Imi Podcast Talking Business

The IMI Talking Leadership podcast is now available on Spotify! Be sure to check back for new episodes over the coming weeks.

Today we’re joined by Filip Moriau, Founder and CEO of Stragilon, a Berlin based consultancy specialising in innovation, agility and development, and also an upcoming speaker at IMI’s last People Strategy Network event of the year. We talked about bureaucracy in organisations and how it can stifle collaboration and innovation, and how leader’s in an organisation can move agility from a word on a page into the very operations of a business. For those IMI Transform members wanting to join Filip’s session on Tuesday, 6th October, 2020, and get that deep dive, please go to imi.ie/events.

Our 2020 National Management Conference – the first one ever to be delivered entirely virtually – featured an array of world-class speakers. In this episode, we talked to Cali Williams Yost, Founder and CEO of the Flex+Strategy Group, about the present, and future, of flexible work practices. Then we talked to Michael Jacobides, who holds the Sir Donald Gordon Chair of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at London Business School, about what businesses can do to not just survive this crisis, but learn from the lessons in the past to take a leap forward in your marketplace. These conversations were recorded in September 2020.

Today we're talking about the Foreign Direct Investment community in Ireland, from the impacts of the current crisis to how we are positioned to get back on a path to growth. A sector that employs 245,000 people directly, and many more indirectly, the change in Ireland’s economy can be quite neatly traced back to the 80’s and 90’s when a proactive policy was put in place to attract Foreign Direct Investment, with IDA Ireland leading the charge. We talk to Mary Buckley, Executive Director at IDA Ireland, and Paul Ryan, a senior director of engineering operations in Qualcomm, one of those Irish subsidiaries of FDI companies generating such vital economic activity. We're also joined by our very own Julie Ryan, Head of Customised Solutions in IMI, to discuss the challenges in the FDI sector she’s gleaned from IMI's research, and the Leading with Strategic Intent programme her customised solutions team put together and ran last year. For more information on the programme, go to www.imi.ie. These conversa

We’re joined by one of Ireland’s most prominent business leaders – Anne O’Leary, CEO of Vodafone Ireland - to talk about lessons in leadership and what she's learnt from her professional career. We talked about resilience, purpose, how you deal with mistakes, following your instinct, ego and humility and the importance of gender diversity in business. This conversation was recorded in March 2020.

Today we’re talking collaboration – how to do it at as a team, an organisational and across borders. We're joined by Mark Mortensen, recent Masterclass speaker at IMI and Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD. As someone with an engineering background, Mark approaches collaboration in a systematic way while allowing for the messy realities of life.

Today we’re joined by Paula Mullin, executive coach and IMI associate, about how to build your own executive presence in a virtual environment. From your appearance on a Zoom call to how you communicate in a virtual environment, we try and give you clear guidance on how to navigate it all as a leader and focus on those things that have changed most in the last few months and are likely to remain.

In today’s episode we're joined by Katharine Wilkinson, lead author for the New York Times’ bestseller Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming. We talked about those practical things leaders can do in industries from food to government to reduce the environmental impact of their organisations, and the potential innovations out there that might change industries. This conversation was recorded back in late 2019 after IMI's National Management Conference.

Decisions, decisions. We’ve been asked to make a lot of them recently – some big, some small, some life-changing – but how can leaders actively improve their decision-making and get better outcomes? In this week’s episode we talk to Simon Haslam, International strategy consultant, programme lead for strategy at the Institute of Directors and visiting faculty as several business schools, including the IMI. This conversation was record in early June 2020.

How can leaders discover their organisation's purpose and then, more importantly, make it operational? Purpose-led leaders achieve extraordinary results for their organisations. Acting as a central principle for people to guided by, an organisation with a strong purpose will make better, more aligned decisions, have more engaged and productive employees, and will produce stronger financial results. We talk to Kris Sirchio, former CEO of North American Breweries, about how he brought the organisation's purpose into the heart of their operations and achieved brilliant results. This conversation was recorded in mid May 2020

What are the key elements leaders need to consider when devising their strategy in the current climate? Thomas C. Lawton, Professor of Strategy and International Business and Director of the Global Competitiveness Institute at Cork University Business School, outlines what lessons of the past can be applied today and the mindset leaders should use when looking to create their own breakout strategies.

