Brian Pitman

Sir Brian joined Lloyds Bank in 1952 and subsequently held a number of managerial appointments in the group, including spells in continental Europe and the USA.

He became Chief Executive of Lloyds Bank in 1983 and Group Chief Executive of the new Lloyds TSB Group in 1995, when Lloyds Bank merged with TSB. He was appointed Chairman of the Lloyds TSB Group in February 1997 and retired in April 2001.

He is also chairman of NEXT Plc; a director of Carlton Communications Plc; a director of Tomkins PLC; a director of The Carphone Warehouse Group Plc; and a Governor of Ashridge Management College.

Sir Brian was President of the British Bankers Association from January 1996 to May 1997 and President of The Chartered Institute of Bankers from May 1997 to October 1998.

In 1993, he was voted Financial World European Banking CEO of the Year; 1996 Times Businessman of the Year; 1998 KPMG Business Leader of the Year and was the winner of the 1999 Gold Medal of the Institute of Management.

Sir Brian was knighted for his services to banking in 1994 and he received the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from The City University, London in 1996 and from the University of Science & Technology, Manchester in 2000.

Archie Norman

…one of the most high-profile turnrounds in British corporate history….

Archie Norman was born in May 1954. He was educated at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis; Emmanuel College, Cambridge (MA Economics); and Harvard Business School (MBA).

He worked for Citibank NA (1975-1977), was a partner at McKinsey & Co Plc (1979-1986), Group Finance Director of Kingfisher Plc (1986-1991), before joining Asda plc as Chief Executive in 1991.

It was here that he undertook one of the most high-profile turnrounds in British corporate history, and as a result became a household name.

Archie was a Non Executive Director of Geest Plc from 1988-1991, of British Rail 1992-1994, and was a Non Executive Director of Railtrack from 1994 – 2000.

Other appointments held include, Patron of the Yorkshire and North-East Bow Group, Fellow of the Marketing Society, Member of the Whitehall Dining Club, Council Member of the Industrial Society, Governor of the Institute of Economic and Social Research, and a Member of the Advisory Group on the Ingliston Development Trust of the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland.

He has also previously been a Member of the HM Government Deregulation Taskforce (1993-1997), and a Member of the Anglo-German Deregulation Taskforce in 1995.

Archie was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Tunbridge Wells in May 1997. He was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party in June 1997, with special responsibility for the reform and renewal programme. In July 1998 he was appointed Chief Executive of the Conservative Party. In the reshuffle of June 1999, Mr Norman became Front Bench Spokesman for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, and was appointed Shadow Secretary for Environment Transport and Regions in February 2000. In 2001 he returned to the back benches. .

Archie Norman is now one of the most respected business leaders in the country, and is one of the most outstanding speakers on leadership, change and customer service.

Tom Farmer

Sir Tom Farmer CBE is Founder and Former Chairman of Kwik-Fit Holdings plc, the household-name automotive repair chain. He founded the Kwik-Fit Group in 1971. The company now operates through 866 centres in the UK, Eire and throughout Benelux and employs 4,000 people. In 1997 the company achieved a turnover of £. 426m, and a profit of £. 43m, an improvement of 19% over the previous year. In 1999 Sir Tom sold Kwik-Fit to Ford Motor Company for nearly one billion dollars.

The success of Kwik-Fit is based entirely on the commitment of the whole company to customer service and quality. Tom Farmer is also well known for putting his ‘people’ even before his customers. If the customer is king, he likes to say, the staff are emperors. He is a passionate and inspiring speaker on teamwork and how employees can be motivated to deliver not just customer satisfaction but customer delight.

Tom Farmer is owner of Hibernian Football Club, Chairman of Scottish Business in the Community, Chairman of Investors in People Scotland and Board Member of Investors in People UK.

Appointments:
Chairman of Scottish Business in the Community
Chairman Scotland Against Drugs Campaign
Non-Executive Director – Airtours PLC

Honours and Awards:
1998 The Institute of Management Gold Medal.
1996 Degree of Doctor honoris causa, University of Edinburgh.
1996 Honorary Degree of Doctor of Technology, Glasgow Claedonian University
1996 Officier in de Orde van Oranje-Nassau of The Netherlands (From Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands).
1993 Honorary Doctorate in Business Administration, Napier University, Edinburgh.
1993 The Knight Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (From the President of Poland).
1990 Scottish Marketing Man of the Year.
1989 Scottish Businessman of the Year.

