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Hi there, I'm Ben Pearce and welcome to the Tech World Human Skills Podcast. Every episode we talk through how to thrive in the tech world, not just survive. Now, if you want me to work with your team, just give me a shout. I love to help teams be more influential, memorable and successful with their stakeholders. Head over to www.techworldhumanskills.com to book a chat.
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lovely to have you with us. Thank you so much for joining us and we are recording the third really of a little mini-series about leadership leading in tech and in episode one we sort of talked a little bit about how you shop as a leader. In episode two of this we talked about change theory and how you drive change and in this episode we are talking all about results and how you multiply and achieve greater results through people. So that's what we're going to be talking about and our guest today is a definite friend of the show. He's done a number of episodes with us now and they've all been brilliant. So please can you welcome to the podcast Ben Ked. Ben it's lovely to have you with us. Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me back. The pleasure is all mine. Now for people that maybe haven't caught any of the earlier episodes could you just introduce yourself a little bit? I certainly can. 25 years of working in software and technology. 15 plus years now leading people. Yeah big enterprise customers, big software, SaaS all that good stuff but really kind of building large operational teams and driving improvement and transformation. Yeah and so we've worked together for you know we haven't actually worked together for many years but many years ago we did work together. We did. For a good number of years we led a team together and then we've done a number of episodes together. So the episodes that the last two that I think were particularly relevant you know to this and I'd encourage if you haven't listened to those to go back and listen to those. First one was thinking about how you show up as a leader. Yes. And we talked a little bit about that. Second one was then about a bit about change theory. Yes. What we said in both of those was although some of those maybe sounded a little bit soft and fluffy actually that was how you achieve results. Achieving results is really important and the soft and fluffy helps. Yes we did. Do you want to expand on that a little bit? I think we really wanted to call that out because it can be a bit soft like servant leadership depending on who hears that term it's you know oh create an environment but is there any discipline are there any results or is it all just you know we all having a nice time to know real end. So I think we touched on that and I think a lot of what we talked about was yes it's the environment but it is about creating trust but also about accountability and then having that real clarity around what success is and we'll come on to that I guess in this one in terms of driving those ultimate results. Yeah. And as you said with and through people. Yeah. Yeah. And I think so today what we're gonna do is we're going to focus on achieving results through people because you can achieve greater results as a group than you can as an individual. Yes. So the three sort of areas that we're going to focus and dig into a little bit today. A little bit on giving the right things to the right people. Yeah. A little bit on giving feedback to people and a little bit on oversight governance that kind of stuff whatever term you want to use. So that's where we're going to go over the next half an hour or so. Shall we start off with the first point? Giving the right things to the right people. What does that mean to you? I think about I interview in this way but I also lead teams in this way in that I think about aptitude. So I try and get to know people to know how are they wired and what would they be good at. Okay. And then I'm also looking at have they done it before. So have I got confidence that they can get there maybe with a bit less coaching or a bit less oversight. So that I mean that's really how I think about how I think about it and then it depends on what you're trying to get done. So is it I need to get there quickly or it's high risk or those types of things and I might want people that have done it a bit before. Yeah. Or maybe I've got a bit more room and I can give it to somebody who's like high potential you know really good wiring might need a little bit more course correcting. So that's kind of how I think about trying to line up. Can they do it is the first question and then how much help might they need in order to do it and how does that work with what I need to achieve. Yeah. And so it's interesting as you go into that it sounds a little bit like situational leadership which is a training course I went on many many years ago. Did you go on that training course? I did for the same company.
