King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

Why Transformation Programmes Fail — The Inner Game of Organisations
Most transformation programmes fail because the organisation is quietly protecting the very thing you are trying to change.
Cop a copy of my new book NOW: https://ademolaodewade.com
Turn transformation experience into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw
AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb
Build the culture diagnostic deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h
Zhanna Zhuravleva grew up in Georgia and lived through war as a child, then built her career across Russia, Israel and the UK. She completed two master's degrees — finance and human resources — followed by postgraduate study, and taught finance, management and philosophy at a university in St. Petersburg.
She started in industry as a Kaizen team leader and went on to lead HR and cultural transformation across organisations of more than 1,000 people in 40 countries. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, has run over 3,000 sessions with leaders, and founded Awake Conscious Play, a school of conscious leadership and leadership transformation.
Early in her career she ran a textbook transformation — designed framework, defined KPIs, strong governance. Six months later almost nothing had changed. The organisation was not governed by its processes; it was governed by informal power. Everything since has been built on that finding.
The 30% improvement in employee satisfaction and 10% reduction in turnover she reports came from no single initiative — a culture hub that put interns and juniors into the improvement process, people partners trained in coaching, and one-to-ones where the feedback actually changed the next decision.
In this episode:
Change fluency — why transformation is not a project with a start date and an end dateThe "inner game": why a fintech's people-first programme stalls because the tension is giving leaders their identity
Three signals that tell you inside a week whether a culture is healthy — quality of disagreement, speed of bad news, and the gap between the official story and the underground story
Diagnosis before prescription: the first 30 days run across Ken Wilber's four quadrants, not a rush to launch programmes
Three types of values — declarative, conscious, unconscious — and which layer actually decides
Why Meta making AI token consumption a performance metric produced engineers burning tokens instead of better decisions
WEF Future of Jobs: 170 million roles created against 92 million displaced — recalibration, not replacement"AI is electricity with intelligence" — why this is an electricity moment rather than an internet one
The 4D Compass for building trust: self, soul, soft, spiritWhy engagement surveys measure compliance — a purple, tribal culture scores high on engagement and low on trust
What she protects if the HR budget is halved: leader development, and a culture diagnosis every year
The mistake founders make at 100 employees — still leading as though there are 20Zhanna's recommendation for every CEO is Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan.
Her conscious leadership programmes — including Lila, the transformational game she has adapted for leaders and runs offline and online — are at: https://awake-play.co.uk/
Upcoming cohorts: https://awake-play.co.uk/upcoming
Connect with Zhanna on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhanna-zhuravleva-chartered-fcipd-03a0a622a/
Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.
The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.
Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.
This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Business valuation isn't a multiple of EBITDA. Cop a copy of my new book NOW: https://ademolaodewade.com
Turn expertise into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw
AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): https://t.mercor.com/neABb
Build the buyer deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h
Mark Mills OBE started Cardpoint plc from scratch in 2000. Two years later it floated on AIM at a £7 million valuation. By 2006 it was turning over £100 million a year on £19.8 million of EBITDA, and he exited in 2007 at £175 million.
He now sells other people's businesses. One owner was told his company was worth £3 million. Mark sold it for just over £10 million. Nothing changed in the accounts — what changed was who the business was presented to, and why they needed it.
In this episode:
- Why bids from strategic buyers don't resemble a multiple of EBITDA
- The £3m-to-£10m sale, and the buyer maths that produced it
- Rule one of any business model: recurring income — learned from a payphone business that died in the 1991 recession
- How Mark and his CFO reverse-engineered £100m of revenue onto a sheet of paper, then landed within 2%
- Why "in three years" is a useless target and "by 31 August 2029" is not
- Solving a working capital problem by finding a bank with too much physical cash
- The one metric he never ignores when assessing a company for sale
- FARM — why people work for Fun, Achievement, Recognition, then Money, in that order
- Selling to strangers, and why referrals cannot scale a business
- What AI actually changes about client acquisition and KPI monitoring
- Realistic exit timelines: 12 to 30 months, not six
Mark's book is Making Your Mark: How I Built a Fortune From £1.50 — and You Can Too.
He offered listeners a free signed copy — email him at mark@mark.co.uk with your address and he'll send one out.
More from Mark: www.mark.co.uk · linkedin.com/in/markrichardmills
Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.
The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.
Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.
This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
#BusinessValuation #ExitStrategy #DiaryOfACFO #KingDemsPodcast

How can leaders use AI without weakening the judgement, creativity and critical thinking that leadership requires? Dr David Rock explains what neuroscience reveals about decision-making, cognitive bias, uncertainty and human performance.
This conversation is for leaders navigating a world of rising information overload, faster technology and increasing pressure. Dr Rock, Co-Founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute, coined the term neuroleadership and has spent decades translating cognitive science into practical tools for organisations and executives.
In this episode, you will learn:
Why leadership creates three recurring cognitive challenges: capacity, self-regulation and social cognitionWhy intelligent leaders can still make poor decisions under pressure
How uncertainty affects the way people think, regulate emotion and understand others
Why David argues that AI should keep the human in the lead, rather than outsourcing critical judgement
Why recognising your own cognitive bias is harder than most leaders assume
How the SEEDS framework helps teams identify recurring categories of bias
How the SCARF model explains Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness and Fairness
Why useful leadership frameworks require both scientific credibility and practical simplicity

About Dr David Rock
Dr David Rock is Co-Founder and CEO of the NeuroLeadership Institute and the originator of the term neuroleadership. His work applies cognitive science to leadership, organisational change and human performance. He is the author of Your Brain at Work and the forthcoming Good with Humans, which explores the SCARF model and the neuroscience of social motivation.

