovery and development, one result of which was the writing and publishing of the best-selling book, The Six Habits.

Through her books, her presentations and her consultancy and coaching, Laura devoted to sharing the universally applicable and deeply liberating truths she has discovered and how they can be used to breathe life into professional or personal dreams, and offering a life of limitless possibility.

Find out more at www.LauraDiBenedetto.com

A more diverse and inclusive workforce – where there is equality of opportunity and all employees feel included, heard and respected is ultimately a more productive and commercially successful one. It is also one that is rightly more reflective of the fantastic diversity of ethnicity, culture, gender and social experience that exists in society itself.

However, there remain significant systemic and structural challenges and inequalities that executives and leaders need to urgently address to ensure their companies fully embrace diversity and inclusion in an authentic and meaningful way, a way that goes beyond compliance and marketing and right to the very heart of a company’s thinking and its culture.

This week, The New P&L spoke to Raafi-Karim Alidina and Stephen Frost of diversity and inclusion consultancy, Frost Included, and co-authors of the brilliant book, ‘Building an Inclusive Organisation – leveraging the power of a diverse workforce’.  We discuss with Stephen and Raafi how companies can ensure cultural, gender and social diversity and inclusion becomes part of their thinking and not just part of their marketing; how social media and social isolation can reinforce and indulge bias and how executives, CEO and leaders have a genuine moment in time in 2020 to truly embrace diversity and inclusion in their business and drive the momentum for positive change.

Design Thinking and Systems Thinking have the potential to dramatically transform a business – bringing order to innovation, opening up creativity, challenging funnel thinking and dramatically reducing the timeline from product ideation to product delivery.

This week, The New P&L – Principles & Leadership in Business podcast series spoke to respected Design Thinking consultant and advocate, Daniel Tuitt. We discuss with Daniel the definition of design thinking; what the evolution of systems and design thinking looks like over the next decade; how to test the assumptions that feed the product innovation process and how businesses can use the principles of these dynamic business methodologies to ‘build back better’ in the coming months.

The future of work looks very different to how we imagined it might be just 12 months ago. All of us - from business leaders, SME employers, employees to those in the contracting and freelance sectors are going to have to creatively reimagine what that future now looks like for work and employment. There are, clearly, many challenges ahead of us, but with change and challenge also comes tremendous opportunity – to recreate, change the power balance and build a new way of working based on collaboration, mutual respect and collective purpose.

This week we speak to Tessa Cooper, Founder and Managing Director of Collaborative Future – a UK-based social enterprise that is focused creating a world of work in which everyone is empowered to thrive. We discuss with Tessa the type of leadership needed to build strong, cohesive cultures in a hybrid working environment, what work could and should look like as we emerge from the pandemic, the importance of social innovation and enterprise, and the inherent contradictions in the ‘Gig economy’.

The ability to be ‘agile’ is key to a more successful future for businesses as we move slowly out of the pandemic in the next few months and years. Strong, self-aware and empathetic leadership is needed in order to recognise where the opportunities for a business are and how that business can quickly and firmly get itself in best position operationally and commercially to take advantage of these opportunities.

This week, The New P&L speaks to best-selling author of the Agile Series of business books, Agile World podcast host, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Career Gig, Greg Kihlström.  We chat with Greg on what it takes to be a more agile business, the current state of the balance of power between brands and consumers and how this has affected the customer experience, as well as what great leadership and the future of work looks like as we rebuild businesses and the economy.

Neuromarketing is a fascinating and fast-developing industry. Tapping into consumers’ subconscious minds offers huge potential for brands as they continually strive to get closer to their customers, understand what drives them and create and sell products that are aligned with their motivations, interests and desires.  However, there are challenges around data consent and privacy and the responsible use of the data collected that need to be addressed to ensure that, as the guardian of all this data, the neuromarketing industry acts in an ethical and accountable manner.

This week on The New P&L in a wide-ranging conversation, we speak to Shazia Ginai, CEO of Neuro Insight, one of the world’s preeminent neuromarketing and neuroanalytics companies. We discuss with Shazia the neuromarketing methodology and what it hopes to deliver; where the ethically appropriate line is when it comes to measuring and assessing the subconscious; whether the sector needs to be regulated and what can be done to address the role of conscious and unconscious bias in the designing and interpretation of neuromarketing data.

We all have dreams within us. Whether personal or professional, or both. But dreams don’t materialise by themselves. The dream might be the ambition, but it’s the hard work, focus, inner strength and determination and single-minded drive – over time and often through periods of tremendous adversity - that helps us to realise the dream and ultimately, fulfil the ambition