#112: What separates ambition from impact?

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Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Your idea is starting to take off, and the early momentum makes success feel inevitable. 

But what happens when an idea outgrows the methods that made it? And when others are able to take it forward, how far can it go? 

Today, we ask: What separates ambition from impact? 

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Matt Henderson (Guest) 

What has got you to the position that you’re in may not necessarily take you forward to the position that you want to be in. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

And that became a light bulb moment by saying, “I need to think differently.” 

To make sure that this technology is just not add on to the existing infrastructure. It is changing the infrastructure. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Balancing that as co-founders of your business to ensure that your ambition, your dream isn’t diluted but is staying on the right track. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

But as soon as that operation was in place, the growth was bigger than our capacity. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

It’s the systems and processes that you put in place to allow you as a founder to become more of a steward of the business. 

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Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Welcome to The Green Room, a podcast by Deloitte. I'm Hannah Gowen, and I'm joined today by my co-host, Oli Carpenter. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

Thanks, Hannah. So really looking forward to today's discussion and we're joined by Dr Somayeh Taheri, co-founder and CEO of UrbanChain – winner of three awards at Deloitte's 2024 UK Technology Fast 50. Welcome, Somayeh. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Thank you for having me. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

We're also joined by Matt Henderson, managing partner at Deloitte Private and a long-time adviser to high-growth businesses. So welcome, Matt. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Thank you. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

So why don't we jump straight into the conversation and there's nothing quite like seeing an idea that you come up with, take off, gain that momentum. But how much does early momentum really tell us about future success? That's what we'd like to start off with. And Somayeh, you've had lots of experience growing an initiative from idea to impact at UrbanChain. So I'd like to look at what you can tell us about the original idea that you had that very quickly grew that momentum? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

So when I was at the university, research scientist, I was very much involved in different projects which were looking at climate change and fuel poverty. As part of those projects, because of my skills in science, or data science and market structure, I was very much involved in understanding why the market is not responding to those issues and it's an enduring problem which has never been solved. That became a question for myself by saying, “what is wrong fundamentally which is causing those issues?” 

University at the time was encouraging researchers to go into entrepreneurship. And in those moments, there were groups of people who started making, sharing ideas. And the light bulb moment for me was when I got an email from one of those groups talking about, “distributed systems of blockchain has come to play and changed our lives, but we haven't been successful.” And that sentence made me like… “distributed systems? We've never talked about distributed systems. We always talked about centralised systems and centralised markets. We have distributed assets, but we never had distributed systems.” 

And that became a light bulb moment by saying, “I need to think differently to make sure that this technology is not just an add-on to the existing infrastructure. It is changing the infrastructure from the ground.” And then that became a starting point with two co-founders coming to the journey. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

That's amazing. It sounds like you had a very busy start. And I guess that happened very quickly, didn't it? So how did that early momentum feel for you and the team? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

The thing is that as a founder, you see the future. That's the thing. My co-founder, he has a great experience in commercialisation, specifically commercialisation of innovation. From the very start, he could bring with his messaging big clients to our door. 

But when it was coming to say, “this is what we are doing”, they were like, “okay, what is it?” And then that becomes several meetings, meetings, meetings. Till now, they're like, “I want this now, because now it makes sense for me, because now I understand what you're talking about.” 

So that… and when you have disrupted the market once, in that sense, then you become that… you get that credibility of what you're saying next is potentially right. They doubted you in the beginning, but what you're saying, it is the future. So they want to join you. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

The interesting piece you described there was, you had the conviction right from the start, but because you were dealing with something that was foundational, you weren't a fast follower. You were actually creating a market that investors hadn't heard of previously. And therefore, as you described, there's no way of them assessing sort of risk and reward. When we think about, within Deloitte, how you're turning ambition into impact, we're typically talking about where there are existing markets and where there might be a market inequality or a market inefficiency. 

