Junaid Ahmed, Applied Materials

Leadership 2050

Andrew White at Saïd Business School and Adam Canwell at EY explore the key to successful business transformation with Junaid Ahmed from Applied Materials.

“In a rapidly changing and dynamic business environment it’s essential for companies and people to be comfortable and proactive about transformation, it’s the calling of our time.”

In Transformation Leadership2050 Dr Andrew White and Adam Canwell at EY explore the journey a number of global leaders and their workforce went through as they successfully led their organisations through significant change.

Why do most transformations fail to deliver the value that organisations expect? And what should CEOs do when a transformation goes off track? These questions have confounded companies around the world over for decades.

In 2021, the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and EY formed a long-term research collaboration to find out why.

In this new series Andrew and Adam focus on the specific area of turning points. These are those moments every organisation faces in a transformation which can lead to failure or create positive momentum and accelerate your business into the future. They speak to five top executives who share their insights and experience of the pitfalls and the keys to success, looking at listening, sense-making, early warning systems and the human dynamics that drive organisational change.

In the first episode of the new series they talk to Junaid Ahmed, Corporate Vice President and Head of Corporate Planning at Applied Materials, a supplier to semiconductor manufacturers with US$25b in revenue that undertook a systemic robotic process automation (RPA) transformation.

Junaid’s experience reveals how transformation only works if people are at the centre. As a leader, you will drive success if you are present, both physically and emotionally. Be brave and act early to build the capability of your team and the legacy of your transformation will be a willingness to adapt and not see change as a threat.

Featuring:

Dr Andrew White, Senior Fellow of Management Practice, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Adam Canwell, EY Oceania Workforce Advisory Leader.

Junaid Ahmed, Corporate Vice President and Head of Corporate Planning at Applied Materials.

Resources:

• Subscribe to Andrew’s Leadership2050 Newsletter on LinkedIn

• Discover more articles, podcasts and videos from Saïd Business School on the challenges business leaders of the future need to consider on Oxford Answers

• Follow us on Twitter @Oxford_Answers

https://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk

Produced by Eve Streeter for Stabl

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