Contributors

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Co-host

James Lawther

James is a business improvement practitioner with extensive experience across various industries, sectors and disciplines.

He is a problem solver with a talent for getting to the heart of the issue. James has a history of using data, analysis, and improvement techniques to develop creative solutions to complex, expensive and emotive business problems.

James is also the author of the critically acclaimed book Managed by Morons. (His Mum liked it).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jameslawther/
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Co-host

Jimmy Barber

Jimmy has led organisations as both a chief operating officer and board member.


He has a direct, authentic, and articulate style that engages and influences people at all levels, from front-line teams to the Treasury Select Committee. Jimmy has a proven track record of excelling and delivering outstanding results across a variety of industries, challenges, and disciplines.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimmybarber/

Guests

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Adrian Swinscoe

Described as an experimental CX thought leader and visionary, Adrian Swinscoe is a best-selling author, Forbes contributor, speaker, investor, advisor and aspirant CX Punk. 

He has been growing and helping develop customer-focused large and small businesses for over 25 years now. 

His clients have included brands such as Adobe, Apple, Cancer Research UK, Costa Coffee, the UK Gov’s Crown Commercial Service, ING, Intercontinental Hotel Group, KFC, KPMG, ING, Kramp, Lloyds, Harper Collins, Médecins Sans Frontières, Megger, Microsoft, Nespresso, NowTV, Olympus, Pearson, Philips, Sky, Talk Talk and Zoom as well as numerous tech vendors and many smaller and medium-sized businesses.

Adrian is a frequent writer, podcaster and speaker on all things related to customer service and experience. 

He published a best selling book in 2016 called How to Wow: 68 Effortless Ways to Make Every Customer Experience Amazing (Pearson).

http://uk.linkedin.com/in/adrianswinscoe

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Alex Alexander

Alex is an internationally experienced CPTO/CTO who has led diverse global technology teams for major companies. He has led seven technology transformations, achieving top-quartile performance and accelerating profitable growth. Starting in software development, Alex rose to head of Retail Banking technology at a leading UK internet startup bank. He later co-founded an eCommerce consultancy and led iconic CTO interim roles for 8 years.

August 2023, Alex founded XOOTS, an innovative AI tech startup with an award winning AI powered talent screening / assessment platform called TALENT-X and PRODUCTIVITY-X, which enables companies to measure and improve their productivity using AI.

Alex’s previous executive positions include:

  • Group Chief Product and Technology Officer at Adevinta
  • Group Chief Technology Officer at Emirates Group
  • Group Chief Technology Officer at YOOX NET-A-PORTER GROUP
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-alexander-xoots/

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Amanda Gilbert

Amanda is an individual and team coach and learning facilitator. She works with leaders in successful and progressive organisations, supporting them in developing their leadership styles and building a cultural environment that facilitates high performance. Amanda creates a safe space for people to make sustained and purposeful changes by helping them explore the issues that help or prevent them from achieving their goals.

Amanda adopts a positive psychology approach and draws on emotional intelligence principles. Her clients describe her as an ‘empathetic provocateur’ who supports and challenges them to move beyond self-imposed limits and achieve their professional and personal goals.

With over twenty years of experience leading Organizational Development strategy, Amanda has worked with leaders across several industry sectors. She has worked at all levels, including the C-suite, high-potential future leaders, and early career talent.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-gilbert-6784371/

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Bernie Smith

Bernie Smith coaches businesses to develop meaningful KPIs and present their management information in the clearest possible way to support good decision-making. 

As owner of Made to Measure KPIs he has worked with major organisations including HSBC, UBS, Lloyd’s Register, Credit Suisse, Sainsbury’s Bank, Scottish Widows, Tesco Bank, Yorkshire Building Society and many others.

Previously, Bernie led teams delivering operational improvement in FTSE 100 companies using Lean and Six Sigma approaches. This took him to the US to help paper makers, Finland, to make olefins and Wrexham to package cheese.

Bernie lives in Sheffield, UK, with his wife Liz, two children and some underused exercise equipment.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/berniesmith/

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Dawn Wray

Dawn is a Gestalt therapist and co-founder of The Listening Collective. Before becoming a therapist, she worked as an operations director for a financial services company.


She believes organisations work best when the people and teams they are part of work well. Focusing on ‘individual development’ isn't enough; we also need to pay attention to what goes on between us and the environments we create. This means embracing complexity and acknowledging that sometimes, what we want may not be measurable with a number.

The Listening Collective is all about helping people thrive at work, whether individually or in groups. Dawn is passionate about the idea that work is just a part of life. When people have a safe, confidential space to talk through what’s happening, they can show up more authentically and perform better.

In addition to her work at The Listening Collective, Dawn runs a private therapy practice.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawnswray/

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Frank Devine

Frank specialises in creating a continuous improvement culture from the bottom-up. This deepens and accelerates employee engagement and enablement, systematically develops continuous improvement capability at all levels and overcomes resistance to change.

 

He also has developed a comprehensive system of leadership development (The Higher Purpose/Cathedral Model) to equip leaders to create and sustain high levels of engagement and enablement.

