Latest news with #SimonSinek
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Nordic Business Forum Confirms Full Speaker Lineup as Ticket Sales Top 7,000
Europe's leading business conference, featuring Rick Rubin, Simon Sinek, and Angela Ahrendts as headliners, is close to being sold out Main Stage at Nordic Business Forum 2024 in Messukeskus, Helsinki Audience at Nordic Business Forum 2024 in Messukeskus, Helsinki Helsinki, Finland, June 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- , Europe's leading business and leadership conference, returns to Helsinki on September 24–25, 2025. With 7,000 tickets sold and only 300 remaining, the event is set to be a sell-out. Senior business decision-makers are encouraged to secure their spots quickly before ticket prices increase on June 13. Held at Messukeskus in Helsinki, the Nordic Business Forum 2025 event will welcome more than 7,000 leaders and executives from over 40 countries. With the theme "Moving Forward', the conference will feature some of the world's most influential thinkers and doers in business and leadership. The final speaker was confirmed last week, which means that the speaker lineup is now complete. The following speakers will share their top insights on the topics of Strategic Foresight, Growth, and Organizational Culture: Rick Rubin: Legendary music producer will discuss bridging music and business innovation. Simon Sinek: Popular leadership visionary will focus on purpose-driven leadership for high-performing teams. Angela Ahrendts: Former Apple and Burberry executive will share insights on leading change through values. Jonah Berger: Wharton professor will unpack shifting consumer behaviors and lasting trends. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy: Acclaimed CEO will discuss cultural transformation with integrity. Milda Mitkuté: Vinted co-founder will share her journey in the secondhand economy. Diana Kander: Innovation expert will reveal how simple questions can lead to business breakthroughs. April Rinne: Global futurist will discuss how to embrace uncertainty as a leadership advantage. Howard Yu: IMD professor will offer strategies to develop future-ready organizations. Risto Siilasmaa: F-Secure founder will discuss strategic foresight as a business imperative. Gianpiero Petriglieri: INSEAD professor will talk about fostering cultures of freedom and belonging. Peter Hinssen: Innovation strategist will share ideas on turning disruption into a business advantage. Nordic Business Forum has a strong history of convening world-class thinkers, with past speakers including President Barack Obama, Al Gore, Malala Yousafzai, Steven Wozniak, Brené Brown, and Sir Richard Branson. The 2025 event continues this legacy, curating insights to help leaders progress amid hardship, disruption, and change. Quote from Nordic Business Forum Leadership:'This year's theme is more than timely, it's necessary,' says Priit Liiv, CEO of Nordic Business Forum. 'Leaders everywhere are grappling with uncertainty, the speed of change, and the need to grow responsibly. Our speakers will help them move forward with foresight, resilience, and purpose.' Media Accreditation:A limited number of media passes are available, granting access to the full conference experience, including catering, a media working space, and potential interviews with speakers and event guests. Media representatives can apply for in-person or online accreditation here. About Nordic Business Forum:Nordic Business Forum is Europe's leading organizer of business and leadership conferences. The company empowers leaders to change the world by delivering world-class content and encouraging global networks. Through its annual flagship event in Helsinki and other regional forums, the organization connects ambitious professionals with transformative ideas, people, and perspectives. Attachments Main Stage at Nordic Business Forum 2024 in Messukeskus, Helsinki Audience at Nordic Business Forum 2024 in Messukeskus, Helsinki CONTACT: Heli Hänninen Nordic Business Forum 044340050 in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Hospitality Net
2 days ago
- Business
- Hospitality Net
Connection Over Code: A Human-First Vision for Hotel Tech
Lately, it feels like nearly every conversation I have comes back to how fast AI is moving—and how easily we can get swept up in it. In an industry that thrives on personal connection, it's worth asking: What does all this tech actually do for the people who make hospitality what it is? Because here's the thing. Hotels don't run on code. They run on people. On housekeepers who notice the little things. On engineers who fix problems before guests know they exist. On frontline teams who deliver comfort, care, and calm when travelers need it most. In a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO, Simon Sinek spoke about the danger of over-automating what should remain deeply human. His point? AI may scale information, but it can't replace the nuance of human judgment, emotion, and care. Hospitality, more than any industry, lives in that nuance. So when we talk about technology—and especially AI—we can't afford to talk about replacement. We have to talk about reinforcement. Support. Empowerment. The role of tech in hospitality should be to help people do their jobs better—not make them feel like they're being replaced by a dashboard. We should be asking: Will this help someone be more present? Will it reduce noise, not add to it? Will it make space for more meaningful interactions? If we get it right, tech becomes the connective tissue—quietly linking people, teams, systems, and signals. It disappears into the background, letting humans do what only humans can: read the room, calm the tension, deliver delight. This isn't just about improving service—it's about protecting the experience of work itself. The best hospitality tech helps teams feel confident, clear, and connected. It strengthens culture. It reduces stress. It brings people back to the reason they chose this industry in the first place. Right now, many hotel teams are burned out. They're working short-staffed. They're trying to deliver excellence without the right support. Technology alone won't fix that—but thoughtfully applied technology can help. It can remove guesswork. Streamline handovers. Surface urgent needs. And when done well, it can restore a bit of joy to the job. This is the future I believe in. Not a world where AI takes