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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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World Human Skills Podcast. It is wonderful to have you with us. Now
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loads of people that listen to the show haven't followed or subscribed or rated the show. Can you believe it? So could I ask a massive favour? Could you do that? Can you give us a follow and a rating? It really helps the show become more discoverable and reach even more people. So thanks for that. Well
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today's episode is another really interesting one. We are in a pretty fast-paced world at the moment and when new disruptive tech comes how do you diffuse that change resistance? How do you get people to adopt new ideas and embrace new approaches? Well
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our guest today to help us with the topic has spent a lot of time putting this into practice with tech companies and with customers and he's founded startups, he's worked Oracle at Microsoft and now he's the senior vice president of sales and go-to-market at IFS Industrial Intelligence. So please welcome to the show
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Matt Quinn. Matt it is lovely to have you with us.
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Ben thank you for the invite and thank you for the great introduction. I'm looking forward to a great conversation and always following the podcast and looking forward to it so I'll make sure I'm subscribed on every channel I should be.
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Thank you. I'm glad you're listening but no the pleasure is all mine and thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. We've been trying to get you on for ages and you're hopping around. You're such a very important person these days you see and you're hopping around and so you've managed to hop in a booth in a we-work somewhere in Canary Wharf and join us to go through this topic.
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It's a pleasure to be with you and it's a topic I know you and I are both passionate about. We had the joy of crossing paths when we were at Microsoft and some of the things that we talked about then are relevant today right? Change is the only constant but some things don't change and I'm really looking forward to diving into this a little bit today. Yeah well so for folks that haven't met you before do you want to just give us a quick overview of your background?
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Got it so I'll kind of work backwards if that makes sense. So I'm currently as you said working at a company called IFS and IFS is like industrial financial solutions as the unpack of the acronym.
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My job is to take the AI technologies that we have some of those we spotted best of breed products in the market we've acquired them some of those we've incubated and built inside in the business but really it's about taking innovative disruptive tech and building into established very well stable ERP type systems and you know field management systems so we're in that kind of cutting edge of like disruption right at the edge we've got core systems that are established for years and we're transforming those through the power of AI to unlock value for customers and that journey really is you know it's a great role for me I'm only four months in but I get to be part of the sales organization thinking about go-to-market thinking about how we connect the value to customers how do we do the story tell how do we help our own people who've maybe sold traditionally our P systems for many years and many decades understand how to articulate value in a world where that is disrupted and changed and that's one of the things I'm really keen to talk about
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how we do that as organizations when we're selling but also what does that mean as an organization embracing this change and buying technology that solves these problems and the issue exists at both sides you mentioned I've had a varied career from you know big tech with microsoft's of the world
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through to doing startups and my key I guess blessing is I always like the innovative to change the disruption I'm lucky enough that typically when change happens I'm one of those people who runs towards it I love that change and I embrace it quickly and I move on what I've learned to do better is that not everybody is in the same boat some people take a little bit of time to warm up some people really resist change hard and actually as a leader it's really important to think about not just how we react to change but how do we bring people with us and how do we lead people through change and it you know we're all aware it feels like change is just getting faster and faster and faster um so it's a really important component so you know from startups to innovation ends of big tech companies through to the role that I'm in now which blends a bit of both and really really interesting journey and looking forward to sharing some hopefully useful insights yeah and it's interesting you know as you were introducing yourself there you know and you were saying things like ERP finance systems or you know yeah my business starts going to these big core business platforms that have been in pro in place for years that are the core essence of a business that process all the revenue all the business process all the all the things that business work and you know there's still lots of people with lots of very old technology because it works and it does a job and it you know and then when you insert the words AI into that kind of landscape you go oh it's almost like chalk and cheese you've got these really established really ancient effective business processes and now this really disruptive bit that may or may not have some great benefits so maybe you know we can sort of get into that um but but that's a