Mark Gallagher has worked in senior roles of the Formula One industry for nearly 40 years. Over the last 20 years, Gallagher has engaged wide audiences by sharing his expertise on this high-performance world and how these insights can be applied to business in terms of teamwork, leadership, adaptability, digital transformation and inclusivity.
In this exclusive interview, Mark Gallagher discusses his experience working with great champions; Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna and Jenson Button, and what it truly takes to maintain their iconic levels of success. He stresses the importance of “the leadership seeing themselves as being responsible for creating the environment within which a group of people can really excel”. Gallagher talks about the powerful model of High Performance Organisation’s (HPO) in which psychological safety and worker empowerment are fostered.
The role Formula One is playing in driving environmental sustainability within their industry shows great initiative. Gallagher discusses the ways in which they are working with energy and aviation sectors in order to find solutions to the negative contributions they are making environmentally, proving to be well on their way to reaching a net-zero emissions target by 2030 and abandoning fossil fuels completely by 2025.
In his recent second edition book, “The Business of Winning”, he discusses a range of topics regarding transformation and change, and how organisations can effectively “turn a negative into a positive”. Formula One has demonstrated this for decades, by striving to “play an important role in developing solutions and using the innovation mindset to develop these and then scale them for the benefit of wider society”.
Gallagher provides expert insight into what business leaders can learn from the sustained success of Formula One, which operates under a highly regulated industry with fast changing technologies and overall environment.
Video Timeline
- 00:16 – Who are you and what do you do?
- 00:51 – You recently released the 2nd edition of your bestselling book, “The Business of Winning”. Could you give us a quick overview please?
- 03:07 – How does the F1 industry relate to the business World?
- 05:45 – What are the secrets behind Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton achieving so much over the years?
- 08:58 – You are an expert on HPO (High Performance Organisations) – what is your view on this buzzword? What do these very efficient organisations do differently, giving them their competitive advantage?
- 10:58 – Sustainability is of course one of the key priorities for both society and organisations – What is the strategy for the automotive/F1 industry to become more sustainable? Is that an opportunity or threat to this business model?
- 08:56 – If you had one dream technology that could fix things within our society, what would it be?
- 14:34 – What is next for you?