Mark Gallagher

Having been involved in Formula One for close to 20 years, Mark Gallagher is widely respected within the industry and is today Head of Business Development at Jaguar Racing, the official Formula One team of Jaguar, itself a subsidiary of the giant Ford Motor Company. A former member of the senior management team at Jordan Grand Prix, confidante of team principal Eddie Jordan as well as drivers past and present, Mark understands the key issues involved in being a winner in this most demanding of high technology sports.

Leadership, motivation, teamwork and the use of technology to gain competitive advantage are just some of the areas into which Mark has gained a unique insight. Combining his media broadcasting background with his vast knowledge of the inner workings of Formula One he has become perhaps the most prolific speaker from within the exciting world of Grand Prix racing.

A former journalist in the 1980s, when he covered Formula One for the Sunday Express and was a regular broadcaster on television and radio, Mark was for many years best known for his long and successful association with Jordan Grand Prix – once described by television commentator as being ‘the most motivated team in Formula One’. Heading up the team’s marketing and communications side, Mark was a right hand man to Eddie Jordan during two spells with the team totalling nine years. After leaving Jordan, Mark joined the management team behind British Formula One star Jenson Button before accepting an offer to head up sponsorship and commercial negotiations for Jaguar’s fast-improving Formula One team.

During his two decades in the sport Mark has, through his work with teams, sponsors and the media, had occasion to closely observe some of the most famous names in the sport – Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna, John Watson, Didier Pironi, Ricardo Patrese – while at Jordan he worked with drivers including Michael and Ralf Schumacher, Damon Hill, Rubens Barrichello, Martin Brundle, Giancarlo Fisichella, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Jarno Trulli, Takuma Sato and Ralph Firman.

His experience of top-flight motor sport has not been limited to Formula One. During the 1980s Mark was a leading correspondent for publications covering the lower formulae of racing, while in the early 1990s he worked in both the British and World Rally Championships including periods with the Prodrive Subaru and Ford Motorsport rally teams.

A well known face in the Formula One paddocks around the world, Mark gives a fascinating insight into the world of top level motor sport, drawing parallels between the challenging, high speed environment of Formula One and the fast-paced business world of today.

Lawrence Leyton

Lawrence Leyton is one of the UK’s leading motivational speakers and recognised experts in the Psychology of Peak Performance Training, appearing all over the world for leading Blue Chip companies, with his seminars reaching over a million people to date.

His company LLI (Lawrence Leyton International), specialises in enhancing personal and business performance through his powerfully engaging and uniquely entertaining interactive coaching seminars.

Lawrence’s techniques empower people to adopt winning strategies and powerful behaviour patterns that have transformational results, allowing individuals to reach their full potential.

As a successful author in personal development, a skilled Neuro-Linguistic Practitioner, a clinical Hypnotherapist and also a Thought Field Therapist, he has earned in just a short space of time, a growing reputation on the international business circuit and is in high demand around the world with his cutting edge seminars, keynote presentations and workshops.

His advice is sought by leading people in the fields of business, politics and sports, including world-class athletes in their preparation for sporting events including the Olympic games.

He is a strategist and consultant to some of the world’s leading blue chip companies, with a growing client list that already includes Microsoft, Lucent, Nortel, The Prudential, Baxter Healthcare, Aventis, Halifax, The AA, Astrazenica, GSK to name but a few.

Lawrence has just completed recording his own ten-part television series about the potential of the human mind, which will be shown on the ITV network later this year.

Karren Brady

She has already packed a lifetime into her short career, starting off in radio with LBC at the tender age of 18. After a brief spell at Saatchis, she joined David Sullivan’s Sports Newspapers, becoming a director at age 22. David added Birmingham City to his business empire and put Karren in charge two years later. When the club floated on the AIM in 1997, she became the youngest MD of any UK PLC. Her speech concentrated on the development of Birmingham City as a business, in particular its transformation from a shabby also-ran to one of the most successful clubs outside the Premiership.

As she said: “Persistence and determination should be the aim of any business that wants to succeed. It is important never to look back, as it is always time wasted. Concentrate on the future. “Do what you do best and don’t be side-tracked. Businesses should follow the example of football clubs when it comes to marketing – merchandise the brand in all its aspects and harness the support of the media to help develop and grow the company.” She admitted to having a problem with players’ wages – how do you motivate somebody on £26k a week? – and predicted that high costs would ultimately drive some clubs out of business.