difficult world to kind of try and energize and it's a real balance right so and and you know when you think about ERP you think about core business processes you want those to be rigorous they need to be auditable they've probably got compliance rules in them yeah so that structure that governance that control you want to maintain yeah but at the same time you want this agility of AR you want the power to adapt and to innovate and so bringing that that balance together and identifying what parts of this system can i keep you know well controlled and and and governed and auditable but i don't want that to slow me down and stop me from innovating and so finding that right balance for your organization and for which parts of a process do i want to keep constant and which parts of a process can i disrupt and the bit that's really interesting in in in the world that i work in iFS always focus on industrial customers and so one of the things that the AI cycle for the last three four years has been very focused on people like you and me ben who who work at a desk like we sit with we sit with a computer and a chair and you know probably have a cup of coffee by our side 70% of the world's workforce don't sit at a desk they work in a production line they work in a mining facility they work in an industrial setting where they don't necessarily interact with compute in the same way and the ability to like how do you change those kinds of core robust industrial processes infuse the power of AI into them and bring the power and benefits that AI has to people at the industrial edge of a process not just the folks back at the headquarters sitting at the desk i think that again is you know how do you build change how do you change how do you bring people with you because i think you know much as we talk about AI it AI is an enabler of people that's where it's more successful than the kind of disruptive um uh kind of messaging that's out there okay and so i guess the disruption the change in the the 70 of all these other jobs is only going to get more and more and faster and faster uh is that what you're sort of thinking over the coming the coming years yeah it absolutely is and you can see that snowballing and it's about how do you team um you know how does change happen like we saw this in manufacturing with with you know robotics doing lots of heavy lifting doing lots of dangerous jobs in in very structured processes you can see that now as AI can be infused into processes and it might be things about how do we organize and orchestrate labor like how do we make sure that we're optimizing our logistics networks in order that the right parts are on place ready for the engineer who's going to turn up how do we drive efficiency and cost into a process that still has manual bits of paper and that has multiple suppliers and we need to aggregate data from lots of places that's everything from a scrap of paper to you know emails to weird and wonderful formats to you know some structured api integration bringing all of that together in order to give insights to transform how work gets done at head office at HQ sat at a desk but equally how does that diffuse optimizing what we can do in a production line in a facility how do we make sure we're arming our people to do the highest value tasks that they can do and that helps lift um lift people in that but it's not a tool right it's not just about here's a piece of technology good luck the tool enables this change to happen but the tech's not the bottleneck people an adoption of that tool the the kind of clarity on how do i embrace it how do i change a process what does this mean that's where uh ai projects tend to stall that's where innovation projects tend to stall right if you don't bring the people with you they'll pocket veto it and then suddenly the the shiniest tool in the world even if it in theory could do great things doesn't deliver value so how do you manage change how do you embrace this and embed technology and people and processes together i think that's an ongoing uh piece and one of my favorite quotes is change is the only constant right so it's not just about doing this once it's about building that organizational muscle to be ready to embrace ongoing innovation and change this will be an iterative process that continues for for decades and i think that's a real cultural leadership challenge to build the you know the readiness and to embrace change and make it happen so so if change is the new constant disruption is the new constant um why does it matter to people to to listeners of this podcast why is it important to understand that and to to think about um how we navigate that world
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so i think the the there are two ways to to think about change and and and we're all aware of the kind of adoption cycles i think it's rogers adoption cycles you've got your early adopters your early majority late majority and that the reality is um we have all either directly or through colleagues friends family seen people who were at the top of their game like they they absolutely owned their expertise in whatever it was that they were an expert at and then something changes in a market a new technology comes along a new economic dynamic happens your priorities shift in a particular industry or in an economy as a whole and the rug gets pulled right and suddenly that person goes being like top of their game expert like fully autonomous at a task to they're a beginner at this new world right the new way of doing that thing is now radically different and we saw this for developers um in in the world of you know the traditional waterfall software development became agile actually you needed to become a very different thinker about how do you do development it's not about cranking out loads of code but about having good testing good automation good architecture right so you saw this iteration happen as you move as we move to cloud you know that's happened on steroids in the last few years there's actually development is now a kind of AI fueled task actually many leaders in that space are writing less and less code they're directing agents who write that code so suddenly the skills of cranking code are not the important part it's the ability to think about the outcome and do the systems thinking and think about the architecture that becomes the real critical skill so it changes that what what is the important critical skill can change and i think individuals who are either comfortable to embrace change or recognize the need to put themselves out of their comfort zone to be able to adapt fast to recognize that things are changing and have that constant learning every day as a school day change learn move move fast invest
