A very cultured gathering
23/01/2025
Yesterday Leasing World was invited to attend the LTi Technology Solutions Leadership Live Event at London’s Albert Hall. As host Robert Taylor (LTi’s UK Managing Director) observed, it’s a building we associate with culture and the theme of the day’s event was, fittingly, Culture is Critical to Business Success.
The venue may have been impressive but the international line-up of speakers was even more so: swimmer and Olympic medallist Jazz Carlin talked about the importance of strong culture and supportive environment for enabling people to perform at their best, and was followed by Della Wolfe, co-founder of The Curve Group, who posed the question “Culture — who truly owns it in an organisation?” (and immediately went on to say “spoiler alert — it’s everyone!”). Both commanded the stage, but we’d like to give a particular shout-out to Jazz Carlin since we were told this was her first time playing the speaker role at an event of this type; you would have imagined she had been doing it for years.
Ty Francis MBE went on to discuss why companies should focus on corporate culture, how to measure it, and what he called “the generation gap conundrum”, backing up his points with a dazzling array of international data. As a very rough summary, there are bigger differences between generations than you might have expected, in terms of their approach to brand loyalty and ethics, and a good HR team would do well to review Ty’s speech.
On a typically chilly January day, anything labelled as a “Fireside Chat” sounded extremely welcome. Alas, no doubt for health and safety reasons, there was no fireplace on the stage, but Rory Underwood MBE DL sat down with friend and colleague Ian Filby, Non-Executive Chairman at Pinewood Technologies and former CEO of DFS, to discuss culture with some hilariously enacted examples of how great salesman might not necessarily be the most extroverted types.
We had been particularly looking forward to listening to the Industry Panel, moderated by Julie Warren, Marketing Director at Propel and with contributors including Jim Higginbotham, CEO of the NAFCB. Jen Martin, CPO of LTi and Francois-Xavier Roth of Invigors were on hand to provide their useful North American and European perspectives.
Feedback after the event was glowing as LTi had managed to fit a great deal into fast-paced event, including comments such as “inspiring to both listen to and take part in,” and “really energising” and “best Leadership Live by a country mile!” The concept of good culture starting at the top was explored in detail, and we heard an example of how anyone can in fact change the company’s culture. Ideally for the better…
Of course we’ll have a full report in the February edition of Leasing World, and in the meantime our thanks go to LTI Technology Solutions, sponsor Propel Finance and event partners Wingman, LRN Group and the Curve Group.
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