She began her career with LBC at the age of eighteen. She moved swiftly to Saatchi & Saatchi as Account Handler, joining David Sullivan’s Sports Newspapers in 1988 where she became a Director within twelve months. This meteoric rise prepared her for new role as ‘the first woman of football’.

Since 1993 she has been Managing Director of Birmingham City Football Club, producing profits for the first time in modern history. The club launched on the AIM in February 1997, making Karren the youngest Managing Director of any PLC in the UK.

She has attracted much media attention as the highest placed woman in football and was the subject of an hour long BBC 1 documentary entitled ‘Inside Story – The Real Life Manageress’. She has also hosted her own TV show – ‘The Brady Bunch’- and written three books – ‘Brady Plays the Blues’, ‘United’ and ‘Trophy Wives’.

Karren has made constructive changes at Birmingham City and her community projects such as the Kids a Quid scheme, Family Stand and Community Classroom have been emulated and copied elsewhere. She is married to Fulham FC footballer and Canada World Cup striker Paul Peschisolido and has two children.

Bear Grylls

Every year the death toll on Mount Everest rises, and for every six mountaineers who make it to the top, one will die. Yet at 7.22am on May 26th 1998, Bear entered The Guinness Book of Records by becoming the Youngest, and one of only thirty, British climbers to have successfully climbed Everest and returned alive. He was only 23 years old.

The actual ascent took Bear over ninety days of extreme weather, limited sleep and almost running out of oxygen deep inside the ‘death zone’ (above 26,000 feet). On the way down from his first reconnaissance climb, Bear was almost killed in a crevasse at 19,000 feet. The ice cracked and the ground disappeared beneath him, he was knocked unconscious and came to swinging on the end of a rope. His teammate and that rope saved his life.

Previously, in 1997, Bear had become the Youngest Briton to climb Mount Ama Dablam in the Himalayas (22,500 feet), a peak once described by Sir Edmund Hillary as ‘unclimbable’. Last year he led the first team ever to circumnavigate the UK on Jet Skis, in aid of the Lifeboats.

Bear has a natural talent for communication and his speaking has brought him worldwide acclaim. He now spends his time talking to corporations around the world on his experiences on the mountain and how these can help us in our business environments.

“I remember lying there during those long months of recovery and suddenly this dream that I had clung to so tightly for so long, of climbing Everest, just felt a million miles away. It was something I could no longer relate to. It was out of what I could believe and I remember vividly looking at those same pictures of Everest my father had given me years earlier, and taking them down. I dismissed it as something childish and something that could no longer become a reality.”

Bear continued to persevere against all the odds and eventually after three months on the mountain, during which time four climbers were tragically killed, he was getting ever closer. “I remember clearing that final lip on my stomach and looking up and being unable to believe that just 200m away was the place that had captured me since I was a little boy. The roof of the world. But however many of these pathetic shuffles I took this place never got any closer. I remember the adrenalin beginning to pump, and you feel it as this very physical presence that fills your muscles and your veins but which also very quickly leaves you with this deep sense of weakness that follows…”

At 7.22am on the 26th May 1998 Bear Grylls climbed into the Guinness Book of Records as the Youngest British climber ever to reach the summit of Everest and return alive. “Looking back it is strangely clear how certain qualities stood out above everything else up there. There were certain things that kept people alive up there and gave us hope and they may be different from what you might at first imagine”.

He focuses on those simple qualities that make the difference between life and death on a mountain: the intimacies and realities of teamwork, the honesty needed in intense environments and the courage that comes not from bravado but from something else inside.

His book has also recently been launched in the USA and continues to touch people through its honesty, courage and humility.

BEAR GRYLLS SELECTED REFERENCES

“There are precious few people in this world who can really make a difference in a positive way, you are one. Many thanks for all you are doing for BA. It is so good for our people to hear and learn from someone who has done so much in a world so different from ours”.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, BRITISH AIRWAYS

“I have never had such a positive reaction to a guest speaker before, the team were simply enthralled…an inspiration to all who listened! Somehow you still managed to make the challenges we face in our jobs relevant on a personal level to yours”.
TRADING DIRECTOR, COCA COLA ENTERPRISES LTD

“Bear was exceptionally well received by the audience, we thought he scored 10 out of 10”.
BP INTERNATIONAL

“Bear has a wonderful way of conveying his passion and excitement of the life threatening adventures he’s been on in a highly personal and compelling way – the ripples he has sent out across our business has been terrific. His delivery and content for our conference was excellent”.
W H SMITH LTD

