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What if the career path you're meant to follow isn't the one everyone expects?

In this episode of Get Amplified, we sit down with Beth Taylor, Country Lead for UK and Ireland People and Communities at Cisco, to explore how feeling average at school, and later discovering her neurodiversity ultimately shaped a successful career in HR leadership.

Choosing a degree apprenticeship over the traditional university route gave Beth the opportunity to earn, learn, and gain real-world experience from day one. She shares how practical learning, supportive mentors, and unexpected opportunities helped her build confidence, credibility, and a career she loves.

We also discuss trust, psychological safety, leadership through change, and why creating space for growth matters now more than ever.

In this episode, we cover:

• Choosing a degree apprenticeship and learning through experience
• Discovering neurodiversity and finding supportive workplaces
• The power of networking, mentors, and chance conversations
• Building trust and psychological safety in teams
• Leading through change with openness and shared ownership
• Creating protected development time through Cisco's "Time to Grow"
• Better career conversations and the question: "What would you like to be known for?"

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Sales and sales operations want the same thing, but the way we’re set up often guarantees friction. When sales and ops functions collide it can feel like two organisations speaking different languages. We sit down with Robert Gessner, a seasoned operations and go-to-market leader with deep experience across global tech and a long spell at Citrix, to unpack what’s really going on and what actually helps.

We dig into the practical fix that keeps coming up in high-performing teams: customer proximity. Robert explains why operations cannot live entirely in a central bubble, and how a customer-facing front end creates a clear interface between the field and HQ. We also talk about the risks of centralisation, why regions create shadow organisations when they do not get what they need, and how to simplify processes that drive everyone mad, from price exceptions to endless approval loops.

The theme is autonomy with guardrails: push decisions closer to the customer while keeping accountability and sensible constraints.

Then we zoom out to the bigger picture: complexity often reflects strategy. If a company tries to serve every segment, every channel, and every go-to-market model at once, operations has to build processes for all of it, and the machinery creaks.

From there, we move into the “project economy” and the execution gap that appears when leaders design strategy but step away from delivery. Robert makes the case for building project management capability inside sales organisations and for involving frontline and middle managers early, so change does not die after a launch webinar.

If you care about go-to-market execution, sales operations, process design, and building a customer-centric operating model in a fast-moving tech business, you’ll take away practical steps you can use straight away.

Subscribe, share this with a colleague who lives in approvals, and leave a review with the one change you’d make to reduce friction where you work.

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We get into the reality of the CRO role: owning the number, shaping the plan, influencing product direction, and then switching straight into the gritty detail of deals, risk and negotiations.

We’re joined by Helen Sutton, who went from electrical engineer to Chief Revenue Officer in high-growth, private equity–backed tech businesses, and proves there’s no such thing as a straight career path.

We explore leading at scale, what it’s like operating in fast-moving PE environments, and why the CRO role is so much more than just hitting a number.

We dig into the career pivots that get you there, including that first awkward jump from peer to manager, and the moments that shape your leadership style.

We talk about earning respect in male-dominated environments and why a coaching approach beats telling everyone to do it “your way”.

Helen also shares why leadership can feel lonely at the top, and how having a coach gives you a safe space to think clearly while still showing up with calm confidence for your team.

Decision making becomes the thread that ties it all together. We explore decisive leadership, the difference between consensus and commitment, and why “perfect” can block progress.

Plus, Helen wraps things up with three simple but powerful career tips, including why you shouldn’t change your job and company at the same time, and why the best careers are a bit “squiggly.”

Insightful, practical, and refreshingly honest, give this one a listen.

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What if the words you use as a leader are shaping your team's performance more than your strategy?

In this episode of Get Amplified, Vic and Sam sit down with leadership consultant Chris Collett to unpack one of the most influential leadership books Vic's ever read: Turn the Ship Around! by David Marquet.

The book tells the remarkable true story of a struggling nuclear submarine where traditional command-and-control leadership simply didn't work. Faced with a crew that knew more than he did and a situation where he couldn't possibly have all the answers, Marquet had to rethink what leadership looked like.

The result? A powerful shift from giving orders to creating an environment where everyone was empowered to think, contribute and speak up.

Along the way, from his second book 'Leadership is Language', they explore why good intentions aren't always enough.

Vic shares why this book was a genuine game changer for her, one of the most impactful leadership reads since The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. While she always believed she created space for people to contribute, this book challenged her to look more closely at the language she was using and the unintended influence leaders can have on the conversations around them.

The discussion also dives into Marquet's concept of "red work" and "blue work" – doing versus thinking – and why teams need deliberate pauses to reflect, challenge assumptions and make sure they're still heading in the right direction.

If you're interested in building teams where people think for themselves, challenge constructively, and move forward with greater clarity and confidence, this episode is packed with practical insights.

More than anything, it's a reminder that leadership isn't just about what you do. It's about the environment you create and the conversations you enable.

