Join me and the Levitt Group at Westminster Business School for our Five Great Minds event, on June 12th

Westminster Business School, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Senior marketers are increasingly under pressure not just to be masters of their own discipline but to play a role in business leadership. The Levitt Group’s Five great minds event offers insights into both the business and the marketing skills required to meet the challenge.

Four of the speakers are published authors of management or marketing books. A copy of your choice of one of the books is included in the price of the event. In addition, you will be able to buy copies of the others at greatly discounted prices.

Agenda:

09:00 – 09:30 Registration, networking and coffee

09:30 – 09:35 Welcome by Mike Holland

09:35 – 10:35 All In – the future of business leadership with David Grayson

10:35 – 11:35 The art of plain speaking with Charlie Corbett

11:35 – 12:00 Tea/coffee break

12:00 – 13:00 The rules of success with Karsten Drath

13:00 – 14:00 Lunch

14:00 – 15:00 Protecting your brand online with Helen Roberts

15:00 – 16:00 Narrative by numbers with Sam Knowles

16:00 – 16:05 Conclusion and finish

More information about our speakers and their talks can be found below.

CPD category: Strategy; CPD duration: 5 hours

Cost: Members and studying members £95; Non-members £130.

To book your place on the event please contact the Events team on +44 (0)1628 427340.

All In – the future of business leadership

David Grayson defines the essential attributes of high-impact corporate sustainability leadership and describe how companies can combine and apply those characteristics for future success.

His presentation is based on the book of the same title co-authored with Chris Coulter and Mark Lee – https://allinbook.net/. This draws on research involving thousands of experts globally collected via the GlobeScan-SustainAbility Leaders Survey over two decades. The book also reveals insights from dozens of interviews with chairs, CEOs and chief sustainability officers of major corporations explaining how they have gained recognition, created value and boosted resiliency based on their sustainability leadership.

He outlines what the private sector must do to lift sustainability performance, protect business’s license to operate and help to deliver the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

David Grayson CBE is Emeritus Professor of Corporate Responsibility at the Cranfield School of Management and Chairman of the Institute of Business Ethics. He is also Chair of the charity Carers UK. He is a former Managing Director of Business in the Community.

He started his working life trying to persuade people to buy a certain brand of washing-up liquid in marketing management with Procter and Gamble. For most of his career, however, he has been a social entrepreneur, starting and/or running a number of public-private-community partnerships and chairing several government bodies.

He joined Cranfield School of Management as Director of the Doughty Centre for Corporate Responsibility in April 2007.

www.davidgrayson.net

Twitter: @DavidGrayson

The art of plain speaking

Charlie Corbett explains how to ‘write and speak in a way that will impress the people that matter’.

His presentation is based on his book ‘The Art of Plain Speaking’ which is described as a step-bystep guidebook to surviving and thriving in the modern work place: from how to write well, speak publicly and stand out in your job, to crafting compelling communications, making the best of social media and handling the press.

Charlie draws on his experience of the corporate world, a confusing and nonsensical place, where common sense and basic humanity have been replaced by jargon, dehumanising language and soulless dictates from faceless rule-makers. A world where senior management is entirely absent from the shop floor – replaced by indecipherable emails from HR – and where people speak in esoteric corporate riddles.

Charlie was winner of the Plain English Campaign, Communicator of the Year award, 2018.

He has worked as a Senior Financial Journalist and Editor at the FT Group, Wall Street Journal, Euromoney and Morningstar. In a career that spans 18 years in finance and journalism, he’s been Editor of the special reports section at The Wall Street Journal in Europe and, before that, Economics Editor at the Financial Times’ monthly international financial affairs magazine, The Banker. From 2006 to 2008 he was Editor of Investor Weekly magazine, published by Morningstar in Australia.

He now runs his own communications consultancy, Bullfinch Media.

The rules of success

Karsten Drath talks to us about resilience and how managers can overcome setbacks and grow.

His presentation is based on his book ‘The rules of success’ which suggests that success is, above all, one thing: the quest for a combination of happiness and satisfaction, coupled with economic independence.

Karsten argues that, in fact, certain success factors do exist and that they are fewer in number than one might think. But above all, if we look thoroughly at the lives of truly successful people, it soon becomes apparent that success primarily has to do with overcoming setbacks, failure and crisis. This ability to effectively process adversity is also known as resilience.

Karsten Drath is a graduate engineer with an Executive MBA and is a certified Master Level Executive Coach with an extensive management background, acquired over 16 years in numerous international management positions at Accenture, Bombardier and Perot Systems, amongst others. Before that he was Managing Director EMEA at the consulting unit of Dell, where he successfully implemented the acquisition and integration of an international consulting firm, among other things. Today he is a certified executive coach and psychotherapist. He is one of the managing partners at Leadership Choices, a provider of executive development. In addition, he works as adjunct faculty at the Centre for Responsible Leadership of the WHU business school in Koblenz.

Protecting your brand online

In this era of ‘fake news’, ‘brand theft’ & YouTube activism, what can you do to protect your brand from threats by competitors and surfers?

Helen Roberts looks at both practical and legal steps you can take to protect the value of your brand and to address possible issues early.

Helen Roberts is a solicitor with experience in industry and with a UK regulator. She has particular expertise in pharmaceutical and life sciences digital markets.

Narrative by numbers

If marketers are to succeed in the boardroom, we must talk the same language as the rest of the ‘C suite’ – and that means numbers.

Sam Knowles explains how to tell powerful and purposeful stories with data. Drawing on his book ‘Narrative by numbers’ he will highlight two skills that we need today – the ability to interrogate and make sense of data, and the ability to use insights extracted from data to persuade others to act.

Sam believes that humans are hardwired to respond to stories and story structure. Stories are how we make sense of the world. We respond best to stories based on evidence. But storytellers need to use data as the foundation of stories, not as the stories themselves. Rational facts need to be embedded within fundamentally emotional, human stories.

Sam Knowles is a corporate storyteller with 30 years’ experience helping businesses to communicate better. Originally a classicist, he holds a doctorate in psychology, the source of his understanding of human motivation and his passion for data-driven stories. He says his purpose is to make businesses sound human.

He is Founder and Managing Director of Insight Agents which helps brands to communicate more effectively, using the principles and tools of strategic planning to create compelling and distinctive narratives for companies to tell authentic, relevant brand stories.

His previous career included senior positions with a number of marketing, PR and communications companies.

Please note:

This event is only available for Levitt Group members, Fellows, Chartered Marketers, and CIM members (MCIM) undertaking the CPD program with a view to becoming Chartered Marketers.

Levitt Group members are encouraged to invite colleagues and clients to accompany them as guests who may find the event interesting and informative.

If you are a Chartered Marketer or Fellow and not a member of the Levitt Group please contact the Membership team on +44 (0)1628 427120 or membership@cim.co.uk and ask for this be added to your membership, at no extra cost.