NatWest Group

Research Consultant

Noggin The Brain People

🧠 Noggin The Brain People 🧠

Sainsbury's Bank

Head of Research, Planning & Brand

Head of Propositions & Innovation

Head of Customer Insight & Innovation

The Marketing Society Scotland

Chair Of Marketing Society Scotland

Heineken UK

Head Of CMI (Consumer & Market Intelligence)

Category Insights Controller

PepsiCo Intl

Consumer Insights For All PepsiCo Portfolio Of Beverage Brands across Western & Eastern Europe

European Consumer & Market Insights Director

PepsiCo

Worked on creating new International Trademarks for PepsiCo to play in exciting growing Asian beverage categories e.g. Healthy Whites (RTD Soymilk/Drinking Yoghurts) in China, India, Vietnam & Thailand.

Asia Regional Innovation Insights Manager

Quorn Foods

Consumer & market insights for the Quorn brand.

Consumer Insight Manager

Procter & Gamble

Consumer & Product Researcher Working In Skin Beauty Care (Oil Of Olay).

Products Research

🧠 Noggin - helping improve the cognitive health of the nation 🧠 | P&G | PepsiCo | Heineken | Sainsbury's |

I have over 25 years of insight, marketing, and innovation leadership experience in FMCG and FS sectors, I know, I don't look THAT old.

I've enjoyed working for some of the world's leading brands in various categories (health & beauty, food & beverages & financial services) and regions, delivering impactful consumer and market intelligence, brand strategy, and product innovation. My time spent working on Oil Of Olay made me my mum's favourite son.

Currently, I'm a research consultant at NatWest Group, where I'm supporting the bank's customer, technology and data-driven approach to enhancing its products and services. 

I'm a co-founder at Noggin The Brain People, on a mission to improve the cognitive health of the nation & founding investor in Gutzy Organic which makes having a healthy, happy gut, fun and easy. Active investor in the technology & health & wellness arena.

I'm a former chair and current fellow of the Marketing Society in Scotland.

Mick Doran

'What we fail to notice quietly shapes what we fail to do.'


My latest What I Underlined book review The Marketing Society Scotland

https://lnkd.in/e8UKwjqZ

#discovery #useyournoggin #marketing

We need to anticipate better.



It was Drucker who said "The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence; it is to act with yesterday's logic"

And if we're honest, lots of us are doing just this. 

I have an ask / request .... 

What's shaped your thinking on this?

Books, courses, people to follow, tools you actually use for strategic foresight?

Drop them below. I'll compile everything and share it back.

Thank you in advance, please share as I'd like to get a diverse viewpoint. 🙏🏽


#StrategicForesight #FuturesThinking #UsingYourNoggin

Credibility is overrated. Seriously. 

#nofluff #training #2026goals

If work feels exhausting, it’s probably not because you’re working too hard.


But it might be because your brain never gets to switch off.

Most corporate work doesn’t tire people out with effort.

It tires them out with constant cognition. Think about it ....

Notifications.

Messages.

Decisions that feel almost too small to matter, but never stop coming.

We’ve seem to have built jobs that demand continuous attention without recovery, and then act surprised when people feel drained by mid-afternoon.

Our noggins didn’t evolve for that.

They work best in bursts .... focus, effort, rest, and ready to go again.

Work used to have more boundaries, but now it just leaks into everything.

Somewhere along the way, most also confused being busy with doing good thinking.

Fast replies.

Full calendars.

Visible responsiveness.

But clarity comes from giving the appropriate space to THINKING.

Many organisational systems are optimised for efficiency and scale. Not a bad thing mind.

However, let's not forget that human brains need context, meaning and recovery.

When those don’t line up, the system might keep running but the people absorb the cost.

Which is why so many well intentioned fixes fall flat.

We tell people to be more resilient.

We add wellbeing initiatives on top of overloaded days.

We introduce new tools that promise efficiency and quietly add another layer of 'mental noise'.

The organisations doing better are taking a different approach.

They’re reducing unnecessary decisions.

Protecting thinking time.

Simplifying priorities.

Rewarding clarity, not constant availability.

Because recovery shouldn't be an afterthought.

It’s a performance input really.

so this year, remember this ....

Burnout isn’t normally a failure of people, it’s a failure of systems....

and Tony Schwartz puts it's brilliantly

The no.1 enemy of performance is not stress. It’s the absence of recovery.

Look after your noggin, so it can look after you.

#productivity #useyournoggin #brainhealth #cognition

Iain Montgomery

Iain Montgomery is a provocateur, but more professionally known as a strategist and founder of Now or Never, a firm that helps companies dither less and do more. His work sits at the intersection of strategy, innovation and behavioral science, helping established institutions navigate change, not just incrementally, but with some audacity. 

He works with executive teams to reboot their innovation efforts, rethink their category and make sharper strategic bets because in an era of disruption, playing it safe is the riskiest thing you can do. This includes imagining new futures, designing new propositions and finding distinctive signature moves. 

Beyond the corporate world, Iain is also deeply immersed in urban innovation, specifically how cities and infrastructure can act with more of a Challenger mindset through his podcast and writing with Challenger Cities. He believes that whether it's a multinational firm or a municipal transit network, the biggest obstacle to change usually isn’t money or technology, but a mindset.

In short, he’s here to pick fights with mediocrity, whether it’s in corporate boardrooms, city halls or the way we think about the future.

Founder, consultant and the guy who sends the invoices. 

You can't go on social media just now without 99% of Canadian leaders backslapping or wooing over Mark Carney's Davos speech. Anyone I know who's been in Davos has been saying about how he's been the talk of the resort. 

But can we get to the business end of this. What are Canadian business leaders or bureaucrats doing differently today? 

"Nostalgia is not a strategy." is going to be parroted. But back in Canada, this has been the strategy for as long as I've been here. 

Carney lists Canada’s assets of energy, minerals, talent, capital, fiscal capacity. He’s not wrong. What he didn't say is how little urgency there is inside Canadian institutions to actually deploy them. Projects crawl, decisions are consistently deferred. Responsibility is so diffuse. Business waits for government, but government waits for consensus that isn't coming. 

While Canada waits, other 'middle powers' are moving, sometimes clumsily, sometimes brutally, but they are moving. Only the Brits are in a bigger tangle. 

Canada seemingly agrees with Carney’s diagnosis of the world, but continues to behave as if the old, hypocritical conditions still apply at home.

I am dying to be proven wrong here by the way. 

For a bit of a refreshing take, do have a read of Tom Goldsmith, PhD who has the wonderful ability to call Canada home, and not get lost in the hot air being pumped into the atmosphere this January.

Strategy, insight and innovation for companies and cities to become more interestingly less wrong.

Open article: The Performance of Ritual: The Hypocrisy of Carney's Davos Speech by open.substack.com

The Performance of Ritual: The Hypocrisy of Carney's Davos Speech

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Iain Montgomery

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The Battle

Mick Doran

Iain Montgomery

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Engagements

Likes

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