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that will help make sure that you're more valuable in today's market whatever it is that's there but if you make that a habit for life
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you'll be ready and able to embrace future shocks to whatever the roles and markets that we that we live in that makes you more valuable more promotable and ultimately as leaders in organizations it's not just about how an individual does that how do we set up our teams for success to enable them to embrace change to kind of foster a culture where they're ready to move fast when change happens to embrace it because as leaders that means our teams are able to to adapt to changes quicker that means as an organization we can be more agile we can deliver value so i think it's really important that we think about it from both lenses an individual how do i make myself more relevant ready as a leader how do i make my team or my organization ready to embrace the constant change and challenge that's likely to come in in whatever industry we're at yeah and just as you were saying that i was just thinking uh
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there's been a lot of redundancies you know more released in the press every week i mean i was just thinking personally in the last year five five good buddies so not people i knew but that the but people that are genuinely my good buddies that i see regularly in different organizations all been made redundant because of every business is changing is being disrupted for a variety for a variety of different factors and so this idea that from a selfish perspective actually i'm going to make myself now as able to cope and thrive in this period of disruption as possible is really important and then often you know in these sort of more leadership roles like you say we need to be able to take people with us and that's such a core skill and more and more the roles become leadership skills there's more of the the grunt work the toil becomes aiified it's you know the roles that we need are more of these sort of leadership sort of roles they're going to be um you know really important right well so we frame what we're talking about change is constant it's important for individuals to be able to deal with change and to lead others through change um
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let's maybe dig into some of the meat and the potatoes some valuable bits for people so what would be your your sort of top your top tips maybe we could look through some of those on on how to get better at this managing disruption managing change leading people through change
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so there's a couple of things that i would i would think about and the first of them is to avoid the temptation to just jump so look before you leap and you know if you diagnose what's really what's really the issue here and what's really the problem for you here i think that was from a coaching habit course i don't remember um so if we think about where in our organization where is friction happening is is there uh is the resistance to change that's happening in our organization or in our in our roles or in our in our personal lives what is it stopping me from embracing this change is it that i don't like it don't believe it is it that i don't have the skills and i'm reacting out of fear and protecting you know the old way i liked the old way of it worked and i want to go back to how it used to work it doesn't tend to be very successful right time tends to move in one direction and it's a kind of slow steady march in whether we like it or not um and having just celebrated a birthday that that that slow steady march seems to get faster um and so so i think the the you know the aim here is to understand what what's the real problem and sometimes it will be around culture so i use the framework um of ad car a lot and i'm sure it's a topic that's familiar but kind of in order to embrace change people need to have awareness of the change they need to desire that change they need to want to change like if you don't want to change it's not going to happen they need to have the knowledge how to change they need to be able to change and they need reinforcement to kind of iterate it so they don't fall back into the old habit so so you can't just throw out a training manual and say this is the new way good luck um so so i think awareness of change like how do we take people through that but actually what you might find is for different cohorts different people in your organization or different tasks in your life um the problem might be different things but sometimes you you're just not aware that the change is happening it's kind of not being communicated very well it's kind of things are moving around you and you don't quite know what it is it gives you a sense of fear and and you're not quite sure what's happening well that's that's not going to set you off for success but if we're communicating clearly this is why things are changing this is what is happening like that helps get people past chapter one then there's just some motivation like you need to understand and motivate people to have a desire to embrace this change um i guess one of the things of of having worked in
