Resolving Organisational Constipation: Insights from Dr. Mark Baker

Ever wonder how internal operations can actually support and supercharge your sales efforts rather than hinder them? 

Join us on Get Amplified with special guest Dr. Mark Baker, visiting fellow at Cranfield University. With a rich background in engineering, finance, and risk management, Mark shares compelling stories from his time at Unilever and his pivotal role in the London 2012 Speedo project! Discover the untapped potential of effective teaming and learn how bridging the gap between front office and back office can create a formidable competitive edge.

Reflecting on the 2003 Rugby World Cup and England’s T-C-U-P (Think Clearly Under Pressure) strategy, we explore how preparation and resilience can turn high-pressure situations into opportunities for success. 

By integrating systematic approaches and digitalization, we uncover strategies that enhance decision-making processes and client outcomes, emphasising the importance of continuous improvement.

In our discussions on strategic leadership and vision planning, we tackle the necessity of stepping back from daily operations to focus on long-term goals. Learn valuable insights into effective delegation, the dangers of "organisational constipation," and the benefits of pre-mortem analyses. 

A big thank you to Dr. Mark Baker for his insights on effective teaming and strategic leadership.

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Chapters

• 0:10 Teaming in Tech Industry Leadership
• 10:09 Building Capability and Resilience in Teams
• 19:51 Strategic Leadership and Vision Planning
• 26:16 Mastering Leadership and Strategic Alignment
• 39:42 Learning From Leadership Books and Coaching

Transcript

Sam: 0:10

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, bringing you stories to help leaders in the tech industry execute at speed through the power of working together. Vicky, how are you?

Vicky: 0:19

I'm all right, thank you. I've had a comment already on the podcast that went out. I know we've started series six, that you didn't ask how it was in deepest oxfordshire.

Sam: 0:32

Wow, yeah, good point. Well, how is it in deepest oxfordshire?

Vicky: 0:35

it's beautifully sunny this morning.

Sam: 0:40

It's glorious. Here there was actually frost on the ground, yeah, so fortunately my tomato plants seem to have survived. I've got loads of green tomatoes, so I'm hoping for a last minute sunshine push to get them over the edge they're supposed to be warm, I think coming up. Yeah, I think so I hope so, but they say they've survived the minor frost. But but other than that it's an absolutely glorious day. So wonderful stuff. So, who do have on the podcast today?

Vicky: 1:08

Yeah, so we've set off on Series 6 and we are focusing on teaming. Over the last couple of years it's really started to become apparent to us that in tech, in the organizations we work with and actually I've even just had a call this morning on the fact that the challenges on process between the people at the front end working with customers and those more supporting roles, like legal and customer success, those roles are not all working together as effectively as they could be. So how do we get that front office and back office working more efficiently together? And we worked on it in the June newsletter from the Amplified Group and as we were working on it, I've started to do some work for some lectures that I'm doing with, can I say, dr Mark Baker that sounds very grand who's a visiting fellow and lecturer at Cranfield University, and Mark does a lot of work around risk management and through me talking to him about the challenges that we were seeing, it was apparent that actually it would be great to get him on to to talk about.

Vicky: 2:34

Actually, ark posed a really great question that if, if the organization was brilliant at managing the internal processes. How could that be a source of long-term competitive edge? And I thought, gosh, that's a really forward thinking way of doing that, because it seems to be hampering sales at the minute versus empowering sales. So that's a very long-winded answer to to make loads of sense though I can totally see why that is massively important.

Sam: 3:05

You know how often do you phone a company to get some help with something and one bit isn't talking to the next, and as a consumer it shouldn't be my problem, but it ends up being my problem often. So welcome, Mark. I'm looking forward to hearing you solve all those problems and all my frustrations in dealing with companies out there. So you're very welcome on the pod today. Thanks. Would you mind introducing yourself, giving us a little sort of run through your career to date please?

Mark: 3:33

I started off in an engineering background. I've got a degree in material science and engineering sort of underpinned a lot of my thinking along the years. My first job when I came out of uni was as a management trainee with Unilever, which is a great management training scheme, and I was doing factory management, industrial engineering, supply chain mostly global food brands. And also while I was at Unilever I qualified as an accountant as well. So I became an engineering accountant and ended up in head of finance.

Sam: 4:09

Or an accounting engineer.

