The entrepreneurial journey is famously a bumpy one and Planet Organic founder Renée Elliott’s story is testament to that.

For her, seeing the vision for the business she founded interpreted (she prefers “eroded”) through other people’s priorities over the years has been “excruciating, infuriating…and exhausting”. But in 2023, Elliott returned to Planet, more than a decade after she and her husband stepped away from the company.

This unlikely “business fairytale” had an inauspicious start: a phone call informing her that Planet would be giving notice of administration in 30 minutes’ time.

In this week’s episode of Leadership Lessons, Elliott revisits that moment, the scramble to rescue the company, and the collective effort since to pull Planet “out of the mud back into the light”.

“There’s no magic bullet in retail, as any retailer will tell you,” she says. Instead there are “50 or 100 things” the company will need to do if it is to still meet its goal to return to profit this year.

It’s lucky, then, that the 30 years since the first Planet store opened in Westbourne Grove have taught Elliott a lot about resilience, which in her view starts with “care of self”.

Just as important is to “trust yourself”. If you’re having a tough time, Elliott says, there are many different ways in which you can respond. “But if you go into fear, panic about the future, or any kind of what I call contracted state, you go into stress and then you're not thinking your best; you're not accessing the knowledge and the answers and the intuition that you have inside of you.”

If, on the other hand, you can trust yourself, “that stress falls away and you're in a much better place to manage through difficult situations”.

*The interview with Renée Elliott was recorded in December 2024.

Credits:

Presenter: Antonia Garrett Peel

Producer: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode of The Debrief, MT’s editorial team discusses whether Elon Musk is jeopardising the Tesla brand and what’s in store for the M&A market in 2025.

It’s official: the richest man on the planet is now the United States’ – and possibly the world’s – most powerful unelected bureaucrat. Twenty twenty-four was a key year in the ongoing metamorphosis of Elon Musk, as he threw his support behind Donald Trump and embraced populist politicians around the globe, while courting controversy at (nearly) every turn. But what does this all mean for the businesses he controls? We put Tesla sales under the spotlight and bring you some expert views on what the future holds for the EV maker.

Is the M&A market poised for an upturn? Bain & Company certainly thinks so. Its latest Global M&A Report explains why it has hopes for a rebound, and how businesses can set themselves up to harness positive momentum in the market. What’s for certain is that any good news couldn’t come soon enough, after last year saw deal value reach a historically low level as a percentage of global GDP, according to Bain. We bring you its reasons to be optimistic.

Links:

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/elon-musk-jeopardising-tesla-brand/leadership-lessons/article/1905320

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/m-a-market-poised-comeback-2025-headwinds-ease/indepth/article/1905223

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin and Antonia Garrett Peel

Producer: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Negative feedback is a gift; it provides the “gems that make sure you improve what you're doing and take it to the next level”, says Zurich Insurance’s Conny Kalcher.

The chief customer officer of the more than 150-year-old company should know, having spent the last few years focusing on driving customer-centric business transformation at Zurich and, before that, at Lego, where she was instrumental in helping the brand to redefine its purpose, transforming it from a toy factory into a company that ‘tells stories’.

“It's important to embrace what customers are telling us, not try to explain it away or rationalise it, but really look it in the eye,” she says.

Customer expectations of the insurance industry have changed dramatically in recent years, partly because of the disruptive impact of insurtechs but also because of the impact of digital-first companies more generally.

“We could lean back and think we’re different, we’re insurance, but that’s a false truism because today it’s companies like Amazon and Netflix that set the standards,” says Kalcher. After all, if Amazon can deliver a parcel overnight why should you, as a customer of a legacy business, struggle to get your address changed or to get through to a human being on the phone?

For Kalcher, the solution to increasing customer expectations has been to help move Zurich away from being a transactional company to one that connects with customers on both a functional and emotional level.

This isn’t an easy ask for an insurance firm, which aren’t usually associated by consumers with being warm and fuzzy, but that’s part of the point for Kalcher, who claims that in this way the company is able to “surprise and delight, which is really the space we want to be in”.

And it’s a strategy that seems to be paying dividends. The company is growing faster than the market, product density is up (in other words people buy more products), and, perhaps most importantly, says Kalcher, customers are happier.

Credits:

Presenter: Claire Warren

Producer: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this week’s episode, MT’s editorial team discusses which Big Four firms are on course to miss UK female partner goals, what CIOs want from consultants in 2025, and how a once-powerful name in consulting is making a comeback.

