Making Waves

Wavelength spoke to Oke Eleazu, former UK CEO at insurance unicorn ManyPets, on why so many businesses think ‘good enough’ is acceptable when it comes to delivering the customer experience. How to get the people in your organisation to really care about and prioritise CX, from getting the basics right, to putting the customer at the very heart of a business, and why innovating around great customer experience is key to making more money and building a long-term, sustainable business. He also talks about why leadership is all about relying on other people, how he creates high-performing teams, and why looking for failures on a person’s CV is the most important thing! 

Zoe Scaman, Founder of strategy agency Bodacious, and former Global Head of Strategy at Ridley Scott, is a renowned thought-leader and speaker on AI, Fandom, The MultiPlayer Brand, and the intersections of frontier technologies (such as the metaverse, AR & VR), business and entertainment. During this episode Zoe chats about her career and how she came to found her own strategy agency, the importance of her own ‘Personal Boardroom’, how creation is becoming play, the impact of AI on film companies, the rise of fandom, the intersection of gaming and AI, the advent of The Multiplayer Brand and how brands like NIKE are leveraging this, and much more.

Hear from Wavelength’s co-founder Adrian Simpson in conversation with the hugely experienced Silicon Valley-based Chief People Officer Colleen McCreary, who has worked at the likes of Credit Karma, EA, Microsoft, Vevo and Zynga during her career. Hear as Colleen talks about the traits that are most important as a leader; courage, empathy, curiosity, not being afraid to learn, and of her “3 Cs." Find out why Colleen is not the CEO of happiness, why she feels it’s so important to be externally aware as a leader, of how she recruits for senior leadership positions, of the importance of empathy as leader and how she ‘teaches’ that to leadership colleagues.

Join us as Wavelength associate Liz Mosley welcomes Declan Ronayne to the Wavelength Making Waves podcast show. Declan shares insights into his spectacular career in retail, culminating in his role as CEO at Woodie’s, Ireland’s leading DIY home and garden chain, and the retail arm of FTSE 250 business Grafton Group. Listen as Declan shares personal leadership insights from his career, in particular his work to totally transform Woodie’s. He speaks about how he created a culture of trust, and how they built Woodie’s to become a truly great place to work. Think personalised birthday cards, Woodie’s Oscars, caring about your staff, doing things no other retailer does, their focus on community work, of creating team spirit, the importance of truly excellent communication, the role of a CEO to inspire their people, to listen to their people and customers, to understand what’s going on on the ground, and to make things happen. But importantly, that a CEO “should never be busy". “Keep out of the weeds”, “Be personal”, “your job is culture, setting the tone”, and “use your powers of persuasion rather than direction".

Wavelength Associate Liz Moseley speaks with Peter Pritchard, former Group CEO at Pets At Home, and Robert Kent, former Chief Data Officer at Pets at Home about how they survived and went on to transform the business post-pandemic. Peter and Rob share their personal experiences on leading through Covid, that 'tumbleweed moment' when their business just halved, and how "narrowing your field of vision during a crisis is critical to success. We didn’t let our focus go further than a day!" They share how they persuaded their people to come to work when they were scared. “If people didn’t feel safe when coming to work, then we had no business. So we put ALL our energies into our people." Hear them talk about their focus in 7 key priorities (and none were commercial!), which guided them for 18 months. Together, we explore how data insights and predictions allowed them to see customer trends before anyone else and react, for example, their puppy and kitten club boom at the start of the pandemic. Peter explains "The importance of recognising how life looked for all our colleagues was the most powerful thing we did.” That led to the leaders giving their people the trust and autonomy to find all 3000 new employees needed to set up a new £90m distribution centre right in the middle of the pandemic. Hear as Peter explains the huge value of showing kindness to their people in a unique way - creating a Colleague Hardship Fund of £1m - a true GAMECHANGER for Pets. “We showed that we give and we return." Theirs is a story of running a business on a moral compass, of doing the right thing by colleagues, of the importance of over-communication with daily videos to calm fears, of staying focused, of letting yourself get it wrong. Robert talks about “not doing data for data’s sake.” They ensured they understood where’s the value was going to be created - for their customers, colleagues and then for the overall business. Find out how they harnessed the power of ‘Little Data' and how it drove growth, through personalisation, prediction and anticipation of future needs. What you’ll get from this podcast is a sense of real leadership humility. No buzzwords. Of leaders who believe in "keeping it real and taking everyone with you". Of servant leadership, keeping the organisation sensible and kind, and how "culture is your primary responsibility as a CEO."

