The CXO Summit Insights: Day One, Strategy

Day one of our CXO Summit opened with a keynote speech to over 500 attendees from Chief People and Sustainability Officer at BizClik Media, Stacy Green. 

“Leadership can be an extremely lonely place,” says Stacy. “You're expected to have a clear vision, make difficult decisions, inspire people and stay calm, even before your first coffee of the day.”

Bringing together leaders across departments and sectors, the inaugural summit saw lively Q&As and keynotes, featuring 50+ speakers, with topics ranging from AI in Marketing, the Leadership and Strategy Summit and of course Financing a Sustainable Future. 

Stacy’s words resonate through the packed theatre full of leaders; in finance, HR, marketing and business.

Leadership and Strategy Summit  

The Leadership and Strategy Summit was first to follow the keynote address. 

Guest speakers include Mike Burnett, Partner at the Alexander Group, Dr Shaady Harrison, Executive Advisor, Kate Adams, Non-Executive Director at ParalympicsGB and Jess Cruse, CEO of Voxa. The speakers joined moderator and host Matt High on the stage for a discussion on the fundamentals of leadership, clarity and the pace of change. 

Dr Shaady has experience as an A&E doctor, and now works as an executive advisor for FTSE 250 businesses. 

She notes on the stage that in the c-suite, there can be some comparison to the activity seen in the c-suite. Using her background in psychology, she tackles the elephant in the room: AI. 

Dr Shaady opens the topic about AI: “I’m really interested in the brain behind AI and the neuroscience behind what’s going on. How does it matter? Why does it matter? And there’s two reasons why it really matters. The first is that AI is essentially a synonym for uncertainty.” 

No longer able to ignore the technology, AI is on every business leader’s radar, as the panel discussed how leaders are approaching the uncertainty around it. 

Dr Shaady’s background in psychology comes through as she explained how the body interprets uncertainty as danger; low-level anxiety build and affects individual behaviour.

This shifts focus onto immediate problems, in place of the bigger picture. “AI is shaking up what being valuable as a human in the workplace means” says Dr Shaady. 

Mike concurs, noting that: “So much has changed and it will only continue to accelerate”

Shaady: “We need to be able to see the bigger context and to see what’s more important than just what’s happening now. That’s the basis of creativity, innovation, all of the things that matter.”

Uncertainty and the pace of change 

Kate Adams, Chair of the Paralympics, explains the impact on the younger generation. In the last year she has worked with 42 interns, from around 20 countries between the ages of age 16 to 37. “People care about values,” she says. 

The panel went on to discuss that in a chaotic hospital emergency department, team performance relies heavily on whether the leader reacts with visible stress or maintains composure. 

Projecting genuine calm requires self-compassion and honest self-awareness regarding one's own stress levels. 

Jess Cruse, CEO of Voxa, notes that to protect her productivity, she ensures that she has no meetings before 10AM. “I’m managing my cognitive workload,” she explains. “We need to stay calm and it’s our priority.”

Key takeaways from the panel

After a lively explanation into insights regarding pace of change, the continuing engine of transformation and ensuring that productivity and humanity remain the focus, the panel concludes with essential takeaways for numerous c-suite executives. 

Jess notes that humanity should take precedence: “people need human beings. If we’re going to AI more, we’re automating. If we’re going to screen more, our leaders need to be human.”

Essentially, what do those leaders look like?

It comes with the realisation that much like capital, there is a finite number of resources to consider. While the classic answer may be that time is a finite resource, the panel brought forward another important contender: attention. “Attention is finite. That’s just a fact” Dr Shaady explains.

Kate concludes that her network of CEOs are working on personal resilience. “We only have so much capacity as individuals. So where we do now see so much more overload, how are you kind of collectively leading?”

Emphasising the point that time and attention are finite, Mark explains that “surrounding yourself with the right team, the right people, empowering them, that’s going to be the key, because there’s just not enough time in the day.”

Thank you to our sponsors at the inaugural CXO Summit: Alexander Group, HiBob and Malt.