And we find that some of our scale-up, start-up clients are trying to solve those aspects. But actually, what Somayeh was describing, I think, was something much more foundational in nature there. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

The difference is that, you are making certainty better or are you creating new certainty? I was creating new certainty. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

I think the concept there around certainty is a really interesting point. And if we think about the really early stages of anything, how do we define some of these terms? So, ambition here. In those early stages, Matt, I'll start with you, how do you define what ambition means? What does it look like? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Ambition is conviction that you have an idea that is worthy of expending capital and that's personal capital, emotional capital. Somayeh and her team – and we've seen this across many, many organisations that have come out of academia – they’re starting with a great hypothesis, with a great thesis that they've got something that is valuable to society, and they've got that conviction to take it forward. And Oli used the phrase momentum there, which I think, an ambition on its own… we all get out of bed every morning and have ambitions, but actually it requires that personal capital and that impetus, that momentum to take it forward. 

That to me is ambition with a capital A as opposed to just the everyday ambitions that we all sort of hold dear to our hearts. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

And Matt, Somayeh has touched on starting with a really small team, just three co-founders in this instance. So what can make a small team really effective at an early stage like this? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

We see it time and time again. I do a lot of work in health and social care, they talk about mom-and-pop businesses, businesses that just start out with husband and wife, co-founders, and it allows for very nimble decision-making. You've got a small business and so everybody has a view on all of the aspects. The ability to have that emotional lens through which you're making decisions, I think that's what co-founders can do. They can understand emotionally that their ambition might be driven by social purpose, social impact, and so they make decisions based on things like that. The bit that becomes really interesting is, if you're a husband and wife and you have one care home, you can manage it together. 

You can double that and have two care homes, and you can both be a manager. It's the trust that comes from that third care home or that trust that you have to have systems and processes in place that others can follow that then allows you to scale your business. So ambition can start with very small teams, they can move very, very quickly. But in order to scale that ambition, you've got to get the right systems and processes and governance in place to balance speed and also the trust that things will continue to work in the way that you hoped. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

And I'd be interested to come back to the point around momentum and looking at the journey of an idea. What can it tell you about the future success of that idea and also what can't it tell you? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

I was expecting for the market to take the idea much faster and be able to offer what we do much faster at much higher, bigger scale. You talked about momentum, we had this market infrastructure which could work with different distributed commodities, could work with transport, could work with electricity, gas. But the market which was ready as a momentum was electricity. And then we started with electricity because that was the one that was quite advanced enough for us to work with. But then, other markets came in. 

But when I was starting, I was hoping to get much more capital in terms of what I'm doing. And also the board infrastructure and others becomes very much aligned with the ambition that I'm seeing. But it becomes the point that people in this journey, they don't see the whole future you see. They see part of the future and they are in that position with you and then you need to reinvent the whole team. That's the very important point. 

But the reality is the impact I wanted to see, I wanted to see much, kind of, worldwide impact. And for that worldwide impact, what slowed us down? The right team to see the bigger picture. That's another thing. Or I couldn't… I wasn't successful in maybe training them. Maybe that's my fault, which I don't know. 

So that's one thing. The right board to see the bigger picture and continue that change, continue to support that change, not to get comfortable with where you are and then want an exit. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

And Matt, to come back to you, so when you're working with a company, you've got to the point where they're starting to build momentum from that first idea or concept. How do you know that it's time then to move on to the next stage, the next thing? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

I think there's a point that Somayeh is making, which is a good one, which is as a founder, what has got you to the position that you're in may not necessarily take you forward to the position that you want to be in. 

And what you've described there is, there's a bit of luck, there's a bit of experience that comes with the stakeholders that you build around your business, some of whom you may have to build into the business because you've got funding needs, you've got regulators, you've got customers and suppliers that you're working with. Building an ability to allow those voices to help define where you're taking the business but not necessarily detract from where you're taking the business. 

