Interviewer: Sam Ridgway • February / March 2025

The below article is based on a transcription from of Episode 3 of the Fit for Business Podcast.

“You really have to start with purpose because everything should support and align with that – the fundamental 'why' of the organization. More often than not, transformation efforts fail because the means have overshadowed the ends, or the organization lacks a shared sense of common purpose. This leads to everything becoming political, and every attempt at improvement or radical change becomes a negotiation.”

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Sam: Let's start by talking about how you two actually came to know each other in the first place. I think there's, there's a few touch points along the way, but Jonathan, give us the start of the journey back at Cambridge, I think. Talk to us about that period.

Jonathan: This this was a meeting that took place at the other place, not Oxford and but like all great meetings or great collaborations. It was a serendipitous meeting. So I in fact inherited a course to master's students from a colleague at Cambridge. And one of the one of the keynote guest speakers was in fact Bijan and we met through that and worked together. And what was interesting, was at the time I was busy developing the alignment work, the fitness work and wasn't really terribly sure what Bijan was going to talk about but actually it was completely germane to my interest as well.

So like one of those happy, points of synchronicity and we've maintained contact ever since. And in fact, I carried on my work and then coming to Oxford, published a book, a line, and then very happily, out of the blue, heard from Bijan, who had said that he'd used it in practice.

And, you know, for an academic to hear that their book has been practically useful has helped, particularly a senior leader, and particularly for an organization like Save the Children. I mean, that was just manna from heaven, really.

Sam: Bijan, you used that theory in practice, am I right in thinking you came across it on a train?

Bidjan: There are lots of trains in that journey. I think it was a rainy evening in London Ealing that I reconnected with the book and the work. And to add to Jonathan's point, it was a wonderful connection because at the time I had moved back from the US and left the World Bank, started to work for Save the Children in Germany, and then ended up working in London in the global executive team, and that was an even better connection to come back and to reconnect with some of the work.

Sam: And as Jonathan mentioned absolutely brilliant to be able to get a real life  Case study, a real lived example. We talk a lot on this podcast about concept in context. This is concept lived out and we can't wait to get into all you've, you've done Bijan.  Jonathan, let's, let's get into it. If I can come to you first, you talk a lot about.  Training a realignment muscle. We spoke in our first episode on fitness about organizational alignment being a muscle we train, about fitness for purpose being a muscle we train.

Frankly, I'm worried that we're going to end up in the health and fitness genre on the podcast apps. But what do you mean when you say organisations need to build a realignment muscle.

Can you open that up for us?

Jonathan: I think the, the case study that we're going to hear about from Bidjan is a good example of this, but actually applies across all organizations, large or small, not for profit or for profit, or for that matter, public sector.

And the way I think about it, and to build on our previous, podcast, alignment is very much a state of being for organizations. Organizations are broadly highly aligned or poorly aligned or somewhere in the middle. And the better aligned they are, which is to say the more purposeful they are, the more their strategy supports the reason for their existence as an organization, the more they are better organized to be capable of implementing that strategy, the more all of the moving parts in the organization, fit together and align the better performing it will be. So we think of alignment as a state of being that's connected to the ability to perform well. But realignment is not a state, it's a process. It's a process of how to improve performance or how to overcome some form of disruption from the external environment so that we can maintain alignment over the long term and perform sustainably well. A lot of my work, whether research or advisory with organizations (corporations or small startups), involves helping leadership teams think about realignment and build the necessary critical thinking muscle. This enables them to evaluate their current alignment, explore options to realign to a different, better, fit-for-purpose state in the future, and then effectively lead others along that journey. It's a technical and strategic journey, but also an emotional one, especially in people-intensive organizations. We should also add the political dimension; don't forget the politics in the alignment equation, particularly at the sharp end of realignment, where we're talking about change, and potentially there are winners and losers in all change programs.

So, I describe it as a muscle because it's something that can be developed and should be maintained. If you have and regularly exercise this muscle, I believe you'll have a more resilient, sustainable organization, better able to adapt to the ever-changing and increasingly rapid realities of the external environment.

Bidjan: Building on that, and as you mentioned those listening in the gym, they know building muscle takes time, hard work, and discipline. That's what I appreciate about Jonathan's work; in an age of quick, simple solutions, he highlights the real work needed in organizations for genuine impact, which is challenging but necessary.

