Founding Principal

Global Practice Head

Marcus Iles

I help leaders of transforming businesses to activate their AI strategy through their people.

Get in touch

Expertise

Financial Services

Infrastructure & Real Estate

Strategy & Transformation

Digital, Data & AI

Replies personally within two working days

Our Principals have worked with

About me

I am a business strategy and organisational behaviour expert specialising in strategy activation, leadership alignment, organisational storytelling and collective action. I have channelled my 25 years’ experience (spanning marketing, advertising, business and communications strategy, organisational storytelling and consultancy) into my consultancy, Shared Minds.

The focus for Shared Minds is on why strategies that appear clear at leadership level can fragment when they are interpreted and acted upon across an organisation. This is particularly apparent in AI strategies that, if left without comprehensible meaning within an organisation, have the potential to be more destructive than revolutionary.

Formerly Chief Storytelling Officer at The Storytellers and an award-winning creative strategist, I have helped lead my own businesses, as well as clients’, through significant change and transformation.

I am also Business Strategy & Organisational Behaviour Correspondent for The European, covering strategy execution, workplace culture, leadership, AI and the changing nature of work.

Experience

25 years’ experience (spanning marketing, advertising, business and communications strategy, organisational storytelling and consultancy) across almost every sector, helping leaders to define their objectives in a way that motivates people (colleagues, customers, shareholders) to act.

Education

BA Industrial Design and Technology, Loughborough University; Behaviour Change Accreditation, School of Behavioural Economics; Coaching & Mentoring accreditations; Facilitation

Languages

English

Region

Location

London

Interests

Art, writing, reading, walking, but mostly children.

How I help

SENSE Diagnostic™

It stops the business throwing more licence, training and vendor spend at a problem that is about meaning, not technology. It gives the CEO language for why adoption has stalled, and a baseline of belief and use against which the return on later AI investment can be tracked.

2–3 weeks · colleague comms/surveys analysis, desk research, Exco and colleague interviews, 2hr playback

Narrative Sprint

A shared, tested strategic narrative for AI implementation that the exec team owns and can tell, along with the ability to track its impact on strategy activation.

4–7 weeks · SENSE Diagnostic™ (above), plus 2–3 exec workshops to co-create the Leaders’ Story + 12 months’ access to SENSE Diagnostic to ensure the story sticks and that collective action is being taken

AI Activation Programme

A story that carries a coherent call to action throughout the organisation; a drumbeat of comms and experiences that drives the sense of inspired urgency to act; measurable shifts in understanding and collective behaviour.

4–6 months · Leaders’ Story co-creation, ENDVR Story co-creation, story launch, rollout and embedding, measurement and optimisation

Proof

10x

increase in internal understanding of the value and offer of a bank’s AI platform. Billions already invested and billions more committed: it took one story to enable the business to buy its own AI offering.

53%

increase in understanding of and belief in the need for change. With a major six-year turnaround achieved, a multinational construction company told the story together, which gave them the confidence to push into change even harder.

26%

rise in external perception of the brand’s meaning. A global beer brand needed to cement the real purpose behind its positioning in the UK. Their story went viral, clocking 50m views, as well as countless news reports, around the world.

Latest insights