And I can understand the frustration of you want to go big, you want to go global, you want to go quickly. We've seen many scenarios where sometimes businesses go too quickly. You have a kind of cash runway, you can burn through the cash and there's many, many casualties. So some of the voices will be naturally bringing a little bit of caution, a bit of prudence. So, I think it's about building the right team around you, which will be your internal team, your board and also the external advisors that you have and paying sufficient attention to that advice and balancing that as co-founders of your business to ensure that your ambition, your dream isn't diluted but is staying on the right track. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

You make something to be repeatable, to be adjusted, and it's ready for a nice management team to come and take it. What I struggled with was when people get comfortable with their current position and not moving forward. It's like they keep it in their safe zone. They just stay in their safe zone. And as soon as you move them to their fear zone or to, kind of like, to the growth zone, they feel uncomfortable and then pull you back to the safe zone. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

You've just used a very key word there of repeatable, so we want to now sort of go into that a little bit more. In the first episode of this series, our guest Scott Campbell mentioned the fact that progress is nothing without scaling. So Somayeh, when you think back to those early days of launching UrbanChain, how did that start to scale bigger than perhaps you'd initially anticipated? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Right, to be honest, because we had those customers, as soon as we were ready, we grew quickly. The reason for those awards is exactly that. So what happened is that operationally we weren't ready. We had the system, but operationally we weren't ready. But as soon as that operation was in place, the growth was bigger than our capacity. 

So our customers grew bigger than our capacity. Then we got some people to come and help us to employ and then to build the capacity resource-wise, people-wise, anything like that. But then the point was, if you are bringing somebody to help you to build the capacity, it shouldn't be that you build the capacity first, then the opportunity comes in. The opportunity comes in and you have a pipeline and then build the capacity for different scenarios. 

And that's very important. The point that you mentioned about burning cash, in a scale-up environment, burning cash is one of your huge concerns in the whole stage. Because any time, if you are burning too much, you're out of cash. And then you have investors but it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have cash. That's a very, very important point here. And for that reason, when you create that team to make it repeatable, you should always also consider you are still a scale-up company. You are not a corporate company, which then builds, for example, for next year, six months in advance. It's not like that. You build enough to realise the growth you are seeing, and then you go to the next step. 

So for us, to answer your questions, five years it took us to bring the technology to the market. But after five years, in one year, we grew 10x. Then we had the wrong hires because we thought, “okay, it's now repeatable. Everybody can do these repeating things now and I have documents for it to work.” 

So we started recruiting with that mindset. But we didn't know, still not repeatable. So came out and then quite like had the wrong hire. So then, kind of like, gone out and then again, grew again. So we started with zero, but now we have £1billion contracted value, which is quite a big number to achieve. But it's not something that came overnight consistently all the way through. No, we went… 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

It's not linear, is it? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Exactly. You went down, and then you go up. And then the biggest kind of like infrastructure player in the UK wants to work with you, and then suddenly you go with that, kind of like these things, which are very proud moments. But all of them need a team which is happy to stretch itself, not to be in the safe zone. People should stretch themselves and accept those changes. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

But if we stick on that thread, Matt, I'd be interested to hear from you because it sounds like the challenge is no longer making the idea work, but how you help other people make it work as well. And in that scenario, Somayeh spoke about growth being bigger than the capacity that you've got. What has to change when an idea does move from a small, ambitious group to people who weren't there at the beginning? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

I think capacity is a really interesting concept in this regard. And capacity can be the assets that the company has, could be the resources, the talent, but it's how you control the capacity as well. So it's the systems and processes that you put in place to allow you to take more of a step back from day-to-day management and to allow you, as a founder, to become more of a steward of the business. And you're allowing the management team to take control. You mentioned there, Somayeh, that you had papers describing how the business can scale. But the reality is it's more than just what is written down or what is described on a website, it's culture, it's systems, it's processes and technology to allow these things to become repeatable, to use that phrase as well Hannah. 

