Rene Carayol

    (£9,000 - £15,000)

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Biography

René Carayol is one of the world’s leading speakers on  business transformation, using case material from the corporate strategies of the winners and losers in the UK and Europe.  His messages are essentially practical.  He also has the experience and communication skills to translate his vision into a coherent, compelling philosophy with electrifying effect.

Carayol is a regular broadsheet columnist and broadcaster on UK radio and TV.  His book, Corporate Voodoo, published in 2001, is now in the third edition.  The sequel, My Voodoo was published in September 2002.

Carayol has served as an executive main board director for blue-chip companies and the public sector.  As Managing Director of IPC Electric he took the business from concept through to the acquisition by AOL Time Warner.  He has since moved on to a portfolio career, including the role of non-executive director at the UK Inland Revenue and Chairman of a publishing business plus recent hands on experience includes acquisitions, mergers and flotations.  This varied experience yields fascinating insights and practical lessons both for budding entrepreneurs and those wishing to create a more risk–ready culture.

Carayol asks difficult and uncomfortable questions.  For example, how do companies attract, retain and nurture talent?  The paternalistic model – work for me and I own your career – is a busted flush.  What is needed to secure the talents of a new generation of managers and teams who demand the opportunity to exercise their talents to the full?  Who look not for management, but for leadership?

He argues that a risk-averse management culture is ill suited to emerging global markets.  As business gets faster and riskier, even the most powerful corporations are threatened by their own inertia and conservatism.  “Your heritage is not your destiny,” says Carayol. He has collected a portfolio of case studies on “sensible recklessness,” showing how opportunities can be identified, seized and exploited even in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty.

Perhaps the most distinctive contribution Carayol makes to any audience lies in the field of motivation.  No one who attends a Carayol presentation emerges unchanged.  He inspires his listeners to believe that what seemed impossible lies within their reach if not yet their grasp, that they have the necessary talents and ambitions to achieve their dreams.

“The two great threats we face today,” says Carayol, “are cynicism and complacency, the unthinking acceptance that nothing can be done, or the hope that nothing need be done.  My aim with any group of people I address is to inspire them to take decisive action.

René is has just finished filming a TV series on leadership in business for Channel 4.  The series is entitled 'René Unwraps...' with the first episode looking at the leadership of the Metropolitan Police - 'René Unwraps The Met'.