A Step Ahead

A Step Ahead is a seminar series designed to help senior leaders, teams, and grassroots change agents anticipate and respond to the future.

The series does this by curating a space for you to:

Step back from day-to-day pressures to explore a topic that is timely and relevant for leadership
Tune into the lived experience of sector leaders and change agents ‘beyond your normal bubble’
Reflect on the implications for your own leadership journey

Each season of A Step Ahead is anchored in a headline that has been carefully selected based on insights from the Agents of Change initiative to be relevant for leaders who wish to get on the front foot of change. This headline is then broken down into three themes which build on one another, taking participants on mini-journey over a four-month period.

Autumn 2025

Integrating Competing Priorities

Our Agents of Change roundtables from earlier in the year suggest that many leaders are being challenged to find balance in the midst of competing forces. This has implications for:

Decision Making Focus - 2 October 08:00-09:30 BST
It is increasingly challenging for leaders to take the long-view given the pace of change, the steep learning curve required to keep up, and the sense that business survival is at stake - but to not do so makes business failure more inevitable in the future.
Stakeholder Trust - 29 October 16:00-17:30 BST
Across the business ecosystem, stakeholders (customers, investors, employees, etc) have stronger and more polarised opinions about what they expect from business leaders - aligning with one side is increasingly perceived as betrayal by the other.
Personal Responsibility - 5 December 08:00-09:30 GMT
Aspiring Agents of Change may feel disheartened by forces beyond their control and their limited capacity to address multiple issues at once - when it is unclear how to take ownership without losing personal balance, it is tempting to hide behind the status quo.

In this season, we will discuss competing priorities across all three of these dimensions, and explore the processes required for effective integration. Click here to find out what else we are offering this autumn.