Changing before you need to change
- Apr 10
- 3 min read
Reflections on organisational change from a morning of genuine, generous thinking, hosted in partnership with AMS, on what it really means to build organisations that hold steady when it matters most.
Recently, we gathered over 50 leaders from some of the world’s leading organisations for a morning that was anything but ordinary. Together with AMS, we created a space for the kind of thinking that rarely finds its way into a boardroom agenda - honest, rigorous, and deeply human.
The theme was organisational resilience. Not as a buzzword. Not as a slide deck. But as a living question: what does resilience really mean, and what does it genuinely demand of those who lead?
“Resilience is not one thing. It lives in culture, in behaviour - in how an organisation prevents problems just as much as how it recovers from them.” Professor David Denyer, Cranfield University
Professor David Denyer, a world-leading expert and Professor at Cranfield University, opened the morning with a quietly radical reframe. Resilience isn’t simply about bouncing back from adversity. It’s about building the conditions - the culture, the habits, the structures - that stop things from going wrong in the first place. It lives in prevention as much as recovery, in the everyday choices leaders make long before any crisis appears on the horizon.
From there, our speakers brought perspectives that no textbook could replicate.
The voices in the room
Gary Prout CGC
Decorated for extraordinary bravery in Afghanistan, Gary brought the room face-to-face with what leadership and decision-making under real pressure actually looks like. Not the sanitised version. The real one - where clarity of purpose and the trust of those beside you are the only things that hold.
Deniz Kayadelen
Five-time world champion ice swimmer, record-holder, and psychologist, Deniz challenged us to work with our discomfort rather than flee from it. Avoidance, she reminded us, is never the path to strength, and the leaders who build truly resilient cultures are those who’ve learned to sit with their own.
Hollie Pearne-Webb MBE ACMA CGMA
Hollie led GB Hockey to Olympic gold in Rio and scored the winning penalty herself. She spoke about what it takes to create the kind of trust and psychological safety where teams don’t just perform, they rise. The conditions for that, she made clear, are built long before the final whistle.
Gary Keogh
Drawing on decades of global leadership experience and deep academic study, Gary made a compelling case for psychological safety as the true foundation of high performance - individual and collective. Not a nice-to-have. A precondition.
The day was further elevated by a panel of senior leaders who brought refreshing honesty to what it means to lead through real turbulence.
Adam Streeter, Global Head of Culture at Primark, Rohan Mulvaney ChPP RPP, Head of Portfolio and PMO at EDF, Carol Frost, Global People Director at Johnson Matthey and Joe Dent, Chief People Officer at Princes Group, each shared their experiences of leading through turbulence with the kind of directness that makes the abstract feel achievable and the aspirational feel real.
We were proud to welcome over 50 guests from some of the world’s leading organisations including Allianz, Bank of America, Bank of England, Barclays, Bentley Motors, Government Commercial Agency, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Haulfryn, the LEGO Group, pladis Global, Standard Chartered, The AA, Virgin Experience Days, The National College, Allwyn UK, Amiqus, Arcadis, Bridge of Hope Careers, Clu, DIAL Global, Diverse Futures, Evelyn Partners, Evenbreak, evoke, RS, and many others.
More than 50 guests. One shared question. Countless honest conversations that went well beyond the agenda.
The question now isn’t whether your organisation needs to build resilience. It’s whether you’ll start before you have to. And whether you’ll be able to bring your people with you on that journey.
Because resilience is never built alone. It’s built through trust, through psychological safety, and through leaders willing to face their own discomfort first.
We look forward to continuing the conversation.
Interested in joining us for our next event? Get in touch with the AhaMo team at hello@ahamo.co.uk.