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And you know and that sort of talks about this idea of thinking about they call it competence I guess like functional competence I forget maybe the exact terminology but are they really good at doing something or do they you know they don't have the functional competence. So you've got a scale there and then the other scale is their energy levels and their commitment and their enthusiasm you know. So the idea being you know the obvious you know the cliches that come up of course being you've got the perhaps the early in career super enthusiastic but doesn't yet have the skills and the competence. Yes. But is on a great path to build those or maybe in tech we've seen that the functional cynic who's really knows the job really well but has lost the will to live and is a bit of an energy sucker rather than an energy giver but actually knows a lot about how to do the role. There may be there may be two extremes. Yeah. But then the other one that you're putting in is you're talking about aptitude and potential in there as well. Yes. How does that sort of map in? Yeah so it's the potential isn't it. I'll give you one example okay maybe two if you push me. So I've actually in in a couple of different settings I've needed somebody to help me build out a really good data model so that I could understand in a more objective way what's going on use that data to make good decisions and also to kind of measure that that we're driving the right results right. Yeah data is done well really important. I didn't necessarily have an opt analyst that I could bring to bear but in both both of these scenarios two different people two different companies I could see that they were very so insights blue very data oriented very good
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just thought really well one of them was actually a people manager so had a really good side there as well so I could not just think about data but then how would you actually use that in a manager role to drive things for example and then in the other scenario this person had really good sort of SQL knowledge understood how to build data models and actually turned out had much better ideas around how to visualize data than I did. I did a sort of a whiteboard really rough diagram sent a photo and she could turn she's like yeah you haven't thought about that and that and by the way here you go yeah so but in both of those examples they were not ops analysts they weren't as experienced as other ops analysts that you could bring in but actually they had really good thinking and they had a load of other things that they could bring in as well yeah and so so the attitude was there was really strong yeah and actually some of the other proven capability yeah helped them be even better at this particular so it was about you having faith that even though they didn't have the proven competence yet that they were going to get there that they were going to they were give them a bit of time yeah they were going to get there absolutely right okay so um yeah so the question then comes to me is well why wouldn't you just want everybody in your team to be high competence high energy can't it well I think I will high commitment yeah high energy I mean I think you have to be a bit careful with okay with balancing teams I would say so I think you want everybody to be committed yeah I think energy is different with different people yeah you do have people that are quite laid back and considered but that you shouldn't always confuse some people might think that isn't hard working that absolutely can be yeah and that can be a real there's lots of people I've worked with who I can see are very reflective yeah so I will ask them to come back to me rather than put them on a spot yeah right because I get a better result then yeah so I think you you do need to balance a team and if you had high energy highly competitive and everyone was fairly similar in that regard it doesn't always create that balanced team and that's we've done our insights in the past I often think about that you need a bit of the red the yellow the green and the blue yeah and how you balance that and also just in terms of commitment or energy levels and I guess what I'm thinking about energy there what I'm thinking about is not are you an enthusiastic person but are you committed and energized by your mission and trying to work hard as it were um okay is um you go through that in different in in different cycles so for example and I can only speak for my my when I just had kids probably wasn't quite as committed well not probably wasn't as committed to deliver it at work as I was maybe a year or two before where I didn't have other things competing for my headspace yeah and that kind of stuff so perhaps my commitment and energy levels were a bit lower but then you know maybe the kids got a bit older and I was the novelty of children wore off you know you get a little bit more this is being recorded yeah you know then you get a bit bit committed so it's not like everybody's on this constant energy and commitment level everybody's varying and we probably covered elements of this in the one of the one of the other two but there is that getting to know your people and understanding what's going on in their world and balancing that isn't it it's like we're three-dimensional aren't we and yeah I'm sure there's some sort of metaphor about an iceberg here right but there's a lot that's going on and you need to understand that yeah um but somebody that's that's doing a great job is still doing a great job even if it's 80 percent of what they can give at a point in time yeah yeah yeah so so choosing the right people to do the right thing yeah bearing those sorts of things in