over, but one where it helps us tune in more deeply. Where it handles the friction, so we can focus on the feeling. And that's the challenge—and opportunity—facing hospitality today: to keep evolving, but never lose touch. At Unifocus, we've embarked on this very journey. With the recent launch of XiQ—our reimagined guest experience platform—and the emergence of our new Communications pillar, we're laying the foundation for a future where technology works in service of connection. It's the start of something bigger: a hospitality ecosystem where insight, action, and alignment flow naturally—because people are at the center of it all. About Unifocus Unifocus is a global leader in workforce management technology, serving properties in 68 countries and 31 languages. Designed for hotels, Unifocus boosts hotel performance with intelligent analytics that automate labor budgeting and forecasting, delivering precise staffing levels and workloads by streamlining Planning & Scheduling, Time & Attendance, and Operations Management tools. Employees love the mobile app for seamless communication, with features like effortless shift swaps using the award-winning Shift Genius, and real-time prioritization of guest requests, housekeeping and maintenance tasks. Operational efficiency is accelerated with compliance alerts that allow managers to focus on what truly matters: maximizing guest satisfaction and fostering a productive, engaged workforce. Discover the future of hotel operations with Unifocus. Visit today.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Purpose-driven leadership drives growth—and these Fortune 500 titans prove it
Ultimate success cannot be engineered, argues author Simon Sinek, it derives from a team collectively knowing why they get up and go to work every day. Distinguishing between 'leaders' in a position of authority and 'those that lead,' Sinek revealed people follow the latter not because they have to, but because they want to—for their own sake. Only then can a team be inspired to deliver maximum effort and achieve the impossible. For the fifth year in a row, Fortune partnered with Indiggo to publish the ROL100®, a unique ranking that captures the ReturnOnLeadership® of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500. This ReturnOnLeadership® (ROL®) metric evaluates and quantifies key fundamentals previously not measured that are vital to mitigate risk and improve the chances for success when it matters most. 'We know how challenging it continues to be for leaders to navigate today's turbulent world. Each year we hear from CEOs and other executives that value the external measure of their corporate leadership performance,' Seth Verry, Indiggo's Chief Research Officer, tells Fortune. To calculate the ROL100 Ranking, Indiggo draws on publicly available information to provide an industry agnostic 'outside-in' view of Return On Leadership. Since some criteria is inherently qualitative in nature, it applies artificial intelligence to ensure consistency and objectivity when assessing its comprehensive data set. Purpose-driven leadership is strongly linked to business success. Although the ROL100 ranking does not directly use financial metrics like stock performance to calculate the ranking, companies at the top of the list consistently outperform those ranked lower in key areas such as revenue, profit, and growth. We're seeing this correlation year after year. No. 1 … Microsoft retook the top spot from Nvidia. It was followed by Nvidia (No. 2), Delta Air Lines (No. 3), Alphabet (No. 4), and Eli Lilly and Company (No. 5). $180,000 … the median EBITDA per employee of companies in the top 25 of the ROL100. By comparison, the median EBITDA of companies in the bottom 25 of the ranking is $44,000. +8.3% … the median three-year revenue growth of companies in the top 25 of the ROL100. The median three-year revenue growth of companies in the bottom 25 of the ranking is +5.1%, by comparison. Microsoft edges out Nvidia—barely. This year, Microsoft has reclaimed the No. 1 spot on the ROL100 from Nvidia, though both companies continue to lead the field when it comes to Corporate America's best leaders. Microsoft's return to the top reflects its consistent strength in driving strategic clarity, fostering leadership alignment, and executing with focused discipline across its sprawling business. Under CEO Satya Nadella's leadership, Microsoft has excelled in cultivating a growth mindset culture and encouraging innovation while maintaining operational excellence. The company's clear vision for cloud computing, AI integration, and enterprise solutions keeps its leadership team tightly aligned around priorities that drive long-term value. Meanwhile, Nvidia remains a formidable presence on the list, praised for its visionary leadership and agile execution in the fast-evolving semiconductor and AI chip sector. CEO Jensen Huang continues to guide Nvidia with remarkable strategic clarity, positioning the company as a trailblazer in GPU technology as well as AI training and inference. Nvidia's leadership team is highly aligned and focused, enabling rapid innovation cycles and market responsiveness that keep it at the forefront of its industry. Improving its rank by one notch this year to third place is Delta Air Lines, a fact its chief executive attributes to its corporate culture. 'For a hundred years, Delta leaders have put our values and our people at the forefront of everything we do,' says CEO Ed Bastian. 'So we know from experience that companies that consistently live their values also regularly outperform their competitors.' Health care and tech sit at the top. In the three previous ROL100 rankings, the health care industry consistently had the highest number of companies in the top 25. Last year, however, the technology sector surged ahead to claim the top spot. For the 2025 list, it was a tie: Both information technology and health care each represented 24% of the companies in the top 25. Forward-thinking leadership delivers real results. The correlation between financial success and a high ranking on ReturnOnLeadership is so strong that S&P Dow Jones Indices, a subsidiary of S&P Global, recently added a dedicated product for investors to track companies on Indiggo's list. Over the past five years, Indiggo's ReturnOnLeadership Index (+109%) has outpaced both the S&P 500 (+91%) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (+64%). 'This reinforces what we all know: how critical the leadership factor is to stock market performance,' Janeen Gelbart, CEO of Indiggo, tells Fortune. This story was originally featured on Sign in to access your portfolio