Mark: 4:11

Yeah, either way, there's a lot about someone with those two qualifications. And it's funny when you talk about risk and risk diversity. You know accountants aren't really noted for their risk seeking. But I ended up in head of finance roles and my last role at Unilever was head of finance for the UK ice cream business that was Walls Ice Cream a lot of fun. But also at the time was one of those competition authorities. I was in the middle of the walls versus mars competition authority. That was a very interesting experience. I spent a couple years in grocery retailing and then over 15 years in managing brands in global sports, fashion apparel brands like Speedo and Berghaus. A lot of fun all around the world.

Sam: 5:03

Did you get free budgie smugglers? Yeah?

Mark: 5:08

But one of the highlights for me was I did run the London 2012 project for Speedo, so I was kitting out Michael Phelps and Becky Aslington for the Olympics. Being at Poolside and those sorts of events was just amazing.

Sam: 5:23

Wow,

Mark: 5:26

And that appealed to my material science pieces. Then you know lots of. I've had lots of things come together in my life. It's quite strange all these bits of learning. There are points where they're all quite useful, but you know in all of those, across all of those years, what unilever.

Mark: 5:42

Working as Penman Group, I seem to have a knack of getting involved in tackling complex problems. Some of that was because of the ownership I'd be with as a lot of private capital. I was traveling around the world doing troubleshooting, especially minority investments that ran out of cash and trying to get them back into a healthy situation. I was involved a lot in mergers and acquisitions. I did a global head of risk role for a number of years, which I absolutely loved, and quite a few multi-year transformation projects. That's the whole thing of identifying what needs to be done, getting it agreed, implementing it and then seeing that it works. So that sort of experience as well.

Mark: 6:27

Lots of work in sports, which I enjoyed when I was at Unilever as a young engineer helped build the biggest ice cream factory in the world, things like that and I suppose I worked in all sorts of different leadership roles COO, CFO and risk roles so that was a sort of a large part of my early career and along the way, one of the really complex problems I came up against was in new product development, especially when you've got large portfolios of new ideas and they're especially dynamic, especially if they're going to being developed and going to market very quickly dynamic, especially if they're going to be developed and going to market very quickly and how do you select the most value creating project in these large dynamic portfolios?

Mark: 7:15

So it's about how you balance control and creativity, how do you get innovation and still deliver the numbers, and so I managed to find a way of much better way of making decisions through those processes in new product development. I've got published academic research on that and I've got a doctorate in business administration from Cranfield. That's why you know. After that I set up my own consulting business and I've been doing research and teaching still at Cranfield as a visiting fellow and that's all in governance, risk performance management, and I suppose the one final thing that has kept me really excited and busy and relates to this front and back office thing. So I should I should bring you in is I've, a few years ago I co-founded and I'm still running, both as a CFO, and strategy is a scale up social purpose law firm where we're helping some of the most vulnerable members of our community get access to justice, so thousands of people yeah, who've got?

Mark: 8:20

no, not much money to get domestic abuse legal protections and so on. So there's a lot in process and digitalization, digital transformation, that we might, might want to touch on, but I'm very used to over that of how front end and back ends do or don't work together in the best interest of the uh, the customer, the client. That's a sort of yeah, that's me.

Sam: 8:48

Well, let's dig into it then let's talk about this teaming thing and this front office back office thing.

Mark: 8:55

The first thing that I always think about when I hear it is why not have high-performance teaming? I also think that that why aspire to mediocrity? What does high performance look like? And through my consulting and I've actually consulted with tech sector as well, so I see a little bit about decision making and where it doesn't work very privileged to see lots of organizations. So see where there is high performance teaming and where there isn't.

Mark: 9:22

And the way I would describe it is when it's high performing, it looks like the engine is humming. You know you're achieving your purpose, you're making effective decisions at good pace. You know you're landing the target opportunities. So when people connecting with you I'm using sports now the ball is passed really well, seamlessly, effectively. I mean because of my experience in sport. So you know you think about football, the thing about when you get one touch passing and the goal is scored. You know that's what it looks and feels like and it's also performing well when it's easy and when it's tough and a lovely sports example, I like, of that which it's seeing over the years.