So we surveyed a whole bunch of start-ups and scale-ups this year, we've got a scale-up survey, founders overwhelmingly believe that their businesses will grow. Now whether that comes from misplaced conviction, or whether it comes from the fact that they can understand the demand signals within their markets and they can talk to those customers and they can understand that they can see the marketplace is there. I think just simply having that belief is not sufficient to actually deliver the growth that, and we're talking here 10x, 100x, is phenomenal. Not many businesses can achieve that. And the only way that we've seen it being achieved and being repeatable and sustainable, that's another way of describing repeatability, is having the right processes. Not just so that things can happen in a linear fashion, because as we've just described, that doesn't happen. But you have to have the ability to act responsibly and rapidly to changing regulatory environments, customer contracts being curtailed, intellectual property challenges coming from competitors, funding crises, etc. So the processes can't just be set in stone, I think that's what I meant when you said they're written on paper, it has to be a cultural thing as to how people react. And I love this idea of people being out of their safe zone, because when we're scaling quickly, there is no room for safety. It has to be, people have to recognise this sort of risk-reward dynamic that's going on every week, every day, probably every hour in some circumstances. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Another attitude I found in people… 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Attitude, I think, is quite a good way… 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Yeah, attitude is another one. Another attitude when you're hiring, that person, it's not about your job, it's about the company. That's a very important point, and the company is not just that entity that you've created. The company is the whole thing and its impact, including the clients that it has. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Well, I mean, it's… just coming back to our survey, you're absolutely right. The two biggest responses that we had from founders – and actually I noticed that the ScaleUp Institute had a very similar survey – again, market access and access to talent are two of the biggest challenges for founders and entrepreneurs. And then you've got another sort of angle as to how challenging that must be to build and sustain a team. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

And Matt, you said something earlier which was quite interesting around sort of, I suppose, how much freedom that you would give teams and individuals within that organisation. And just to kind of double-click on that a bit, is too much freedom a bad thing? Does it risk losing that original idea in making things work? How can you find that balance? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Yeah, freedom's an interesting concept in this regard because I think I would think about it in the… thinking about when you take one of your children to the bowling alley and you put the bumpers up for them because we're allowed a little bit of freedom but we can't go too far beyond these, kind of, constraints, if you like, if that's the right word. Ultimately, as we've said, many of our start-ups and scale-ups in the UK, the funding does come from external parties. They do work in regulated markets. You are working to a business strategy. 

I have a client that I'm working with at the moment and they gave the management team a little bit too much freedom and they felt like they had a brand-new way of going to market. So they had a new concept around how they're going to deal with digital marketing. And the business ended up burning millions, millions of pounds. And the founders had to step back in, and they had to take control. And they probably, to your point, Somayeh, probably went backwards by a year to 18 months rather than that linear progression that their business plan had been setting forth. So, I think there's a role for freedom of expression around the board table. I think it's really healthy to bring in voices with different views. But when you leave the boardroom, everybody needs to know what the bumpers look like, and that's important actually that everybody understands where the bumpers are. 

If you come into a business and you feel like, “oh, it's a start-up and therefore we've got free rein to go and attack new markets to develop new products”, we've just seen the last three or four years have been devilishly hard for, the European scale-up community. Just the funding environment has not been the same. We've got to focus on the right stuff, and we've got to make sure that we're really hitting our demand signals. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Is it the right stuff? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

I mean, that is a great, that is a great… 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

You just kind of like reduce the capacity of European scale-ups, then the others, like Chinese or American scale-ups are heading over. So the difference between European scale-ups and them, I mean, the gap becomes bigger and bigger. What I would say for scale-ups, the key for me to win was always focusing on commercial, regardless of whether somebody funds or not, I've funded myself, so at any time, I can decide to not to call the fund. And that's the power that brings to it. 

And that's the power you get from your customers, not from your investors. I never put investors first over my customers. In spite of, like, it might become quite bitter for them, but that was the reality of what happened. And whether they liked it or not, my duty was to protect the customer, to stick to me for the next one. And because they trusted the future I see, so I shouldn't destroy their future. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

I do love the vision of the bumpers, and I think at the times where perhaps things have started to work and perhaps you've got a really clear idea of this is the formula and this is the process. Is there a risk therefore when things are going right that if you continue just doing everything the same way, that growth can plateau? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

If you are doing what I learned or what I'm good at, over and over again, that becomes a plateau because there's nothing new for people. And people, when you pitch the future to them, they want to be able to design that future. It's not just, you tell them what future look like. And if you are not moving with them in designing the future, meaning that you are not changing your product in their design, for their design, yes, you're right. Your growth will plateau and even goes down. Because the next one, the next competitor comes, thinks differently, and they would be like, “oh, that's going to cover my needs.” 