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you know sales organizations that the beauty is there's a pretty linear they tend to be very motivated people they tend to be people who have uh you know to coin a phrase coin operated um you know they have a very specific goal that's well defined and it has an attribute so that tends to create desire if motives are properly aligned to the change sometimes you find that actually reward structures in an organization for recognition compensation or just internal pr are aligned to the old way
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and so no matter how much we talk about the new way and how great that is if i get paid for doing the old way guess what my desire to change is going to be minimal so so again that happens that's in a sales organization it's pretty open and transparent that that's that motivation is there in any organization in any role there are reward structures whether they're the pat on the back or they are the promotion or the whatever it is in the in the job
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it needs to align to the change we're trying to to work for then that will motivate people to move so when you when i talk about desire or look um diagnosed before you mandate like looking before you leap
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you need to understand where is the friction
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is it that we haven't communicated the problem is it that our reward structures aren't creating the desire for people to move towards the destination we want them to be do have we not armed them with the knowledge about why this new way is better and the tools and how to work and how to operate in that new space have we trained them and given them the ability are we reinforcing the new way because habits don't change overnight you know i kind of um you know get up and go to the gym it's not you you can do it for a while but if you don't kind of get into a real habit and make it a daily thing or a weekly thing and a routine you kind of fall out of it again so that reinforcement that leadership that goes there is really important so you're an organization building product that you need to sell or you're an enterprise organization and you're managing processes if those processes are changing diagnose where the friction is what is it that's stopping people from embracing whatever change it is that i'm advocating or seeking in my organization and when you've done that then you can think about how do you design making the new way
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the most rewarding like create the desire structures that mean people want to go there and enable them and remove risks like what's the risk for people in changing from how it used to be to how you want it to be how do we how do i diagnose where the risks are for people whether they're real or perceived
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and then i can start to identify ways to improve a process and make it lower risk to for people to come with us on that journey they understand they want to do it they know how to do it and now we've got the support structures in place to go do it so i think being really incisive about that rather than just you know here's the target state like meet you there good luck
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so um so i love this i'm a massive fan of my car um used it lots talk to people about it massive fan and and i that awareness and desire piece so important um yeah it's almost like the simon cynics start with why isn't it you know start with why awareness and desire now this is the question i i'm interested now maybe as we start to set this in the ai world
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certainly when i was a graduate right and i wrote sorry when i was interviewing for graduates i remember interviewing for graduates and part of the the interview was do these people feel that the you know that tech change is positive you know are they tech advocates we're looking for people that are passionate about tech advocates the implicit being that this change this tech was good
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we're seeing at the moment things like um social media perhaps banned for teenagers we've seen that in australia we're looking at that coming in into the uk
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there's now sort of maybe more of a actually
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some of this tech isn't always for good and maybe giving social media foot to kids is a bad idea for for example so this awareness and desire piece it feels like it's a bad idea it feels like it gets it's got a bit more tricky recently you know uh really yeah there's been lots of graduate speaks that speeches i think in the us where young people are booing ai when anybody mentions ai so
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what about this where it's perhaps not so clear is is this you know a good way forward or is this an experimental way forward that may work and may not how does adcast sort of fit in perhaps a little bit more difficult world well i think the first part is you know as somebody trying to advocate for change that's part of awareness right awareness of the reality like this this is potential friction to our change so if i'm trying to roll out ai into a production line and i'm trying to do that if i've got fear and uncertainty and my workers don't know what that means and are afraid of it yeah i need to know that i need to understand what is the potential
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that might be slowing adoption and and it might be real it might be a genuine like actually i've not understood the unintended consequences of of this action have i fully thought this through it so diagnosing what's the real friction where is it coming from why are people resisting that yeah and helping people understand or helping us understand it works two ways right it's not that we're in the ivory tower and i've got all the answers yeah um what what's the reality of this change what does it mean for the business but what does it mean for um for the people that are in that business because ultimately a business runs on on people like machines might help automate some of those tasks and i always think of accountants when i when i as soon as that i say that that pops into my head in a world where accounting systems came into being you know 30 40 years ago and spreadsheets appeared in the in the 80s the act of bookkeeping and adding up all the numbers
