Building Better Cultures

Inspiring change in a field like accountancy might seem like an insurmountable task. We often think of accountants as boring individuals who prefer to work in gray-walled basements, refusing to interact with anyone unless they have to. But Cooper Parry's chief people officer, April Bembridge, thinks differently, and so does Cooper Perry. On this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast, Scott talks...

Jim Egan always knew he wanted to be in communications to connect with and inspire people. As he says, he wanted to be Julie McCoy character in the TV Series 'The Love Boat' 😊. He started work in the agency world and has been with Kerry since 2005, working in both internal and external comms roles. Today Jim is Regional Corporate comms lead for Kerry North America Show Notes: 4.00 – A bit about J...

Chuck has over 20 years of experience in the internal communications world and is the self-confessed cheerleader of Internal Comms. By his own admission, he's about helping communicators to strengthen communications, engage with employees and change businesses for the better. He has worked with brands like General Motors and Rolls-Royce where he has seen the benefit that really good internal commu...

Covid Christmas Craker Podcast episode 2-part series. This is part 2 of 2. It has been a wild year with many ups and downs. And, while times have often been tough, there are silver linings on many of those clouds. We wanted to give you an early Christmas present - some REALLY practical leadership, internal comms and engagement ideas that you can take and apply in your businesses. Our guests range...

Covid Christmas Craker Podcast episode 2-part series. This is part 1 of 2. It has been a wild year with many ups and downs. And, while times have often been tough, there are silver linings on many of those clouds. We wanted to give you an early Christmas present - some REALLY practical leadership, internal comms and engagement ideas that you can take and apply in your businesses. Our guests range...

Jenni started her career, not in internal communications but, having studies marketing at uni, went into more public sector communications roles. She then moved into media relations and realised quickly that what she was missing was seeing the true impact of what she was doing - PR wasn't fulfilling enough. And so came the move into internal communications which started when she was working in an...

Gillian French has a passion for people and for scaling indigenous Irish start-ups. She is Chief People Officer at Cubic Telecom an indigenous Irish tech firm with 200 employees. Gillian is responsible for people strategy – ensuring that the business has the right people in the right jobs doing the right things in order to deliver Cubic's business strategy. Prior to joining Cubic Telecom, Gillian...

Zoë Routh is a Canadian-Australian leadership expert specialising in the people stuff. She shows leaders and teams struggling with office politics and silos how to work better together. From the wild rivers of northern Ontario to the remote regions of Australia, Zoë has spent the last thirty years showing teams how to navigate the wilderness of people stuff. Zoë is the author of four books and the...

If you live in Ireland and follow the sport, Jamie Heaslip is a household name and one that's synonymous with Ireland's rugby success over the past 15 years. As well as having earned 95 caps for Ireland and played 230 matches for Leinster, he was also part of two British and Irish Lions Tours. Due to injury, Jamie had to retire from rugby in 2018. He's since carved out a very successful career for...

'How are you feeling and why?'. That's the question Matt Stephens uses when he's measuring wellbeing and how engaged people are at work. Starting his career as a coder in Aviva, Matt was 'found' by the Head of Internal Communications and that put him on a new career trajectory. After a number of years in Aviva, he moved into performance coaching and NLP working with senior execs across a range of...

With a background in marketing and PR, it was when Lindsay went into internal comms in a large Dutch oil and gas company. She soon realised that communications within large firms were complex and surrounded by a sea of fog. This resulted in their people not being on the same page and feeling a sense of ambiguity. This desire to create clarity, confidence and community in organisations led her to c...

A marketeer by trade, James worked as CEO and CMO in a number of large multinationals including fashion brand Anthropology, VisitLondon and Selfridges, where he oversaw the incredible turnaround of that business in the early noughties. Buying Springwise – a global crowdsourcing movement for innovative ideas - in 2015 was the catalyst for James's innovation journey. In 2017, inspired by Springwise,...

Brendan didn't come from training or HR but started in advertising and marketing – but it was 'why do people do what they do?' that fascinated him. Coming from a competitive sailing background he saw the power of chemistry and leadership when it came to bringing together teams. He started SeachangeNow in 2006 to help leaders to be the most effective, human and impactful they can be. In this episod...

