Cris Beswick

15/09/2026

Most organisations treat human-centred leadership as a wellbeing agenda. Something HR owns. Something you get to once the growth numbers are safe.

I think that's exactly backwards.

A new Harvard Business Impact Enterprise perspective argues that human-centred leadership is the antidote to burnout and change fatigue. I don’t disagree as it's a well-made case, but I’d suggest it stops one step short of the real one!

In an era where AI makes analysis and expertise abundant, deeply understanding humans is the differentiator. Not a nice-to-have. The thing that tells you which problems are worth solving, for whom, how fast, and what impact you need to have.

My latest article builds on their argument and pushes it somewhere more uncomfortable: the leaders who can't read their own people won't be able to read their markets either, and the impact they intend to have over the next decade is being quietly decided by that gap today.

Have a read, then tell me in the comments: in your organisation, is human-centred leadership a wellbeing programme or a growth capability?

🔗 https://shorturl.at/1Pti3

If it resonates, repost it for the leaders in your network who need the same challenge.

🙋🏼‍♂️ If you’re a CEO and leading for innovation-led growth is on your agenda, DM me for a chat.

14/09/2026

What does each layer of your organisation need to drive innovation collectively?

The third layer, non-managerial employees, should be able to ‘CONTRIBUTE’ to the agenda.

If you’re a leader, how can you help them do that?

08/09/2026

Harvard Business Review’s 2007 classic “The Chief Strategy Officer” is doing the rounds again, and it’s still half right.

Right: strategy divorced from ex*****on is fiction. The strategist must be a doer.

Wrong, or at least incomplete: the belief that one person with a mandate can keep an organisation aligned.

The authority to say “this no longer fits our strategy” isn’t granted by a job title. It’s granted by a culture that has decided alignment matters, and leaders who model it daily.

That’s why I keep making the same argument: strategy, leadership, and culture need to eat breakfast together. One integrated system, at the same table, every day.

Because approximately 84% of executives say innovation is critical to growth, yet only around 6% are satisfied with the results. Two decades of strategy officers haven’t closed that gap. Systems will.

My full response 👉 https://shorturl.at/pVkHO, and the original HBR piece deserves a re-read.

HBR’s classic case for the Chief Strategy Officer is resurfacing — and nearly two decades on, it’s still half right. The half it misses is the reason most strategies still fail. An article from the October 2007 issue of Harvard Business Review has been doing the rounds again, and for good reas...

07/09/2026

What does each layer of your organisation need to collectively drive innovation?

The middle layer, managers, should ‘DRIVE’ the innovation agenda.

If you’re a leader, how can you support them to bring alive on a day-to-day basis?

02/09/2026

We accept without question that you can't innovate for customers you don't understand. So why do so many leaders abandon that logic the moment they turn to face their own organisation?

My latest article makes the case that empathy isn't a soft skill sitting at the edge of leadership — it's the first discipline of building an innovation-led culture, and it has to point in two directions at once.

OUTWARD, to understand the customers you're innovating for.
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INWARD, to create the environment your people need to innovate repeatedly.

Here's the test: you can describe your customers' frustrations in forensic detail. Could you do the same for your own people?

Read the full article, then tell me in the comments: Which direction does empathy point in your organisation?

🔗 https://shorturl.at/nJMUC

If it resonates, repost it for the leaders in your network who need the same challenge.

🙋🏼‍♂️ Or reach out for a discussion about helping your leaders understand how to build the capability for innovation-led growth.

01/09/2026

What does each layer of your organisation need to collectively drive ?

The first layer, leaders, should ‘OWN’ the innovation agenda.

If you’re a leader, how can you help them do that?

27/08/2026

Running assessments inside clients…

Client asks: "How will you assess where we are today?"

Big Four: "We'll baseline you against our proprietary maturity model."

You: "We'll run a survey and do some interviews."

Same expertise. Different perceived rigour!

I've been on the losing side of that. I've also been on the winning side — because I built my own assessment and ran it 100+ times with organisations worldwide. It changed how clients saw me before I'd said anything clever.

The Evaluaite Hub is that capability, licensed. Software you use to build your own assessment — your thinking, your approach, your pillars, questions and maturity levels — deploy it into the client organisation, and get a dashboard back, enabling you to play back evidence-based advice.

Individual consultants and boutique firms were never outgunned on thinking. Only on instrumentation.

🚀 Launching soon.

Register HERE 🔗 www.theevaluaitehub.com for early access — beta is opening to a select group of individual consultants and boutique firms.

DM me if you'd like a demo.

25/08/2026

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is outdated.

Ray Kleeman’s excellent HR Executive piece argues culture should be managed like a core business function: designed, measured and led.

He’s right. And when the goal is innovation-led growth, it’s not just right. It’s existential.

Because approximately 84% of executives say innovation is critical, yet only around 6% are satisfied with the results. That’s not a strategy gap. It’s a capability gap — and capability lives in culture.

My response to Ray’s article makes one core argument:

Strategy, leadership and culture need to eat breakfast together.

Not competing for primacy. One integrated system, at the same table, every day.

Read my full response 👉 https://shorturl.at/x0JKw, which includes a link to Ray’s original piece, which deserves your time.

24/08/2026

To foster , the three distinct layers of an organisation each require specific enablement from leaders:

Senior Leaders need to understand how to ‘OWN’ the innovation agenda.

Middle Management needs to be enabled to ‘DRIVE’ the innovation agenda.

And Employees need to be able to ‘CONTRIBUTE’ to the innovation agenda.

20/08/2026

Following the recent 'What's Coming at LEAP Innovation Summit' taster session I spoke at, alongside Sean Downs, we've had a fantastic response to what is shaping up to be a must-attend summit.

If you haven't registered yet, click the link, and I'll see you there.

📍 Amsterdam | Sept 28-30
📍 Atlanta | Oct 21-23

🔗 https://www.wellspring.com/leap-2026