PULSE Keynote / Speaking
Talk/Keynote: THE EMPEROR IS WEARING NO CLOTHES
What happens when everyone agrees on a version of reality that isn't true?
Most organisations don't have an intelligence problem. They have a problem with the conditions in which intelligence is used.
Organisations invest heavily in talent, technology and leadership development. They want original thinking, innovation, collaboration and better decisions. Yet the everyday working environment can make it difficult for people to contribute what they actually know.
Time and attention are spent navigating status, hierarchy, office politics and the possible consequences of saying the wrong thing. People may see a problem, question a decision or have a different perspective, but decide that saying nothing is the safer option.
Over time, an accepted version of reality can become more important than what people can actually see.
The Emperor Is Wearing No Clothes is a familiar story. Its implications for modern organisations, however, are far from childish. It offers a remarkably useful lens through which to examine how people, teams and institutions come to accept a particular interpretation of events, and what happens when that version is no longer supported by the evidence.
The Four Characters
Andersen's story gives us four characters through which to examine the pattern. They are not necessarily four separate people. In real life, the roles can overlap and change.
The Emperor
The person, leader or institution whose version of reality is being presented. They may genuinely believe the story, know it isn't true but be unwilling to admit it, or become so invested in a decision that changing course feels like an admission of failure.
The Weavers and Swindlers
Those who create or sustain the illusion. Sometimes they deliberately deceive for money, power or advantage. Sometimes they use impressive language, complexity or carefully constructed explanations. And sometimes they simply repeat a story they have come to believe themselves.
The Audience
The people watching. Some believe what they are told. Others have doubts but assume everyone else agrees. Some stay quiet to protect their position, relationships or livelihood. Others benefit from the arrangement continuing.
The Child
Where the Story Appears in Organisations
The pattern can be found in countless workplace situations.
A leader makes a decision. The evidence begins to suggest it isn't working, but the organisation has already invested time, money and reputation in the original course of action. Advisers reinforce the decision. Colleagues notice the problems but hesitate to raise them. What began as a choice gradually becomes an accepted reality.
Or an organisation talks about openness and welcomes challenge in principle. Yet in practice, people carefully assess who is in the room, how a question might be received and whether disagreement could affect their standing. The stated culture and the lived culture are not always the same.
During my corporate career, I saw a small but revealing version of this in a formal product review meeting. Useful observations remained largely unspoken in the room itself. Afterwards, those same observations emerged in corridor conversations. The information was there. The room simply wasn't conducive to hearing it.
In many British workplaces, diplomacy, respect for hierarchy and avoiding unnecessary discomfort are valued qualities. They can help people work together. But they can also make it surprisingly difficult to ask an obvious question when everyone else appears comfortable with the answer.
Sometimes the Emperor survives not through deception, but through politeness.
This is how valuable knowledge can remain outside the conversations where it is most needed. It isn't always a question of whether people have something to contribute. Sometimes it is a question of what the environment allows them to say.
The same pattern appears in whistleblowing, public institutions, education, finance, technology and wider society. The Post Office Horizon scandal, Theranos and Enron each reveal different versions of it. Some involve deliberate deception. Others reflect institutional pressure, misplaced trust, financial incentives or the difficulty of admitting that a long-held assumption may have been wrong.
The circumstances differ. The underlying question remains remarkably familiar:
What allows a version of reality to survive when increasing numbers of people can see that something doesn't quite add up?
The Hidden Cost of Conformity
There is a human cost to all this, as well as an organisational one.
Consider what can be going through someone's mind in a meeting:
Is this the right person to challenge? How will this sound? Will I appear difficult? Should I wait until afterwards? What might this mean for my position?
Those calculations take attention. Social self-monitoring, managing impressions and navigating hierarchy all place demands on our cognitive resources. The more energy people spend working out how to behave, the less they have available for the problem in front of them.
That matters because original thinking rarely comes from everyone following the same line of reasoning. It comes from different perspectives, unexpected connections, questions that interrupt the familiar answer and the willingness to examine an assumption rather than simply accept it.
When people can contribute without constantly calculating the social consequences, more of their attention is available for the work itself. Concerns can surface earlier. Information can reach the people making decisions. Different interpretations can be considered before a course of action becomes difficult to reverse.
There is a practical commercial benefit, too. Less time spent navigating internal dynamics means fewer conversations held afterwards, fewer decisions revisited because important information was missing, and less effort spent working around things that could have been addressed openly.
Speed is a consequence of clarity, not the objective in itself.
The Human Advantage in the Age of AI
As AI changes how organisations access, process and use information, the ability to question what is accepted becomes increasingly important.
AI can identify patterns, produce conventional answers and work with enormous amounts of information at speed. But the value of human judgement is not simply in producing another answer. It is also in recognising when the question itself needs challenging.
What has been overlooked? What doesn't quite add up? Which assumption has everyone accepted without examining? What connection might be missed because it doesn't fit the established pattern?
Original thinking, intuition, creativity and independent judgement all have a part to play. Yet organisations can unintentionally reward people for following the familiar script rather than examining whether it is still serving them.
The familiar script is programmable. The human advantage lies in what happens when we question it.
A Different Way of Working: The Nordic Connection
My connection with Nordic cultures is both personal and professional. I've long been drawn to their relationship with nature, home and simplicity: cabins, candlelight, natural textures and the feeling of being able to settle in and simply be.
I'm equally drawn to the emphasis on equality, trust and flatter hierarchies found in aspects of Nordic working culture.
Part of the reason is that it feels familiar.
I grew up around my mother's Saturday kitchen table: a mix of family, neighbours and friends from very different walks of life. Everyone belonged. Different personalities, different opinions, different experiences, yet nobody had to leave themselves at the door.