Fast Company
15-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How to ace almost any behavioral interview questions
You've made it past the recruiter and the first round of interviews. Now you're meeting with the hiring manager. They'll likely ask you a series of behavioral questions to evaluate whether you're a good cultural fit for the team. They'll also assess whether they believe you are up to the managerial and leadership challenges facing the role. Preparing for behavioral interviews can be nerve-wracking. The stakes are high, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed by all the possible scenarios they could throw at you. I've spent over a dozen plus years of preparing folks for interviews and talking to people on the hiring side. As a result, I've developed an approach to behavioral questions that will help you shine in the behavioral interview. It's all about ensuring that you start strong. The STAR framework and why it doesn't quite work Many people use the STAR framework to structure interview responses. This method helps candidates describe their experiences to illustrate desired competencies. Start with 'S' the Situation they faced, 'T' their Task, 'A' what Action they took, and 'R' the Result they achieved. Now, this framework does help you organize your thoughts and distill a story to illustrate your experience and competencies. Unfortunately, this approach fails rhetorically because it lacks a strong start. When you lead with situations or context before getting to the task, the interviewer has to wait too long for the payoff. You risk losing the interviewer before you get to the action and results. An interview is like any presentation, you have somewhere around 30 seconds to hook your audience. Starting strong means a clear, concise statement of value that captures what kind of leader or manager you are. It also provides the interviewer a blueprint of what to listen for in your response. How behavioral interviews work Behavioral interviews are based on the premise that past experience is a predictor of future performance. The questions are generally less about getting the 'right' answer. It's more about helping the interviewer understand your approach, how you think, how you relate to others, and your values. As one hiring manager told me, 'When a candidate explains how he or she thinks about solving a problem, I get a lot more insight into what it would be like to have them on my team than I do from them reciting the solution.' In my view, the STAR formula focuses too much on the story and not enough on the meaning. To borrow language from Simon Sinek's Golden Circle model for organizations, interview candidates who strictly adhere to the STAR approach focus too much on the 'what' and not enough on the 'how' or the 'why.' When you start your answer by naming the principles or values that guided your action, you get to the heart of the matter quickly. You also cue the interviewer on what to listen for as the story unfolds. How to prepare for behavioral interviews The STAR method is a good start to help you distill the narratives that illustrate your experience and competence. But to ensure that you have a strong start for each STAR story. Reflect on the foundational values that guided your actions. That might be empathy, accountability, collaboration, customer focus, data-driven decision-making, fairness, relationships, trust, or transparency. Articulating these principles will help establish what kind of leader, manager, or contributor you are. Examples of strong answers Once you've identified a set of 5–8 principles or values, you can use them to frame almost any answer. For example: Behavioral question #1 'Tell me about a time when you had to influence without authority.' 'Influencing without authority was a key part of my role at ABC Company. T here were three things I always tried to keep in mind: empathy for my cross-functional stakeholders, transparent communication, and relentless customer focus. On xyz project, as the product manager (situation) I needed to influence my engineering counterpart to commit to an aggressive timeline (task). I knew that her team was under a lot of pressure. I had a series of 1:1 conversations with her about the requirements. I made sure to listen with empathy so that I understood all her constraints (action). I also shared the potential customer impact of the feature. It turned out that her team had been expressing frustration about not feeling valued. So it was key that she could motivate her team to work on a more visible feature (action). We found some compromises and were able to land on a timeline that would be a stretch for her team but that she was excited about (result).' Here are some other examples of strong starts: Behavioral question #2 'What was a time when you failed?' 'First, let me start by saying that in order for a goal to be meaningful, it needs to be beyond what you've done before, and so there is always a risk of falling short. The key is to communicate to stakeholders as soon as I know we are going to miss, take ownership of the failure, and use it as an opportunity for learning. An example of this is when I led a team in product marketing at xyz . . .' Behavioral question #3 'How have you managed conflict within your organization?' 'Well, conflict is inevitable, and in my view, if it is handled with empathy for both participants while maintaining accountability for results, it can be an opportunity to learn more about each other and build trust and improve collaboration. The conflict I want to talk about was between someone who reported to me and someone on another team and was related to overlapping roles and responsibilities . . .' The importance of principles Once you have a strong list of principles, you can plug them into almost any behavioral question and nail the response. And if your interview is on video, you can write each of your values on a post and attach them to your monitor. This will act as a reminder to cue you during the interview. Then you can kick off any response with an articulation of your values and priorities. This will ensure that your interviewer gets a true sense not just of what you've done, but of how you approach problem-solving and what you stand for.