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it didn't make accountants redundant in fact i'd argue there's probably more accountants now than there ever were but the reality is where it did it removed some of the drudgery from accountancy so accountants now focus on higher order tasks they focused on value they focus on making the right investment decisions they talk about net present value of investing in a solution and you know making sure that we're doing revenue recognition in the right way and we're making sure our capital reserves are in the right they're doing higher value tasks than just adding up the numbers because lots of the automation tasks that used to be manual are now automated now the optimist in me sees that as the path of the trend for ai remove the drudgery from people to free them from some of the you know manual tasks in order to enable them to do higher value is that hugely disruptive is that change that people may or may not want to embrace absolutely so an awareness of that and then how do i motivate and create the desire in my team that they want to come on that journey that they want to embrace it it's a really important path that we need to to be considerate about as we we drive change because you know it depends where workers councils will have a lot of power in that certainly in some of the european countries what does that mean for change and it forces a very thoughtful process in other lowest less regulated markets that they might be more like let's run 100 miles an hour and see what we break and that has a different impact but it still means you need to be aware of what that means and how do you put that into practice yeah i mean this whole bit it sort of reminded me of one of the seven habits of highly effective people which is seek first to understand and then to be understood so it's understanding and then going right well now we've understood it and this is the way we need to go forward now now now we can be understood and this is the way the business is going this is the way tech is going this is the way the world is going it is being disrupted now you need to get on board because this is sort of where it's going
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but you've got to do that understanding part first to make sure that you're going in the right direction
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definitely and i always say communication isn't what you say it's what people have people here yeah and so so so if you want people to hear the message you need to understand why they're not hearing it or you know how they will interpret it yeah and so i think you know really important that first step yeah right so that's the first thing that sort so the first tip on this is looking before you leap i think that was sort of how you how you described it
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what's the next thing you got for us matt i think the next piece is about
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not having one way of doing it so the style needs to fit the task not the person and i saw this a lot you kind of you've you've worked in a large team a larger organization or even a small team you probably have heard people say oh that person is our superstar like they're our you know they're our go-to they're our hero
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but that's situational right that's that's about the things that they are good at in that context and you do have some people that just appear to be very good things and that they have that natural piece and they get that aura of the superstar it's lovely because like me that way matt it's well you know better and compliments get you everywhere right so um i think that yeah but the key part is it's that all-rounder is good the reality is under the hood they're probably just very good at embracing change and adapting to new things and be very conscious about how they how they operate but there will all undoubtedly be tasked that they are still not great at right they are situationally in different places and so as leaders we need to think about how are we changing our leadership style not just by the person but by the task so so what are we asking somebody to do
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and how do we lead and manage them so so the the model for situation and leadership that um that have been through a few pieces of training and have kind of iterated and found a piece um you know there's different styles that you have and so so for certain tasks when somebody's beginner at something you need to be very directive you need to be very outcomes oriented you need to be very specific you need to kind of do a then b then c
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and as they mature in their ability for that as they get more familiar with the task you you need to you know you continue micromanaging them you're going to drive them nuts right and you're going to waste lots of time doing that and they're going to get fed up so at the appropriate moment you need to recognize that now they've become you know they're still a beginner at it but they've got some competence in that task so then you can step back to kind of coaching them well actually now i'm not teaching you to do it i'm not saying do a then b then c but i might say hey you know in the alphabet i know like is there other other ways that these letters could be organized like maybe the task could be done differently you can challenge you can coach is this the best way for you what's the real problem so i think you change that leadership style so on matures and i think it's one of those things to some extent you do that intuitively yeah if you've you have children you kind of like you hold their hand and make them step one in front of the other and then they kind of become a toggler and they can wobble around on their own and you just kind of stay there to make sure they don't fall over and then you know suddenly they're a teenager and like you delegate the task of like go fill the dishwasher and do your homework and you you leave you leave them to it and just check in on them so i think adapting that style as as a someone gets used to a task it's not that it's the person is good or bad it's that for individual tasks they will go through various different levels of competency i think one of the things that's easy to forget is if a core part of what we do changes