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in mind how much oversight we're going to get to that later but how much help and oversight people might need how much space people might need I guess the the the aptitude like what we talked about before the the people I was talking about there could probably afford a bit more time and energy to kind of cut their teeth on this new opportunity and learn how to be a seasoned ops analyst yeah whereas you just had your kids you could have been an ops analyst and lived in your comfort zone for a year or two or closer into your comfort zone so I think that's that's life isn't it sometimes you want to push on sometimes you need to sort of stay where you are and solidate in some aspects of your life yeah you still learn a lot there but it's not the same trajectory yeah that's okay so I think it's probably worth just thinking if people are more interested in that I would definitely recommend having a look at that situation or leadership it's definitely up there on Wikipedia if you do some searching you can find it it's not the perfect model there's always things that are good and bad about a model but it's a useful way to to I you know hook your thinking into yeah and consciously competent isn't it I think which is like don't think about changing gear do you once you've learned to drive it's that
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that's the model isn't it right I don't remember I think that's it so you're you know the the model is very simplistically you have to really concentrate on changing gear when you first learn to drive don't you yeah and then fast forward two years and you don't know how you drove from one town to another and that's that you know you become subconsciously competent yeah yeah yeah I'd forgotten that yeah now you say it all right okay right well let's move on um so we thought there about giving the right things to the right people yes and that's a great thing to do to achieve results through others let's talk a little bit about having to give feedback now I know I've done a whole episode with Nicola Slater on this um but it's such and I encourage people to go back and have a look at that but I think it's worth touching on because people leaders are often not great at giving feedback so maybe we've given things to people and either people aren't delivering them as effectively or their competence is lowest they need to be given feedback so that they can get better and can become more competent but often we're not very great not very good at giving feedback I don't know have you got any got any experiences of not being very good at giving feedback loads yeah I mean I I'd probably bow to you've probably got some good models and some a bit more expertise there I
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I think giving feedback is important you don't always have to sit somebody down and say I'm going to give you some feedback yes that tends to lead to yeah there's ways of giving feedback but I when I coach if I'll give you a two things I have in my head when I'm coaching people and often this is you know I've been in leader of leader roles so I'm thinking more about about those scenarios I think about am I do I need to build confidence or do I need to build awareness so if somebody not aware of the impact they're having and maybe they need some some awareness some help around that because most people are good and if they have that awareness they can probably do something about it it's normally they're not quite aware of how they show up on the impact it has or that might be and then sometimes you've got we talked about high potential earlier you've got really high potential people and actually it's less about giving them tiny little bits of veneer feedback it's more about using your network getting them opportunities and running I always think about running ahead in a corridor and opening doors so they can go quicker right it's that side so I think feedback's really important the feedback is really on that awareness bit and then it is just about trying to be quite specific I think we touched on this but if you if you're in a good position where you've built trust and you've got a good relationship I think that feedback it's much easier to be quite direct on that and I'm sure you've got some good models around how to think about that but I you try and give feedback and then I've had some scenarios where I've had to just go very very direct because it didn't it's just not landing and it's that real sometimes you need to kind of give it to somebody between the eyes and they need to go away for the weekend or whatever it is and reflect on it and you're trying to kind of go look I've got your back here but you really need to hear this yeah that's not often that I've had to do that but I think that's something quite impactful yeah I think um so you're right you get a couple of models and you know so my experience is had to had to give a lot as a leader so when you're leading teams um and the way I kind of think of it is is feedback it really is rocket fuel for performance right how do you get better at something somebody tells you you're an expert saying you're not doing and if you think about becoming a musician you know that's something your people go through music lessons to get to get that or or if you're becoming a chef you know people you know or a coach if even if you think about the best sports people like I don't know jokovich in tennis or they have coaches right even though they're the best football best at football or the best at tennis that's somebody to help them yeah they do and and that's the intro if you if I go take you back to my two things around raising awareness yeah and building confidence um actually with jokovich let's pick jokovich yeah he'll have had lots of very directive coaching around this is how you throw a ball and hit a ball and serve and do those things early in career later in the career have you noticed that when you hit that ball out on that first serve that your elbow's in this position like it's not nobody's telling him