Mark: 10:09

I still recollect the impact in thinking. I remember in the rugby world cup 2003 when england won it and there's a bit where everybody's watching it and martin johnson the whole team's under huge pressure. It's a key moment and they have to work together brilliantly as a team. And he makes this T sign with his hands and everything. Well, what's that about? Is it a timeout or anything? But they've done a lot of preparation for those key moments and it stood for T-C-U-P is what he was saying. Think, clearly under pressure was what he was communing instantaneously to the whole team teacup, teacup, and it was, and it's those sorts of things that stick about. So how does the team operate when it's nice and easy, but also when there's a lot going on and when it's tough? And so there's about how do you build in responsiveness and resilience, especially in processes, is definitely, is definitely part of it mark what you've just talked about.

Vicky: 11:08

There we have different engagements with different organizations. Some organizations we work with because they've they're in that tricky place and they need to find a way out of it. But quite often we're working with organizations that are in a good place and we're helping them to put a deliberate operating system in place for when they do hit those inevitable bumps in the road because they're going to Fix the roof while the sun is shining.

Vicky: 11:37

Yeah, and actually I'd say the vast majority of organisations we're working with is for the latter say the vast majority of organizations we're working with is for the. For the latter it's because they want to use the time to prepare to hit the bumps, which is, which is, a really great position to be in I sometimes keep the language out.

Mark: 11:54

So you know building capability, yeah, also some muscle memory, in advance of it happening. You know how you will respond when, when things come across a little bit more challenge. But you joined up in your in your response yeah, well, we're all all about building muscle memory.

Vicky: 12:11

Every new client we we work with it's: Are you doing this just as a one-off? Because if you are, we're not the right people to work with, because we need to work with you to build the muscle memory. So you, using that language, is, is brilliant to hear very interesting, very interesting it is.

Mark: 12:25

I think people can relate to. Relate to that as a concept, yeah, but it's an organ, it's the organization as a muscle performing yeah, it's not not easy to achieve though, so help us um, definitely experience this, um, I don't know for the past few years with the law firm. We're in scale. We're suddenly going through rapid growth in demand, which is always a challenge, which is partly what.

Mark: 12:53

That's what you want to happen, but sometimes that's what that's what they refer to as a class a problem, right, yeah, yeah, exactly, it's a nice, nice problem to have, but you can see the pressures on a team sometimes and so in our back office we have administration on compliance and they have to approve the merits of this vulnerable client. So there's a lot of complications here about just the emotional aspect and the life impacts of people who are reaching out for support. But will they meet the merits of legal aid and do they have the merits legally to actually get an appropriate protection order? So there's a back office piece of checking that. Then there's the lawyer, there's the fee earner or the contact or the caseworker who's talking to the person this really vulnerable person trying to get a witness statement to support the application. So there's a front-end bit, the client-facing bit, and you can imagine all the characteristics that you require of empathy and understanding as well as knowledge of the law that you're applying. So sometimes actually getting the person to have the conversation at that point is a big step for them in their lives. There's over 2 million incidents of domestic abuse in the UK at the moment. So this is a really serious, serious issue in the country.

Mark: 14:15

So sometimes when we grow, it always feels you think we have a strategy. Of course we have a strategy, but it feels like muzzling through. Sometimes you think, well, I've not got enough people, well, I've got too much work and not enough people. That's what it often feels like. So what we found, that's been really successful. I suppose, in response to your question, Vicky's take a more systematic approach as well. There are a number of things in a more structured way, and this is about improving decision making as well as how you do these things. So sometimes it's pretty obvious because we're going through Scalar, we are regularly re-forecasting the whole organization, both bottom up and top down, so we can identify where the next most likely recruitment is going to be required. So, assuming recruiting good people, they're going to perform, and you still go oh, we need more people, and that's pretty straightforward. So you make sure you're totally joined up in the recruitment plan. You know that there's alignment there to the whole organization, support of how we're going to get those people, where we're going to get them, from, what sort of people they are, and so on. So that's a really important process and sometimes it's also obvious process improvement. You know you see this bureaucracy and need to reduce it and just digitalization of processes.

Mark: 15:36

I think one of the things that does differentiate us in the sector the legal sector is our emphasis and focus on digitalization and, with continuous improvement, we are always saying there's always got to be a better way of doing these things, and our overall purpose is to get you know, as well as help all these numbers of people is to get the best client outcomes. So any decision we make, we say if we invest in this person or this technology or this digitalization, will it help get better outcomes for our clients? And if it's yes, then we'll do it. So that's another thing that we do is we continuously identify multiple process improvements and continually prioritizing them, and there's always the one that comes out top, which is going to have a big impact, which might be.

