Vanessa Bennett - Next Evolution Performance

Vanessa Bennett30 January 2026

The brain science behind why a great strategy fails: A CEO’s guide to change that actually works

When Change Feels Like a Threat, Performance Takes a Hit Here’s what I’m seeing constantly right now: Leaders are dealing with major organisational changes – mergers, AI implementation, restructures – and they’re frustrated because their teams aren’t moving as fast as they need them to. The typical response? “We just need to get the right […]

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Vanessa Bennett27 November 2025

Stress is literally infectious: The hidden neurobiology behind your company’s performance decline

The Silent Performance Killer Hiding in Plain Sight Have you ever noticed how one person’s bad mood can somehow shift the energy of anyone close by? Or how a particularly stressful period for your senior leadership team seems to trickle down and affect everyone’s productivity, even people who aren’t directly involved in the crisis? You’re […]

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Vanessa Bennett7 November 2025

High Performance Culture: Why It’s a Process – Not a Campaign

The gap between intention and reality in building high performance teams Most leaders don’t embark on culture work because they have spare time on their hands. They start paying serious attention to culture because something isn’t working. Maybe it’s high turnover that’s costing both talent and revenue. Perhaps it’s teams that seem to be working […]

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Vanessa Bennett16 October 2025

How Leaders Can Do More With Less Without Burning Out Their Teams

In many of our conversations, especially over the last few years, we are seeing an increasing need for companies to do more with less. This challenge is backed up by recent research on financial services organisations. The Keegan Adams 2025 annual report “The Evolving Workplace – Trends in Employment, Benefits, Recruitment and Salaries” shows that […]

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Vanessa Bennett8 October 2025

Cognitive Overhead – The Energy Credits Your Team is Wasting… Without Knowing It!

Recently, I’ve been working with many businesses undergoing merger and acquisition activity. I’ve encountered people spending more energy credits worrying about their job security than actually doing great work. They’re literally spending work time calculating possible redundancies and planning for potential job loss. Imagine if they channelled that same energy into excelling at their current […]

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Vanessa Bennett7 August 2025

Are you wanting your transformation program to move more quickly?

When going through any form of change management – whether it be on a small scale, or a large scale transformation program, I’ve never met any leadership team, or private equity stakeholders, who wished the change implementation would go more slowly. In all cases, time is of the essence and generally speaking the quicker the […]

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Vanessa Bennett11 June 2025

Outcomes vs working location – the chicken or the egg?

Recently we have been receiving some enquiries from companies who are keen to bring their staff back to the office 5 days a week. At least that’s the question they think they are asking us. Here’s how the first part of the conversation often goes: Prospective client: We need to bring our staff back to […]

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Vanessa Bennett23 May 2025

An overlooked cause of procrastination…and a relatively easy fix

Procrastination is a topic that is often brought up by clients in our workshops. There are often many causes for it. Some are slightly more obvious reasons such as a lack of interest in a particular task, perfectionism, feeling overwhelmed and perhaps a general lack of motivation. Others might be less obvious reasons like not […]

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Vanessa Bennett30 April 2025

Should we aim for consistency or intensity?

It’s a common problem for high performers – the all or nothing approach. Yes – that old chestnut. It applies to so many facets of work and life. People who don’t exercise consistently end up exercising too hard too quickly and then get injured again which makes it harder to keep exercising. And the boom/bust […]

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Vanessa Bennett30 April 2025

20/20 – Clearer views on the neuroscience of high performance

On the first Wednesday of each month (Tuesday night USA) Perk up your week – Join us for 20 minutes of insight and 20 minutes for your questions. Next Evolution Performance founders, Vanessa and Alex, with senior performance coach Dr P, team up for this spotlight on High Performance, designed to keep you relevant […]

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