Winston Churchill understood leadership. Cast in bronze, his statue dominates one of the rooms in the Savoy Hotel. It set the tone for Drayton’s latest gathering of Consumer Sector leaders, clients, and candidates.
This time, in partnership with PCL – the Psychological Consultancy Ltd – we analysed ‘Skills to Fuel Growth’ – the vital link between talent strategy and business expansion.
Drayton MD, Nicola Wensley, hosted an insightful panel of speakers including – Retail Analyst, Natalie Berg, PCL MD, Gillian Hyde, and Jon Wragg, who serves on the boards of Refined Brands, Abel & Cole, and Manchester Airport Group. As well as David Stern, Chairman of Facetheory.
Under Churchill’s watchful eye, the lively debate covered a range of topical issues. Including, the importance of personalisation in the new era of AI agents, ‘command and control leadership’ becoming obsolete, and a ‘growth mindset’ being a key attribute of the consumer leader. . Jon Wragg’s focus was on the kind of consumer leadership skills most needed in a Private Equity environment. He pinpointed:
Mindset – A ‘growth mindset’ – the ability to see the real growth drivers, understand how to pull the levers effectively, and to focus the team on these.
Discipline – A passion for operational discipline across the business.
Customer know-how – The ability to see a clear path to value creation, grounded in a deep understanding of the customer.
Driving change – An ability to drive change at pace whilst maintaining precision. Pace without precision is chaos. Precision without pace is stagnation.
PCL’s Gillian Hyde talked about the need for leaders to ‘embrace uncertainty,’ and identified ‘adaptability, curiosity, integrity, and tenacity,’ as key traits of the effective leader.
‘Resilience,’ was generally agreed to be the most important soft skill for leaders. As Jon commented, ‘It won't always go right, and you need the flexibility to stay resilient and be able to pivot, if necessary, to find another route to achieving the businesses goals.’
At that point, even Churchill seemed to be nodding along in agreement. Perhaps because, as he, himself, once noted, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal. It's the courage to continue that counts.”