Eleanor Winton, FRSA

Fresh thinking and practical guidance for curious leaders dealing with change

Eleanor is a foresight and innovation specialist whose career has spanned legal policy, money laundering investigations, innovation and future thinking. She designed, built and led KPMG’s Future Institute in the UK, the firm’s first foresight capability, and has worked with the senior leadership teams of organisations spanning multiple sectors and industries from healthcare through to mining, logistics and financial services.

Today she is the owner of Foresightfully, a boutique consultancy, which specialises in supporting C-suite leaders to think and act differently in the face of rapid and unpredictable change; that might include refreshing strategy, motivating the leadership team, bringing the ‘outside-in’ perspective or providing one to one challenge. Eleanor specialises in creative thinking on strategy, leadership and culture and brings experience, insight and provocation around global trends, future ready leadership, scenario planning, strategy, innovation and disruption.

Using value as the anchor, how it is built, sustained and lost, Eleanor helps her clients to understand the impact of external change on their sector and industry dynamics and, critically, to react by developing clear short and long term action plans. She provokes her clients to be curious about what’s changing and to be bold in taking advantage of the opportunities that change presents.

Eleanor is co-author of The Disruption Game Plan: New rules for connected thinking on innovation and risk and a member of faculty on the Kings College London and Duke Corporate Education Executive MBA programmes.

She is trusted by clients including Mars Foods, Aviva, the UK Green Building Council, British Airways, the NHS, KPMG, First Group, Associated British Ports, Hiscox, JLL and many others, to provoke different thinking and inspire action.

Whilst Eleanor’s work today is focussed on foresight, she spent the early part of her career specialising in hindsight as an investigator of misconduct, fraud and money laundering at the Scottish Legal Services Ombudsman, the Financial Ombudsman service and in KPMG’s Forensic group. Through this work she developed an ability to quickly assess and understand a client's business and bring analytical thinking to their challenges. In 2009, frustrated by the need to constantly look backwards and fix problems rather than helping her clients to look forward and create opportunities, she took advantage of an invitation to join KPMG’s first ever innovation group. Trained by the ‘?What If!’ Innovation team in creative facilitation and innovative tools and behaviours, she was part of a select team of ‘Innovation Mentors’ driving the growth of an innovation culture within the firm. Her work required close collaboration with specialist teams to integrate innovative thinking and creative approaches into existing projects and new pursuits. As a result, she has a proven ability to quickly get under the skin of a challenge, no matter how complex it seems on the surface.

Eleanor went on to design and lead KPMG’s first ever foresight capability, The Future Institute, which worked directly with the Executive teams of key clients to identify and act on disruptive trends and to create live opportunities for both clients and the firm. In 2017 she set up Foresightfully to continue this work through speaking, design, facilitation and coaching. Foresightfully has a passion for, and focus on, sustainable business and the urgent role of business leaders in designing an equal and inclusive future.

Speaking topics

Future Trends

As organisations grapple with an ever more complex and seemingly unpredictable operating environment, it’s more important than ever for leaders to be foresightful, combining long term vision with action today. Eleanor brings a fresh and expertly curated perspective on the global trends shaping the future and the steps that foresightful businesses are taking to drive sustainable growth.

Her high energy style and engaging content will motivate you to take the first steps towards creating your vision for the future and building the behaviours and mindset that will help get you there. 

Disruption

Often, when people think of disruption, they think of the financial value that has been lost rather than considering the broad range of potential categories of value that can be created. And maybe it’s seen as a binary situation? Win or lose, disruptor vs. disrupted, the new kid vs. the slowcoach incumbent. The word, in the business context, carries a primarily negative connotation – certainly one with high stakes.

Most of us feel disrupted but Eleanor explores how you can start to think and act like the disruptor, whether within your own business or in your broader sector context. She shares tools and practical tips for disruptive thinking that you can apply straight away alone or with your teams drawing on her 2021 book ‘The Disruption Game Plan: New rules for connected thinking on innovation and risk’. 

What clients say

“Eleanor gave the keynote presentation at an event I spoke at recently, and was a very tough act to follow! She has that rare combination of abilities that makes for a truly memorable and inspiring keynote - a charismatic, entertaining and attention-grabbing presentational style, a content-rich message that is thought-provoking, novel and memorable, and clear actionable insights that can be taken forward by her audience. I found Eleanor extremely engaging. Not only did I learn a great deal in an enjoyable way, but I came away wanting to work with her and wondering how best to incorporate her insights into my own work and thinking.”

Independent Director, London

“Fantastic opening to the conference, very thought provoking and good context to make us think differently and more broadly as we headed into the conference time.”

HR Director, UK

“Her presentation inspired the audience across the board to understand their capacity to make change - helping businesses with a mission to change the world and get a foothold in the future, using her professional experience to solve seemingly impossible problems and bring new ideas to life. Attending were C-Level executives representing global businesses including BlackRock, JP Morgan Chase & Co, United Nations, Royal Dutch Shell, Triodos Investment Management and Stanhope.

Eleanor’s delivery was wholly engaging; charismatic, dynamic and nothing short of mesmerising.”

Founder, Women Powering Smart Energy

“The opening session on future trends was a fantastic way to lift my thoughts to a strategic level and prepare the way for the rest of the conference.”

Operations Director, UK