Jonathan: I'm glad Bijan mentioned that, as it brings to mind values once central to organizations but now less common. Discipline, for instance, is indispensable when approaching alignment and making strategic decisions about market offerings, culture, structure, and people management – not just for fairness, but for good execution and performance. We need discipline, and also duty. I rarely see 'duty' in corporate values, yet it's crucial, especially considering Bijan's work at Save the Children with its clear purpose and duty to stakeholders, particularly children. This is essential but often missing in other organizations, along with rigor and evidence.

And all of these – including honor, which is often missing – are important. While the values we've embraced aren't necessarily unimportant, I'd like us to return to a greater sense of duty, discipline, and honor in our work as organizational leaders, with the expectation that our organizations would be better for it.

Sam: That's a great point, perhaps even a topic for season two of Fit for Business – there's so much to unpack there. Bijan, you mentioned 'real work,' 'proper work.' Can we revisit that? You have experience in this process, this 'muscle building,' this work of transformation and realignment. You've written a brilliant case study summarizing your time at Save the Children, which we can link in the show description. My takeaway from your case study is that it was ultimately a period of significant transformation, though you rather understate it. Quoting Jonathan's work, you mentioned being motivated, along with your small team, to rethink program strategy and design a function approaching alignment around purpose and impact, right down to field-level operations. This was a process of realignment, leading transformation at Save the Children. Can you tell us more about that transformation and realignment process, starting with the context and then why it was so important at that time?

Bidjan: Let me set the context. This came after a period of great success in my first leadership role after leaving the World Bank in Berlin, where we responded to the Syrian refugee crisis and worked towards a European approach. I'd been successful, but in a much smaller organization. Then, I was invited to apply for the executive team to build this global function. To summarize briefly, I had no real budget, no real team, and only five months until the most important governance meeting, which would decide on the centenary year (1919-2019). Feeling all that pressure, and lacking the resources, was significant. However, coming in as the youngest member of the executive team with credibility from a member organization, I recognized an opening, a window of opportunity. The first few months in London were genuinely scary.

Let me be transparent, it was a huge role to step into. Everyone was contacting me with different demands, and I was tasked with transforming a global function that didn't truly exist, something the organization had struggled to agree on for over a decade. It was all federal, with most functions spread across member organizations globally – primarily in the Global North, including the US, Sweden, and the UK. Consolidating it was, in Jonathan's words, very political, as it meant centralizing resources, which equated to power. Achieving that felt very daunting. I remember sitting in the central office feeling overwhelmed, almost as if everyone could see I didn't have all the answers. Of course, that wasn't the reality, but it felt that way sometimes. The advice I received was to fix the dispersed teams, negotiate with each one, bring them together, and then figure out the rest.

And something felt wrong about this approach because it, it It felt very piecemeal,  and I knew about the centenary, of course, I knew that the hundred years is a window of opportunity, I knew that there could be a strategy around the three big goals that we had set to achieve for children in the next ten years, and I felt if I have one shot at this opportunity, then it is now,  and I appreciate it.

Something felt wrong about that approach. It felt very piecemeal. Knowing the centenary was a window of opportunity and that we had a strategy around three big goals for children over the next ten years, I felt I had one shot. So, I scaled back the detailed negotiations on small team budgets and instead proposed aligning on the big goal – the enterprise purpose – and building the rest of the value chain from there. That's when I rediscovered Jonathan's work, which made perfect sense as a starting point, but not the endpoint. The starting point was really to say, we have these significant goals for children: no child dies under five, every child learns, and all children are protected. Why not build a global strategy around this? Let's set aside the politics for a moment and align everyone on what these goals are and how we break them down, how we measure them, and then how we align the teams and capabilities Jonathan discusses behind them. Knowing I only had five months, I rallied everyone, including the Boston Consulting Group, which provided pro bono support, and all the teams I could, leveraging relationships built over five years.

I proposed defining what the impact would look like, believing that would bring everyone on board. Save the Children had never set a specific goal like this before. Another important context is that as a federation, it's complex. Imagine a McDonald's franchise where seven to ten different owners produce different hamburgers within the same location. That gives you an idea of the complexity.