Mark: 16:25

Some of them are harder to implement, but you go right, that's the next one we're going to do. So you keep on having a list that, when you've got a chance to you know, keep the work on the roof while the sun's shining, you know what's the next most important thing to do. The other thing that we found is really powerful and maybe applicable in what you've been talking about is joint training. It's like scenario planning, especially managing pressure points. So you go through multiple difficult, different scenarios with the team and that's when you build that capability and muscle memory before they even have to go through it, so they know what to do and when they know how to work together when it gets tough, which is that War gaming you could almost call it Exactly exactly.

Mark: 17:13

I think we see a lot still. You know, sometimes you see the emergency services doing this. You know there's an incident in central London, and how do they all work together? What do you learn from it? You know how to cope and manage in those situations and improve your processes. That is hugely valuable. So when it does happen, real time, everybody knows how to respond. It sounds really simple and straightforward, but are you actually doing it?

Mark: 17:42

There's a couple of other things so you can see how systematic this is. A couple of other things we do. We've identified someone with this brilliant capability of process improvement and we've given them a leadership role. That person now sits on the senior leadership team so looks across the whole business continually with all of these aspects. That's fantastic. So we get line of sight of all these things, sight of all these things. And then the other thing that's come up more recently, which is back from my manufacturing days, is combining tasks, is multitasking. It sounds pretty obvious, but if you can train one person to tackle multiple decisions rather than having multiple people do one decision, it's actually more effective. And if you think you add all of this stuff together, we've been able to go faster and better with it, We've definitely had better outcomes for our clients and we're seeing our market share growing rapidly, so I do think it is a source of competitive edge to go back to.

Vicky: 18:44

I've got a question, which is everything you've just talked about makes loads of sense, but one of the biggest challenges we see is everyone is so darn busy firefighting and trying to keep up with the pace of day to day business. How on earth do you find the time to get in front of the problem?

Mark: 19:13

That's so funny. The one thing that I had a number of times I was doing my coaching and people would say this is this is c-suite.

Sam: 19:21

People say I am so busy there's absolutely no way I can go on a time management course yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, I've used the example before, vicky, but, um, a lady that I have oodles of respect for in our industry, uh, once said to me it's really important as a leader to make time to work on your business rather than in your business. Thank you, Denise, was really important.

Mark: 19:51

I use the same line. I talk about it with anybody, and certainly my business partner in the law firm. I say we, as quick as we can, we've got to get to being on it rather than in it. So yeah, and that means resource delegation. It takes time to put people around you. You trust who can it what? The one test for us in that is we say when we are not in the room, will the team still make the decision we wanted if we’d been in the room?

Sam: 20:21

yeah, it before, but so there was a chap that I worked with who was effectively my right-hand man at Softcat and you know I was big picture and he was detail and thinking about it. Thinking back about it now, I was working on the business and he was working in the business and obviously there was an overlap and you know we would spend two or three hours together one-to-one every week, you know, making sure that that was meshed. But having him around gave me the headspace to plan and move the business forward rather than being in the weeds of everything, and you know that was pretty much invaluable really.

Mark: 21:06

That's great teamwork, I mean, I think part of it. When you're founding a firm, you're starting off, you're in it, you're in it, and so you have to think at some point. It's not going to succeed unless you create your question, but you create the space to do that. So it's about vision and leadership and combining that and and seeing what that future looks like. And therefore you've got the organization structure, the people, the processes, the delegations of authority. This is why, for me, I've been fascinated by how about practical governance? Because that's all about systems. It's about systems. It's about what's the quality of your control systems and your decision-making systems. And it may be a fancy language about it, but that's what it's all about is, in those moments do you have the maturity, the sophistication to respond at the different stages of growth? And you have to anticipate what's going to happen. You can't just wait to hit a brick wall, because that's that's really, really painful. So it's a leadership responsibility.

Vicky: 22:14

What about process brawl, because that's what we tend to see. It's we're growing, we're adding this process in, then we're going to add another process, and then we're going to add another process and you've just got so many organizations feel like that. I mean we even even on the in the newsletter, where we are estimating 50 of salesperson's time is being lost on battling through stuff internally wow rather than doing the job that they're actually being paid to do. So what have you got in your kit bag that can help them? Because we're not really in startup mode. Most of the tech organizations that we're working with we're in scale out, hyper growth mode. Does that make sense?

