INTRODUCTION

After chairing one of the FT Forums’ gatherings in 2019, I watched the highly animated chat of the participants as they left and suggested to Mike Hepburn, FT Forums’ managing director, that the talks by business leaders and subsequent discussions at the FT Forums events contained enough material for a book. The result is Inside the Leaders’ Club: How Top ­Companies Deal with Pressing Business Issues.

Who is this book aimed at? Anyone who is, has been, or wants to be a leader and would like to learn from those who have already done the job. Drawing on the words of the FT Forums’ speakers – all of whom have kindly agreed to waive their anonymity under the Chatham House Rule – I have tried to lay out the biggest challenges facing leaders today. These range from how to manage diverse teams and a multigenerational workforce, to how to confront a corporate crisis, to the challenges of artificial intelligence and climate change.

I have woven the FT Forums’ events into a wider narrative that takes in reports from the Financial Times and other publications, along with my own thoughts based on 34 years of reporting on business for the FT and heading two of its editorial departments.

Much of this book was written during the lockdowns that accompanied the Covid-19 pandemic, which not only brought death and illness to millions worldwide, but also forced companies and organisations to re-­evaluate how they operated. The final stages of producing this book coincided with ­Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the suffering and destruction that followed.

The pandemic brought to the fore two themes that run through this book. The first is that leadership is about inspiring people to do things, rather than standing over them to ensure they are done. Those bosses who, in the past, relied on shouting, intimidation and forcing people into daily attendance at the office saw their management style blown away by the coronavirus crisis.

When, during the pandemic, people were forced to work at home for long periods, and when leaders couldn’t travel to the various outposts of their kingdoms, it became clear who the most effective leaders were: those who managed by setting goals and inspiring staff to achieve them – those who were enablers rather than enforcers.

The second theme in this book is the importance of listening to people on the frontline, whether at a supermarket checkout, a customer helpline or a truck delivery depot. Not only were they among the workers who kept our economies running; their closeness to the customer is a resource that leaders should draw on, and not only during a pandemic.

The war in Ukraine, accompanied by sweeping sanctions against ­Russia, confronted business leaders with geopolitical realities that an ­earlier ­generation of executives, cosseted by post World War II stability, had been able to ignore.

It will take years for the full consequences of the Covid-19 period to make themselves felt in the workplace. It has already prompted a ­rethinking of what the future of leadership is and what work means. With the help of the FT Forums’ speakers and reports from journalists around the world, I have tried to lay out in this book what that future might be.