The Purposeful Strategist

In this episode, I’ll be joined by Laura Soucek, CEO of Peptomyc, a spin off company from her research lab that aims at treating cancer with anti-Myc peptides.  Laura shares with us the 20-year journey she has been on to turn her breakthrough science into a drug that could change how cancer is treated.  She talks about the role of profit in realising this purpose, the importance of people who say “no”, and how she has had to change to maintain progress towards her goal. 

https://www.peptomyc.com/

linkedin.com/in/laurasoucek

#strategy #purpose #leadership

In this episode, I’ll be joined by Paul Campbell, Founder and CEO of Amazing Media, who shares with us how he used his personal interests and experiences to define Amazing’s purpose. He explains how they have provided freedom, connection, and control to their artists and their audiences, becoming a launch pad for new music and musicians globally.  He also describes how he has been able to keep Amazing true to who they are, while evolving their business model over time.

linkedin.com/in/paulcampbell4

https://amazing.media/

In this episode, I’ll be joined by Richard Corderoy, Managing Director of The Oakland Group, a data and analytics business that helps organisations find the true value in their data. He shares with us the steps they are taking to protect the essence of who they are as they grow at 40% to 50% a year. He also discusses the challenges and joys of balancing the organisation’s vision and his own and the way they are using external standards to cement change around their purpose. 

In this episode, I’ll be joined by Arun Chauhan, founder of Tenet, a specialist Compliance & Litigation law firm.  Arun talks about why his organisation has two purposes and the separate ways he discovered each of them. He also discusses the importance of paying attention to emotion in developing your purpose and shares his advice on key things to avoid when developing your strategy.    

My guest is Asad Dhunna, Founder and CEO of The Unmistakables, a consultancy that works with organisations to create ‘inside out’ inclusion. Asad discusses the difference between a strategic journey and a quest, as well as sharing frameworks he has used to clarify their purpose and hone their strategy. He also talks about how he deals with the constant changes that can invalidate a strategy soon after it’s created.

CEO Simon Mitchell describes how Covid forced them to re-examine who they were and what they were doing in order to save their business, and how this put them on a path to realise their purpose in a new and more fundamental way – leading to faster growth, and some stunning commercial wins. 

Blurb

In this episode, I’ll be joined by Heidi Mottram, CEO of Northumbrian Water. Heidi describes what happened when they started over with a clean sheet of paper and co-created their purpose with their stakeholders.  She also shares how their desire to be the industry leader resulted in the development of an industry-wide set of performance measures, so everyone can see how well they are doing – which in turn has reinforced Northumbrian Water’s ability to work across the business as a team.

Do listen to the end, as Heidi has an interesting offer for other CEOs who are looking at similar issues. 

CEO Mike Carragher describes how VHB has unlocked a sustainable future for their organisation, in part by weaving their purpose through all their communications and key events.  He also discusses how they made clear choices in creating their long-term vision, choices which have helped their people understand what VHB is going to do and what they aren’t going to do – so all their people can self-navigate more. 

Alex Vaughan, CEO of Costain describes how it became clear during the development of their strategy that the first implementation step was to make sure everyone in the organisation understood the narrative for the business.  He also shares how a more inclusive approach to strategy development has allowed him as CEO to shift from personally driving the strategy to setting the conditions for success.