It's both a privilege and a pleasure to be invited to deliver the annual Mark Bailey lecture at The Grammar School at Leeds this month. The school established this annual public lecture to honour the achievements of its former headmaster Mark Bailey.
Professor Bailey was appointed as headmaster of Leeds Grammar School – my old school - in September 1999, and during his time at the school he oversaw its successful merger with Leeds Girls' High School to form The Grammar School at Leeds. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the merger, so as an alumnus I'm delighted to be part of the celebrations. It will be great to be back in Leeds and I've reserved a seat in the front row for my extremely proud mum.
So what's my specialist subject, what's going to draw in my audience?
I've been lucky enough to find myself at the centre of Deloitte's collaboration with McLaren Applied Technologies. It's nearly a year since we announced the alliance which brings together complimentary capabilities so as to apply F1 technology and simulation to drive tomorrow's high-performance businesses.
Looking to address complex, industry-wide challenges and improve performance across clients' businesses our focus so far has included healthcare, life sciences, retail and transport – our products combine specialist hardware and software, with sophisticated algorithms which aim to bridge the 'physical-to-digital' divide by helping organisations make sense of data. This can include capturing data from physical sensors to create a sophisticated digital record; enriching it using advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; and delivering information in automated and more effective ways.
So in essence my talk will centre around...
Life moves fast. Business, faster. It's not a race against your competitors. It's a race against time. The reality for business today, will not be so tomorrow. We succeed or fail with every choice we make, from split-second decisions at the front line to strategic decisions in the boardroom. The business of F1 is uncertain and rapidly changing. We must compete for the future. We don't just measure what is unfolding in the race now, or simply look back at what has happened in the past. Instead we create hundreds of thousands of alternate realities – every second of every race – to guide us towards the best available result. And when we take this power from the track into the race for organisational performance, the advantages are innumerable – from improving traffic congestion and accident response time in complex transport networks to raising quality and compliance in manufacturing supply chains and live outpatient monitoring and treatment in healthcare.
I plan to get a few more practice laps under my belt before heading to Leeds to deliver my presentation - especially the lunch time one with the students.
If you would like to hear more, you can register for the evening event on the Grammar School at Leeds website.
Admission is free but places are limited, event details noted below:
Date: Thursday 19 April
Location: Grammar School at Leeds Assembly Hall, Harrogate Road,
Leeds LS17 8GS
18:30 – Doors open and refreshments will be served in the
theatre foyer
19:00 – Talk in the Assembly Hall followed by a Q&A