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What do lawnmowers, cricket commentary, and scaling a tech company have in common? More than you’d think . . .

In this lively episode of Get Amplified, Sam and Vic bring the banter before catching up with returning guest Francisco Perez van der Oord, founder of ITQ. Five years after discussing his journey as a founder, Francisco shares how the business has skyrocketed and expanded internationally.

At the heart of the conversation is a bold question: what if the biggest barrier to your company’s growth is you?

Most importantly, Francisco offers insight into selecting the right successor, highlighting the critical balance between complementary skillsets and shared values to preserve culture and drive long-term success.

And the secret to making the new successor successful? Completely removing himself from the decision making process. This shouldn’t be underestimated, and took 12 months of Francisco saying “don’t ask me”.

The conversation explores the distinction between running an organisation and transforming it, and why successful scaling often requires leaders to evolve their role.

Along the way, you’ll get stories, laughs, and real-world lessons on scaling a business, letting go, and focusing on what truly moves the needle.

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AI feels like it should be a shortcut to productivity, yet most teams still struggle to turn pilots into real business value.

We sit down with Karina Arteaga, CEO and founder of Visible Global and former operations leader at Meta Reality Labs, to unpack the uncomfortable reason: AI projects fail less because the tech is weak and more because the organisation is unclear, messy, or misaligned.

If your objectives, decision-making, and workflows are broken, automation just scales the chaos.

We explore what it takes to build a human AI operating model that actually works in the real world, where people have fears, incentives, and habits.

Karina shares lessons from building an operating model from scratch in a high-growth, AR/VR and AI environment, and she explains why leaders should start with basics: map the workflow, clarify ownership, and decide what outcomes matter before choosing tools.

The conversation moves into agentic AI and autonomous workflows, and why that shift makes human judgement more important, not less.

Finally, we get practical about change management: listen to employees, solve the most painful parts of the job first, and use internal champions to drive adoption without creating a Big Brother culture.

If you want AI transformation, organisational design, and leadership culture to pull in the same direction, subscribe, share this with a colleague, and leave us a review.

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Where Does Your Time Go?
And why your sales motion might be the reason you have less of it.

In this episode, we sit down with Stu Pike, VP and COO of ServiceNow APAC, to get into what’s actually going on with the GTM motion and what to do about it.

Stu’s seen this from every angle over the last 30 years, and he brings it back to something simple: design your go-to-market around how buyers actually make decisions, not how your org is structured.

Most revenue teams feel this, even if they don’t always say it out loud, it’s not effort that slows things down, it’s friction.

Stuff gets lost between demand gen, sales, solutions, customer success. Deals start to drag and discovery gets repeated. And before you know it, you’re talking more about the internal process than the customer’s problem. That’s usually when trust starts to wobble a bit too.

We get into the handoffs that quietly kill momentum, a really simple question that exposes where things break, and why so many “transformations” fall flat.

We also talk about what’s changing right now, how teams are starting to use AI to carry customer context, clean up CRM gaps, and make coaching way more useful (and less painful).

But the thread running through all of it is time. How do you give it back to your reps, your managers, your leaders so they can spend more of it with customers and, honestly, more of it outside of work too.

If it resonates, give it a share with someone who’s rethinking how their team sells, and don’t forget to subscribe.

Here is the blueprint that Stu refers to

https://fortune.com/2025/10/29/ai-doesnt-fail-on-tech-fails-on-leadership-servicenow-commentary/

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We’re celebrating our 100th episode of Get Amplified by bringing in Troy Stoll from Dynatrace (APAC), an energising leader who’s lived what it really takes to make alignment stick.

If you’ve seen strong teams slowed by silos, mixed metrics, or underlying friction, this is a clearer way forward. By aligning on a shared North Star and working back to remove friction between marketing, sales, services, and customer success, the APAC team is now executing with real pace and consistency.

We get into why over-communication is a leadership responsibility, especially as teams evolve, new leaders join, and priorities shift. It’s less about telling people what to do, and more about helping them understand why it matters and where they fit into the bigger picture.

A big part of the story is the Switch change framework and why shared language matters more than most leaders realise. We break down its three core ideas: finding the bright spots (what’s already working), shaping the path (making the right behaviours easier to follow), and motivating the elephant (tapping into what actually drives people to act).

The shift here is simple but powerful: stop trying to fix everything, and start amplifying what already works. That’s what shrinks change and helps it land faster across teams, cultures, and geographies.

Troy also connects this to the Team Speed Check as a practical way to surface purpose, trust, clarity, and simplicity, so leaders aren’t guessing what’s going on, they’re responding to reality.

If you’re looking for actionable ideas on cross-functional leadership, communication, and building trust that shows up in pipeline, renewals, and better customer outcomes, this one’s worth your time.

Subscribe to Get Amplified, share this milestone episode with a colleague.

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