An Interview with INTENT
02 December 2025
Meeting Henry Davies and Rich Howard, the founders of INTENT Leadership Evolution, it is immediately clear that their approach to leadership isn’t something you learn in a classroom — it’s something shaped by lived experience, pressure-tested environments, and a deep curiosity about human behaviour.
Their residency in Launchpad Futures at Falmouth University is more than a practical move. It’s a collaboration built on exchange: INTENT brings a rare blend of military discipline, creative thinking, and behavioural insight, and in return they’re immersing themselves in an ecosystem of innovation that continually pushes their own methods forward.
From Defence to Human-Centred Leadership
Both Henry and Rich draw heavily on their early careers in the Armed Forces — places where leadership is not a skill but a necessity.
Henry spent 17 years as a Naval helicopter pilot before founding an award-winning film production company. He spoke candidly about the stark difference between military and civilian expectations:
“They gave me a uniform and said ‘go and learn to lead’ and then they gave me a helicopter. The world we come from is the inverse of the working world.”
It’s clear that Henry’s creative background now helps shape how INTENT tackles organisational problems — often by reframing old challenges through a new lens, what he calls “playing new tunes on existing issues.”
Rich’s journey spans outdoor education, experiential learning and senior leadership roles in the Royal Marines, including global deployments and political-military work in Washington, D.C.
He’s frank about the Defence environment:
“Defence messes lots of things up, but it’s exceptional at uniting people with purpose under pressure.”
INTENT, he explains, is about distilling the best of that clarity and purpose and combining it with contemporary leadership thinking.
A Methodology That Puts Behaviour First
INTENT does not deliver training in the traditional sense. Their programmes are experiential, task-based, and designed to replicate the real pressures and behaviours of working life — deliberately immersive without being physical.
Rich described their role succinctly:
“We hold up a mirror. People get to see their attitudes and behaviours in a way that’s impossible to ignore.”
Every programme ends with something Henry emphasises repeatedly: real, diarise-able actions.
“It’s not notional. It’s: what are you going to do differently on Monday morning to affect the change you want?”
This approach has been validated at scale.
A previous collaboration on a post-Covid programme for NHS staff grew from a regional pilot to around 70 cohorts at BARTS in London, eventually becoming a finalist for Best Educational Programme at the HSJ Awards.
Henry described one cohort of exhausted clinicians who began the programme convinced that “there’s nothing you can teach us,” but ended it in tears of relief and renewed hope..
“They said it had given them a new lease of life. That moment will stay with me.”
A Growing Collaboration with Launchpad Futures
INTENT has already worked with Falmouth University’s Marketing & Engagement team, working with 70 staff. It was, Henry and Rich told me, a revealing first encounter with the energy inside the space.
They see the university as fertile ground for adopting a “team of teams” model inspired by Stanley McChrystal — moving from siloed structures towards what Rich calls:
“Shared consciousness. An incredibly self-aware organisation where information flows like a neural network.”
Launchpad Futures, to them, feels like a living laboratory for this kind of evolution.
“It’s a petri dish of ideas,” Rich said. “A wonderful environment to land in.”
At the same time, INTENT benefit from being surrounded by creativity, entrepreneurship and interdisciplinary thinking — all of which feed back into their own methodology.
The Future: Elevating Human Skills in a Technical World
One theme the pair returned to again and again was the importance of human capability in an AI-driven age.
Rich put it this way:
“It’s a full moon of technical skills right now. Human skills are overshadowed. We want to rebalance that.”
Their aspirations for their residency at Launchpad Futures is ambitious but simple:
To help students, researchers and early-career professionals build leadership capability early — before they’ve learned unhelpful habits that are harder to unpick later.
With clients now spanning the UK, Launchpad Futures gives INTENT a national hub in Cornwall that matches the scale and ambition of their work.
Launchpad Futures is funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund as part of the Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Good Growth Programme.
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