Our Story

Inspiros is built on extensive research for the international best selling business book Peak Performance. Twelve of the world’s greatest sports organizations were studied firsthand. They included the New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves, San Francisco 49ers, US Women’s Soccer, Team New Zealand, FC Bayern Munich, Australian Cricket, Australian Netball, All Blacks, Williams F1, Australian Hockey and the Chicago Bulls. Insights from these outstanding organizations are included in Inspiros Workshops.

Marcus Fabius Quintilian instigated the concept of Inspiros. Born in 35 A.D., he became one of Rome’s most famous rhetoricians, philosophers and educators. He believed that inspiration was the ultimate expression of leadership through oratory. He called the search to become the best you can be through inspiration the state of Inspiros. Our company INSPIROS WORLDWIDE Ltd works in the spirit of Quintilian to assist leaders of iconic corporations to inspire others towards sustained peak performance.

Inspiros Ltd was created by Dr Mike Pratt, Dean and Professor of Management and Clive Gilson, Professor of Human Resources Management at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. Co-founder Dr Kevin Roberts joined the group in 1996 when he was CEO of Lion Nathan, a major Australasian brewer.

As Dean, Mike was keen to develop a new kind of leadership programme designed for corporate leaders. Mike, Clive and Kevin were unconvinced by traditional leadership and organizational development in both theory and practice. There had to be a better way and a new approach was developed that combined academic and practical leadership experiences.

As avid sports fans, they knew that in the sports they followed for decades, one or two organizations remained in continuous contention. As this level of performance could not all be attributed to talented players who joined and left teams, they concluded that there had to be something significant about the leadership and organization. They resolved to discover how these organizations kept on winning.

In 1997 Kevin Roberts was appointed CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi the global ideas company. It was to prove a challenging role. The Saatchi brothers who had founded the company had just been forced out by shareholders, the company was facing a serious financial crisis and it was losing clients. This difficult situation was an ideal place to put emerging theories to the test.

Saatchi & Saatchi became a global business laboratory with around 7000 people in 150 offices in 90 countries. This real-time research, theory development and practical implementation honed the ideas behind peak performance and inspirational leadership. The financial difficulties at Saatchi & Saatchi were quickly resolved through clarity of Purpose and inspirational leadership.

Within a year the company was demerged from its holding company and floated on the London Stock Exchange at £1.10. Two-and-a-half years later with the stock price at £5, Saatchi & Saatchi merged with the Publicis Groupe.

The Saatchi & Saatchi success story was noted by the new CEO Worldwide of Procter & Gamble A.G. Lafley. A blue chip giant with a proud history of 165 years, P&G had fallen into financial difficulties, with its share price dropping by approximately 50 percent over 18 months. Lafley turned to Inspiros and asked it to work worldwide with P&G’s top 200 people. The task was to develop a shared Purpose for the company and to enhance their inspirational leadership potential towards that Purpose. Under A.G.’s leadership, the fortunes of P&G have been restored over the following years. In 2005 the company took over Gillette in the largest merger of two consumer goods companies in history. Inspiros continues to work with P&G leaders holding Inspirational Leadership Workshops around the world.

From these beginnings, Inspiros Worldwide has now worked with more than 50 companies around the world. Insights from our ongoing consultancy are factored into Peak Performance theory and practice.