Years later, I recognised echoes of that same spirit in Nordic cultures. Places where people seem to have more room to contribute without constantly navigating status.
The goal isn't to remove structure, accountability or the governance required in complex organisations. It is to create conditions in which people have more freedom within those structures to contribute what they know, question assumptions and challenge decisions when the evidence points in a different direction.
Perhaps it's no coincidence that Nordic countries are frequently associated with innovation, trust and wellbeing. While no culture has all the answers, there is something worth paying attention to in environments that appear to make better use of the intelligence already present in the room.
In many ways, this brings us back to the Emperor. The question isn't simply how to encourage more people to speak up. It's how to create environments where fewer people feel they need to stay silent in the first place.
Why This Story Resonated
What drew me to The Emperor is wearing no clothes wasn't the courage of the child. It was the innocence of the child.
The child isn't trying to challenge authority, expose anyone or create trouble. They simply haven't learned that everyone else appears to be operating from an agreement they can't see. They notice a discrepancy and say what they see.
That felt familiar.
For much of my life, I didn't realise there were agreements that other people seemed instinctively to understand. Agreements about status, authority, belonging and what could or couldn't be said. Again and again, I found myself in situations where the accepted view and my own observations didn't quite match. Sometimes in workplaces, sometimes in education, sometimes in creative environments and sometimes in everyday life. The details were different, but the pattern was remarkably similar.
What fascinated me wasn't whether people were right or wrong. It was how intelligent, well-intentioned people could arrive at a shared understanding that became increasingly difficult to question.
People often assume that conformity is created through pressure from above. Sometimes it is. But often it is sustained through something much quieter: habit, loyalty, professionalism, social expectations, fear of exclusion, or the assumption that everyone else must know something we don't.
The reason this story resonates so deeply with me is not because it is about an Emperor. It is because it is about us. About the assumptions we inherit, the stories we learn to accept, and the ways human beings collectively create a version of reality that can become surprisingly difficult to examine.
The child reminds us of something many of us once understood naturally: that there can be a difference between what a group has come to accept and what individuals are quietly noticing.
The question is not whether people are honest or dishonest. It is how certain assumptions become so familiar, so normal and so rarely questioned that they begin to feel like reality itself.
What the Keynote Explores
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How illusions are created and maintained: deception, self-deception, groupthink, financial interests, institutional loyalty and the pressure to protect an established account.
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The roles we play: the Emperor, the Weavers, the Audience and the Child, and how people can move between those roles.
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The cost of conformity: what people withhold, overlook or accept to protect their position, relationships or sense of belonging.
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Cognitive bandwidth and human intelligence: how status, self-monitoring and social expectations use attention that could otherwise be devoted to the work.
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Divergent thinking: why different perspectives, awkward questions and unexpected connections matter.
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Trust, hierarchy and innovation: what different ways of working, including aspects of Nordic culture, can teach us about making better use of the intelligence in a room.
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The consequences of challenge: why inviting people to speak up is not enough if their contribution is dismissed, discouraged or ignored.
What Audiences Take Away
Audiences will leave with more than an understanding of how conformity and institutional pressure operate. They will have a deeper, practical understanding of how a more egalitarian way of working can change the conditions in which people contribute, communicate and make decisions.
They will begin to understand why, when status and hierarchy carry less weight in everyday interactions, information can move more freely, different opinions can be explored, and people can change their minds without feeling they have lost face or position.
When people have room to question, disagree, offer new ideas and challenge assumptions, organisations can draw on more of the intelligence already present. Decisions can be better informed, problems identified earlier, and unexpected ideas and possibilities brought into the conversation.
Ultimately, the aim is to create an environment where the Child is no longer needed to say what others already see. Where people feel able to say it for themselves, and where the organisation is genuinely able to hear them.
Testimonials
Jessica Ajayi, Event Organiser - Get Supply Ready.
“Ingrid Marsh is a fantastic public speaker!”
Ingrid embodies the rarely seen professionalism and subject matter expertise. Complete openness and an infectious energy. She had our team totally hooked from the first second and everyone came away buzzing. Truly empowering and I would recommend to anyone.
Georgie Hazel - The Eleven Start Up
Really Good Session, What a Legend.
Sam Carrick - Creative, Born Social
Ingrid is fire!! Innovative, Engaging, Raw.
Lanre Atijosan - Entrepreneur
"Ingrid is present, and she gets us to be present and show up. Her style of delivery is powerful. She is an honest communicator who will challenge and stretch you to inspire real change."
Andrea - attendee from workshop for The Abbey Centre
“Great opening presentation by Ingrid Marsh. Thought-provoking indeed!”
ALAK S SALEEM
“Great energy, great speaker, great inspiration with some wonderful tips too.”
Sara Stafford-Williams
“I echo the too! Great event last night. Loved the vibe and the positive energy in the room.”
Parwinder Da, le
“Wonderful event! Love what you are doing and stand for. ”
Natasha Hayles
References
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Day, D. V., & Schleicher, D. J. (2006). Self-monitoring at work: A motive-based perspective. Journal of Personality, 74(3), 685–713.
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Schmader, T., & Johns, M. (2003). Converging evidence that stereotype threat reduces working memory capacity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(3), 440–452.
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Heatherton, T. F. (2011). Neuroscience of self and self-regulation. Annual Review of Psychology, 62, 363–390.
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Biondi, F. N., et al. (2021). Overloaded and at work: Investigating the effect of cognitive workload on assembly task performance. Human Factors, 63(6), 1056–1067.
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Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behaviour in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.
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Typical leadership programme outcomes (aligned with industry benchmarks ~£7 return per £1 invested).