Nicholas Barton
over 6 years ago by Nicholas Barton

Last week, The Barton Partnership held our 2nd annual Conference and Networking Event. The event was a huge success, with over 200 attendees representing Commerce & Industry, Financial Services, Consulting and Private Equity making it the largest Strategy/Transformation/M&A event in the UK.     

Our guest speaker this year was none other than Dame Kelly Holmes, one of Britain’s most recognised and admired athletes. Dame Kelly gave a motivational and hugely inspiring speech talking about her story - how she began her career at 17 as a Heavy Goods Vehicle Driver in the British Army, leaving to focus on Athletics 10 years later after reaching the rank of Sergeant. 

Dame Kelly spoke about the obstacles she has faced and overcome throughout her career emphasising the struggles with diversity, injury and mental health as well as what steps she put in place in order to reach the top. 

The five key takeaways we took away from Dame Kelly's speech were:

  • Set your sights on Gold, you have to aim high in order to succeed 

  • Break down your long-term goals into manageable actions from months, to days, to hours, to minutes

  • Getting the right team is critical, they must want to succeed in what they are doing as much as you do to get the very best out of them

  • There is an “i" in team because each individual in the team must have their own
    ambition in order for the team to be the very best

  • To beat your competition, you have to know your competition - their goals, their tactics and their ambitions

Nick Adlam also spoke at our event and raised two key points;

1.We can introduce you to other providers when we are not best placed:

a. Geographically –doing what we do outside our core Europe/New York markets

b. Beyond Strategy/Transformation/M&A – e.g. Finance, IT,  Legal, Tech

c. Specialist Consulting – e.g. Pricing, Complexity reduction, Salesforce effectiveness

2. Key themes based on what our clients are telling us:

a. Disruptive theft of talent

b. The creativity vacuum

c. Addressing diversity

d. Nimblicity is the “new normal”

We hope that everyone who attended thought the event was as insightful and interesting as we did and we hope to see you all for the 2018 Strategy Conference and Network Event.

In the meantime, if there is anything we can do to assist you with your hiring needs or even add value to your own career planning thought process, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at contact@thebartonpartnership.com. Search for strategy jobs in London or New York today.