AltitudeX 2024: Key takeaways from the business leaders’ AI summit

How many decisions do you make in a day?

Kicking off the event with the opening keynote was Peak’s CEO and co-founder, Richard Potter. As individuals, we make 35,000 decisions a day — some conscious and some automatic. But, as Richard warns, a lot of different elements go into making a decision: emotion, logic and data. It’s the sad truth that businesses often don’t have the data they need to make decisions.

As part of his talk, Richard considered whether experience equals decision accuracy. Business leaders are responsible for the efficacy of all business decisions, but they’re usually a long way from these decisions. So, they often have to rely on intuition and experience.

These 35,000 decisions a day — which include strategic decisions and operational decisions — which all add up to company performance. To do it right, leaders need to make the best decisions possible, with the optimal resource mix, as often as they can.

Time is also of the essence. But one of the biggest business constraints is time. To tackle this, Richard gave an overview of Peak’s agentic assistant, Co:Driver, which combines accuracy with automation to help businesses accelerate their decision making.

The power of none

Following Richard’s address was Simon Clarke, a consultant and former director at some of the world’s most dynamic drinks companies, including Coca-Cola and Pernod Ricard.

Simon’s presentation centered on the importance of endless curiosity and the ability for businesses and employees to fail and learn. We learn more as babies in the first 12 months than any other stage of our lives, and it’s as infants that we have relentless curiosity, learning and progress. Simon argued that that shouldn’t stop when we reach adulthood.

Simon shared that “much of our learning as babies takes place as ‘safe learning and safe failing’. Babies persevere and continue until they succeed. How many businesses also have a ‘safe learning and safe failing’ environment? When did we stop being so curious?”

In light of this, businesses should make ‘heavy learning’ part of their DNA. Only then can they create an environment of curiosity and learning for employees.

How can we do this? It comes down to resetting your mindset:

• Take risks
• Be expansive in your thinking
• Stay curious
• Embrace the power of none

Al, automation and digital supply chain

Up next was  Hans Thalbauer, Global Supply Chain Executive at UiPath. Exploring what businesses shouldn’t do in the AI era, Hans advised that supply chain disruptions are the norm, so taking costs out of the supply chain is the priority.

Looking at this more closely, when the pandemic started, the focus shifted to risk management. At the start of this year, the priority changed again to focus on cost. AI is the first time technology is empowering supply chain managers to manage these decisions.

With AI, the traditional way of working is changing. Automating manual, repetitive and document-based processes breaks down internal silos, helping supply chain teams to communicate better with business partners and orchestrate processes across systems.

Not only this, but the orchestration of AI and automation along the value chain will result in substantial productivity gains, translating into up to 20% increase in knowledge worker productivity, and +50 business partner Net Promoter Score. 

Who will benefit most from unlocking capacity across the supply chain with AI and automation programs? Hans believes this will particularly impact purchasing, procurement and logistics.

Is there such a thing as a stupid question?

After the half-time break (you know, National Football Museum and all that…) journalist Mark Lawson sat down with Peak’s Helen Craven to discuss ‘questions that change everything’.

As a journalist with decades of experience interviewing, Mark is well placed to determine what makes a good question. Ultimately, interviewing people is such a large part of human life. And, as one of Mark’s mentors says, “every person has something interesting to tell you”.

Mark shared some key advice, from ‘starting with something people don’t expect’, to bad interviewer traits (not listening!). To truly listen, interviewers must minimize disruption, be in the moment every moment and keep momentum and energy.

Let’s talk about difficult topics

Sticking with the theme of building connections, Janet Hadley of Co-op took to the stage to talk about stigma and team performance.

She warns that stigma has a downside; it prevents us from talking about uncomfortable topics and bringing important things out in the open. And, as someone who has struggled with alcohol dependency, she is advocating for workplaces to do more to change stigma.

She shares, “I recognized that I needed a break and took a proper break from work. When I came back I told the truth, and that vulnerability I showed to the team went a long way.”

When it comes to leading a team, to lead is to listen. It’s not to offer sympathy or give unsolicited advice. It’s empathy and listening, and helping where you can.

Janet’s key advice includes:

• Know your team well enough to know when something is different
• Talk about taboo topics in the workplace
• Remember the power of sharing your own vulnerabilities through storytelling

Discovering the virtue of impatience

Impatience is often seen as a vice. But impatience also drives urgency. Impatient leaders are the ones who want to move faster, who motivate others to do so. But how do we get the virtues of impatience, while avoiding some of the associated vices?

To find out, Richard Potter was back on stage to sit down with Niamh Dugdale, Senior Product Operations Manager at Boohoo Group. Niamh explored how impatience has defined her career and business success, and talked us through her stratospheric career progression so far, which includes being selected for promotion twice in a few years, leading a product category that grew to represent 40% of BoohooMan’s total business and being featured on Drapers’ 30 under 30 list, which recognizes young talent in fashion. 

How to do everything

Next up was Bethany Ayers, Peak’s Chief Operating Officer, who admits she’s one who likes to do everything. Why’s that? Because “if you have a life massively full of routine, you don’t remember it. I want a long and full life, and I want to remember it.”

Bethany then asked the room a series of questions to encourage them to truly question their motives. This includes ‘Given the season of your life, which buckets would you like to pour more time and energy into?’ and ‘What would make you a better leader if you made more time for it in your life?’

Allocating this time to what you truly want to do might seem guilt-inducing at times, but it’s ultimately guilt based on what we should be doing for someone else.

“I know that I am a better leader because I make time for fun, creativity, and therapy in my life.”

Bethany asks: What would make you a better leader if you made more time for it in your life?#AltitudeX || #ReachNewHeights https://t.co/XpFUYiN0HD

— Peak (@Peak_HQ) October 10, 2024

A closing keynote that made a splash

Our final speaker of the day was Steve Parry, an Olympic-medal winning swimmer who picked up bronze in Athens 2004. Steve shared that he’s very concerned that, as a country, we have a tendency to talk ourselves down. He warns that this is also the same for businesses. 

We need to consciously make a decision as business leaders that we’ll talk ourselves up instead of down. Because, ultimately, it is impossible to succeed if we get out of bed every day and feel bad about ourselves.

After walking us through his career, Olympic success and apparent uncanny resemblance to Michael Phelps, Steveo opened up about his goals for life and for his children; to have resilience, kindness, confidence and curiosity. He also outlined his belief that success also comes down to individual responsibility and accountability.

Want more post-match reaction?

We’ll be making some of AltitudeX 2024’s talks and fireside chats available in the coming days, so watch this space if you’re looking to re-live some of the best bits or catch up on what you might have missed.

If you’re looking for more thought-provoking AltitudeX content, then you’re in luck — we’ve officially launched AltitudeX: The business leaders’ podcast. Hosted by Holly Clarke, we’ll be uncovering the untold stories of brilliant business leaders. Head to Altitudex.live/podcast to listen now

Thank you to all of our amazing speakers and to everyone who attended AltitudeX 2024 — and a special mention to our event sponsors UiPath and Resulting IT.

We hope you enjoyed your day with us at the National Football Museum and took away some key learnings and motivations to help you reach new heights, both personally and professionally.