how to serve anymore but they are raising his awareness yeah so that he can work out in his style yeah his way yeah how to do the thing and there's yeah I think sports quite interesting in that regard yeah yeah the elite sport yes there are some quite key parallels there and yet so you've got these elite people that are paying other people to help them do that yes and yet somehow there's something else like you say somebody says I want to give you some feedback your hackles go you know hackles go so I think first thing is to go the feedback is is rocket fuel for your performance so as somebody that wants to get better at stuff always being open to feedback that's not always saying that you have to act on everybody's opinion but to be open to feedback I think is a really important thing um there's some things to think about that I've seen that people don't do very well um so the first thing I would always say is talk about behaviors rather than judgments ascribing judgments to think so if we go back to your jock of jockovich advantage example and I'm making this up now so it could all go a bit wrong but you were very specific you know have you noticed that your elbow is slightly out to the right when you that's very behavioral whereas if somebody come in and went you're rubbish at serving right or you're average at serving um that that doesn't help because being average at serving isn't something that you can fix whereas having your elbow out is something that you can work on and something that you can change and the shame you know like if you've got somebody in your team that always shows up to meetings and is always on the phone you know all the time you know saying saying stuff like you're not interested you're never listening to me is perhaps and a judgment whereas said oh I've just noticed that you're using your phone quite in the meeting you're quite a bit in the meeting are you okay are you okay and and so you know the first thing I'd say is is think always about behaviors don't turn that around just to be really specific lead with are you okay yeah yeah and then go to yeah you know because if they go what do you mean sometimes you don't even need to give that feedback because are you okay I'm sure we've all had it can lead to uh you know an outburst of emotion and all no no what's really going on yeah these are things and you're exactly right and and I'm glad you said that because you know in the episode on the full episode I did on this with Nicola um she she talked about the accountability dial you know and you start off light and curious are you okay yeah yeah I'm fine you're right but then if it's the same in the next meeting and there isn't you know an emergency going on oh you know I noticed you know several times in meetings now you're on your phone yeah and then you can get right to the end where now you've just got somebody that's just never listening never engaging in a meeting you need to be direct you need to be listening in this meeting this is part of your job so you sort of dial up from the are you okay through to I'm being very directive yeah in quite a diet you know in a time because it's rare but occasionally people will push the limits of what's acceptable and yeah you don't you don't just softly softly forever yeah there needs to be at some point an awareness going from yeah from from behavioral change one way or another yeah yeah and um and so that's the other bit then I would say is um it's timely yeah there's nothing worse than getting to somebody's end of year review and say you're nine months ago uh you did this Tuesday yeah so get there quick and actually if you get there quick and exercise curiosity yeah that is you know the winner that the winners and the flip side to this just to put a slight counter on it as well is if you're new into perhaps giving feedback or leading people don't feel you have to give feedback always because I think sometimes people will give feedback to feel like they've ticked the box of giving feedback in a one-to-one yeah and it's not always it's not always required do it if it's if it's needed and if it's needed but don't feel the need to and also don't give feedback to your I think you touched on this a bit but it's not about my style it's about how you know the outcome we talked about this before delegate outcomes not activities yeah but coach around the elbow amplifying their style not making them like you you don't need to tell jocovics how how to fix the thing because most of his coaches are never going to be as good as him are they but they can at least raise his awareness and then ask him how he wants to go about do you even want to fix it yeah what does that look like yeah early in career people or trying something new maybe they need more specific feedback around the technique and the detail yeah and and a nice little framework that I got given years ago by somebody that worked at the BBC was that was the wit feedback the wit framework so he had to give feedback to to journalists that were on the other yeah in front of the camera you know perhaps some big egos that sort of thing going on um and so I remember him coaching on on the wit framework so it was when impact therefore so when so if we you if we do this with the jocovish example when you served your elbows going out too far so what's the impact the impact let's make this up because I'm not a tennis officiato uh is that you're reducing the power that's going through the ball right so maybe so therefore should we look at ways that we can bring the elbow in that means we'll amplify the amount of power that we can use so that's quite an unemotional way of saying this was the issue w when your elbow goes out the impact is we're not getting as much power through the ball therefore let's look at techniques to change where your elbow is in the serve nice and so you can put that in the setting of tech or you can put that in the setting or being a team leader or whatever really nice little framework um uh and I've used that personally loads and found it really useful way to give feedback yep who knew that jocovitch would show up so often it's almost like we're getting paid for mention but we're not sponsored by anyone I don't even know we're sponsored by these days it lakas I'm sure he's lakas we're going for lakas sponsorship um right um so feedback I think that's a really useful topic to think about um the other thing I'd say on it I know we can talk about this