 

He has trained senior leaders and internal change champions in organisations such as DePuy Johnson & Johnson, Rolls-Royce, Coca Cola, GSK, GKN, Seagate Technology, Lake Region, Bacardi and Boston Scientific. He contributed to the ‘getting buy-in’, employee engagement, leadership and coaching aspects of every year of Cardiff’s Lean Systems MSc (LERC). When this migrated to Buckingham he continued in that role and also delivered these topics on a number of programmes at Warwick’s WMG.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankdevine54/

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Graeme Rainbird

Helping people and organisations to be the best they can be is Graeme’s passion. With over 25 years of consultancy experience in leadership and team development, cultural change, organisational development and conflict management, he has worked with clients internationally across many sectors.


Graeme’s own words, his core expertise includes:

  • Executive team building:
  • Leadership development
  • Culture change
  • Facilitation and design
  • Individual coaching


Graeme’s starting point is a profound belief in people and an unfailing sense of possibility in what they can achieve. “We are all driven by our passions and peculiarities, striving to make a difference, in our own deeply personal and endlessly fascinating ways!”

https://www.linkedin.com/in/graemerainbird/

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Hugh Alley

Hugh Alley is an author and consultant. He divides his time between coaching senior operational leaders in continuous improvement, training front-line leaders in core supervisory skills, and designing industrial facilities.

By training, he is an industrial engineer. He has run three manufacturing and distribution firms and a department in a government agency. He has taught skills to over 1,000 front-line leaders. He has written two books: Becoming the Supervisor: Achieving Your Company’s Mission and Building Your Team and The TWI Memory Jogger.

He speaks frequently about supervision, quality, lean manufacturing and Toyota Kata. From his home near Vancouver, Canada, he helps clients across North America.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hughalley/

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James Carrier

James discovered his love of helping managers, leaders and teams to grow and develop part way through his career as a chartered accountant. He has spent the last decade working with teams, leaders and managers across the profit, not-for-profit and public sector to help them become better at what they do.

His core focus is helping organizations develop truly human-focused leaders and managers who create great places to work and who unlock the potential of their employees.

 

Sign-up to James' People-Shift Newsletter

https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-c-74b0a115/

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Patricia Brooks

Patricia is an independent consultant and business owner with almost 4 decades of experience working in large corporations managing large-scale change initiatives. She has worked across many sectors, including telecommunication, NHS, banking and Energy.  She has run several successful businesses, winning multiple awards, specialising in training, leadership development and transforming culture. 

After struggling to stand out and demonstrate her true value, Patricia set up her company Geneva Pearl, where she works with individuals unlocking potential by coaching them to recognise and leverage their superpowers for maximum performance and a more fulfilled life. She also partners with business leaders and teams to create the very best environments and accelerate performance. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/workplace-culture/

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Rachael Edmondson-Clarke

With over two decades of experience mastering practical leadership psychology, Rachael empowers leaders, invigorates teams, and drives transformative outcomes.

Rachael is a certified Coach, and practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming® and MBTI®, she has a Masters in Marketing and Management, and a proven record as a trusted performance consultant for high-profile brands spanning seven, eight, and nine figures. She is also an international speaker and current President of the Professional Speaking Association UK & Ireland.

Rachael has helped countless people change their behaviour to get the results they want.

https://linktr.ee/RachaelEdmondsonClarke

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Rob Wilson

Rob has spent his career leading and transforming large-scale service operations for companies such as Aviva, RAC, Marsh, and Hyperoptic.

During the latter stages of his career at Aviva, Rob became Systems Thinking Director, responsible for leading a team of internal consultants charged with implementing Systems Thinking as a way of thinking and working across Aviva’s global businesses. He has worked with teams worldwide, from Hong Kong and Singapore to France and Italy, helping frontline teams and senior leaders think differently about how they run their operations—delivering £millions in cost savings and improving CX along the way.

He lives in Norfolk with his family and is an avid Norwich City supporter.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwilsonservice-economics/

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Seán Keane

Seán is the MD and co-founder of Service Economics. He’s led, grown and sold CX technology and consulting businesses, and has a strong background in Op Model design, technology and process. He’s led complex programmes and teams for companies like Davies Group, Ember and Capgemini on behalf of brands like RSA, Tesco, BUPA, The British Council, Thames Water, Disney Channel and HMRC.

He’s a certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), PRINCE2 qualified and practitioner of Systems Thinking based methods. He’s also pioneered the development of Digital Twins for Organisations (‘DTO’) in enterprise applications for Operating Model, Process & IT programmes.


https://www.linkedin.com/in/seankeane/

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Steve Shutts

Steve joined the charity Astriid in 2018, working with the charity's founder, his brother David. Initially as CEO, more recently as Ambassador, his main duties involved driving the charity's membership through message amplification whilst forging relationships with businesses that are keen to employ people with energy limiting conditions. 
 
Astriid helps individuals with long term health conditions get back into work. Their support extends to those who have a range of conditions including energy limiting chronic illnesses; physical disabilities; neurodiverse conditions and cancer. The Charity is championing the needs of its community – delivering research, consulting and training services for employers.
 
They help candidates by supporting them with coaching, training and specialist resources; providing state-of-the-art recruitment tools, to match candidates with employers and using raising awareness of and championing the ‘invisible talent pool’.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-shutts-9470471/

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