The Purposeful Strategist

Do not put an end date on your strategy, teach your team how to say “no” and use Purpose and Ambition instead of mission and vision. So says Ben Peachey, Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors. Learn how these beliefs, and the use Theory of Change maps, are key to refreshing and implementing the institute’s purpose-driven strategy. On this episode of The Purpose...

Employers and health-and-safety professionals face an increasingly complex array of challenges as they try to make workplaces physically and psychologically safe. Vanessa Harwood-Whitcher is Chief Executive of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. Listen as she explains how IOSH is equipping employers and health-and-safety professionals to deal with their ever-widening remit, on this...

Tap water must be safe, reliable and high-quality. The purpose of the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) is to ensure that public water supplies in England and Wales meets those standards. Delivering on that purpose has required solving a set of complex interrelated challenges, and developing a new approach to regulation. Marcus Rink, Chief Inspector at the DWI, describes the journey on this episod...

Cambridge Building Society turns a branch refurbishment programme into an opportunity to provide practical help for struggling first-time home buyers. CEO Peter Burrows tells the story, and explains why purpose is like “the force” in Star Wars, on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist. #TheCambridge

Purpose can unlock the potential of Artificial Intelligence coupled with the Internet of Things, to help businesses reach their sustainability goals. That’s according to Dr Elisabetta Castiglioni, CEO of A1 Digital, the European technology services provider. A1 helps companies globally to translate digital potential into business results. Learn how the belief in digitisation as a force for good po...

How can you cut the high re-offending rate among UK ex-prisoners? Max Dubiel decided that the answer is coffee. Max co-founded Redemption Roasters and opened an industrial-scale coffee roastery and barista training academy inside the UK prison system. Then he and his business partner set up a chain of retail coffee shops across London. Learn how he did it on this episode of The Purposeful Strategi...

Once your business has discovered its purpose, it’s tempting to launch it with great fanfare and a three-month communications campaign. But some corporate cultures, particularly those that are analytical and problem-solving, will reject that approach. A slow burn is often more effective than a big bang. That’s the path that Alan Dunsmore, CEO of Severfield, the UK’s largest steel fabricator, choos...

What happens to your purpose when the people who buy your product or service are not the people who use it? Joel Ratnasothy, Managing Director of Interneuron, founded the business to “to provide the health record for every citizen in every country.” The company, now part of Answer Digital, provides professionally managed open-source software as a service to the healthcare sector. Managing through...

Sustainable companies deliver better returns on investment and lower risk than extractive businesses. And Paul Herman, founder and CEO of HIP Investor, has almost 20 years of data to prove it. HIP Investor uses a proprietary zero-to-100-point system (the HIP Index) to measure which companies are more sustainable or impactful and which are more extractive. After 18 years of using the index to advis...

Purpose can help solve a common dilemma in professional services firms: how to reconcile the freedom that their professionals and practice areas need to be successful, with the consistency needed to build a meaningful brand. Sarah Walker-Smith, CEO of law firm Shakespeare Martineau and its parent group Ampa, uses purpose to connect and manage the individual brands owned by the group. In the five y...

Social impact is the driving force behind Shea Yeleen, a skincare products company that supports an African supply chain employing more than 800 women who earn five times the local minimum wage. Her latest venture is the Yeleen Beauty Makerspace, a hybrid teaching lab and manufacturing space in Washington DC designed to support women and founders of color in the beauty industry. Learn how she does...

A meaningful purpose will guide the behaviour of everybody in your business. First Mile, a UK-based B-Corporation, defines its purpose as “to revolutionise business sustainability, starting with waste and recycling.” CEO Bruce Bratley uses three core values to help everyone in the business embody that purpose. Listen to how he does it on the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

No single doctor attends all your medical appointments. But you do. That makes you, the patient, the de facto integrator of the healthcare system. That insight led Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli to found Patients Know Best (PKB), Europe’s largest Personal Health Record and patient engagement platform. PKB’s purpose is to give every person the ability to access their personal health record, control who can...

What happens when a business achieves its original purpose? Where does it go from there? Find out how Nej Gakenyi, CEO and founder of GRM Digital, faced that unusual challenge in the latest episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

When a business connects its purpose and values to the way it wants its people to behave, the resulting clarity and focus helps drive growth and success. But how do you achieve that? David Liddle, CEO of The TCM Group, did it by engaging his organisation in an inclusive process to develop a values and behaviours framework. Learn how on this episode of The Purposeful Strategist.

Words matter when you talk about purpose. Doubly so when you lead an organisation focused on language and communication. But what if that organisation is not comfortable discussing purpose and strategy? That was the dilemma facing Sara Crofts when she became CEO of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), the UK professional body for translators and interpreters. Learn how she solved i...

Loss of momentum can be fatal to any organisational change project. But committed leadership can keep the cause alive. Three years into an ongoing initiative to bring Matrix’s purpose to life, CEO Mark Inskip and his team doubled the company’s size by acquiring another business. Despite this welcome complication, the purpose is taking root inside the organisation, employee engagement is high, and...

The founders of Office Space In Town (OSIT) set out to build a company that “reflects who we are as people and the ethics and morals that we live by.” Their goal was to be a provider of boutique, design-led workspaces where businesses thrive and people are inspired, focused and happy. Co-Founder and CEO Niki Fuchs and Georgia Sandom, Director of Operations and Environmental, Social and Governance...

In its quest to become the most trusted personalised service business in the world, the global concierge company Ten Lifestyle Group has kept its purpose and its revenue streams closely aligned. The result is a remarkably resilient organisation, that has survived some very testing times to deliver long-term success. Alex Cheatle, co-founder and CEO of Ten, reveals how sticking to the purpose, and...

Sometimes commercial success can cause an organisation’s original purpose to dim over time. . That was the challenge facing Mike Astell, CEO of FCDO Services, an executive agency and trading fund owned by Britain’s Foreign Office, with customers in both the public and private sectors around the world. Re-grounding the organisation in its original purpose unlocked a surprising amount of enthusiasm...

Purpose is presenting business leaders with the biggest opportunity in the past 200 years, according to Sarah Gillard, CEO of A Blueprint for Better Business. And it’s going to happen fast. But how do you change business to serve society better, while still acknowledging the need to make money? That’s the question that Sarah is helping the senior leaders of large businesses to answer. Learn how sh...

A purpose that serves an organisation well for over 260 years deserves respect. But can you stay true to it while developing a business strategy that tackles today’s reality? And can you keep that plan so short and clear that almost 90 per cent of the organisation’s people say they understand the strategy and where they fit in it? That is what Tom Willis, CEO of the UK’s bustling Shoreham Port, ha...

Sarah McMath, CEO of MOSL, used purpose as a tool to transform her organisation’s performance. Learn how her inclusive approach to developing a shared organisational purpose helped the UK’s retail water market operator for business customers shape a new strategy, grow the organisation’s capabilities, craft practical operating principles, and turn around employee engagement.

Ben Quinn had a different view of what a restaurant could be, how it could work, and the impact it could have on a community and the lives of their guests.  Hear how he built a business based on positive memories for guests, while addressing the toxic culture that exists in the industry and creating a safer and more equal environment for women – and men.  And, do check out the amazing ph...

In this episode, I’m very pleased to welcome Sophie Carr, the founder and Director of Bays Consulting.  She shares with us how she grew her firm by tapping into and developing a hidden workforce that is able to use maths to solve tough problems and then make the maths explainable.  Join me for a fun and informative discussion about maths, crowds, predictions, and the school gate.  h...