I talk about the bits of brand, culture and leadership that can be difficult to see when you’re in the middle of them.
From Culture Debt and what people don’t tell the boss, to whether you really need a rebrand in the first place.
These aren’t off-the-shelf talks. They’re some of the subjects and ideas I can bring to your event, shaped around the people in the room, what’s going on for them and the conversation worth starting.
Talks can be shaped from a 30-minute session to a longer workshop or facilitated conversation, depending on the event and audience.
1: Something’s Off
You can feel it before you can explain it. This is how you work out what’s actually wrong.
Good people are still there. The business is still moving. But something has changed. Maybe the energy has gone, teams aren’t pulling together, trust feels thinner or customers are beginning to feel the difference.
The temptation is to jump straight to a solution: new values, a restructure, a rebrand, another engagement survey.
This talk is about what comes before that. How do you get underneath the symptoms, listen properly and work out what’s actually going on before deciding what needs fixed?
Perfect for: CEOs, founders, leadership teams, growing businesses and third-sector leaders.
2. Culture Debt
The stuff you keep putting off doesn’t go away. It just gets more expensive.
The brilliant manager compensating for a broken system. The founder who still approves everything. The behaviour everyone complains about but nobody challenges. The silo that’s become normal.
Individually, these things can seem manageable. So they get left for another day.
But one compromise becomes another. Workarounds become normal. Good people carry more than they should. Eventually the things you didn’t deal with start costing you in time, trust, energy, customers or people.
This talk explores how Culture Debt builds, where the cost starts showing up and why dealing with seemingly small cultural problems early matters.
Perfect for: founders, leadership teams, growing organisations and businesses where the same people or culture problems keep coming back.
3. Nobody Tells the Boss
What people actually say once the boss leaves the room, and why it took this long to hear it.
The more senior you become, the easier it can be to become disconnected from what’s actually happening.
People edit what they say. Problems get softened. Someone decides now isn’t the right time to raise something. The meeting after the meeting becomes more honest than the meeting itself.
And leaders can end up making decisions based on a version of the organisation that their people don’t recognise.
This talk explores why honest information gets lost as it travels upwards, what leaders might be missing and how they can create the conditions for people to tell them what they actually need to hear.
Perfect for: CEOs, founders, senior leaders, boards and People teams.
4. Leading Culture Change Starts With You
People watch what you do a lot more closely than what you say.
Culture change isn’t something leadership can announce and hand over to HR, People or an external consultant.
People notice what leaders pay attention to. What they reward. What they challenge. What they let slide. And whether their own behaviour matches the change they’re asking everyone else to make.
This talk explores what leaders need to model, reward, change and sometimes stop doing if they genuinely want the culture around them to change.
Because asking everyone else to behave differently while carrying on exactly as before isn’t culture change.
Perfect for: senior leaders, managers, People teams and organisations going through growth, restructure, leadership change or wider transformation.
5. Do You Actually Need a Rebrand?
Before you change how you look, work out what’s actually broken.
Sometimes a rebrand is exactly what’s needed.
Sometimes it isn’t.
The problem might be positioning. Customer experience. Leadership. Culture. A lack of clarity about where the business is going. Or a gap between what the organisation says externally and what people actually experience.
Change the identity without understanding that and you might simply give the same problem a nicer logo.
This talk looks at what organisations should understand before reaching for a rebrand and how to work out where the real problem sits.
Perfect for: founders, SMEs, marketing teams, creative audiences and organisations considering brand change.
6. What Are You Actually Selling?
A buyer isn’t just getting your customers and your systems. They’re getting your people too.
When someone buys a business, takes it through succession or moves it into employee ownership, they’re inheriting far more than what’s written in the accounts.
They’re inheriting relationships, behaviours, knowledge, leadership habits, ways of working and all the unwritten stuff that holds the place together.
Some of that creates value. Some of it creates risk.
This talk explores why culture and organisational alignment deserve attention before a sale, merger, acquisition, succession or employee ownership transition, and what can happen when the human side is treated as something to sort out later.
Perfect for: business owners, founders and events focused on succession, employee ownership, M&A and business growth.
7. What the Hell Is a Brand and Why Do We Need One?
We talk about brands all the time. But ask ten people what one actually is and you’ll probably get ten different answers.
They’re all part of it, but none of them is the whole thing.
This talk strips away some of the BS that’s built up around branding and asks a much simpler question: what is a brand actually there to do?
Brand isn’t something that belongs to the marketing department. What happens inside an organisation shapes what customers experience outside it, and the strongest brands aren’t remembered for how they look. Take Patagonia, nobody’s talking about their logo, they’re talking about a company that once told customers not to buy their jacket. That’s what people have come to expect from them, and that’s the bit that actually sticks.
We’ll also ask whether every business really needs to spend quite so much time talking about its brand in the first place.
Because you can spend months defining your purpose, polishing your values and perfecting your visual identity. But ultimately, your brand has to mean something to the people you’re hoping will choose you, work for you or come back.
Perfect for: founders, business owners, marketers, students, creatives and anyone who’s ever sat in a meeting where everyone keeps saying “brand” but seems to mean something different.
8. Leadership Lessons From the Pitch, the Uni Halls and Home
What coaching, mentoring and being a parent have taught me about trust, confidence and communication.
Not everything I’ve learned about leadership has come from businesses, books or boardrooms.
Some of it has come from coaching young footballers. Some from mentoring students. And plenty from being a parent.
Different places, different ages, but many of the same questions keep appearing.
How do you build someone’s confidence without pretending everything is brilliant? How do you give people enough direction without controlling them? What happens when what you say and what you do don’t match? And how do you help someone take ownership rather than simply doing what they’re told?
A more personal, light-hearted talk about some of the leadership lessons I’ve picked up in places I wasn’t necessarily looking for them.
Perfect for: leadership events, business groups, universities, creative audiences and events looking for something a little more personal.
Something else in mind?
These are ideas, not a fixed menu.
We can shape something around that.
If you’re planning an event, panel, workshop or conversation around brand, culture or leadership, tell me who’s going to be in the room and what you’d like them to leave thinking or talking about.
Contact me here
Ready to explore your best route? Take the ten-minute culture quiz. Or book a call and let's have a wee chat on how to move forward together.