It is extremely complicated. So what I mean is When you deliver aid programs or humanitarian programs and you have seven different funding streams with different requirements coming into one franchise on the ground, it creates a lot of complexity. And we, I didn't just want to set up a big strategy with a big goal. I also wanted to follow up and say, what do we need to change on the ground so that we actually deliver with impact for children? So those were the first few months of that. 

Jonathan: I think it's a really great story, and one I hear often. Organizations I've worked with frequently start by considering what they can do within the existing status quo, rather than having a different kind of conversation.

Instead of focusing on what's truly important – the reason we exist in the first place – they almost start from the perspective of their existing capabilities, which limits their potential strategic options. They often miss the fundamental big picture question: why are we here?

So, what should we ideally do differently? Then, being mindful of resource constraints, legacy systems, politics, and people, we can try to close that gap. I completely commend Bijan for his courageous approach to alignment. You really have to start with purpose, because everything should support and align with that – the fundamental 'why' of the organization. More often than not, transformation efforts fail because the means have overshadowed the ends, or the organization lacks a shared sense of common purpose. This leads to everything becoming political, and every attempt at improvement or radical change becomes a negotiation.

So, I completely commend Bijan for his, I think, very courageous approach to that alignment piece. You really have to start with purpose, because everything should support and align with that – the fundamental 'why' of everything an organization does. More often than not, transformation efforts fail or are ineffective because means have overtaken that sense of ends or simply that the organization itself is, is not united behind a shared sense of common purpose. And so everything becomes so political, everything, every attempt to either make an improvement or, or even some form of more radical change becomes a negotiation. It's because the methods have eclipsed the goals, or the organization isn't united by a shared sense of purpose.

This politicizes everything, turning every attempt at improvement or radical change into a negotiation. Organizations with that level of complexity to be fit for purpose. You simply can't run everything in a decentralized way; sometimes centralization is necessary. And the more complex an organization is, the more this potentially holds true. I simply don’t think you can have organizations of such a level of complexity to be fit for purpose, there's no way you can run everything in a decentralized fashion sometimes you have to centralize some things and the more complex an organization is, potentially, the more that is the case.

Bidjan: The centralization versus decentralization argument, in my opinion, was framed incorrectly. It was seen as London versus the northern federation members, but the real work for children happens on the ground in the countries we operate in. When you're stuck in organizational structures practiced for decades, it's hard to break free and ask, 'What are we actually doing?' We deliver on the ground, often within 24 hours during a crisis. So, we need to empower those parts of the organization to be fit for purpose when needed, step back, and develop leaders on the ground, giving them the capabilities to achieve our goals. For me, it was helpful because this wasn't a sudden realization. I had the chance to practice this when I joined Save the Children in Germany. It was a small, rapidly growing organization, and we had to define our purpose: raising funds and doing policy work in Germany to help children globally. So, I'd been considering the idea of finding a role and purpose within a larger federation for five years, and we developed a frontline leadership culture centered on enabling our colleagues on the ground to deliver for children.

And once you have that mission, that purpose, it becomes much easier to say, no, we're not hiring 10 people in Berlin. We want to give that those resources to people in Somalia to build the capabilities to deliver. But that takes, you know, an organizational alignment in itself. So I brought that, that understanding of why we're here to the global role, which then helped me convince other people because I had proven it before.

Sam: Jonathan, is that what it takes? Does it require someone who's 'been there, done that'? We see so many organizations fail at this, while Bijan has implemented it successfully, mentioning his prior experience and five years of considering its crucial nature. Does it take someone with that background and knowledge to succeed, or can it be done from scratch?

Jonathan: It's a great question, and I'm afraid I'll give my usual response – you both know what's coming: 'it depends.' But in Bijan's case, I think it takes a strong leader – not necessarily autocratic or macho, but someone who can show others what's possible and inject discipline into conversations to challenge the status quo. Knowing Bijan, I believe a key part of that conversation is not just telling people what or how to think, or what to prioritize (like action on the ground), but showing them through data and evidence.

This is incredibly compelling, especially when aligning a federated structure where there's often high decentralization in decision-making and diverse practices. The alternative is a consensus-based approach, which can work. I've been in situations where the leader's role is to create a space for people to come together and think differently, requiring high psychological safety. But in both scenarios – driving the organization to a different perspective or letting it emerge through consensus – you need to confront and challenge the status quo and bring in an external perspective. As you said, Sam, whoever does that needs credibility.