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we might need to reset that
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so somebody goes from being the expert on a particular thing
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like a seller of software in an enterprise kind of business suddenly the whole model of that switched to be cloud and it's sass instead of installed based software and it's sold on value not on number of users and it's sold in a different way and it's got new features and new functions like they might go from like completely autonomous and i can just run with this and i know how to do my job to actually i need some more coaching i've kind of come back to i've you know i've got to learn to walk again and and kind of get ready to crawl and run so i think how we how we lead people needs to change based on the task and we need to recognize that it's not constant when change the way that we lead for some of those tasks might need to adapt again to where they are and and that's a constant reflex that we need to have as a leader am i coaching this person the right way am i micromanaging somebody who's autonomous am i leaving somebody who's who needs more coaching just to run with it and i'll let them let them run feral
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yeah and it's interesting as i as you're talking there my mind keeps flicking between me as an individual and then me as a leader and and going well actually
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there are skills that are changing all the time i need to now be good with using ai for certain tasks to remove the toil to become more productive you know for example things like there are things like that there are also some things that change perhaps a little bit less like how you listen to people or engage with people you know people are people and have been people for several you know a lot a long a long time thousands and thousands of years and the nature of humans hasn't changed that much the core and essence even though the the situations we find ourselves in has so whereas some parts of me as an individual are going right i need to just be constantly adapting this part of myself i need to be good at learning some parts can perhaps be a little bit more constant and and count as experience that that i can use so as an individual i'm sort of thinking like where am i am i that early beginner or am i the mature and parts of me are going to be i'm a beginner in this area but parts of me are i'm very motivated and very mature in this other area so i'm sort of thinking of myself as an individual like that but then thinking about well and then how would i lead people that are in these different categories um
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so that that i can lead them more effectively
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and i think that's the first part there is to be self-aware on it and i think being open and transparent about it and and i know and i i'm not a great uh rigor and disciplinarian right so so i know that i love the creative bits of the job i love the customer facing i love like ideating and workshops and like let's make this work and and run to the innovation end
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i have to force myself and i find ways to do that by kind of getting other people hoping to account on like each week doing the admin things that i need to do and refreshing the kind of updates that i need to do and like i i need to be managed in that space so some things i need you know a push and some things i'll just automatically go and do so the self-awareness for that helps you set yourself up for success but it's also as i've become aware of that i then start to see it in others and how i lead and work with other people like you know you the more aware of something you are you suddenly oh yeah okay i maybe understand why they're having a challenge with that and i need to just reset i'm no longer delegating that task in this person i need to switch into more of a coaching mode or be more prescriptive on a particular set of tasks until they get back up and running because something's changed um you touched on a point that flashed a piece in my memory one of my favorite kind of random quotes is um everything's changed and nothing's changed
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you know the technology of ai has radically changed huge amounts of the way that things can be done
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it has the opportunity to rapidly disrupt all sorts of industries that we just didn't think were going to be tech enabled or touched by tech five years ago
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but the very human components of that the way that people interact the way that economics works is fundamentally very similar and actually enterprises as much as they embrace technology and embed it into key components of their technology they will still work on you know 30 year investment cycles long-term planning cap cost of capital is a huge component of how they plan projects and what will they all prioritize and how they engage with customers and how they buy byproducts and services from vendors so i think you know some of those things haven't fundamentally changed how you do them might have changed yeah
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right so
