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Before a strategy becomes a success story, it's a judgement call.
Now in its second season, Founder's Mentality: The CEO Sessions gets inside the decisions that defined some of the world's greatest leaders - a bet the market couldn't yet see, a crisis that put the organisation's purpose to the test, and the courage to keep showing up even when you don't have the answer.
How do you stay close to the frontline as the organisation scales?
What does AI mean for the thing you have spent years building?
How do you transform the company without breaking what makes it great?
Hosted by Jimmy Allen, Advisory Partner at Bain & Company, bestselling author and leader of Bain's Global CEO Forum, each episode is a candid, in-depth conversation with leaders from Mars, The Economist Group, Khan Academy, and more.
Each episode is built around one real story, one defining moment, and the lessons that come from living through it. Dense with insight and designed for leaders who listen with a pen in hand, the series explores the outer game of markets, technology and growth, and the inner game of energy, humility and courage, and what it takes to master both.
The question this season isn't just what the CEO should do.
It's who does the CEO need to become?
Join the Conversation:
https://www.bain.com/founders-mentality/
https://www.bain.com/insights/topics/ceo-agenda
Links:
Bain & Company LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/bain-and-company/)
Bain & Company X (https://x.com/BainandCompany)
Jimmy Allen LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-allen-3442b/)
About the Host:
Jimmy Allen is an Advisory Partner at Bain & Company with over 35 years’ experience advising leading organizations. He’s the author of multiple best-selling books on growth and leadership and the host and founder of Bain’s Global CEO Community Forum. Jimmy is a regular speaker at global business events, including the World Economic Forum, and serves on the Botswana Economic Advisory Council. Outside of consulting, Jimmy started his own record label (Abubilla Music) in 2008 and supports Singing Wells, a project dedicated to preserving Kenyan village music.
Bain & Company:
Founder’s Mentality: The CEO Sessions is brought to you by Bain & Company, a global consultancy trusted by the world’s most influential business leaders. With decades of experience guiding organizations through growth, transformation, and leadership development, Bain’s executive insights offer what it takes to lead at scale.
- For 35 years I've been sitting
with CEOs having tough conversations.
And lately, we keep coming
back to the same tension.
Is the job all about focusing externally?
Competitors, markets,
the next wave of growth.
Or is it actually about
winning internally?
Culture, energy, how you lead
when the path isn't clear.
Or is it both?
- I do strategy in the field.
I don't do strategy in the boardrooms.
- And we always ask the cost of daring,
but we never ask the cost of not daring.
How will the world be
different if we don't try?
- I'm Jimmy Allen and this
is Founder's Mentality: The CEO Sessions.
And this season I sat down with a dozen
of the most extraordinary
CEOs I've encountered
from The Economist, Khan
Academy, from Mars and more.
And what helped them navigate that tension
was actually the same thing.
Conviction.
Now, conviction isn't certainty.
Conviction is the courage to act
before the world agrees with you
and the humility to keep
learning after you do.
- But I said that's if we're wrong.
If we're right, this has
an asymmetric upside.
We will be right
for a decade if we're right.
- So the question this season isn't just
what the CEO should do,
it's who does the CEO need to become?
This is "Founder's Mentality:
The CEO Sessions", season two.
Stay curious.