Just a silly anecdote from my own experience: I was once invited to a board meeting for a professional services firm and was immediately thrown into a very heated discussion about priorities for the East and West strategy. I assumed they meant global hemispheres, like Asia for East and the Americas for West. But it turned out to be East and West Birmingham in the UK, only about five miles apart. So, challenging these sometimes very entrenched views or closed mentalities, often understandable, is important. Sometimes people don't even realize how limited their options are because they don't see how structured their thinking has become. That's why this approach, trying to inject structure and objectivity into these discussions, while potentially painful, is ultimately beneficial.

Bidjan: Well, city rivalries shouldn't be underestimated. I grew up in West Berlin with the wall, and we're still dealing with the aftermath. But to your broader point, I agree – it depends. I've heard that sentiment in many places, not just Oxford. I threw everything at the wall, like spaghetti, to see what stuck. One thing the case study shows is that I really tried to build relationships with my senior team colleagues, understanding their motivations regarding our 'why' and desired impact. It turned out they were mostly on board, having waited for this opportunity. Working for a large organization with the sole goal of serving children naturally attracts motivated people. They were ready for alignment, but it hadn't been possible until then. So, I spent time understanding their motivations, and a lot of it aligned. We just had that five-month window. I used relationship-building and some negotiation to align on what we could present at the major governance meeting in Hong Kong – our achievable goals, supported by numbers, impact, and evidence. It was a whirlwind, making sense in retrospect, but during those five months, it felt like everything was happening at once, testing every hypothesis. We succeeded together thanks to the brilliant people in that organization, whom I still miss working with.

Jonathan: Building on that, research consistently shows that most realignment or transformation initiatives fail to meet their original objectives. The truth is, globally, leaders across all sectors aren't great at change, for various structural, cultural, and political reasons. However, in my experience facilitating these conversations, and as Bijan pointed out, leadership teams are often more aligned than they think at the outset, but lack the means to articulate it coherently or the necessary language.

Academia and research can help by providing frameworks and language to discuss complex realignment issues. But the key is to avoid starting with the current state. It's tempting to assess the present and then decide what to change. Instead, go back to the purposeful future state and ask: in an ideal world, what should we look like, do, prioritize, be capable of, and how should we be organized in the future to be fit for purpose? This future could be five to ten years out. In my experience, and I need to write about this, nine times out of ten, leadership teams are surprisingly aligned on their shared vision for the future, even if they haven't formally discussed it.

The greatest misalignment isn't in describing the future, but in agreeing on the current state. This is likely because they're under immense operational pressure or simply don't have the opportunity for strategic thinking. This begs the question: if we can't agree on our current situation, how aligned are we, and what's the impact on performance? The good news is that we can agree on the future. That's where conversations about the gap begin – the gap between our ideal future and our present reality, and how to close it. This must be driven by the beneficiary, the end-user, whether a customer, policymaker, or, in Bijan's case, a vulnerable child. That's the real starting point, the fundamental 'why' of our work

Bidjan: Absolutely, and in retrospect, one helpful thing for me and perhaps the team was a snowy December in 2017. I joined the leadership team retreat before starting my role in early 2018. The person who hired me was Helle Thorning-Schmidt, former Prime Minister of Denmark, a strong and directive leader with extensive experience. I joined the leadership team in awe of everyone, including her. I felt I wanted to make an impact by connecting us to the organization's founding. I had carefully read the biography of Eglantyne Jebb, the brilliant British founder of Save the Children and the Child Rights movement in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Many of her quotes from a hundred years ago are still relevant today. After that first senior team workshop, I sent an email about our discussions on alignment and focus, including three or four quotes from her original writing that clearly defined our purpose. While I used some of it to reconnect us to impact, it became our rallying cry. It was the year we were preparing for the 100th anniversary, really revisiting our founding. For me, this was a huge opportunity to ask: why were we founded? Why do these child rights exist? What was the post-World War I situation, and how does it translate to current conflicts? I'm not sure about the actual impact – others would need to say – but for me, it was extremely grounding in terms of my goals, providing a compass for my later actions and how to navigate the enterprise value chain, asking: what does this mean for training people on the ground so they can effectively deliver in a crisis?