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your first tip was about looking before you leap second one was about thinking about the situation things are changing how you as an individual change and how you lead people that are going from incompetent to competent or enthused to unenthused the situation they're in that's really important what's the third thing you want to talk to us about
[00:32:46:00 - 00:33:01:20]
i think the third thing i kind of touched on it with with having people who hold me to account on the things that i know i'm i'm weak at like i i use this phrase probably too much about good cop and bad cop and being intentional about the roles that different play and so
[00:33:01:20 - 00:33:13:11]
the the story queue there right the thing that i'm thinking about is within any leadership team and i've had this when i ran small businesses deliberately sought a business partner who was the opposite of me
[00:33:13:11 - 00:33:41:20]
and and what that meant was they were very process orientated they were very detail oriented they were very down into the weeds of run a process and add structure whilst i tended to be quite creative more innovative more let's just pick this up and and the balance is important so as you lead change you need to bring people through this kind of denial get them over their frustration help them explore what that change looks like and and get them to accept it
[00:33:41:20 - 00:34:07:02]
and through that process there's often dips and and the reinforcement part of ad car is really important so sometimes you'll need a leader who can help set the vision like in that awareness piece and that kind of creating the desire to move you want someone who can create the vision paint the picture of the destination like make people want to do it and understand why they're going to do it and really have that okay i'm going to go do that
[00:34:07:02 - 00:35:47:06]
when it comes to ability and knowledge that's a detail oriented piece that's here's the process take them through that beginner phase of those days like the early stages of of um uh of directive behavior and then reinforcement to turn it into a habit that's a rigor that's a routine a rhythm of business that is relentless and continues to you know do it again tell them tell them tell them tell them what you just told them um like to do that and so i think building a structure where you're conscious of where you naturally fit are you good cop are you bad cop and again that might be situational right in different areas you might want to consciously be good cop and identify who else in your leadership team can play bad cop that can make sure that the rigor and the diligence and the repetitive nature can be hammered out whilst you're setting that tone if you're one person you have to kind of flip-flop between being both you feel authentic at neither of them people start to like not really understand how you're working so in order to be authentic in those tasks identifying how you as a team and that might be you know if you're a ceo of a business then you might need to have somebody on your leadership team that you hire in that's that's that discipline and you build that if you've got a wider team you know four different roles how do you do it and there's there's people you know some people have been immense demand gen leaders that i've worked with who are just relentless on like this is the routine the rhythm the kind of process like where are you on this bang bang bang bang bang have you done these five things what's the next five things you're going to do and that detail person now for me that's that that drives me crazy but i know it needs to happen so finding that balance who's the good cop for this task who's the bad cop for this task
[00:35:47:06 - 00:35:51:22]
being intentional about the roles that we each play in reinforcing that
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that's often where adcar fails right you get people halfway through that journey they've they they they came out of the training course and said yeah i get it i'm on board let's go and then you just left them to it and slowly guess what they drift back to the old way of doing things you know they don't fully embrace the new the new way and it kind of stops being a habit that change unwinds so having that person who's going to be that rigger the antithesis of that to reinforce and make it the habit like keep going keep pushing i think that's what people like personal trainers right they kind of they keep beating you up every week to say no push harder push harder push harder yeah yeah yeah interesting interest how you framed it like sort of good good cop bad cop you you can tell you like the vision and not the rigger otherwise you might have done it the other way around it might have you know you know it's subjective right soft and fluffy setting this yeah these marketing people
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that's me that's me
[00:36:42:18 - 00:37:52:02]
but i i i completely agree with the you you need the opposites you need the vision you need the governance and the execution but again it goes yin and yang might be a different a better way of phrasing it let's let's uh controversial yeah yeah i'm only teasing it's all good fun but no i i'm with you a hundred percent in the you need that that creativity then you need the detail and both of them are absolutely essential and they need to work in lockstep and if you can get those two things to work to work together in lockstep um that then that that is so powerful um but and it's also that a bit about governance isn't it really where if you go too hard it becomes that micromanaging and who wants the micromanager but then if you if you do none of it chaos rules nothing changes so it's getting that balance right isn't it of sort of going right we're setting the vision and we're putting the routine in and people feel engaged and we're directing some people with maybe lower competence but we're setting other people free with more god it's a this leadership business is a complicated thing
[00:37:52:02 - 00:38:24:05]