Sam: 23:04

Panic mode- hanging on to the tail of the tiger mate.

Vicky: 23:06

Yes

Mark: 23:12

That to me, thinking about the back and front office bit. I'd want to. Not exactly the best, but you're a bit constipated as an organisation. Yes, yeah, when that's going on.

Sam: 23:21

And nothing is working the way you should.

Mark: 23:24

That's what it is, Sam. Organisational constipation, yeah, is it? Yeah, and there's a whole heap of things and I have got some real deep learning on. This is when you throw too much against the wall. And it's about we test, like in law firm, we test what's the absorption capacity of the business to take this on. Now, you know, and if we, if it's really crucial is you have to do the forward-looking risk assessment You'd say I love Gary Klein's pre-mortems.

Mark: 23:55

And so we sit down as a top team. We say, right, we're about to put this one in. Let's imagine in six months' time, it's all screwed up. What went wrong? Let's go around the table now, be honest with each other. Also, let's say what would have gone right? If it's worked brilliantly, what will have gone right, which is different from the way a client normally thinks. So by the time you've done that with a top team, everybody's going. Maybe we should push this back for another three months and think about it again. Or we are so desperate for this process, right, what's going to go wrong is we won't. Everybody's still trying to settle in the last two things we did. So you know, let's talk to that team and talk about what and when and how, so there's the right participation in the plan.

Mark: 24:38

So all this is about creating space for looking ahead, doing planning. Most of these ideas are brilliant. It all fails in the execution. You, you know. So it's that recognition, um, the tension. The other way, you know, is it sometimes if you don't do anything, then you know, that's one of the things you I saw you quoted me in the newsletter you know being, you know being risk averse can be very risky as well. So I, I think you know managing these trade-offs in organisations. I'm finding day to day that most people struggle with these risk and opportunity trade-offs.

Vicky: 25:16

How can you help us on that, because I completely agree with you and that's really why we wanted you on here.

Mark: 25:24

It's definitely some of the systematic approaches. So my research has definitely shown that when you are going to make change like this it sounds a bit is to do it more systematically. I think I heard you use the word this week, vicky deliberate. Yes.

Mark: 25:42

Yeah, I like that. In other words, you actually have a plan. That's wonderful. Those people who don't like to plan that john harvey jones used to have a wonderful expression about that people hate planning, you know, and so you know, fairly shouldn't come as a complete surprise, you know, yeah, looked ahead about it. Um, so there's definitely and this for me is because any senior people listening to this podcast it's that combination of vision and leadership.

Mark: 26:16

I think the risk discussion at the top table is really important. So just pretty much every top management team meeting we have, we start off going around the table and ask what everybody's concerned about. One of the effects that's happened to that and this is obviously a lot of lawyers, they're not used to these sorts of discussions there's been a lot of maturity, improved sophistication in understanding and making these decisions. So, interesting enough, I do see a relationship by getting people involved to look ahead and talk about what may go wrong actually helps. That is a very simple thing to do, but being grown up and mature enough to share and, as a leader, to go, I'm so glad that I wouldn't have thought of that. You have to really embrace everybody's thinking and say is it appropriate to respond to Very simple behavior, but absolutely crucial.

Vicky: 27:13

And how often should you have a conversation like that?

Mark: 27:16

As a top team, we're doing it every month.

Vicky: 27:19

Right regularly, so build it in as a muscle.

Mark: 27:22

Absolutely, absolutely. It's a very simple thing but very powerful, and I've observed that in organisation and ones that I've been on C-suite and I see it definitely. There's an acceleration of maturity in all of this decision making and people more aware of what the organisation can take on at any one point in time and also the decision. Well, if you have to do it, then we're going to have to invest maybe a little bit ahead of the curve because we know we're not going to get through that route if we don't. So some key things I found is within all this is getting people.

Mark: 28:06

There are different levels of sophistication in decision making here. People have probably never thought about that, but there are. I certainly found that in in the new product development that you know people just try stuff, you know, then throw it all up against the wall and see what sticks. I came up with a way that well, here's the dartboard, here's probably three or four darts, you know you could probably get them close to the bullseye. That's much better than throwing loads of stuff. It's also part of constipation is actually taking out wasteful activity that's not going to realize value yeah, and that's another.