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so let's say we've got we've got to the point where we've exercised curiosity
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and and actually we're saying people somebody needs to change the way they're doing something in order to be more effective this balance of empathy and honesty so if you if you think about being honest right honest is saying this is the thing you need to change to get better yeah but there's ways that you can go about it that perhaps put people's backs up or perhaps do more harm than good how do you think about getting the balance of empathy and kindness versus honesty still working on it I I think it's really difficult and I also think ideally you've got some trust or you've got something with somebody but not always and so I think it's um it's an ongoing thing as well and you can course correct I think sometimes we think about this as like one interaction it's got to be perfect well actually you can recover and you can check in with people can't you and you can virtually put your arm around them um so I you know I'm certain I don't you'd have to speak to people I've worked with over the years I think that I listen and I care and people feel that
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hopefully that's just authentic I mean it's difficult but I genuinely think people want to do good stuff and I genuinely come into most interactions with you know how can I help you know need to understand a bit about you a bit where you're coming from you know are you in the right job is this the right bit of work for you to be doing you know even if it's not if that's what you're paid to do we probably we might need to help you get there even if if the longer term play is to do a different role ideally in the same company or whatever it might be so I think it's always that if you come at it from I've always thought about you're looking after the business you're looking after the team and you're looking after the individual and if you can balance those three it's a great win yeah and so I think if you come into that though if you if you do those three I think hopefully you you can you can balance those two really yeah you're as long as you're doing the seek to understand the empathy but ultimately you know something needs to give doesn't it yeah it's why you're in that company and I think it's about that balance right if we're all honesty you're going to put people's backs up because you're not caring you're not you're not coming from people yeah we're meeting people where they are but if you're all empathy and you're never actually honest it's all unicorns and sparkles and nothing ever yeah I've got a lot you know I'm very positive generally and I have to dial that down because it it can be annoying you can ask my wife but b if you're too positive it's not credible either in depending on the scenario right so to your point it is a balance I don't think I get it right all the time I don't reckon I most of the time I don't go too far yeah and so it is that I always think almost all relationships are course correctable and as long as you don't go too far in one direction there is that you know and you can always finish these tough conversations with look give you a bit of time to think about that please now I've got your best interests and you know I'll put some time in and we'll check in on where you're up to and how you're thinking about it do you know what I mean so you can you can have the impact sometimes you really need the person to hear the bad thing because you need them to go away and reflect on it I say the bad thing but you know the crunching feedback or whatever it might be but I still think you can often they're not always listening so much after that but you can at least say and then you can follow up as we talked about really keen to just check in with and at least have that you know have that across to them so I know there's another checking point and the other thing is we always talk about feedback and this is where feedback can be a bad word and maybe perspective sometimes it's better if you always think of it as about being that crunchy and we forget to give positive you know affirmation you're doing that thing really well yeah keep doing that thing really well you know building confidence and reinforcing the things that people do well as opposed to picking a hole in the little thing that they can get better so it's not forgetting to think about positive perspective and positive feedback as well yes I agree I and probably should listen to that advice sometimes I think I'm very much an optimizer be it of a system or a team or whatever it might be so I'm always looking for what we can do better again you can put systems and things in place to make yourself go actually I'm gonna spend some time and thanks some people and do that and the other bit that's probably not talked about but certainly as a parent I think about it a lot is role modeling as well with all these things isn't it be the behavior you want to see yeah don't put that right so that's I think that's a key part of all of this is you know if you're giving feedback you best be living and breathing it yourself you know for some reason Michael Jackson's just come into my brain with dancing with the man in the mirror I don't know if you know that song remember that when I danced with Be the change something about anyway make that change I believe right let's move on we're running out of time so the final thing because we've we've looked at right get the right people in the right place and yes and then get them optimized in that place and then if things are going well tell them about it and when things aren't these are some techniques on how we can give feedback so that we can raise their competence so that they're more effective in confidence and confidence yeah um let's think about oversight governance phrase is like that um I'll give you an easy question what's it like talk to me about when there is no oversight and talk to me about when there is too much oversight
