Guest Speaker Presentation

Dr Kevin Money, Associate Professor at Henley Business School and Director of the John Madejski Centre for Reputation. Cognosis worked with Kevin on the development of our Edge research, where his role was to ensure our research was academically rigorous without losing sight of the need for practical relevance. In addition to his work with Henley, Kevin is also a Fellow of the Sunningdale Institute, a Chartered Psychologist, a member of the British Society of Clinical Hypnosis and a licensed NLP practitioner.

One of the main themes of Kevin’s talk was that of conflict and how we can turn conflict from being dysfunctional to effective and the practicalities of doing this. He also considered the importance of belonging and how this affects conflict between groups.

Listen to highlights of Kevin's presentation

A key focus during the event was the ability of leaders and leader teams to manage challenge so that organisational performance is maximised.
In EDGE2 we found that where managers say their organisation actively encourages challenge, they report far higher (+30%) satisfaction with their strategy and far higher confidence in their business performance. And we also know from EDGE1 that when managers feel good about their organisation’s strategy, they are far more likely to make it happen.

The very nature of challenge in strategy-making means that if you are challenging, you’re involved. If you’re actively involved you’ve invested a bit of yourself- your mental and emotional energy- in the strategy. This means that you’re likely to be more committed to the outcome and more focused on making the strategy happen.

The flip-side of this is that where challenge is missing or poorly managed, its benefits are completely lost. The biggest victim is ‘missed opportunities’- failure to seize and capitalise on opportunities can make the difference between good and great performance, or in tough times surviving or hitting the wall. ‘Low challenge’ means lower efficiency: less realistic strategies, poorer execution and higher risks.

Click above to see selected slides from the presentation (.pdf)

Click above to download selected stimulus material from the breakfast pack(.pdf)