The coronavirus pandemic has cast a harsh light on the financial security and sustainability of many organisations. Will the pandemic subtly shift how we do business and how we make ourselves financially secure? We’re joined by Cormac Lucey, a columnist on economics for the Sunday Times, a chartered accountant and lecturer in Business Finance at IMI, to talk about financial leadership in a crisis – both at the moment of crisis and all those ways to survive the initial onslaught, but also how to use financial levers to grow out of a crisis as a stronger organisation.

In the past five years, the business world has seen the birth of a new breed of company. The Exponential Organisation has revolutionized how a company can accelerate its growth by using technology and transformational leadership. An Exponential Organisation can eliminate the incremental, linear way traditional companies get bigger, leveraging assets like community, big data, algorithms, and new technology. Yuri van Geest is an international keynote speaker on exponential emerging technologies, digital transformation and technology trends. During his IMI Masterclass, Yuri explained why some organisations are able to grow exponentially and the fundamentally new ways corporations are organised to deal with disruption, exponential technologies and accelerated change through transformational leadership. This conversation was recorded in March 2019

How much coffee is too much? How much should we be moving every day? In this Lunchtime Listen, we talk to Dr. John Briffa about how leaders can achieve peak physical performance – all while breaking a few myths about health and wellbeing. Dr John Briffa is a practising doctor and award-winning health writer who has contributed to a wide variety of newspaper and magazines both in the UK and abroad. This conversation was recorded in September 2019.

For our lunchtime listen today we revisit our conversation with Dr Jill Walker. Originally released in November 2019. A key element of maximising leadership resilience, impact and success is making sure you have a healthy relationship with being busy – something which can be challenging in the modern culture of speed, ‘doing’ and distraction. Being too busy can seriously affect the performance and impact of leaders – their focus, clarity of thought, creativity and impact on others. It also often affects their health, wellbeing and work-life balance – critical components for long-term, sustainable success. Based on 18 years’ working with top global organisations, busy CEOs, entrepreneurs and C suite executives, psychologist and transformative coach Dr. Jill Walker challenges our relationship with being busy. In this episode Jill provides practical ways to help us create space in our fast-paced world, as well as how think about your work from a new perspective.

Is change changing? Does the modern business landscape mean we have to throw out our change toolkits and templates? Can we even devise a strategy any more? In this episode we talk to Deborah Rowland, a leading practitioner in the world of large, complex change. We explore how change will always be effected by the leader's inner state, and how 'making disturbance your friend' can lead to brilliant results. Recorded on Thursday, 12th March, 2020.

How can leaders achieve peak performance? Can we activate our minds in a way that allows us to perform at pace in the long-term? In this Lunchtime Listen we talk to Friederike Fabritius about the neuroscience behind peak performance, and how getting the mixture between ‘fun’, ‘fear’ and ‘focus’ right can make you and your organisation perform brilliantly. Friederike is a lead designer on the Mastering the Performance Mindset programme for senior leaders. Find out more at www.imi.ie

With COVID-19 the majority of us have been forced to work remotely for the first time in our lives, while others are welcoming us into the experience while, in the macro sense, working remotely and leading virtual teams around the world is becoming much more common. We talked to Fiona Buckley, IMI associate and expert in the fields of work behaviour, leadership, coaching and mentoring, about how to best lead virtual teams, either temporarily or permanently.

Why do certain leaders have the ability to really engage, inspire and move people to act? For our lunchtime listen today, we revisit our conversation with Paula Mullin, IMI Connect Lounge Speaker and Executive Coach. Paula talks about Executive Presence and what it can teach leaders in how they should package themselves in order to drive their business, and teams, to success. Go to www.imi.ie for more.

In a world of unimaginable complexity, how are leaders today supposed to make consistently great decisions, especially in the absence of tangible information? For our lunchtime listen this week, we revisit our conversation with Kriti Jain, a behavioural scientist passionate about developing research and training leaders in making better decisions. Kriti is a programme director on Leadership Decision Making - a programme from the IMI Executive Series for senior leaders.