Simon Hartley
About
I founded WumDrop, a last mile delivery service operating in the African market in 2014, and within seven years the world’s largest retailer, Walmart had completed a 100% acquisition of the company.
I exited WumDrop in 2024 after successfully integrating it into Walmart, maturing the organisation, and scaling it to annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of Rands while maintaining industry-leading performance metrics. During that time I was recognised by Walmart International with a Walmart Leading The Way Award.
Today I serve as a non-executive director of conservation NPO, Ingwe Research Program, and advise businesses and executives in executive storytelling, leadership, strategy and execution, drawing on screenwriting structures and Walmart’s VISSRR framework via my advisory services firm, the Thorndale Group.
I’m also a pretty good cook, a passionate wildlife photographer, a South African National Parks Honorary Ranger, a qualified television scriptwriter, a Choir Olympics gold medalist, and I’ve been known to perform opera in the shower. I might also be building a science and conservation expedition company right now, but you didn’t hear that from me. Yet.
Talks
Your team works under exceptional pressure for the country’s most ambitious retailer. It’s wildly fulfilling to make the kind of magic that moves giant corporations forward, but it can be brutally hard to keep the hits coming according to a corporate schedule. And sometimes we swing, and
we miss, and we have to try again. And sometimes when the load is particularly heavy, and the grind has gone on for too long, we can forget why we’re doing it at all. And we can lose hope. We burn out, and break down, alone, and together.
In this keynote, we’ll:
● Explore how burn out works
● Explore the Sixty60 driver experience as a mirror to our own and a source of instruction to illustrate the sustaining power of a clear purpose, even in the toughest circumstances.
● Explore how the largest retailer in the history of humankind also uses clear purpose statements to sustain their reign at the top, week after week.
● Explain the Walmart VISSRR framework, illustrating how to create a purpose that translates from idea to a clear set of daily to dos, leaving the audience with powerful, practical applications to take away.
Book Now
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