Coming from backgrounds in workplace relations and global marketing, David Macleod and Nita Clarke seemed like the perfect team to undertake a research project on behalf of Peter Mandelsen, the then UK Secretary of State. They knew there was a better way to improve productivity in the UK workforce. In 2009, David Macleod and Nita Clarke published their findings as 'Engage for Success'. Since then...

Pedro Angulo (not a Kerry name as he reminds us!) is Head of Leadership Development in AIB.   As he told us in his first appearance on this podcast (Ep8), his focus is on helping leaders to be the best they can be and ensuring they "show up" in a way that's engaging, respectful and caring. ​In this episode, we focused heavily on the past few months of COVID lockdown, what has set leaders apart and...

By her own admission, Carole Ann's career is a bit of mixed bag. From a degree in Applied Languages and Business to the Diageo Graduate Programme and on to a number of sales and marketing roles.  A spate in ad agencies followed before Carole Ann moved to Coca-Cola where she headed up experiential marketing before becoming Head of Digital. ​ She left Coca-Cola in 2013, having become unwell herself,...

With over 70 years of IC experience between them, Katie Macauley, Chuck Gose and Mike Klein joined me for this episode.  We discussed what the world will look like for IC Teams post-Covid, the role of leaders as communicators and much more.  ​Katie is a 30-year Internal Communications veteran. She is the founder of AB, one of the UK's longest-standing internal communications agencies and the host...

"Adversity becomes a learning opportunity if you know how to process it" ​Ryan had a love of flying from a young age and, at the age of 17 he decided he wanted to be the youngest person to fly a single-engine aircraft around the world, something he achieved two years later. ​ When he was 21, another aircraft-related incident changed his life. He crashed a vintage bi-plane shortly after take-off, h...

"Every company needs their people to be advocates for that business" ​ Aisling went straight into her career in 1987, when she chose, rather than going to university, to join AIB.  By her own admission her education, knowledge, growth and expertise came from the school of life and work. ​ She worked at AIB for 29 years during which time she held leadership roles in branch banking, business banking...

"People aren't after more communication, they're after more connection" ​ Jane started her career in the corporate world where she held roles in a number of large organisations including IBM and Sony, where she was Director of Engagement and Change. ​She founded The Culture Builders in 2011 and has since worked with companies around the world, helping them to put greater emphasis on their culture,...

"People with more power cast longer shadows and have a greater ability to shape culture" ​ Will's career started in sales where he made 100 cold calls a day!. But it was while he was in that role that he found his true calling, gazing across the office at the marketing team "where people were having fun".  So he took some courses and so began a long career in marketing. But deep down, he knew that...

"Being your authentic self and helping others to bring theirs is key to leadership" ​ Mary comes from an academic background in finance and a career that started in the Central Bank of Ireland where she held a number of roles including Consumer Director and Acting Chief Executive.  She also held roles at the IMF and in the World Bank before joining the Institute of Banking as CEO in 2018. With 34,...

​In October we ran a live event in partnership with AIB.  Entitled 'Exploring the Power of Purpose', Pedro Angulo, AIB's Head of Leadership Development, opened the event with exploration and explanation of the purpose journey AIB has been on over the past few months.  Scott then hosted a panel discussion with a number of C-Suite execs from a mix of global organisations - Denis Doolan, Special Olym...

​"If you're going to use words, you might as well use the best ones you can" ​ John Simmons, has had many roles over his career but they all had one thing in common - a deep-seated passion for the 'joy of language', as he puts it.  Starting his career in the UK's National Economic Development office, John soon moved into the agency world. During that period he worked on many 'visual identity proje...

"The mushroom theory of 'feed them $&*% and keep them in the dark' is gone" ​ Orlaith has had a number of different careers within a career. She started her career as a journalist in local radio and then with RTE before co-founding Gavin Duffy and Associates. Her focus was very much on media relations training, coaching and supporting thousands of business and political leaders.  In latter years,...