Category: CEO

At our dinner events and breakfast briefings, conversations can cover a wide range of leadership related issues. We have collected and collated comments from the Chairmen, NEDs, CEOs and Investors that participated in these events in order to provide some real-world insights and anecdotes from current business leaders. The leadership issues we have selected from the many discussed reflect those mentioned more frequently, and include the importance of selfawareness and self-knowledge, team leadership, decision making, leadership styles, and the value of organisational culture.

The latest of Savannah’s series of Boardroom Lunches for Chairmen, CEOs and Investors across the Leisure & Hospitality sector, centred on the recent conversation Tim Clouting had with a senior exec in a successful, sizable global organisation, discussing the five strong years of consistent profit/share price growth of his organisation and the rightful plaudits coming the way of the CEO.

The CEO’s role has never been easy, and it doesn’t look like it will be getting easier any time soon. New entrants, digitisation, changing consumer buying patterns, new shareholders and profit warnings, being a CEO in today’s business environment requires high levels of resilience on both a personal level and within the organisation itself. What follows are lessons and insights picked up from some of the most successful players within the leisure and hospitality sectors, explaining how they’re reacting to a fast-changing world, and what their advice would be to other CEOs in a similar position.

Business leaders are under the spotlight from customers and boards to innovate, to adapt to the new norm and equip their organisation with the tools, skills, capabilities and products to survive in a world where competitors can emerge from unlikely places. One of the more significant shifts that we have seen is organisations becoming more open-minded about where their next leader is coming from, no doubt in an effort to remain relevant and ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving business world.

“Timing is everything” is a phrase we hear all the time. But how do you get the timing right? How do you become better at it, and how do you bring the elusive themes of “timing and luck” more firmly under your control? These questions became the focus of our discussion at a recent Savannah Boardroom lunch for senior executives.