Meet the CEO from Positive Momentum

Hosted by Positive Momentum

BusinessInterviews guests

Website RSS feed LinkedIn YouTube

Episodes

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-GB

About the show

The podcast that takes you inside the minds of CEO's of organisations large and small. Why do people want to become CEO's, how do they really spend their time and how might you become a CEO? Learn all this and more direct from leaders living the CEO experience right now.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 27, 202653 min

E89: Paul Pomroy, CEO Warner Hotels

Guest: Paul Pomroy, CEO of Warner Hotels Host: Matt Crabtree Show notes From the Golden Arches to country house hotels: Paul Pomroy on accountability, trust and writing your story before your strategy Paul Pomroy spent 28 years at McDonald's. He started in finance, moved into strategy, ran the UK and Ireland business as CEO and then took on a global role. Two and a half years ago he joined Warner Hotels, the UK's adult-only hotel group, which has 18 hotels and is backed by Blackstone. He rebuilt the leadership team from scratch and has led a brand transformation since. In this episode Paul tells Matt Crabtree why he loves being "the conductor of the orchestra", and how he protects his time. He holds two hours before 9am and two after 4pm, and keeps one day free every fortnight. He also talks through the two hardest calls of his career: closing McDonald's UK early in COVID, and selling the Russian business on what was effectively a handshake in Dubai. In this episode: Why sideways moves were the best decisions of his career How he decided to leave McDonald's after 28 years, and why he turned down brands he'd "spent his whole life beating" Getting 18 company-owned hotel GMs to think like franchisees The fortnightly "keep free" day, doorstepping and walk-and-talks COVID: closing early, looking after suppliers and franchisees, and handing back furlough money Leading through the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and the trust it took to hand over 900 Russian restaurants remotely Jean-Pierre Petit's challenge: write the story of what you've achieved in five years' time, then turn it into a strategy A 10-year coaching relationship, and why changing coaches isn't always the answer Building an exec team: T-shaped leaders, positive tension, no egos, and Fergie's "golden thread" Paul's top three tips for aspiring CEOs Chapters: 00:00 Intro 02:12 Why become a CEO? 04:44 From insolvency to 28 years at McDonald's 08:27 The jump to Warner Hotels 16:36 What's sacrosanct in Paul's diary 24:11 The toughest calls: COVID and Russia/Ukraine 30:26 Who has shaped how he leads 37:13 Why a 10-year coaching relationship works 41:38 Secrets of an effective exec team 46:11 The biggest change on the horizon 48:34 Top three tips for aspiring CEOs