So they will leave you. So you have to, for a strategy of resilience or strategy called continuity or stewardship, You have to renew that, what you have created again and again, to grow better and better. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

So on the topic of evolving ideas, we're going to get onto how collaboration can help ideas evolve shortly. But first, a quick break for a message about one of Deloitte's social impact partners. 

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That’s why we’re proud to support Ability Net through Deloitte’s Social Impact programme. 

Ability Net is a leading charity and global expert in digital accessibility, helping organisations make their websites, apps and tools work for everyone. Because when technology’s accessible for all, everyone can thrive. 

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Hannah Gowen (Host) 

So what we want to talk about now is the link between impact and evolution of an idea over time. And can an idea truly have a lasting impact if it never evolves? That sort of goes back to the talking point around needing to change. So Somayeh, I'll start with you. What do you think that link is between impact and evolution of an idea? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Similar to what I said earlier, we shouldn't link impact and continuity. Impact is not continuity. Impact is continuous changing for better; that's the very important point. So it's not continuity of what you're good at, it's continuity of the results you can see on the people you are serving. But it doesn't mean that you should stop there because you were the founder of a repeatable position. Now your duty is to find the next things to have impact. 

So you talked about evolution, impact I see as an evolved impact, not just time-stamped impact at a certain position, I would say. And that's the kind of key for the model that I have, which is I'm making an impact, let it go, make it comfortable, leave it, give it to the management team, then go to the next one, then you create the next impact and create the new certainty, and then you create the next management team to run that. And that's the evolving model, I would say. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Just on that point, we see that many, many times that actually serial founders, they don't rest with, “I built a business and I'm satisfied with that business's outcome.” They're constantly searching for that next impact, whether it's that market inequality, that market inefficiency, that opportunity. Sometimes, and this is slightly counter to what we've been discussing a little bit, sometimes it isn't always about what are the demand signals that they're seeing because customers can be very satisfied with the product or the service that they're receiving and that doesn't evolve. I think what founders do very, very well is, and I think you said this earlier, or maybe Hannah, you mentioned it, they see the future. 

So they have an idea and what they're doing is this repeatable process of being able to see the future, to convince the certainty, the risk reward, bringing in the right talent and actually then repeating that, seeing the future over and over again. That sounds like you might have a group of founders that is very, very small in doing so, but actually, partly the future changes day-to-day just with the uncertain times that we're in. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

And Somayeh, at which point do you think an idea creates the most value? Is it when it's invented, when it's scaled, or when it evolves? That might be putting you on the spot a little bit, but I'd be curious to get your thoughts. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

The thing is that, from the moment you create hope for people, the point mentioned about it's not always customer's needs, sometimes the customer doesn't know there is a possibility here. I don't know there's a possibility here for me to be fit without being in pain, or if there's an opportunity for me to really eat without being worried about my energy cost, to live as my electricity is something that is working for me, not me working for the hours of electricity type thing. So you never can… that customer might not know. But the point that you create that hope, that hope that comes to people, that's the first impact you see. It's little, but there is a hope, because that makes people think, “it's coming, it comes in the future”, but then they ask a question of, “when is it available?” 

But that's hope you created, then you shouldn't disappoint people. When you don't disappoint people, it then becomes a mission for you to make it real by saying, “here you go, do you see that?” And then they start kind of like, “can I join now?” or “can I kind of like do that?” or “can you do this for my car?” Then it becomes… and then they come to the journey with you. First of all, they understand you that this is new when the customers will join. But when they see that, and then they get a couple of months or three months experience of it, they don't want to leave. That's the kind of satisfaction they get. And that's for me, that moment of that, “I don't want to leave. This is my place. I don't want it. This is for me.” I measure my impact through that point, I would say. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

I love that. That's fantastic. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

And interesting, I agree with everything that Somayeh has said there, interesting, Oli introduced a new word there. He said, “value”. And I think it was quite interesting that you skipped thinking about value because that is an entirely different conversation, isn't it, to describe? Because value, we could define that as capital V, little v. The value you're describing there is the value to the customer, and to society, and to the market that you've generated. The concept of value in scale-ups has other connotations, which is probably a bigger topic than what we've got time for here. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

