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As people are reflecting on the year that’s just been, making (or ignoring) their 2025 resolutions, and comparing their slightly underwhelming Spotify Wrapped stats, we want to take a moment to reflect on something much more exciting: Thrive Live 2024.
With the dust now settled on another incredible instalment of Thrive’s annual customer conference, let’s explore some key highlights and takeaways from the event – which saw over 400 L&D professionals across multiple companies and industries come together under one roof. (Soho House’s roof, to be precise.)
If you’ve ever been to Thrive Live before, you’ll know that the event attracts some big names, to say the least. Previous years’ guests have included Steven Bartlett, Baroness Karren Brady CBE, and comedy from Nina Conti – and 2024’s line up was equally star-studded.
Taking the stage for an insightful key-note panel, Dan Murray-Serter (Heights) sat down with Fearne Cotton and Spencer Matthews to talk about their business ventures (Happy Place and CleanCo, respectively.) Together they spoke about the challenges of building a business, and compared how their past experiences as public figures dealing with organisations has informed their current leadership strategies.
During a conversation about the qualities of a good leader, Spencer Matthews talked about how Ursula Burns (CleanCo’s current chairwoman, who made history as the first Black woman to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company) has become not just his chairwoman, but his role-model. Spencer explained his admiration of her ability to “remove emotion” from difficult business decisions, which has in turn taught him not to waste energy where it isn’t needed. From Spencer:
“We all know that the path to success – if you want to call it that – is never linear. And so if you can be the kind of leader who just holds everyone’s hand in a calm and considered way through problems … to show strength it’s required of you to be strong, that’s very important.”
Towards the end of the keynote, the conversation turned to our favourite topic: Learning. Dan asked Fearne and Spencer if they had any tips for learning, and how they cultivate a team that is curious about new things in order to stay ahead. From Fearne:
“I think you’ve got to take ego out of it, because there is no room for ego when you’re truly curious. [You should be] willing to humbly step back and say, ‘I did that wrong’, or ‘I thought I knew that thing, and I really, really didn’t.’ You can’t have ego in the room in those moments … because you will have team members who know more than you. You’ve got to check in with yourself, and make sure you can step away and see everything at a distance so that you can be as open-minded as possible.”
Along with this keynote, attendees also enjoyed two customer-led panels talking all about how Thrive boosts their communication and engagement (including replacing their employee intranet with Thrive to save them both a considerable amount of money and time) and four customer-led workshops on the topics of post-implementation success and engaging a deskless workforce.
Thrive CLO Helen Marshall was joined by Thrive customers Rob Beattie (Improvement Manager at Vodafone), Svetlana Lloyd (Senior L&D Business Partner at Bally’s) and Mark Born (Head of The AA Driving School Academy) for a panel that would help attendees showcase exactly how learning translates to success: The blueprint for an award-winning project.
At Thrive, we’re all about demonstrating the impact of L&D, and awards are a brilliant way to do just that. We thought Thrive Live served as the ideal platform to share insights from customers who have won awards in partnership with us, and one such insight came from Svetlana Lloyd. When asked about advice for anyone who is thinking about entering for an award, Svetlana said:
“Data is not just numbers; it’s a story. Be prepared to tell that story.”
This is something we’re keenly aware of at Thrive, underpinned by our very own storytelling team: Thrive Impact. This team of Data and Analytics experts have been assembled to help our customers learn from their data, find out the story it’s telling them, and master exactly how to tell that story.
To close out the day, Josh Devanny (Thrive’s Chief Growth and Innovation Officer) revealed the Winter Release and 2025 product roadmap. This is Thrive’s biggest feature release yet, powered by AI and designed to take our customers’ learning strategies further than ever before.
Along with a new, world-class AI authoring tool that helps L&D professionals create engaging content in minutes through the use of simple prompts, Josh also unveiled improvements to Events, Search and UI functionality, exciting new AI-powered features like AI Video Thumbnails, Chatbots and more.