Jonathan: Just to build on that, 'Align' was followed by 'Realign.' The first was published before the pandemic, the second after, with a focus on disruption – unsurprisingly, given what we were all experiencing and what I was hearing from organizational leaders. In 'Realign,' I feature a case study of the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ), an organization I've worked with for about ten years.

Similarly, DBJ was formed out of crisis, immediately after World War II, to reconstruct Japan from devastation. Fast forward to 2025, and you have to acknowledge their success; Japan is incredibly advanced, and DBJ played a key role. They have a wonderful expression, common in Japanese leadership conversations, which translates to 'image.' What's the image of our organization? I believe they mean a blueprint for how we should ideally operate. How do we want our people, and those outside the organization – policymakers, politicians, donors, the public – to think about us? How do we want them to view us objectively? How should it ideally work, and are we all on the same page? DBJ, like others, invests significant time in conceptual understanding. The value chain Bijan described was part of that research, and a key part of the book was providing a logic, structure, framework, or blueprint for organizations to create this image, align their people to it, and maintain that alignment.

This can be incredibly powerful; without it, organizations risk being stuck in endless debates about values, how things should work, what 'good' looks like, or even disintegrating due to a lack of shared identity.

Bidjan: Building on that, I'm realizing now that 'Align' and 'Realign' perfectly frame the later impact of using 'Align' to drive transformation. When the pandemic hit, and I was still on the executive team, everything for children came to a standstill. Refugee camps, for example, couldn't be accessed due to lockdowns. What we found was that years of investment in local capacity, resources, and evidence-based approaches for on-the-ground response (almost like a standardized checklist) meant we were better equipped to respond for children than ever before during those weeks and months. The 'muscle' had been trained, allowing us to implement it when facing the biggest challenge the organization had ever encountered in its response for children. Interestingly, we didn't need as many people in Global North offices; the need was for capable people on the ground, serving children and families. For me, in terms of 'realign,' a key takeaway is the necessity of doing that foundational work, because it will be crucial at unexpected times. So, 'build that muscle' is a major takeaway for me.

Jonathan: Well, I think that's so true, especially considering the pandemic. When times are good, many organizations, though perhaps not perfect or even dysfunctional for reasons beyond alignment, might have short-term viability. But the real test of resilience, strength, and sustainability is not during good times, but bad. We saw across the board that poorly aligned organizations were the least resilient and most likely to fail during the pandemic. So, while I'm an academic, this isn't just an academic exercise, as we see it repeatedly. If we assume disruption is now inevitable – it doesn't have to be a health pandemic, it could be technological or political, as we see worldwide – and of course, Save the Children is at the sharp end of that, then this becomes crucial. Steady state, stable, good times are not something we can rely on. Perhaps we never could, but it's certainly the case now. Without that 'muscle,' you're running a huge risk.

And of course, Save the Children is at the sharp end of that. , that's why this is so important, because it's not going away. Steady state, stable, good times. We simply can't bank on that. Perhaps we never could, but it's certainly the case now that we can't. So unless you have that muscle, , you're running a huge, huge risk.

Bidjan: For me, some key takeaways – and Sam, please add to this – is that in the midst of a storm, connecting to first principles was really helpful. What are we as an organization, and what are we here to achieve? Jonathan's work was extremely helpful with this. I tend to step back in crises, which can be good for reflection, but you need to balance it so you don't disappear. For me, stepping back and returning to first principles, realizing the only way to fix things was to challenge the status quo of our setup, and to really think about the entire enterprise value chain down to the field level and the front line serving children, was crucial. It was hard, definitely took its toll, but it was the right thing to do, and I'm really proud of that work with my colleagues. The other thing is focusing on that front line. Who are the people closest to those we serve? How do we build their capabilities and rethink the organization from their perspective so they can deliver impact? This is even more important to me now as a startup founder, because you want your end users to benefit, even if your paying clients are different. So, it's a really helpful insight I've carried forward, even now.