Connect with Dr David Rock
NeuroLeadership Institute: https://www.neuroleadership.com
NILES: https://www.askniles.ai/
Book: Good with Humans by David Rock

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What if the career you worked hardest to build is actually keeping you from the work you were meant to do?
In this episode of The King Dems Podcast, Ademola Odewade sits down with Ashley Stahl, bestselling author, TEDx speaker, career expert and Founder of Wise Whisper Agency, for a powerful conversation about career reinvention, artificial intelligence, personal branding, leadership, intuition and the future of work.
Ashley’s own journey took her from national security into career coaching, entrepreneurship, authorship and public speaking. But this conversation goes far beyond the polished career-pivot story.
Ashley explains why careers are not supposed to be linear, why the skills you developed in one chapter of your life can become your competitive advantage in the next and why sometimes “backing up” in your career is not the same as backing down.
We explore:
How to recognise when your career is genuinely misaligned
Why your values and your skill set serve different purposes
Why clarity comes from exploration, not endless thinking
How to experiment with a new career without immediately quitting your job
The transferable skills Ashley carried from national security into entrepreneurship
How intuition can improve leadership and business decisions
The difference between intuition and impulsiveness
Why busy calendars can destroy creativity
How storytelling and a signature talk can transform a personal brand
Why follower count may be one of the most overrated measures of influence
How AI is changing careers and the future of work
Why professionals who know how to leverage AI may have an advantage over those who resist it
What every executive should ask before stepping onto a stage

Ashley also shares how a TEDx talk became a turning point in her career and revealed the extraordinary power of combining your story, expertise and message to create meaningful impact.
One of the biggest ideas from the conversation?
You cannot think your way into clarity. You have to explore your way into it.
And when it comes to AI, Ashley offers an equally important challenge: the greatest risk may not simply be AI replacing people. It may be people who understand how to use AI replacing those who refuse to adapt.
If you are navigating a career transition, building your personal brand, leading through disruption or wondering how to remain relevant in the AI era, this conversation is for you.
🎙️ The King Dems Podcast explores growth mindset, leadership, AI, business, entrepreneurship and the ideas shaping the future of work.
🔗 Connect with Ashley Stahl:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleystahl/
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Subscribe, follow and share this episode with someone navigating their next chapter.
Mindset > Skillset > Toolset.
#AshleyStahl #CareerReinvention #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #Leadership #PersonalBranding #CareerGrowth #Entrepreneurship #AI #KingDemsPodcast

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What human skills will leaders need to remain valuable in the age of artificial intelligence?
Oluchi Ikechi-D’Amico, Founder and CEO of Fully Bossed, joins Ademola Odewade on The King Dems Podcast to explore AI leadership, organisational transformation, executive presence and the human capabilities technology cannot replace.
Oluchi spent nearly two decades advising CEOs, boards and financial institutions on major transformation programmes. Her career includes senior leadership roles at Accenture and EY-Parthenon, more than 30 transformation and M&A programmes and transactions with a combined value exceeding $15 billion.
In this episode, Oluchi explains why effective AI adoption is not simply about purchasing new tools. Organisations must change behaviours, strengthen leadership capabilities and connect technology investments to measurable business value.

You will learn:
Why human skills become more valuable as AI capabilities expand
• How leaders can move from AI adoption to genuine AI enablement
Why many organisations invest billions in AI without achieving the expected ROI
How to measure transformation through revenue growth, cost reduction and operational efficiency
Why mindset, storytelling, personal branding and orchestration matter in modern leadership
How resilience and self-belief helped Oluchi succeed as a Black female executive
What it takes to lead major mergers, acquisitions and organisational transformation programmes
How executives can communicate, influence decisions and hold the boardroom in the AI era
Why leadership is defined by impact and followership rather than job title
How Oluchi evaluated the risk of leaving an EY partner role to build Fully Bossed

Oluchi’s central message is clear: AI can generate the report, but it cannot replace your ability to defend the analysis, influence the boardroom and lead people through change.
This conversation is essential listening for CEOs, CFOs, founders, consultants, transformation leaders and executives developing an AI strategy for their organisations.

Connect with Oluchi Ikechi-D’Amico:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/oli-ikechi/
Discover Fully Bossed:
https://fullybossed.com/
Explore the tools and resources I use to power my podcasts, business and content at:
https://kingdemspodcast.com/tools
Subscribe, follow and share this episode with a leader navigating AI adoption or organisational transformation.
What is the most important human skill leaders must develop to remain valuable in an AI-powered workplace?