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chaos and strangulation I would say okay well let's start on chaos would you like to expand on that yeah let's expand on that um well we'd know like so these words sometimes people hear you know the g word governance people don't you know think it can be a bit it doesn't have to be it's the difference between so at the extreme end bureaucracy and discipline which is the good the good version right so I think that was good to great wasn't it you want discipline not bureaucracy um so having been in environments at both ends of that spectrum generally speaking um not always a popular phrase you get what you inspect but very very true so you do need checks and balances and you do need to make sure that you're all broadly pointing in the right direction and pulling in in the same way right and so um governance can be if I think about recent well you know the last the last few groups that I've led um well the business is usual if you like for the running the business and making sure everything goes well I would have monthly operational reviews where we would check the numbers but generally the leaders would come in and they bring it to life and they talk about their people yeah but you know we'd use data and we would understand what what went well what were the challenges and then what the three things we're going to do this month and then through having some data and some oversight and some conversation to bring it to life we could make sure that if we did a thing did it work are we going to carry on doing that thing or are we going to change tact and that having that oversight just allows people to course correct it also allows people to hear what each other are doing one of the best things from monthly operational review which might fill people with not joy uh dreads perhaps in terms of I've got to come in and talk about what my team's doing we actually saw people going that is brilliant like can I get 10 minutes with you after this and just go through how you're doing that and so sharing of best practices and you can build a real virtuous way so I think that's if you like oversight and governance in that regard and then I'll give you a different example with
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this AI might be relatively topical um we were rolling out some technology um and we wanted to make sure that we iterated really quickly and we improved the customer experience almost on in the day we would have a weekly cadence we'd have the right people plugged in by the way there would be much more going on on a daily basis where people would be talking we'd have a weekly check-in where we'd kind of understand blockers things what we needed to accelerate what side conversations needed to happen and that was a way of sometimes you need to iterate really really quickly and you need a much shorter period of time but what you don't necessarily want is a million people in a meeting daily because that takes you away from doing the actual thing yeah so I sort of think about the transformation build the future stuff and then the run the business stuff there's two separate things but I have oversight on both yeah it does and you know a few a few things to sort of spring it out as you say that that there is firstly there's the importance of data which is which is really important to measure it you then start to say but you get what you inspect you know because people manage the metrics so you you can lead to this watermelon scorecards you know which looks green you chop it open and it's red inside because they so the other bit that you kind of looked at he said there was it's about the stories it's about the best practice it's about the substance beneath that yeah brings it to life that means this isn't somebody managing a metric that's behaving badly yeah but somebody that is behaving well and the data reflects that exactly so that the so the chaos that we talked about with no governance was something would go red and then somebody would act on it but the next day it would be something else it's kind of like what I call whack-a-mole KPIs it's exactly that the method I'm talking about really is much more to your point watermelon score you see everywhere lots of it looks all right it looks good you know we closed it quickly or we did this or we did that but actually when you look underneath it you know we there's multiple things coming in keeps repeating we close them quickly but we aren't actually fixing the problems so it looks good in a stat but when you look more holistically just bouncing up again so we to your point that the reason that monthly works is because you're focusing on a couple of big things and trying to have an impact rather than doing something daily which is really just reacting transactional I would call it rather than so in a support context you're trying to be proactive you're actually trying to stop any problems happening in the first place versus I just need to get the widgets through quickly I'll just whack it down come in tomorrow and do the same thing yeah that's your chaos versus your calm factory floor which is what you're aiming and I'm going to then take that to the other end to the to the micromanage and I and so I remember running a team of solution architects