it is and i think it ever was right and i think it comes back to that you know some some things just haven't changed and and so people are complex and we need to you know to lead we need to understand people first and then bring them on the journey and i think that that's a really important recognition that you know that that that science has never finished yeah fascinating love it love it right i'm just glad to the clock we are out of time i'm afraid matt um so as we start to summarize this what would be the the key takeaways that you'd love people to take from this episode
[00:38:24:05 - 00:39:29:23]
so i think you know we talked about the three things but i think you know what does it mean and what can i do like tomorrow what can i wake up on monday morning and say what am i going to do this week and so i think if you you know we talked about diagnose what's the if you think about the change i want to happen in my organization and i think about that ad car model within that is it awareness is it desire is it knowledge is it activation or ability is it is it reinforcement diagnose what the gap is before you start throwing more training and comms out there so i think lots of organizations temptation is oh i just need to do one more training course one more piece of comms that what that'll do like diagnose what the real problem is step back from the detail and then if you're thinking about the outcome like what's what's the reward structure in my organization and ensure that the new way the thing i want the target state when i've done this change that's the thing that people will be recognized and rewarded for make sure that the rewards align with the outcome that we want to achieve if you're in a sales role that's you know the new way is the fastest way to your number if you're in a different business that might be something completely different but like that kind of alignment um is is really important
[00:39:29:23 - 00:40:44:00]
then when you think about what does this mean from how i lead change make sure i'm resetting that style by initiative it's very easy to fall into the habit of when speaking to this person i'll i behave like this and if i'm speaking to this person they're a beginner i'll behave like this but like just think about four different tasks do i need to flex that and think about the the good cop good cop bad cop yin yang whichever way around we do it like be intentional about who holds me to account on the things that i know i'm weak on and am i setting my team up with a balance of skills to make sure we've got all of these pieces in place and you know be aware that a dip will happen like when when when change is being embraced people will be excited about it and then the reality will kick in am i stuck in that trough how do i reinforce rather than just launching and walking away so mobilizing your innovators and your early adopters like letting people who want to embrace change go fast and then making them the hero so they see their peers doing the right behaviors like that's a good way to embrace change so they're they're they're a little bit woolly at the edges for some of those but they're things to just be really intentional reflect upon within your business and then if you look at one change that you want to drive in your business
[00:40:44:00 - 00:41:28:09]
what's really missing where is it falling down is it awareness desire knowledge ability or reinforcement what's the where is the gap be introspective maybe ask people you know survey them in a trade trusted safe space to say look we're trying to get this change done what is it that's holding us back it's difficult to do that you do have a safe space where people will really tell you what's wrong right otherwise i'm just gonna blow smoke and say oh yeah it's all great like so you need to have those those people that trust and that culture in the organization find one who's willing to do that take some risk be that early adopter help them prove the value of the change that you want to to to enact and then make them the hero to showcase to everyone else i think that's a really powerful structure so i you know encourage everybody to think about some change it could be something
[00:41:28:09 - 00:42:19:10]
typical and practical that you want to change it could be a whole scale change in your organization pick one thing diagnose before you leap yeah love it and from my perspective sort of just as as we have this conversation the whole look before you leap you know seek first to understand then to be understood i think that's really really good valuable thing to think about i really like the way you talked about people are in different situations and i as an individual are in different situations so i need to adapt and learn and think about being self-aware and then how and how i can lead the team in that and then the whole good cop bad cop yin yang opposites you know you need every side in order to be successful so true it's diversity isn't it really you need that diversity of thought of character of ability approach and when all that comes together it's a holistic effect it's sort of greater than the sum of the parts so yeah
[00:42:19:10 - 00:42:24:09]
really really interesting thank you so much for for taking us through that now um
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people want to get hold of you or anything like that how's the best place if people have loved what you've been talking about
[00:42:29:15 - 00:43:09:16]
linkedin is is the place for me like if find me on linkedin reach out via via a kind of direct message or a connect request um it you know tends to be the the quickest route for me to find uh find what's going on have great conversations with people um and and you build that network there there is no um magic bullet to this so it's about an ongoing dialogue like i would welcome feedback right again to that point of you know let know what you don't know like forget feedback of oh yeah but this didn't work in my organisation or how does it work like totally open to that and then thank you massively for the opportunity to share some thoughts and um and to catch up it's been it's been a while you know it's been wonderful so thank you so much for your time your energy your insight it's been a
[00:43:09:16 - 00:43:29:15]
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