STOP DEVELOPING (AND PROTECTING) LEADERS WHO SHOULDN’T LEAD

Why leadership failure is a system problem - and why HR should start designing systems that don’t rely on them

Perry Timms is one of the leading voices in the field of organisation design, future of work, and modern HR. His work focuses on how organisational systems, structures, and ways of working shape behaviour, performance, and leadership more than any leadership programme ever can. 

Instead of asking how to develop better leaders,Perry asks a more uncomfortable question: what if leadership failure is not a people problem, but a system problem ? 

Njegov rad pomera fokus sa individualnog razvoja na dizajn organizacije jer
liderstvo nije izolovana sposobnost, već posledica okruženja u kojem nastaje.

At HR Experience, Perry will talk about why leadership development often doesn’t work, why organisations keep protecting the wrong leaders, and why HR should take a much bigger role in designing systems where good leadership becomes the result of the system, not a heroic exception. 

The Reality This Session Explores

We have never had more leaders - and never less trust. In the mid-2020s, the orthodox model of new/potential leaders modelling themselves on incumbents + HR-sourced/design programmes is now a “life support” machine. 

This keynote challenges the very assumption that better leadership is the answer to failing organisations. Drawing on Organisation Design, Systems Thinking, and his emerging concept of Polymorphic Organisations, Perry Timms argues that leadership failure is rarely just an individual problem - it is a structural one. 

Instead of continuing to develop, protect, and tolerate ineffective leaders, HR must confront the systems that enable them. This session reframes leadership as an outcome of design, not development and positions HR as the organisational conscience responsible for shaping environments where trust, accountability, learning and performance can actually emerge. 

The point is simple: if the system produces bad leadership, leadership development will not solve the problem.

HR mora da prestane da popravlja ljude i počne da menja uslove u kojima ti ljudi rade. 

What You Will Leave With

🟣 Understand why leadership development often fails - and when it is actually the wrong intervention. 

🟣 Learn how Organisation Design and systems shape leadership behaviour more than capability ever will.

🟣 Identify the systems that protect poor leadership - and how HR unintentionally sustains them. 

🟣 Explore Polymorphic Organisations as an alternative - where leadership is distributed, contextual, and accountable. 

Who Needs to Hear This

🟣 HR leaders and HR professionals responsible for leadership development, talent, and organisational development 

🟣 CEOs and senior leaders who are trying to change culture but keep seeing the same leadership behaviours

🟣 HR, OD, and People & Culture professionals who want to move from programmes and initiatives to real organisational change

🟣 Internal communication, employer branding, PR, and marketing professionals who help shape organisational culture, leadership narratives, and employee experience 

🟣 Organisations that invest heavily in leadership development but see little real change in behaviour and trust 

🟣Anyone who believes that leadership is not just a people issue, but a system and design issue 

Biography

Perry Timms has over 30 years of experience in business transformation, leadership and performance, including more than two decades in HR and organisational development. He is , the Founder and Chief Energy Officer of People and Transformational HR (PTHR), with a mission to create better business for a better world.

A Chartered Member of the CIPD and Fellow of the RSA, Perry is one of the most influential global voices in HR. He is a five-time member of HR Magazine’s HR Most Influential list, ranked #1 Most Influential Thinker in HR in 2022, and inducted into the HR Most Influential Hall of Fame in 2023.

In 2024, Perry received a Lifetime Achievement Award from WorldBlu for his contribution to self-managed and freedom-centred systems of workand was named a People & Culture Global Icon.He is also a two-time TEDx speaker, international keynote speaker, and an award-winning author focused on the future of work, HR, and learning.

Perry has authored three highly acclaimed books, including Transformational HR (2017) and The Energized Workplace (2020). His latest book, The HR Operating Model (2025), became an Amazon HR Best Seller shortly after release.

He serves as an Adjunct Professor at Hult International Business School and Ashridge Management Schooland a visiting fellow at Cranfield School of Management and Sheffield Hallam University.Perry is also a LinkedIn Learning instructor and an active member of leading global HR and organisation design communities.

His company, People and Transformational HR,is one of the world’s leading examples of self-managed, flexible, and climate-positive organisations.

Don't miss the chance to meet and hear Ricardo Cabete live in Belgrade!

BUY TICKETS