Making Waves Wavelength Leadership

Wavelength spoke to Oke Eleazu, former UK CEO at insurance unicorn ManyPets, on why so many businesses think ‘good enough’ is acceptable when it comes to delivering the customer experience. How to get the people in your organisation to really care about and prioritise CX, from getting the basics right, to putting the customer at the very heart of a business, and why innovating around great customer experience is key to making more money and building a long-term, sustainable business.

He also talks about why leadership is all about relying on other people, how he creates high-performing teams, and why looking for failures on a person’s CV is the most important thing! 

Zoe Scaman, Founder of strategy agency Bodacious, and former Global Head of Strategy at Ridley Scott, is a renowned thought-leader and speaker on AI, Fandom, The MultiPlayer Brand, and the intersections of frontier technologies (such as the metaverse, AR & VR), business and entertainment.

During this episode Zoe chats about her career and how she came to found her own strategy agency, the importance of her own ‘Personal Boardroom’, how creation is becoming play, the impact of AI on film companies, the rise of fandom, the intersection of gaming and AI, the advent of The Multiplayer Brand and how brands like NIKE are leveraging this, and much more.

Hear from Wavelength’s co-founder Adrian Simpson in conversation with the hugely experienced Silicon Valley-based Chief People Officer Colleen McCreary, who has worked at the likes of Credit Karma, EA, Microsoft, Vevo and Zynga during her career.

Hear as Colleen talks about the traits that are most important as a leader; courage, empathy, curiosity, not being afraid to learn, and of her “3 Cs."

Find out why Colleen is not the CEO of happiness, why she feels it’s so important to be externally aware as a leader, of how she recruits for senior leadership positions, of the importance of empathy as leader and how she ‘teaches’ that to leadership colleagues.

Join us as Wavelength associate Liz Mosley welcomes Declan Ronayne to the Wavelength Making Waves podcast show.

Declan shares insights into his spectacular career in retail, culminating in his role as CEO at Woodie’s, Ireland’s leading DIY home and garden chain, and the retail arm of FTSE 250 business Grafton Group.

Listen as Declan shares personal leadership insights from his career, in particular his work to totally transform Woodie’s. He speaks about how he created a culture of trust, and how they built Woodie’s to become a truly great place to work.

Think personalised birthday cards, Woodie’s Oscars, caring about your staff, doing things no other retailer does, their focus on community work, of creating team spirit, the importance of truly excellent communication, the role of a CEO to inspire their people, to listen to their people and customers, to understand what’s going on on the ground, and to make things happen. But importantly, that a CEO “should never be busy".

“Keep out of the weeds”, “Be personal”, “your job is culture, setting the tone”, and “use your powers of persuasion rather than direction".

Wavelength Associate Liz Moseley speaks with Peter Pritchard, former Group CEO at Pets At Home, and Robert Kent, former Chief Data Officer at Pets at Home about how they survived and went on to transform the business post-pandemic.

Peter and Rob share their personal experiences on leading through Covid, that 'tumbleweed moment' when their business just halved, and how "narrowing your field of vision during a crisis is critical to success. We didn’t let our focus go further than a day!"

They share how they persuaded their people to come to work when they were scared. “If people didn’t feel safe when coming to work, then we had no business. So we put ALL our energies into our people."

Hear them talk about their focus in 7 key priorities (and none were commercial!), which guided them for 18 months.

Together, we explore how data insights and predictions allowed them to see customer trends before anyone else and react, for example, their puppy and kitten club boom at the start of the pandemic.

Peter explains "The importance of recognising how life looked for all our colleagues was the most powerful thing we did.” That led to the leaders giving their people the trust and autonomy to find all 3000 new employees needed to set up a new £90m distribution centre right in the middle of the pandemic.

Hear as Peter explains the huge value of showing kindness to their people in a unique way - creating a Colleague Hardship Fund of £1m - a true GAMECHANGER for Pets. “We showed that we give and we return."

Theirs is a story of running a business on a moral compass, of doing the right thing by colleagues, of the importance of over-communication with daily videos to calm fears, of staying focused, of letting yourself get it wrong.

Robert talks about “not doing data for data’s sake.” They ensured they understood where’s the value was going to be created - for their customers, colleagues and then for the overall business. Find out how they harnessed the power of ‘Little Data' and how it drove growth, through personalisation, prediction and anticipation of future needs.

What you’ll get from this podcast is a sense of real leadership humility. No buzzwords. Of leaders who believe in "keeping it real and taking everyone with you". Of servant leadership, keeping the organisation sensible and kind, and how "culture is your primary responsibility as a CEO."

Wavelength’s Adrian Simpson speaks to Q Hamirani, Airbnb’s former Global People Leader, about the culture and values of Airbnb, how they focus relentlessly on embedding those values across the entire business and how they are part of the DNA of the organisation.

Did you know that every candidate at Airbnb has to go through two core values interviews?

And if you fail one of those two core values interviews you cannot get through the interview process!

Q also shares what he thinks are the best interview questions to ask, to find out if candidates are really the right person for the role, including talking about failure as part of learning.

Adrian delves into how Airbnb get the balance right between attracting people who are a good culture fit for the organisation, whilst ensuring they recruit a strong, diverse team. It’s not solely about having a diverse group of candidates, but also about having a diverse hiring panel.

Hear how they re-wrote the playbook on 'how to do layoffs' with respect and empathy at the toughest of times, when they were forced to make huge layoffs following COVID. From one-on-one conversations for all those who were laid off, to demonstrating accountability from Brian Chesky in in-person meetings, to offering 12 months of healthcare coverage, to creating a new recruiting a platform to support their people in finding new jobs. It didn’t matter what the ’norm' was. It was all about building their own play-book, pushing boundaries and doing things that hadn’t been done before.

Q shares his personal experiences at Airbnb, why he believes that both remote and office-based working will always exist.

Find out about the introduction of Airbnb's all-inclusive Digital Nomad Programme - which became the essence of their Live and Work Anywhere programme.

Adrian and Q also discuss how to drive connectivity in a virtual world and the importance of intentional connectivity - whether that’s through in person or virtual events.