Arun Chauhan, founder of Tenet, a specialist Compliance & Litigation law firm and recent winner of Boutique Law Firm of the year at The Legal Business Awards, talks about why his organisation has two purposes and the separate ways he discovered each of them, including the importance of paying attention to emotion in that process. He also shares his advice on key things to avoid when developing your strategy.

My guest is Asad Dhunna, Founder and CEO of The Unmistakables, a consultancy that works with organisations to create ‘inside out’ inclusion. Asad discusses the difference between a strategic journey and a quest, as well as sharing frameworks he has used to clarify their purpose and hone their strategy. He also talks about how he deals with the constant changes that can invalidate a strategy soon after it’s created.

CEO Simon Mitchell describes how Covid forced them to re-examine who they were and what they were doing in order to save their business, and how this put them on a path to realise their purpose in a new and more fundamental way – leading to faster growth, and some stunning commercial wins.

Kevin Craven, CEO of ADS, the UK trade association for the aerospace, defence, security, and space sectors shares with us the process he used to evolve their purpose and strategy to meet the challenges of an increasingly more complex environment. He also describes how and why they used external resources in the process, in addition to involving a significant proportion of their employees.

CEO Heidi Mottram of Northumbrian Water describes what happened when they decided to start over with a clean sheet of paper and co-create their purpose with their stakeholders. She also shares how their desire to be the industry leader resulted in the development of an industry-wide set of performance measures, so everyone can see how well they are doing – which in turn has reinforced Northumbrian Water’s ability to work across the business as a team.

CEO Mike Carragher describes how VHB has unlocked a sustainable future for their organisation, in part by weaving their purpose through all their communications and key events. He also discusses how they made clear choices in creating their long-term vision, choices which have helped their people understand what VHB is going to do and what they aren’t going to do – so all their people can self-navigate more.

You know, let's not just talk about, wow, we've built a wonderful road or we've built a new energy facility, you know, that gets people motivated to a certain point. But actually let's talk about the difference that this infrastructure's gonna make. So how many jobs is it gonna create? How much clean energy is it gonna provide? How many homes are we gonna power? How much congestion are we gonna remove? And actually that's when you really get people motivated and behind what it is we were trying to do.

CEO Sue Percy describes how CIHT created a strategy and purpose that gave them greater confidence and the ability to say no to things. She also shares how she was able to be ambitious, yet take her members with her.