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when you're behind revenue target right so we're there trying to sell stuff and you're behind revenue targets and so that level of inspection we call it you know weighing the pig you know it doesn't matter how many different ways you weigh the pig the pig still weighs the same and so senior leaders would be sort of saying right we want look at it like this way look at it this way you know what and you're like I'm spending so much time getting this date data for you yes that you're not hearing the story you're not hearing the reality and we keep weighing the pig and we're all spending cycles weighing and weighing and actually what we just need to do is go we haven't got enough in the pipeline and now these are the reasons why now we need to crack on and stop trying to weigh it and start so because that's that's the negative isn't it of data and it's analysis paralysis yeah the problem in I massively generalize the problem there is you needed more in the pipe over here yeah and it needed to close quicker yeah you know and often and I'm no sales expert but that's the other challenge you can bring deals forward but then ultimately you're creating a problem down the line unless you fundamentally fix the underlying thing right so yeah it's um I think that comes some of that comes with experience right and being able to step right back and then look at the system yeah but I think that's the yeah and it's interesting it's about balance again isn't it so often we come back to this sort of idea of it's about balance right you need enough oversight so that you can deliver results because this is about delivering results and if you've got no oversight or no governance you don't know whether you will it's luck whether or not you because you create a great environment but if you're heading in slightly the wrong direction you never measure anything then then then that's bad but if you come down to just all we ever do is weigh the pig and all we ever do and you've got micromanagers that are just constantly giving you no freedom nobody wants to work in that environment yeah like in the I suppose
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it's not adding much to what you've said really but I've I've seen the I create these great environments where people thrive okay can you tell me about x and they know nothing about their business and don't know you know how key customers are doing or whatever it might be nothing at all and then the other end of the spectrum like you say is micro managing within their style and I've seen that quite a lot where it's just I mean you tend to see high turnover as well don't you people have staff people yeah yeah high turnover of staff because people just like I need a little bit of freedom to be me yeah to to get results that yeah it's uh yeah somewhere in the middle yeah life and work it turns out is all about balance well on that bombshell I reckon that's a good sort of place to wrap up so maybe just reflect key takeaways what would be your your key takeaways from what we've talked about today
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um good question
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I think you know I think in systems and structures and things but I think you need to have have the right people in the right spots yeah you need to delegate the right things to to the right people and then you need to spend the time to understand how it's going and to be able to help those people do their best work yeah and and then stay close enough that you can create it's a it's a virtuous cycle right it's not like a once and done is it yeah and so I think it's a blend of right people in the right places right work to the right people and then staying close and just in a really positive way yeah so that you everyone can do their best work and I think we talked a bit about that positivity it's also about celebrating the successes individually and as a team which then just really helps the virtuous cycle go faster yeah now I know I'd agree right people right right place um that that's brilliant just being the positive the other thing is I would say is sometimes you have to be honest and you can't just be you have to give real feedback to real people and that's part of the course correction course correction so if you've got the right people the right right things and you're getting people better at things and people want to get better at things you've got to be able to have those honest conversations yeah and to do that in an empathetic and an honest way I think is an important skill to look to learn as a leader and then we just sort of finished off didn't we thinking about the micromanage versus the chaos that sort of oversight yeah getting that right and it's going to be different for each project and it's going to be different for the group of people that you've got and the size and the scale but finding something that works for a team where you feel like I've got I'm going to say control has anybody ever really got control but you know I've got my finger on the pulse of what's going on the illusion of control versus carnage yeah it's you're stewarding it aren't you and I think that's the thing it's all most things are course correctable as well but you can only course correct if you're if you know what's going on yeah yeah yeah like really what's going on not just the data to your point the data is really helpful yeah and then you need to understand what's underneath yeah yeah well there you go um if people want to get in touch with you how can people get in touch with you then linked in yeah okay so feel free to reach out to you on linked in so absolutely final final thing for me to say thank you once again for coming into the studio joining me on cam front of the camera in front of the lights indeed it's been an
[00:41:09:06 - 00:41:29:09]
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