August 25, 202634 min

E88: John Sills, The Foundation

Host: Paul Hudson, partner at Positive Momentum. John Sills is managing partner at The Foundation, a customer-led growth consultancy. He started out 25 years ago on a London market stall and has since worked with leadership teams shaping strategy, innovation teams designing propositions and frontline teams delivering experiences. That's a rare combination, and it shows in how he thinks. He was head of customer innovation at HSBC and now works with organisations including Sky, BP, Heineken, Bupa and UNICEF. He's the author of The Human Experience, which won Leadership Book of the Year, writes the CX Stories newsletter, and has been featured in The Guardian, the FT and Management Today. He also makes regular visits to complete strangers' homes to ask them very personal questions in the name of research. What we cover Why the CEO role happened: partly accident, but underneath it a need for autonomy and authenticity. Twelve years at HSBC, several rounds of redundancies, and the growing sense of being out of control of your own future. What authenticity actually means at work, and why organisations hire people for their perspectives and then gradually hammer those perspectives out of them. Why authenticity makes you a better leader: the team isn't second-guessing which version of you will turn up. The morning routine, borrowed from Maria Popova: a calm, consistent start as the bedrock of the day, and a golden period between 7 and 9 when the real thinking gets done. The book was written 7 to 8 every morning. The myth of speed: he deliberately takes the longer train. Fifteen minutes slower, but a seat the whole way, and he arrives on top of the day. His point on HS2: comfort, connectivity and Wi-Fi make a productive journey, not just speed. The hardest period: 2020, with a newborn arriving two months after lockdown, his mother terminally ill a hundred miles away, and 12–15 people to keep employed. Three lessons: listen to your body and know when you're about to fall over; be open with the team, because they feel your stress whether you tell them or not; and let it force you into funnel vision on the few things that matter. Influences: "You're everyone you've ever met", including, he admits, an eighty-year-old very drunk sailor in Marseille. The coaching lesson that stuck: know your people, know your people, know your people. Plus Ken Blanchard's situational leadership: shape your approach to them rather than making them fit you. His five leadership values, overheard by chance at a Wokingham branch from an area manager he met for 45 minutes and never saw again: be the best you can be, do what you say you're going to do, put yourself in the other person's shoes, seek to improve yourself, and have fun. Executive teams: open communication, no side conversations once everyone's agreed in the room, and what his colleague Charlie Dawson calls a shared sense of "burningness". A small gap at the top gets wider every month. AI: agentic rather than chatbots, and the risk of using the time freed up to become busier fools rather than more considered leaders. The responsibility question: Dame Irene Hayes at Hayes Travel, and an apprenticeship scheme central to the purpose of the business, not a nice-to-have. What AI means for frontline teams: if it takes 80–90% of interactions, the 10–20% left are the most complex, emotional and stressful. Your people move from low-value contacts to the moments that define the relationship. First Direct's hiring principle: recruit the smile and train the skill. Teaching skills is easier than ever; teaching empathy never gets easier. Why leaders too often leave frontline teams to run the gauntlet on policies set at head office. John's three pieces of advice, via his nan, who lived to 101 Laugh at the world. Don't take it all too seriously, or it will consume you. Drink whiskey every day. (His nan's rule, though he admits he's taken it to heart occasionally.) Be human. We spend a lifetime learning to be human, then walk into organisations and speak a language we'd never normally use. Quotes "Know your people, know your people and know your people." "You're everyone you've ever met." On AI freeing up capacity: "You end up becoming busier fools." "Recruit the smile and train the skill."

August 25, 2026Episode 8744 min

E87: Michael Herron - CEO of Atos Group

Michael Herron is CEO of Atos UK and Ireland, a global AI-fuelled technology services firm working across cybersecurity, cloud, digital applications, AI and workplace transformation. In the UK and Ireland, with nearly 30 years of engineering heritage, Atos focuses on the organisations that keep the country running: hospitals, the National Grid, government departments, financial services and utilities. Their stated mission is an agentic future — sovereign by design, secure by default. Michael has over 25 years in technology and services, starting somewhere unusual for a tech CEO: as a civil servant at the Ministry of Defence. From there to ICL, Fujitsu and CGI, before joining Atos as UK & Ireland CEO in January 2025. He's a dad of two boys, and closely interested in how humans and AI actually work together in practice. What we cover Why he took the job: running towards the fire, the chance to take a whole company on a journey, and the privilege of being CEO in the era of AI. Every CEO he's worked for had the day job plus one defining thing — the tech boom, the crash, Brexit, the pandemic. On his watch, it's AI. Joining a business that had publicly had a couple of hard years, turning over rocks daily, and finding nothing terminally broken Nudge theory as an operating method — and why the size of a nudge is relative to where the business is starting from Work-life priorities , not balance: the non-negotiable first cup of tea, the 12-to-1 running slot his EA Katie guards with her life, the strict two-evening-events-a-week rule, and the running club he takes different employees out with Nature versus nurture in leadership — he's finally off the fence, and puts himself at 70/30 Learning as much from awful leaders as from brilliant ones The man who gave a 22-year-old with serious imposter syndrome a chance: "I don't need you to know anything about IT, but I can see what you do with people" Building culture with outside help, and why it took nine months to land 12 winning behaviours — you can't rush culture His success mantra: 40% people, 30% culture, 20% strategy, 10% luck. A brilliant strategy with average people won't get there; a half-decent strategy with brilliant people will be fine. Surrounding yourself with strong people, and then playing them in the right position — including admitting he got that wrong once and fixed it What people-first leadership looks like in practice: sitting down with people on walkabouts (which drives his team crazy, because he finds out what's really going on), stripping the graphs out of all-hands calls, handwritten notes posted to people's homes Holding the line on behaviour: "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" Agentic AI: mixed human-and-agent teams today, though not yet at scale; why regulation and ethics need to keep toe-to-toe with the technology; and the three columns of AI's employment impact the press tends to ignore — roles replaced, roles evolved, roles created that didn't exist six months ago Doing the right thing for the client even when it cannibalises revenue — and why that tends to come back as a bigger piece of work Michael's three pieces of advice for aspiring CEOs Use your network and do your due diligence. It's not for the faint-hearted, and not everyone will want it once they understand it. Prioritise resilience — physical and mental fitness both. Take the job very seriously, but not yourself. Lead with EQ. The higher you go, the more your EQ needs to match or exceed your IQ.