Wavelength’s Adrian Simpson speaks to Q Hamirani, Airbnb’s former Global People Leader, about the culture and values of Airbnb, how they focus relentlessly on embedding those values across the entire business and how they are part of the DNA of the organisation. Did you know that every candidate at Airbnb has to go through two core values interviews? And if you fail one of those two core values interviews you cannot get through the interview process! Q also shares what he thinks are the best interview questions to ask, to find out if candidates are really the right person for the role, including talking about failure as part of learning. Adrian delves into how Airbnb get the balance right between attracting people who are a good culture fit for the organisation, whilst ensuring they recruit a strong, diverse team. It’s not solely about having a diverse group of candidates, but also about having a diverse hiring panel. Hear how they re-wrote the playbook on 'how to do layoffs' with respect and empathy at the toughest of times, when they were forced to make huge layoffs following COVID. From one-on-one conversations for all those who were laid off, to demonstrating accountability from Brian Chesky in in-person meetings, to offering 12 months of healthcare coverage, to creating a new recruiting a platform to support their people in finding new jobs. It didn’t matter what the ’norm' was. It was all about building their own play-book, pushing boundaries and doing things that hadn’t been done before. Q shares his personal experiences at Airbnb, why he believes that both remote and office-based working will always exist. Find out about the introduction of Airbnb's all-inclusive Digital Nomad Programme - which became the essence of their Live and Work Anywhere programme. Adrian and Q also discuss how to drive connectivity in a virtual world and the importance of intentional connectivity - whether that’s through in person or virtual events.

Catherine Garrod is a leading expert in culture change and how you can combine the power of employee engagement, communications, diversity and inclusion. She is the former Head of Inclusion at Sky and during her tenure led the organisation to be the most inclusive employer with 80% of teams increasing diversity both on and off screen. Catherine is the founder of Compelling Culture and author of Conscious Inclusion: How to ‘do’ EDI one decision at time publishing April 2023. And she lives by this quote “Unless you’re consciously including people, you’re almost certainly unconsciously excluding people.” Catherine works with organisations to boost the experience for colleagues, customers and communities. She believes when employees can be themselves and influence how things are done, their lives are better, they're more creative and better problem solvers. And when consumers are authentically represented in media, products and services, organisations and the communities they serve thrive. Rather than top-down change initiatives involving huge teams, Catherine advocates for combining skill and will to guide people in their everyday thinking. When every voice is heard, every person is empowered and everybody takes action, the outcomes are extraordinary. ​Catherine's book is out in April 2023 “Conscious Inclusion: How to 'do' EDI one decision at a time.” More information available at https://compellingculture.co.uk/conscious-inclusion   

In this episode of Making Waves, the podcast for curious business leaders from Wavelength, our expert facilitator Liz Moseley is joined by world-renowned trends expert and speaker, David Mattin, founder of New World Same Humans.  David talks about trends.  What is a trend. How does he identify them. What are the implications of these trends on societies, on businesses, on marketers.  David shares three big trends that he is seeing right now. 1). Generative AI - The impact of Generative AI on creativity. Chat GPTs. Text to Image. How we make sense of the fact that machines can simulate human creativity at a very high level. Are humans still special? 2) Personal control and local resilience - this trend was founded in the pandemic. A time that has left a lasting impact on us all. We learnt a lesson of fragility during the pandemic. Local networks and resources have become more important than ever. People are questing after new forms of personal control. Whether that be through local communities or communities we have an affinity to. 3) The drive for responsible business transformation - An organisation used to be a black box, essentially outsiders couldn’t really see what was going on in there, and the brand was whatever you wanted to paint on the walls of the box.  People can now see inside organisations as never before. Now, because of transparency, because of a connected world, an organisation is much more like a glass box. What they’re really seeing is your internal culture, and the counterintuitive but really important implication of that is that your internal culture is now a part of your public facing brand. And that every department is now the marketing department. Fascinatingly, David also shares his wish for future trends and touches on the buzzword we’ll all be bored of hearing by the end of 2023 - the Metaverse!

Great leaders actively build networks around them that they can turn to for advice, ideas and support. In this episode of Wavelength's Making Waves podcast series, Wavelength associate Liz Moseley interviews Amanda Scott, co-founder of Personal Boardroom.  Together they explore The Personal Boardroom - a highly practical tool that will help you build a more effective network to help propel you forward in your career - and examine the potential inspiration and trend verification already sitting in your contact list. The Personal Boardroom encourages you to look at personal leadership and consider who’s in your personal boardroom. Amanda challenges you to ask yourself, do you have access to a powerful, external network of people to help advise, connect and support you?  This podcast helps to turn the traditional concept of the dreaded networking on its’ head and instead focuses on developing powerful networks based on 12 well-defined roles and targeted quality relationships – using a practical methodology and tool. Amanda will encourage you to look at who’s in your personal boardroom, to think about the diversity of your network of contacts, and consider whether they are all in your own industry or sector. This podcast will lead you to think about the importance of a strong network of people and how you can build that.

Adrian Simpson is co-founder and chief connector at Wavelength, a UK based boutique executive education business with a global reach.
 Wavelength's specialism is ‘bringing the outside world in for leaders’. Believing that leaders learn best from leaders, Adrian and the team at Wavelength seek to bring the outside in, to provide clients with the world-class external inspiration, education, provocation and application needed to drive change and to develop leaders who will make the world better through business. Adrian has spent his career going inside some of the very finest organisations around the globe. In this episode of Making Waves, Adrian shares so many examples of leadership insight, coupled with his own unique stories gathered from over 25 years of visiting the boardrooms and shop floors of some of the world’s most innovative, successful and admired companies.  Adrian is a leadership expert and much-admired public speaker, regularly delivering keynote speeches about what makes a great organisation, culture and innovation.