Alan Mulally is the former president and CEO of The Ford Motor Company, serving as its most senior leader between 2006 and 2014. Before that and for over 30 years, Mulally held roles at Boeing, including executive vice president of the Boeing Company and president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. To say that Mulally has been at the helm of two of America's most important and prominent brands is wildly understated. In this discussion with Dan Pontefract, Alan outlines with precision and depth his "Working Together" management system. Alan delves into the various factors that help all stakeholders understand the mission and vision whilst using humanistic traits in which to do so. As an added bonus, Alan details how the "Working Together" system can also serve as a model for your life.
Arianna Huffington is the founder and CEO of Thrive, the founder of The Huffington Post, and the author of 15 books, including Thrive and The Sleep Revolution. In 2016, she launched Thrive, a leading behavior change tech company with the mission of changing the way we work and live by ending the collective delusion that burnout is the price we must pay for success. She has been named to Time Magazine's list of the world’s 100 most influential people and the Forbes Most Powerful Women list. Originally from Greece, she moved to England when she was 16 and graduated from Cambridge University with an M.A. in economics. At 21, she became president of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, Arianna discusses the importance of empathy, as well as her two new empathy-based initiatives with SHRM (a mental wellness pledge) and Genesys with the launch of the "Thrive Reset for Genesys" tool to help curb workplace stress.
Kerry Brown is a strategist and thought leader on the future of work, change management, learning, workforce adoption, talent and organizational development helping organizations strategize and achieve organizational success and navigate the intersection of people and technology. Kerry has worked in senior roles at firms such as SAP, Coca-Cola, and CSR among others. Kerry possesses a track record of success leading change efforts, managing businesses and teams, building revenue and leading the creation of new products & services through a visionary leadership style. She is a strategic and creative thinker with strong analytical abilities who thrives on a challenge. Kerry has been recognized by Engagedly as one of its Top 100 HR Influencers. Nowadays she plies her wonderful talents as a leader at Celonis – the world’s first commercial process mining company.
Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor of Business Administration and the former unit head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. He is an expert on leadership in turbulent times, having studied and written about the topic for the past twenty-five years. Gulati’s latest book, Deep Purpose: The Heart and Soul of High-Performance Companies, shows how companies can embed purpose much more deeply than they currently do, delivering impressive performance benefits that reward customers, suppliers, employees, shareholders, and communities alike. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, they discuss key concepts from the book including the four benefits of a deep purpose organization. Professor Gulati holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master’s Degree in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and two Bachelor’s Degrees, in Computer Science and Economics, from Washington State University and St. Stephens College, New Delhi, respectively.
Eloise Skinner is an author, teacher, therapist, and the founder of two educational businesses: The Purpose Workshop and One Typical Day. Eloise was born in East London, studied at Cambridge and trained at Oxford. She started out in corporate law, spent a year training in a monastery community(!) and now focuses on education, social impact and integration by living with intention, integrity and purpose Eloise sits on the youth board of the UK’s national social mobility charity, and is an Enterprise Advisor for the Mayor of London’s education & careers strategy. Dan Pontefract sits down with Eloise to discuss not only her work in the purpose space, but how the choices she made with her career—all with a bend towards becoming purpose-driven—have led her to a richer and fuller life.
With over 27 years’ experience in the advertising, marketing and print industry, Geoff Josey is an overachiever. He has been an account executive, entrepreneur, sales manager, director and business development manager in various organizations, possessing a strong print/digital advertising media skillset. But Geoff recently had an epiphany. He desired more purpose in his life. Geoff set sail in early January 2022, taking a one-year professional sabbatical, to find more meaning and purpose in his life. He is literally travelling the world to do so. As his mom said to him three years ago before passing, “Geoffrey no one ever wishes on their deathbed that if only I had worked harder.” Geoff set out to sort that bit of his life out. Listen in as he and Dan Pontefract discuss his journey, what he's learned, and what else is to come with his life. It's an inspirational and insightful conversation.
The general state of society’s unhappiness appears to be growing, and there seems to be no end in sight. One question that continues to cause alarm is whether technology—and the use of smartphones in particular—is the cause of such mounting unhappiness. Dr. Kostadin Kushlev, an Assistant Professor and Researcher at Georgetown University, investigates how constant connectivity affects societal’s health and well-being. He is the Principle Investigator of the Digital Health and Happiness Lab, aka the Happy Tech Lab. In this conversation with Dan Pontefract, Kushlev discusses the pros and cons of technology, connectivity, and always being on when it comes to our happiness and well-being.
As a professor at the McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management and for +25 years as a Fellow and an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University, Dr. Karl Moore spends a lot of time interacting with the current and future leaders of our world...CEOs and millennials/Zs. Starting with his Ph.D. Karl has studied CEOs and how they lead and develop strategies. At McGill, he teaches an MBA course, CEO Insights, where 31 CEOs come to join the class for an hour each Fall. This class has also been turned into an hour-long radio show across Canada. The show is called the CEO Series. His newest and tenth book will be released in early 2023 and is titled "Ok Boomers: Working with Millennials and Zs," which studies the way that millennials/Zs act as leaders and the way that managers need to act to create meaningful interactions with millennials/Zs. In this wide-ranging discussion with Dan Pontefract, Karl and Dan get into the nuances of generational leadership.
An accomplished executive and trusted advisor to seven CEOs, Jim Reid has navigated significant change and immense pressure to build winning teams that outperform competitors. He has coached, advised and developed thousands of aspiring leaders as CHRO in organizations such as Rogers Communications, Husky Injection Molding Systems and MDS. Originally trained as a military pilot, Jim built his expertise working alongside some of the best thinkers on leadership including Jim Collins, Jeffrey Pfeffer, John Kotter and Dave Ulrich. Jim was recognized in 2021 as one of the 50 Best Executives in Canada by The Globe & Mail’s Report on Business Magazine. His new book, "Leading to Greatness: 5 Principles to Transform Your Leadership and Build Great Teams," contains five core leadership principles for top-level executives who will be primed to take their organizations and teams into the future upon application. The principles are: Principle 1: Define a crystal-clear understanding of values and purpose and never deviate. Principle 2: Recognize core strengths and align them with passion. Principle 3: Identify and engage the right people and get them in the right seats; no leader excels at everything. Principle 4: Learn to manage energy not time to become fully engaged in life (and thus, leadership). Principle 5: Develop a consistent inner discipline to achieve exceptional results.
A leadership thinker and practitioner, Céline Schillinger has been recognized multiple times for her innovative engagement initiatives in the corporate world. After a plentiful business career across several continents, Céline now runs her own consultancy, We Need Social and is the author of her first book, "Dare to Un-Lead: The Art of Relational Leadership in a Fragmented World." Céline helps organizations and leaders create value through Engagement Leadership: the active mobilization of internal and external stakeholders, at the interplay of technology, management research and living systems thinking. In this Leadership NOW discussion with Dan Pontefract, Céline and Dan get into the merits of her new book as well as the state of organizational culture and leadership in general. Céline was awarded the Medal of the National Order of Merit by the French government in 2017 for her efforts for diversity in the workplace.