August 25, 202631 min

E86: Jenny Burns, CEO of Magnetic

Jenny Burns is CEO of Magnetic, a business that helps organisations unlock growth through human-centred innovation, strategy, design and delivery. Like Positive Momentum, Magnetic is a B Corp. Her career spans 25 years in big, complex organisations — WH Smith, Telefónica O2, Centrica British Gas, RSA Insurance and Barclays — and she and Paul go back to their RSA days together. She's a keynote speaker and facilitator, hosts the Human AI series in London and New York, writes The Accidental CEO, and is a Fulham fan. What we cover Why the CEO job was accidental — and how being told she'd never get there became the fuel Loving the work: why work-life balance looks different when you genuinely enjoy the job, and why pressure doesn't tip into stress Hiring for the culture you actually run: framing problems rather than directing, and being honest in recruitment about an environment with few frameworks and a lot of empowerment Adult conversations when someone isn't flourishing — and why that isn't about talent Courage in leadership, and the risk conversation with regulated clients: financial services says it can't take risks, while healthcare is life-or-death and still innovates Selling Magnetic two years ago and buying it back four weeks before recording — a bold, personally costly call The hardest part of the job: people decisions in a business where you hired every single person, and why Magnetic has an alumni who still come back for the annual book launch Why talented people leaving a small business isn't failure Retail as a leadership apprenticeship: store manager at 19, 60 part-time staff, around £5m turnover, and learning early that motivated employees drive what goes through the till Building executive teams: knowing your own gaps at 50, diversity of thought as non-negotiable for an innovation business, and senior women working three or four days a week Women in business: from a gender-balanced retail career to rooms full of white men at Barclays Capital; why board quotas helped but executive teams are still where the gap sits Why AI needs a female voice — bias built in from past data, and the human-centred leadership the transition will demand The AI adoption inversion: consumers moved first this time, businesses are catching up, and the tension between what people use at home and what's authorised at work The blind spot: CEOs and CTOs obsessing over back-office efficiency while missing that customers now discover brands in a chat window rather than a search engine or a shop GLP-1 weight-loss drugs quietly disrupting food, retail and how we socialise Jenny's three tips for aspiring CEOs Get the right team around you — the role can be lonely, so build trust, and run it as a team rather than a series of one-to-ones. Never underestimate the time communication takes. The formal moments matter less than the informal ones — you're on stage even when you're making a cup of tea. Never take yourself too seriously. You're never the smartest person in the room, and no one wants a boring CEO.

June 30, 2026Episode 8538 min

E85: Helen Pain, CEO at Royal Society of Chemistry

Helen Pain, CEO of the Royal Society of Chemistry, reflects on three decades at one organisation, what it really means to lead through a crisis you didn't see coming, and why the secret to an effective exec team isn't talent - it's alignment. A thoughtful conversation about purpose, protecting your Saturdays, and why the CEO role might not be what you think it is; with Positive Momentum Partner, Julie Heneghan.

June 11, 2026Episode 8435 min

E84 : Rob Davies, CEO of BCN Group

Rob Davies, CEO of BCN Group, gets honest about imposter syndrome, the human cost of growth, and what it really takes to lead when the business you've built is being disrupted by the very technology you sell. A candid conversation about alignment, AI, and why the hardest moments in leadership are rarely the commercial ones.

February 9, 2026Episode 8335 min