The Growth Workshop Podcast

Episode 29, Part 2 - Lucy Houlding (Vanguard): Leadership, Decision‑Making and Growing People

This episode looks at leadership, how you should show up to work every day, and how you should evolve as your organization does. Vanguard's Lucy Houlding reflects on the realities of leading teams in high‑performance environments, from decision‑making under uncertainty to balancing empathy with accountability.

Episode 29, Part 1 - Lucy Houlding: Building Trust, Simplicity and Long‑Term Growth

Lucy Houlding from Vanguard Asset Management shares her story, from working in Chile to the UK, exploring Vanguard’s approach to value & communication, and Lucy’s own lessons with scrutiny and change. This episode is all about understanding how strong cultures and clear purpose enable growth that lasts.

Episode 28, Part 2 - Rory Brown: Turning Forecast Insights into Rep-Level Action with AI

Part 2 of our episode with Kluster's Rory Brown gets practical: Rory and Jonny Adams walk through a hypothetical joint client and show how Kluster’s quantitative insight pairs with SBR’s enablement to close performance gaps. Rory breaks down leading vs lagging indicators, why “sheep dip” KPIs fail, and how to reverse-engineer every rep’s route to quota. The episode closes with Rory’s grounded view on AI: fix the data context first, then unlock trusted natural-language answers and predictive actions.

Episode 28, Part 1 - Rory Brown: Forecasting Truth, Not Storytelling, in the Boardroom

In Part 1 of this episode, Rory Brown (Chief Commercial Officer at Kluster) reframes forecasting as an executive decision tool, not a spreadsheet ritual. He explains why many businesses still “feel” their way through board reporting, how latency and fragmented data kill credibility, and why sales forecasting becomes politics when culture rewards narratives over evidence. You’ll hear how Kluster blends the art + science of forecasting to surface uncomfortable truths early enough to act.

Episode 27, Part 3 - Lessons from Facebook, Deliveroo and a Pandemic

In Part 3 of our episode, Matt Ring argues that ‘sales enablement’ is too narrow – the real job is revenue enablement across the full customer lifecycle. He shares practical segmentation frameworks for focusing on strategic, future‑potential and volume accounts, and debates how AI and signal data can support rather than replace human judgment. Matt then opens up about two major crises – Facebook’s missing mobile ad product and Deliveroo’s COVID lockdown shock – before closing with clear, 2026‑ready advice for commercial leaders on propositions, processes, people, and scaling the basics with AI.