“Your talk went down extremely well with all of our audience, I received special thank you letters from the Chief Executives saying that your speech was the most entertaining we have had to date . One of the best speakers we’ve had in years”
PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS

“Our thanks for your professional and inspirational contribution to our lunch, the combination of your particular style and breathtaking video was entirely appropriate and hit all the right notes”.
THE INSTITUTE OF DIRECTORS

“All our senior Chief Executives had great things to say about Bear, he was a fantastic speaker”.
UBS WARBURG

“Your fascinating presentation at our Negotiators and Valuers Conference was truly amazing, especially for someone so young. Without exception we were all absorbed, it has had a positive impact across our company”.
MANAGING DIRECTOR, CHRISTIE & CO

“He was one of the best and most enjoyable speakers we’ve ever had for our Investors in People dinner”.
SUSSEX TEC

“Bear was marvellous, his presentation was unique and we all appreciated his great sense of humour”
AXA INSURANCE CONFERENCE

Alan Pease

Allan Pease is the leading sales and communication speaker in the world.

Formerly one of the top insurance salesmen in Australia, Allan Pease talks about customer service, body language and communicating for results. He delivers his messages in an entertaining way which motivates people to implement his ideas immediately.

In a highly impact, fast-moving style, he takes his audience through powerful communication techniques and teaches them how to decode other people’s messages – and what to do about it. He shows them how to comprehend a wide range of everyday signals which appear in meetings, phone calls and negotiations as well as how to read body language.

Known as `Mr Body Language`, Allan’s own record in the field of selling, motivating and training is almost unequalled. He is a born achiever, starting his career at the age of ten selling rubber sponges door to door. At seventeen he was the number one national salesman for a company selling kitchenware and at the age of twenty-one was the youngest person ever to sell over $1m of life insurance in his first sales year.

He now runs a renowned communication company based in Australia. He lectures extensively throughout the world and his programmes are used by corporations all over the world to train staff in people-handling skills.

Allan Pease is one of Australia’s most successful non-fiction authors. His books Body Language, Talk Language, Write Language and Memory Language have become best sellers and his video series has been watched by more than 100 million viewers.

He is a brilliant after dinner speaker who is well known for both his professionalism and depth of research before each speaking engagement. A recent client said “Allan has the rare ability to broach serious communication issues in a highly entertaining manner to all levels of a corporation.”

Allan’s latest book Why Men Don’t Listen & Why Women Can’t Read Maps has been top of the bestseller list in Australia for the last two months and is currently high in the UK lists. Allan also appears regularly on the BBC talking about communication and body language and is to have his own series later this year.

Adrian Furnham

Professor Adrian Furnham was educated at the London School of Economics where he obtained an MSc Econ., and at Oxford University where he completed a doctorate (DPhil) in 1981. Previously a lecturer in Psychology at Pembroke College, Oxford, he is now Professor of Psychology at University College London.

He has written over 500 scientific papers and 38 books including Culture Shock (1994), The New Economic Mind (1995), Personality at Work (1994), The Myths of Management (1996), The Psychology of Behaviour at Work (1997), The Psychology of Money (1998), The Psychology of Managerial Incompetence (1998), Personality and Social Behaviour (1999), The Dark Side of Behaviour At Work (2004) & Management Myths (2004)

Adrian Furnham is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and is ranked the second most productive psychologist in the world since 1980. He is on the board of a number of international journals, as well as the board of directors of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences. He is also a founder director of Applied Behaviour Research Associates (ABRA), a psychological consultancy.

He wrote a regular column in the Financial Times and HR magazine and is a regular contributor to Management Today, BBC radio and television. Adrian currently writes regularly for the Sunday Times & The Daily Telegraph.

An engaging and amusing speaker, he addresses corporate audiences on the psychology of management, corporate culture, leadership and teams, management incompetence, the role of HR within an organisation and the future of work.

our speakers

Collectively and individually, we have a breadth of business experience, gathered from our own executive and managerial experiences, and from our work across industry sectors and at all organisational levels, from front line staff to Executive Boards.

We combine this expertise and experience with a commitment to deliver on our aim - to help businesses maximise their human capital with demonstrable results and individuals to maximise their potential through our range of assessment, development, coaching and mentoring techniques.

Our depth of knowledge in our areas allows us to provide you with true expertise and if we know we can’t give you the leading thinking in any area then we’ll say so. The breadth of our business experience means that we help you to apply market leading techniques and knowledge to the context in which you operate, ensuring that it actually works for you and will continue to drive improvement long after we’ve delivered our contribution.

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