Want to learn more about this new feature release, but weren’t lucky enough to attend? You’ll just have to peruse our Winter Release page here, or book a demo with Thrive to become a future Thrive Live attendee.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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As people are reflecting on the year that’s just been, making (or ignoring) their 2025 resolutions, and comparing their slightly underwhelming Spotify Wrapped stats, we want to take a moment to reflect on something much more exciting: Thrive Live 2024.
With the dust now settled on another incredible instalment of Thrive’s annual customer conference, let’s explore some key highlights and takeaways from the event – which saw over 400 L&D professionals across multiple companies and industries come together under one roof. (Soho House’s roof, to be precise.)
If you’ve ever been to Thrive Live before, you’ll know that the event attracts some big names, to say the least. Previous years’ guests have included Steven Bartlett, Baroness Karren Brady CBE, and comedy from Nina Conti – and 2024’s line up was equally star-studded.
Taking the stage for an insightful key-note panel, Dan Murray-Serter (Heights) sat down with Fearne Cotton and Spencer Matthews to talk about their business ventures (Happy Place and CleanCo, respectively.) Together they spoke about the challenges of building a business, and compared how their past experiences as public figures dealing with organisations has informed their current leadership strategies.
During a conversation about the qualities of a good leader, Spencer Matthews talked about how Ursula Burns (CleanCo’s current chairwoman, who made history as the first Black woman to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company) has become not just his chairwoman, but his role-model. Spencer explained his admiration of her ability to “remove emotion” from difficult business decisions, which has in turn taught him not to waste energy where it isn’t needed. From Spencer:
“We all know that the path to success – if you want to call it that – is never linear. And so if you can be the kind of leader who just holds everyone’s hand in a calm and considered way through problems … to show strength it’s required of you to be strong, that’s very important.”
Towards the end of the keynote, the conversation turned to our favourite topic: Learning. Dan asked Fearne and Spencer if they had any tips for learning, and how they cultivate a team that is curious about new things in order to stay ahead. From Fearne:
“I think you’ve got to take ego out of it, because there is no room for ego when you’re truly curious. [You should be] willing to humbly step back and say, ‘I did that wrong’, or ‘I thought I knew that thing, and I really, really didn’t.’ You can’t have ego in the room in those moments … because you will have team members who know more than you. You’ve got to check in with yourself, and make sure you can step away and see everything at a distance so that you can be as open-minded as possible.”
Along with this keynote, attendees also enjoyed two customer-led panels talking all about how Thrive boosts their communication and engagement (including replacing their employee intranet with Thrive to save them both a considerable amount of money and time) and four customer-led workshops on the topics of post-implementation success and engaging a deskless workforce.
Thrive CLO Helen Marshall was joined by Thrive customers Rob Beattie (Improvement Manager at Vodafone), Svetlana Lloyd (Senior L&D Business Partner at Bally’s) and Mark Born (Head of The AA Driving School Academy) for a panel that would help attendees showcase exactly how learning translates to success: The blueprint for an award-winning project.
At Thrive, we’re all about demonstrating the impact of L&D, and awards are a brilliant way to do just that. We thought Thrive Live served as the ideal platform to share insights from customers who have won awards in partnership with us, and one such insight came from Svetlana Lloyd. When asked about advice for anyone who is thinking about entering for an award, Svetlana said:
“Data is not just numbers; it’s a story. Be prepared to tell that story.”
This is something we’re keenly aware of at Thrive, underpinned by our very own storytelling team: Thrive Impact. This team of Data and Analytics experts have been assembled to help our customers learn from their data, find out the story it’s telling them, and master exactly how to tell that story.
To close out the day, Josh Devanny (Thrive’s Chief Growth and Innovation Officer) revealed the Winter Release and 2025 product roadmap. This is Thrive’s biggest feature release yet, powered by AI and designed to take our customers’ learning strategies further than ever before.
Along with a new, world-class AI authoring tool that helps L&D professionals create engaging content in minutes through the use of simple prompts, Josh also unveiled improvements to Events, Search and UI functionality, exciting new AI-powered features like AI Video Thumbnails, Chatbots and more.
Want to learn more about this new feature release, but weren’t lucky enough to attend? You’ll just have to peruse our Winter Release page here, or book a demo with Thrive to become a future Thrive Live attendee.
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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