IOL News
08-05-2025
- Business
- IOL News
Beyond the bottom line: how to motivate, engage, and retain small business employees
For many young professionals today, a paycheck is no longer enough. Image: RF._.studio _ /pexels There was a time when a gold watch marked the end of a successful career. You joined a company, stayed loyal for decades, and were rewarded for your time – but not necessarily your impact. However, as leadership expert Simon Sinek pointed out back in 2023, that era is long gone. Today's workforce, especially Millennials and Gen Z, are not motivated by long-term promises or end-of-career rewards. Instead, they crave purpose, recognition, and work that reflects their personal values and ethics. Purpose over pay Gen Z and Millennials are redefining what success looks like in the workplace. Career growth is no longer tied to tenure or job titles, but to a sense of purpose and personal fulfilment. A recent HR Future article notes that 63% of Gen Z professionals consider growth opportunities as a key workplace factor – but this growth needs to be transparent, merit-based, and aligned with their values. These generations want to work for companies that do more than just generate profit. They're drawn to businesses that stand for something – whether that's sustainability, mental health advocacy, community upliftment, or ethical leadership. According to Human8, over 70% of Gen Z employees in South Africa expect brands and employers to contribute positively to society. The rise of human-centred workplaces The shift we're seeing is not just generational – it's human. The last few years have reminded us all just how much mental wellbeing and work-life balance matter. Flexibility, empathy, and emotional intelligence are becoming just as important as KPIs. We are now operating in what some call the 'Disconnect Economy' – a cultural response to digital overload and constant connectivity. People are opting out of always-on hustle culture in favour of intentional, human-focused living. For employers, this means offering flexibility, setting clear boundaries, and prioritising mental health initiatives is not a bonus – it's a business necessity. As leaders, we must ask ourselves: are we managing people, or are we empowering humans? The companies that build environments of trust, openness and psychological safety will have the edge. Recognition is the new reward In a world of instant gratification and hyper-personalisation, annual reviews and service awards feel outdated. Employees today thrive on real-time, authentic recognition. Small businesses can do this better and more cost-effectively than their large counterparts. Create systems for peer-to-peer appreciation, celebrate small wins regularly, and ensure leaders are trained to give constructive, timely feedback. It's not just about the praise – it's about being seen. Customise, don't generalise A one-size-fits-all approach does not work. Employees want personalisation, whether it's in how they're rewarded, how they work, or how they grow. Small businesses have the advantage here. Unlike corporates, you don't need to get dozens of departments aligned before implementing change. Take the time to understand what your people actually want. Offer optional wellness stipends. Let people choose between training courses or flexi hours. Ask what matters to them, and act on it. Workplaces built on trust Loyalty today is reciprocal. Employees will stay if they feel they are part of something meaningful and if they trust their leadership. Transparency in decision-making, honest communication about company goals, and involving employees in shaping culture all go a long way. As younger generations continue to dominate the workforce, it's clear that businesses must embrace a more human-centred leadership style. This means shifting the focus from control to empowerment, from uniformity to individuality, and from profits to purpose. It's tempting to cling to the idea that people should be grateful just to have a job. However, time will prove that the most successful SMEs in 2025 will be the ones who value and view their employees as their competitive advantage. Prioritising purpose, flexibility, empathy, and trust will go beyond retention to building a culture that motivates people to give their best. And that, in the end, is worth far more than a gold watch. Jeremy Lang, Managing Director at Business Partners Limited. Jeremy Lang is the managing director at Business Partners Limited. Image: Supplied
