The Purposeful Strategist

CEO Elisabetta Castiglioni shares with us the key interaction in developing their strategy and the two big strategic challenges they always need to manage.  She also describes what they are doing to retain employment in the face of digital disruption.

Jenny Higham, Principal at St George’s University of London addresses the tensions top leaders face as they navigate authenticity, confidentiality, financial pressures, and an ever-expanding set of aspirations for the organisation. She also describes how she balances the need for leadership from the top with an open, inclusive approach for strategy development. And, she shares a simple tip for what to do when something major makes big parts of your strategy no longer relevant.

Managing Director Susan Cooklin shares with us her manifesto for Route Services and how they are driving carbon reduction while becoming more resilient to extreme weather conditions. She describes how they help staff across all of Route Services have a clear line of sight to its purpose.   She also outlines what she sees ahead for Network Rail and how she is preparing Route Services to support that. 

CEO Daksh Gupta shares with us the vision and purpose that have been instrumental in driving 10 times revenue growth over the last 14 years.  He discusses the practical implications of having a strong moral compass, as well as some of the little things that make a big difference. He also talks about how they created transparency for their staff during Covid and his own view of how one becomes a successful CEO.   

CEO Mike Lord describes how, as they have grown, they’ve changed the way they define, communicate, and cascade their strategy. He also shares with us how they started with a purpose that was just about the owners’ desires, but since then have been weaving this purpose into how they operate. He also describes changes to his management style that will allow the business to continue to grow. Finally, he has some unexpected advice for owners of privately held businesses. 

In this episode, we’ll be hearing from Dan Faust, a CEO at Aecom with oversight of their businesses in the Eastern United States and Latin America.  Aecom is a global architectural, engineering and construction company.

Dan shares what “sustainable” means to him and how asking “why” drives everything they do. He describes the three groups he has to balance for successful projects – and how they make decisions about who they work with. He also shares what he has been reading and how that has shaped his own approach to leadership.

In this episode, we’ll be hearing from Scott Wardrop, CEO of Eurovia UK and VINCI Construction UK.

Eurovia UK is part of VINCI, a world leader in concessions, construction and energy, present in nearly 120 countries.

Scott shares with us how they think about the sustainability of their UK business and how that links with their vision of local partnership. He talks about the tensions between top down and bottom-up strategies that come with being part of a global group and describes how they harness internal ideas to allow them to play a pathfinder role for the whole sector. 

Mark describes how Northern Gas Networks moved to industry leading performance by focusing on their customers, the communities they operate in, and their own employees and partners.  He also shares how a big setback in his career changed his approach to leadership.  And, he highlights why he thinks it’s critical that private companies don’t wait for government action on net zero – and gives practical examples of what can be done to accelerate needed private sector investment.

Matt talks about the journey they have been on to identify and realise a clear, distinctive purpose in a complicated environment. He shares lessons for any leader who realises that the pursuit of purpose requires an organisation to embrace innovation and manage new risks. He describes how they ensure that their purpose drives their strategy, rather than the other way round, and how they engage with a broader ecosystem to deliver that purpose.

Matt shares with us how vertical integration and end-to-end control of the business allows Barambah Organics to produce “dairy as it was meant to be”. He discusses managing the tension between purpose and short-term profit, why stakeholder capitalism matters to him, and how his own thinking has changed over time. He also discusses why they used one approach for developing their purpose and a different one for their strategy – even though both ran somewhat in parallel.