Our breakfast with John O’Brien MBE

This week, we had the pleasure of being joined by John O’Brien MBE, for the June edition of our monthly breakfast series. John has a fascinating background, having first served for ten years in the British Army, retiring as a Captain after service across the world. 

He went on to work with the then-Prince of Wales’s Responsible Business network, BITC culminating as MD of The Prince’s personal CSR & Sustainability orientated initiatives. Following this, he created one of the first specific ethical purpose strategy agencies in the UK, before becoming EMEA Managing Partner at Omnicom’s ONE HUNDRED agency group of nine PR, marketing and creative agencies.

John now serves as the Founder and Chairman of Anthropy, the UK’s biggest congregation of leaders from across different sectors focused on the future of Britain and its role in the world. Nick-named ‘The UK Davos’, each March, over 2,000 prominent and influential leaders from business, charity, academia, the arts and politics, gather at the Eden Project in Cornwall.

John discussed how Anthropy was born out of the post-Covid need to provide a forum for people from different backgrounds and perspectives to come together to discuss how to ‘Build Back Better’, focusing on some of the fundamental issues about how to improve society. The aim was for Anthropy to be a “launch pad” for leaders to “bring their rockets, old or new” to be “amplified” as ideas and actions.

John told us how the location of Anthropy was a key consideration as he set up the platform, with the Eden Project being decided upon as it allowed attendees to fully immerse themselves in the whole experience of a full conference to reimagine Britain’s future. The Eden Project itself was built on land that was once a clay pit, with Anthropy intended to mirror how something new and exciting can emerge from what was once an empty hole.

On attending Anthropy, all attendees are told to leave their “egos and silos” at the door to encourage people from different sectors and viewpoints to come together to share their perspectives. The impact of Anthropy can be seen in the power of this sharing of perspectives, insights, knowledge and experience.

John also talked about how a job is more than just a salary. A job is something that gives people dignity and a sense of meaning in life. He spoke about how he found a sense of identity from his career in the army, which helped build his character into a quality that people wanted to invest in throughout his career. This led John to urge business leaders to think about the character of the jobs they are creating and the character of people they are hiring, rather than just one’s CV or qualifications. 

When thinking about creating jobs, John stated that when an employer creates a job, they are going far beyond filling just their own needs but also filling the needs of a person’s family and their community, by investing in a person’s future, it also impacts locally and helps create renewal at a national level. On leadership, John spoke about how bringing humanity into recruitment and leadership can help powerfully shape organisations for the better – pointing to the example of the Postmaster and NHS scandals whereby a lack of humanity in decision making led to disastrous outcomes. 

John’s breakfast remarks, and his career to date, can be summed up when he stated: “I didn’t create Anthropy to create a conference, I created Anthropy to create change”.

You can read more about Anthropy here.