E86: Jenny Burns, CEO of Magnetic

Jenny Burns is CEO of Magnetic, a business that helps organisations unlock growth through human-centred innovation, strategy, design and delivery. Like Positive Momentum, Magnetic is a B Corp. Her career spans 25 years in big, complex organisations — WH Smith, Telefónica O2, Centrica British Gas, RSA Insurance and Barclays — and she and Paul go back to their RSA days together. She's a keynote speaker and facilitator, hosts the Human AI series in London and New York, writes The Accidental CEO, and is a Fulham fan.

What we cover

• Why the CEO job was accidental — and how being told she'd never get there became the fuel
• Loving the work: why work-life balance looks different when you genuinely enjoy the job, and why pressure doesn't tip into stress
• Hiring for the culture you actually run: framing problems rather than directing, and being honest in recruitment about an environment with few frameworks and a lot of empowerment
• Adult conversations when someone isn't flourishing — and why that isn't about talent
• Courage in leadership, and the risk conversation with regulated clients: financial services says it can't take risks, while healthcare is life-or-death and still innovates
• Selling Magnetic two years ago and buying it back four weeks before recording — a bold, personally costly call
• The hardest part of the job: people decisions in a business where you hired every single person, and why Magnetic has an alumni who still come back for the annual book launch
• Why talented people leaving a small business isn't failure
• Retail as a leadership apprenticeship: store manager at 19, 60 part-time staff, around £5m turnover, and learning early that motivated employees drive what goes through the till
• Building executive teams: knowing your own gaps at 50, diversity of thought as non-negotiable for an innovation business, and senior women working three or four days a week
• Women in business: from a gender-balanced retail career to rooms full of white men at Barclays Capital; why board quotas helped but executive teams are still where the gap sits 
  • Why AI needs a female voice — bias built in from past data, and the human-centred leadership the transition will demand
  • The AI adoption inversion: consumers moved first this time, businesses are catching up, and the tension between what people use at home and what's authorised at work
  • The blind spot: CEOs and CTOs obsessing over back-office efficiency while missing that customers now discover brands in a chat window rather than a search engine or a shop
  • GLP-1 weight-loss drugs quietly disrupting food, retail and how we socialise

  Jenny's three tips for aspiring CEOs

  1. Get the right team around you — the role can be lonely, so build trust, and run it as a team rather than a series of one-to-ones.
  2. Never underestimate the time communication takes. The formal moments matter less than the informal ones — you're on stage even when you're making a cup of tea.
  3. Never take yourself too seriously. You're never the smartest person in the room, and no one wants a boring CEO.