Leadership Webinar

This session brought together senior leaders from National Grid DSO, Last Mile, Challenging Ideas and BFY Group, in partnership with the Young Energy Professionals Forum, for a discussion on what it takes to lead organisations through complexity.

The panel explored why data, digitalisation and flexibility so often promise more operational change than they deliver, and what leaders can do differently to close that gap.

Key topics covered include:

• Deciding Without Certainty: A practical framework for making confident decisions when the evidence will never be complete, and why waiting too long has its own cost
• Building Trust That Surfaces Real Risk: How leaders create the kind of psychological safety where a "green" status actually means green
• Leadership As A Capability, Not A Title: Why leadership has to be built and practised like a muscle, rather than assumed to come with promotion
• Learning From Beyond The Sector: What utilities can learn from industries like retail and logistics that are decades ahead on data and digitalisation

For senior leaders navigating transformation, digital investment or workforce development, this session offers a grounded look at what separates organisations that make change stick from those where it quietly fades.

In our latest article, Chris Thoms explores why the gap between digital investment and committed operational outcomes in network operators is a leadership problem before it's a technology one.

We look at the three places this gap most often opens up, and what closing it actually demands of senior leaders in practice.

Key themes explored in the full article:

• Why the connection between senior leaders and delivery reality stretches until problems surface too late to act on
• How initiatives can be delivered successfully while the capability they were meant to create quietly loses its owner
• Why technology, operations and regulatory teams often work from different definitions of digital success

BFY Group is one of Europe’s fastest-growing management consultancies, trusted by leading energy and utilities organisations, as well as investors supporting the sector. We build strong partnerships with our clients, working practically to tackle their toughest challenges, realise opportunities, and achieve lasting results. Since our founding in 2004, we’ve been proud to remain an independent, privately owned firm based in Nottingham, working with clients throughout the UK.

We specialise in:

• Transformation
• Strategy and Commercial Excellence
• Operational Turnaround and Recovery