Mark: 28:42

Yeah. So this, this is all. Quite when you have it, they're all simple, but when you add it all up together, it's quite complex to make this happen?

Sam: 28:48

Well, all this stuff is obvious. But, as usual, you know, if you're beavering away in the depths of your business, in the weeds, you don't get the chance to go through this stuff and do the prioritisation. And you know we come back time and time again to prioritisation on this podcast, don't we?

Mark: 29:06

Vicky.

Vicky: 29:07

We do yeah.

Mark: 29:08

The high points in my consultancy business over the many years. The best it ever gets, sam, is what you just said when someone says to me that's really good, that would really help, but we don't do it. Yes, yeah, that's that you know, and I'm hoping that I can motivate people to change their behavior, that they realize there are better ways of doing these things. And third-party involvement you know, fresh lens, different perspective, especially knowledgeable can be very valuable, very helpful in catalyzing this thinking and helping you through different stages of growth. So the other thing that I found important in all of this is strategic alignment around the common purpose. I mean, there's so many people have been saying this over the years, but when everybody knows in the organization, both back and front, knows what you're trying to do and how important a particular, you know opportunity is, that is really important and it doesn't happen as often as we think it is. Again, that's a discussion of priorities and direction and sharing that.

Vicky: 30:21

So when we work with a leadership team, we actually measure that, measure that. So we we ask everybody, before we meet with them, to have to answer some questions around what their priorities are, what they think the business is about, what is the purpose, and then we put them up and measure them and actually we're we're just working on a tool to be able to measure that using AI, so we can actually give them an alignment score fantastic.

Mark: 30:48

I really like that's and and part of doing that for me is your. The success is you motivate them to change their behavior absolutely yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vicky: 31:00

And and where we we get to is for them. In fact, we've got a really nice diagram that we use and, sam, we've talked about it a few times is we talk about there cannot afford to be a degree of separation between them. So so that that alignment as it comes down the organization we have a protractor, we use a protractor to to show the image of it as it comes down the organization those differences don't get wider I use a very similar line that's interesting, I use the one there's no daylight between anybody, yeah yeah, very similar, very similar but you're joined up, you're all pointing in the right direction.

Mark: 31:38

You know where you're going and what the most important things you have to do again, simple stuff. It's not, as you said, sam, it's not very complicated, but you weigh it up in every when you, when you're operating at pace and under pressure. So this is thinking clearly under pressure. Yeah, there's another piece as well that I think is about leadership and vision piece. One of the things that I'm finding I'm doing more of to try and help people is talk through different scenarios. I even do this when I do senior recruitment. So we're recruiting a top supervisor or head of department. Supervisor or head of department will actually sit them down in the last, for almost the last stage of recruitment. Say, let's imagine it's six, six months time again and this isn't working the way you're telling me now it would, and you have that discussion as though it was in six months time and you want to see how that person responds. And are you able to work with them? Are their values the same as yours?

Mark: 32:40

it's a really fascinating how they approach it so we're finding we're using it in recruitment as well, especially in leadership, in leadership roles yeah, it was.

Vicky: 32:50

It was interesting. I've had an experience recently where we've been working with different teams and you know, one team you challenge and they're completely open to the challenge and happy to take They've got the growth mindset and looking to learn. And another team you challenge them and immediately they go into defence mode. So seeing how people approach that, I think Mark we were talking yesterday about, there's always. There's always better practice versus best practice love that.

Sam: 33:21

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess that's an analogous to the, the old adage that the the perfect is the enemy of the good yeah yeah, in that you know, if you're striving for perfection, you get a sort of an organizational paralysis, because you know you won't put in an incremental improvement because it doesn't get you to perfection and, as you say, you ain't never going to get to perfection. It doesn't exist.

Mark: 33:49

There is no perfect organization dynamic is the world we're living in now. How fast is change happening? Yeah, you know, I can't believe some of the ideas we've got in digital transformation. That was sci-fi a few years ago. Yeah, that's. That's really going to help. Mad, isn't it?

Mark: 34:10

There's one thing I know you also sort of noted we talk about risk as well, weren't we about this? Uh, I don't know if you want just a minute minutes on that. I know you're talking about this thing about being risky versus risky, and my only, my only thought listening to everything we've said today is you know, sometimes you think maybe doing nothing in this is safe, we're okay if we do nothing, but I sometimes see that as being reckless. You, you know if you're on it and not in it and you decide I think that, or you don't even explore it, you don't just check that. It's all okay, that can be, and when you hit a brick wall, then it shouldn't be a surprise because you weren't looking properly at something really important. So that's the bit on. You know some about risk aversity and not doing doing anything. That's why it can be very risky interesting.

