The Rethink Leadership Podcast

The episode surfaces a handful of genuinely useful ideas - particularly the distinction between a governance structure and an actual innovation process, and the five named SCORE behaviors - but the density is low: most runtime is consumed by introductions, pleasantries, book promotion, and generic truisms about culture and customer centricity that add nothing a smart operator hasn't already absorbed.

“companies, a lot of companies, and I found since that the majority of companies think they've got an innovation process or method in place, but actually they don't. What they have is a governance structure”

“it's not really failure or success. It's in either case we learned some stuff which is valuable for the business”

The governance-versus-process distinction is the episode's one genuinely non-obvious contribution; everything else - AI is just a tool, Maslow applied to safety, leaders sharing failures, customer centricity drives performance - is thoroughly recycled leadership content presented without any fresh framing or counterintuitive argument.

“a lot of companies think they've got an innovation process or method in place, but actually they don't. What they have is a governance structure”

“It's just a tool, right? It's a really good tool and it's probably one of the most powerful ones we've ever had. But it is a tool”

Tom Pullen has genuine practitioner credentials - 18 years in large-cap FMCG including six years as Global Innovation Director at Danone - and has consulted with named multinationals at scale; however, by the time of recording he is primarily a consultant and author promoting his book, which shifts him toward the thought-leader end of the spectrum.

“spent 18 years on the corporate side working for wonderful companies, uh, such as Boots, uh, Mars and Danone”

“ended up spending six years there as the global Innovation Director”

The guest name-drops credible client brands (Coca-Cola, Toyota, Unilever) and shares a single anecdote about a CMO visiting customer homes, but provides zero outcome data, no before-and-after metrics, no timelines, and no detailed case studies; all substantive claims are asserted rather than evidenced.

“one of my previous bosses who was the cmo, uh, at a large organization who every single business trip he did around the world he made time to go into customers homes”

“We've tested across cars, construction, healthcare, um, and logistics and luxury and lots of different sectors”

The host asks broad framing questions that give the guest ample space to promote his book and frameworks, but never challenges a single claim, requests a specific number, or creates any productive friction; the episode functions as a structured advertisement rather than an investigative conversation, with the host routinely restating and validating whatever the guest just said.

“That's really well said. De dramatize is a great word, which is I'm going to claim now”

“Is that your experience or is that just me?”