We kick off this bumper consultancy episode with discussion of a story originally covered by the FT, which found that of the Big Four accounting firms, both EY and PwC are on track to miss their 2025 UK female partner targets. We also consider how gender imbalances might be impacting consulting firms’ progress on pay parity, with an analysis of pay gap data collected as part of the process of compiling MT’s inaugural Top 100 Management Consultancies list last year.

What do chief information officers want from consultants? That’s the question explored by Jon Bance in a recent piece for MT. He argues that CIOs increasingly demand more from external advisors, whom they expect to become fully immersed in their business, becoming a part of its culture and driving teams forward from within, while leveraging soft skills to build meaningful long-term relationships.

Anyone who follows the consultancy sector will probably have heard the news by now: Andersen Consulting is making a comeback. The once-powerful name in the business will return to the sector after 25 years of dormancy. We discuss a piece by Paul Simpson that explores how the brand, once part of collapsed accounting firm Arthur Andersen, might navigate the considerable challenges in the market.

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin and Antonia Garrett Peel

Producer: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Despite continuing to saturate the technology sector, AI investments remain a small percentage of overall IT spending, according to CGI's UK president Tara McGeehan, but gen AI adoption is helping businesses achieve faster and smoother transformations.

On this week's episode, she speaks to MT how traditional AI, like machine learning, continues to grow alongside generative AI, how gen AI is accelerating transformations by enabling businesses to take greater control of the pace of change, and why leaders must encourage employees to educate themselves on AI's benefits to help alleviate resistance to change.

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin

Producers: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode of The Debrief, MT’s editorial team discusses new research into large language models’ creative capabilities and what consultants believe CEOs should be focusing on this year.

The new year is advancing at a frankly scary rate. But if like us you’re already drowning in a sea of immediate priorities, our first segment might provide the opportunity to step back and remind yourself of your aims for the coming 12 months. Before Christmas, we asked our community of consultants what CEOs should be prioritising this year - and they heeded our call. We bring you the what, the why and the how.

Ever since the birth of ChatGPT, there’s been a widespread narrative that gen AI will primarily replace routine and repetitive work tasks. But while this might appeal to those of us with a strong creative component to our job, new research suggests we shouldn’t get too comfortable. Academics compared the ‘collective creativity’ of individual LLMs (as measured by considering multiple responses to one problem) to that of small groups of humans, with some interesting results. We take you through the findings.

Links:

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/consultants-think-ceos-prioritise-year/down-to-business/article/1901214

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/leaders-plan-transform-business-2025/down-to-business/article/1900994

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/research-llms-compete-humans-creative-tasks/indepth/article/1901578

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin and Antonia Garrett Peel

Producer: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indian cuisine aficionados will be no stranger to Cobra Beer, but many may not be familiar with how the brand came to be - or the man behind it. Lord Karan Bilimoria created the brand in response to a lack of appropriate beer to have with spicy Indian food, but his journey to success was paved with challenges.

We discuss how he almost lost the business three times and his decision to step down as chairman. He also gives us his views on the state of British business and what leaders can do to thrive despite the many challenges facing the economy today.

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin

Producers: Inga Marsden

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this week’s episode, MT’s editorial team discusses when a brand should make a break with its past identity and what two leading companies can teach us about organic business growth.

Jaguar has been having a time of it recently – or has it? Certainly, the company has had to face a barrage of negative headlines, even as publicity for the carmaker has swelled to seldom-seen levels. But, as time goes on, opinion on its rebrand appears to be increasingly divided – not least among the leaders that responded to an MT callout for comments. Is Jaguar’s seeming departure from its heritage a gamble or a smart strategic pivot in a world where nostalgia is an ever-declining currency? We bring you a flavour of the debate.

Organic growth strategies might seem like the slightly drab cousin of headline-grabbing acquisitions – but if the advice in some circles has been to buy not build, Paul Simpson offers an alternative view. In his latest piece for MT, he examines the growth stories of four leading companies. These strategies are not flashy, fast-paced or thrilling, and command little fanfare, but the diligent commitment to incremental wins they embody has paid dividends in the long-run. We consider two of them.

Links:

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/four-leading-companies-teach-us-organic-business-growth/indepth/article/1899470

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/mt-asks-when-company-break-its-past-identity/food-for-thought/article/1900155

https://www.managementtoday.co.uk/35-women-35-open-entries/women-in-business/article/1899109

Credits:

Presenters: Éilis Cronin and Antonia Garrett Peel

Producers: Inga Marsden and Til Owen

Artwork: David Robinson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.