Jonathan: And I think one thing I really admire about Bijan's work, both his leadership at Save the Children and his current new business, is this. Returning to the research, a striking aspect of disruption is how prone many organizations are to being disrupted. They wait for a crisis before responding, often too late. Part of this realignment or transformation muscle is the ability to self-disrupt, to not wait to be disrupted. Self-disruption is exactly what I'd describe Bijan as having done at Save the Children, precisely to improve performance and ensure future fitness, before it became a crisis. If that work hadn't been done, it would have had real-world consequences. For me, self-disruption is a really tough ask because you're trying to instill a sense of urgency in colleagues to act, perhaps when it doesn't seem immediately necessary, or when times are good. But that's precisely when we should take the opportunity to reflect on the future, when we're at our best, not our weakest.

Sam: We talk about disruptors, and perhaps there's an argument to add disruption to the value chain. It's not going away; maybe that's the end point we need to prepare for. But Bijan, that process Jonathan just described, self-disruption, is incredibly challenging. External disruptors and challenges like COVID are one thing for an organization, but becoming a self-disruptor, deciding 'this is what we're going to do' and leading on that, is incredibly difficult. Can you give us some insight into how you navigated that as a leader in that context?

Bidjan: Well, it is very challenging. You're often a person who's not entirely happy with the status quo because you're focused on impact. It's not about complacency; you're constantly striving for change. This inevitably impacts work-life balance and overall happiness, as you're always pushing for transformation. Let me give you an honest example. After Save the Children, I was CEO of a social enterprise focused on global leadership development. One reason for leaving was my inability to disrupt and scale leader development to the level I desired. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that the disruption and impact you seek aren't possible in the current setting, and decide if it's still the right organization for you. Part of why I'm now scaling leader development, democratizing access using AI, is because of that experience. It takes a certain mindset, but also the ability to connect with others. Nobody wants a leader who's constantly unhappy and challenging everyone. As Jonathan said, it's about connecting with others, understanding their motivations, and creating a shared sense of urgency. You won't win everyone over, believe me, but as Jonathan also noted, there's often more initial alignment than you think. Then it comes down to agreeing on the problem we're facing to achieve our desired impact. Sometimes it works brilliantly. Other times, you might have to conclude the organization isn't the right fit, or it's not the right moment. And it's important to be clear, as Jonathan mentioned with values, both to yourself and the organization, about what's feasible at that time, while still challenging yourself.

Sam: Jonathan, perhaps there are leaders listening who are aware of a need for transformation or see a window of opportunity to implement it, feeling it's the right time and perhaps just starting that journey. Could you summarize what they should be doing, what they should be thinking? Where do we start this process? I'm not sure if we have time to cover that...

Jonathan: I think we should try. Bijan just said something that really resonates with me. I actually start every lecture, talk, conference keynote, workshop, by saying what motivates me is disappointment. It might sound negative, but it's true that alignment matters to me because alignment equals performance. Yet, when we look at the organizations we depend on – companies whose products we buy, charities doing crucial work, the public sector essential for society – the disappointing reality is that we could be doing so much better. I believe a key factor in being a leader who wants to create more alignment has to be dissatisfaction.

Dissatisfaction with the status quo, either because it's not good enough, or because we know change is coming and we can't remain the same and continue to succeed. This applies across the board. I don't judge organizations' work as being more or less worthy; they're all important. Organizations in any sector can't succeed unless they create value for others. It has to be a sense that we can and should do better. Alignment is the way, and realignment is the process to achieve a better state. Out of that dissatisfaction comes a hopeful narrative: this is what better looks like, this is how we achieve it, and this is the path we can all take.

You should want to be on it, because if you truly care about the organization's mission, then striving for improvement is deeply motivating and inspiring. If you don't care, then why are you here? Sorry for the bluntness, but it's true. Great organizations have leaders who are dissatisfied and want to improve, and everyone should want to be part of that conversation and making it happen. But often, either because we don't know better, don't appreciate how things can be different or improved, or we're simply comfortable, or even scared, we don't take on that challenge, and we really should. It's a matter of choice. Alignment doesn't happen accidentally or by luck sustainably. It happens because we make it so. And Bijan is on this podcast because he made it so, and the world is better for it.

Bidjan: So, my practical advice is to read Jonathan's work. I genuinely believe we need to infuse companies with sound theory and approaches; there's nothing as practical as good theory, and vice versa. We should also infuse academia with more real-life challenges and foster that dialogue. I know, Jonathan, you're considering doing that on a larger scale later, hopefully soon, and we can discuss it on the podcast. I really think we need that exchange, not more flashy case studies, but approaches that help us apply exactly the discipline you talk about.