Sam: 35:07

So so, mark, you know we've covered a huge amount of ground, um, and we always like to try and summarize for our listeners at the end. Would you be able to give us two or three sort of takeaways on everything that we've covered? You know words of words of advice, as it were.

Mark: 35:21

Oh I'd like to give some advice from a leadership point of view, so maybe just inspire people through this. So it's a personal reflection of what sort of thinking you know we're talking about all these different things that you need to be doing, which which, again, each of them are simple you, if you put it together, it's quite complex. What I've found over many years and I know you've had other people that probably say the same thing it's the importance of values through all of this, those guiding principles, and part of that is it helps you make better decisions at crucial times in in organizational change and also as an individual. So if there's alignment between what you value as a person and what you're trying to achieve with your organization is, it's a wonderful feeling, and I think values guide you on that course of action through all of this, like one of mine, is always learning.

Mark: 36:22

You know, when I was an engineer building a factory and I was looking around at all these people making big, important decisions, I thought I want to get there one day and I suddenly realized they had finance and accounting experience. So I thought, well, the best way to do that is to get an accountancy qualification as an engine. You know everybody thought you know a bit nuts if you're working in manufacturing and supply chain to that, but it's the always learning value and there is part of that as a lead is thinking through that. What are you what? And I love that. You know with silence in it. You know what. What, what's beyond the making money. Why are you doing this? What's the purpose? Getting the alignment around common values. I know it's well talked through, but it's absolutely crucial for all this. The other thing, I suppose, is to understand and see how high-performing teams work. See how high performing teams work. I've sat in quite a lot of tech C-suite meetings looking at them trying to do decision making, so I'm able to see where they are a high performing team and when they're not. And it's quite interesting.

Mark: 37:35

So, aspiring to be higher performing, making more effective decisions at pace. How do you do that? In terms of active listening, behaviors, common risk understanding, approaches to risk-assessed strategies will be one. And the final huge you take is a very personal one. It's about what makes a rich, rich life, you know, because that energy and motivation and behavior, you know it's not above. Obviously, the obvious ones are family and personal relationships. You know being open-minded, seeking especially again, I'm thinking about leadership and vision and decision making you know, know seeking diversity of experiences, so you're open-minded to alternatives and taking leaps into challenges. You know you might find powerful parts of yourself that you didn't know were there, even though it feels a bit uncomfortable. So it's not directly summarizing everything said, but I think these are all for certators, enablers, catalysts and a way of managing and guiding your life for all of this. So those will be some of the things that I would be thinking.

Sam: 38:55

Makes sense, and we always ask our guests for a book recommendation. I mean, you sound like the sort of man who might have written one, and I'm sure as hell you've read a few.

Mark: 39:07

That's so funny. What I find is most people there's definitely a group of people who have a pride who say to me oh, I've never read a management book, and we obviously think management book. And I think to myself well, I've never read a management book and we obviously think manageable. And I think myself well, I've had quite a few when you do a doctorate. I've read so many, so much management theory and I've written it and published it myself. So I think that when I think back over the years, there's a book I read at the start of my career and I continually reflect on it, use it, talk about it still guides me in all of this, Um, and it'd be interesting if you've read it. It's Stephen Covey the seven habits of highly effective people. You don't even have to read it now, you can go watch the clips on YouTube, but it is good to read it and I think it stands the test of time. That and I'm still coaching people in you know, internally, externally, you go, oh, I've never heard of that, and they go, wow, that's, that's really . I.

Vicky: 40:05

like the principles. I found the book, I have to admit, deathly boring. I'm really sorry so the YouTube videos are probably yeah, that that's my style of taking that way and I do love a book. I mean I'm I'm working my way at the moment through amy edmondson's book on teaming and I'm absolutely loving it.

Sam: 40:26

So I do that when you finish, then yeah, yeah, okay, deal brilliant good well, as we are out of time, more or less just remains for me to say thank you, mark. That was, that was fascinating. Um will be, I'm sure, incredibly well received by our listeners. And it just remains for me to say thanks for listening to get amplified from the amplified group. Your comments and your subscriptions are, as always, gratefully received.