Maybe one for another pod for another day. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

We'll come back. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

Absolutely. Well, it's been a brilliant discussion and I'm sure we could go on for much longer, but we are coming to the end of our chat. But we'd like to always finish on some takeaway advice for our listeners. And Matt, if I turn to you first, what's one of the earliest signs that leaders should look for that an idea is relying on momentum and needs to evolve? Is it that hope that Somayeh mentioned or is there more to it? What's your thoughts? 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Somayeh has said this right at the start of her introduction actually, which was, it's brilliant to have ambition, ambition can gain momentum through the benefits that one can get in the UK from funding cycles, which might be government funding cycles. But commercialisation and sustained momentum probably comes from capital coming from sources outside of governments. And that's when you're going to start getting some external stakeholders around the table. We've heard that sometimes those voices can be listened to and other times you have to concentrate on the voice of the customer. And I think it's about finding that balance as to… not all ambition will lead to impact. 

And for many founders, this idea of a purely linear model doesn't exist and we heard that it doesn't necessarily exist. So in order to determine that actually you've got the momentum and that that can be sustained. I think it's about listening to your board, listening to your stakeholders and having the right processes and systems in place so that it isn't something that is tempered by the inability to scale beyond your own ownership. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

Yeah, brilliant. And Somayeh, what's the one thing leaders should protect as an idea grows and one thing they should be willing to change? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Definitely the vision you wanted or the way that you looked at your impact, it should be the same between all your team. If you find distractions between somebody is just there for personal gain, not for the company, this is not going to work. So I would say everybody has a vision to go for and that vision is not money. It's never money. Money comes when you have customers, even you have investors because you have customers. It's a very important point. That should never change. 

If you change that by saying, “okay, I put my interest before my customer's interest, my vision's interest”, that's where company potential goes down. That's how I would say that. 

What you should evolve, the company is definitely growing, you as a personality, your personality should grow. And that personality must evolve. What does that mean? Maybe kind of like 10 years ago, if you interviewed me, I would be much more like jolly type thing, “oh, I have this idea, I have that idea.” But over time I understood, okay, my voice has impact and my voice, and there are lots of stakeholders involved. So I can't say all of those things, and I can't kind of like behave like that anymore. 

So you are evolving and you're gaining those experiences. Those experiences are bitter, but you take them as an education or learning environment for yourself to grow as an individual. Otherwise, the company is overgrowing you as a founder, which then at that step, founders should step back. That's the time. That's the time I agree that founders should step back when it comes to the point that they are not evolving as the company is evolving. That's the point. 

Oli Carpenter (Host) 

That's great. Well, I wouldn't say your jolliness has disappeared. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Thank you. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

I love some of the takeaways there. They're so interesting to hear from a founder. It's been a really interesting conversation. We're going to have to wrap up. It's been so insightful. But we have to bring it back to our big question, which is: What separates ambition from impact? I'll start with you, Matt. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

I think reality. So an ambition is a dream, but impact is reality. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Great. Short and snappy. Somayeh, have you got some more wisdom? 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

I agree with you. I don't see different because ambition has created that impact. So it's not… they are the continuity of each other, not separate from each other. They are not separate, they are the continuous, that impact is because of that ambition was there. And there's an impact, which then you find another ambition, which then that becomes, for me, it becomes a more of a continuous movement rather than separation. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Great to get two different perspectives to it. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Thank you. 

Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Thank you very much for joining us today. 

Matt Henderson (Guest) 

Thank you. 

Dr Somayeh Taheri (Guest) 

Much appreciated, thank you. 

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Hannah Gowen (Host) 

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Green Room, a Deloitte podcast. 

We release a new episode every other Tuesday with another big question so don’t forget to hit follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening or watching – and make sure your notifications are on so that way you’ll be alerted whenever a new episode drops. 

This podcast is produced by our very own pod squad. 

Original music by Ali Barrett. 

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