Sam: You mentioned practical advice, Bijan, which is exactly where I was heading. You've clearly had great success, you've 'made it so' as Jonathan just said. Looking back – and I know the case study we've linked below discusses using retrospectives to pull out crucial points – but reflecting on your experience, if you were to go into another organization and do the same, or advise one in a similar position to Save the Children, what practical advice would you give? You've mentioned reading Jonathan's work, but what else have you learned and what are your key takeaways?

Bidjan: I'm going to say something and would love Jonathan's comment. I truly believe, and I've tried many times, that simply presenting a value chain won't convince people of the need for change. Storytelling around it is essential. In recent years, I've used stories about frontline workers, really highlighting the individuals who deliver for us. For example, I took an education worker I met in a prison camp for Rohingya refugees in Myanmar to the Save the Children global governing board. She was a refugee herself, hadn't left the camp in years, imprisoned, yet still working to teach children. She had signed the same Save the Children contract I had, but the difference was I was leaving an hour later, and she was staying, probably still is, in that camp. Really bringing home those stories of the frontline people doing the real work, and emphasizing that we need to serve them within the organization, and build organizations that work for them. To me, those stories illustrate what needs to be done, the hard work involved, and introduce people to it. A plan or a shiny strategy on slides isn't enough. It will take hard work to deliver for those we want to serve on the ground.

Jonathan: I couldn't agree more. Bringing that perspective and objectivity is key. I'd add that one of the most important things when starting this discipline of alignment is that the way to begin isn't with PowerPoint. It really isn't, because that's how every corporate conversation, in inverted commas, starts. Instead, gather your team – be inclusive, carefully consider the constituency, which might extend beyond your direct team to all those who should be part of the conversation. Don't have an agenda, have questions. As the leader, start by simply asking questions – the right questions. These could be: are we good at what we do? Are we fit for purpose? If alignment is important, how aligned are we? These are critical, tough, but great questions. In my experience, when you give people the opportunity to contribute, they'll bring honesty and be constructive, particularly in organizations where they passionately care about the work. That almost Socratic method of leading the conversation with questions, getting everyone on the same page, and generating a sense of urgency and importance about the fundamentals, is the start of a conversation that will eventually lead to a set of new principles across every link of the value chain about our future. This covers everything from articulating our purpose to our strategy, capabilities, people choices, structure choices, and resource choices, ultimately defining performance and impact. It's an inclusive and diverse conversation, where getting different backgrounds and particularly that frontline perspective, rather than just seeing the world from the top, is essential. Start with questions, not PowerPoint, and it's guaranteed to go much better.

Sam: Start with questions and not with PowerPoint that's invaluable, Jonathan.

Bijan, as we wrap up, you're now doing something different. Could you give us an overview of that, and perhaps how everything we've just discussed is playing out in your day-to-day work now?

Bidjan: It might sound counterintuitive, but I'm co-founder of a startup using Gen AI to democratize leadership development, especially for frontline teams. This comes from my experiences in the humanitarian world and other sectors. We need to support those closest to the clients and customers we serve. Now, with Gen AI, we can take those insights and equip them with tools, providing real-time advice and support, similar to executive coaching. I benefited from significant investment in my development as I progressed in organizations, but the same wasn't true for frontline employees. Yet, they hold the talent we need to harness, understanding the realities on the ground. That's what we co-founded with the former Chief People Officer at Save the Children. We both came from that experience and co-founded Potential You. Currently, we're working in the UK railway sector, and I've spent days listening and asking questions, as Jonathan advises, with station and train managers, understanding how they lead large teams with just five minutes between trains. That approach of focusing on the front line and learning from them about organizational structure and challenges – almost starting from the opposite end of the enterprise value chain – is something I've really taken from those experiences and from engaging with Jonathan's work. Start with the front lines, design your product to create value for the people whose lives and work you want to improve, and then work with the paying client, but value creation must come first. It's been a big sector change for me, but these principles still hold true and are incredibly helpful.

Jonathan: And can I just add, without naming the specific railway company, mine has just reported that its trains are on average 40 percent delayed. So, Bijan, the work is definitely needed, and in my opinion, it's an alignment problem.