Why Happy Teams Win with Richard Munro

What if the secret to high-performing teams isn’t working harder, but putting happiness first?

In this episode of Get Amplified, we sit down with technology strategist and former CTO advisor Richard Munro to explore an idea that challenges a lot of conventional leadership thinking: happiness comes before performance, not after it.

This is a conversation of two halves: Storytelling in tech and happiness in work.

What struck us most is that having spent his career in some of the most technical roles in the industry, Richard’s biggest insight wasn’t about technology. 

It was about people.

Because even the best technology strategy fails if the team delivering it isn’t happy, aligned, and energised.

Richard’s career spans everything from mainframes to CTO office of some of the biggest names in tech. Along the way he developed a powerful belief about leadership and strategy: context comes before everything.

That’s why he challenges the familiar “start with why” idea. Richard argues that the real starting point is “where.” Until you understand the context people are operating in, their constraints, pressures, ambitions, and environment, you can’t truly understand their motivations.

The conversation also explores how storytelling shapes strategy itself. 

But the most powerful part of the discussion comes when Richard reflects on leadership. After leading teams of every size, Richard reflects that great teams are built on happy individuals.

Instead of waiting until the end of a project to celebrate success, Richard encourages us to identify the moments in a week that give people a genuine “fist pump”, those small wins that create energy, motivation, and momentum.

He also shares three leadership principles that have guided him throughout his career:

• Guard your integrity. Don't be afraid to stand up for what's right.
• Tackle the problem in front of you. Don’t wait for others to get started, just get stuck in.
• Think speed and scale and settle for good enough vs perfection.

Richard’s book recommendation, The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor, reinforces the key idea from this conversation: happiness drives results, not the other way around.

If you’re interested in building high-performing teams, leading with authenticity, and translating complexity into meaningful action, this episode is packed with insight.

Listen, share with a colleague who leads through change, and if it resonates, subscribe and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

Rain, Banter, And Richard’s Intro

Sam 0:09

Welcome to Get Amplified, the podcast about teamwork in the tech industry. Well, surprise, surprise, Vicky, it's raining again. I read somewhere the other day it's rained every day this year so far, and it that appeals to be accurate. Rainy where you are?

Vic 0:25

It's very grey. And I'm, as you say, absolutely fed up with the rain. And my dog is fed up of getting hose piped off. He's like, oh no, not again.

Sam 0:41

Bless him. Poor Charlie.

Vic 0:43

Yeah, exactly.

Sam 0:45

So is Charlie coming on the podcast today, or have we got another illustrious guest?

Vic 0:49

Well, that's bloomin’ charming, isn't it? I'm not sure if Richard would appreciate that. So today we've got Richard Monroe, who I have known for quite a while, uh, from VMware. And Richard was if I needed some advice on something, Richard was the person to go to because he just seems to have this expansive knowledge across. Well, I'll let him tell you himself. So uh yes, we've got Richard with us, and um I'm quite fascinated to see where this will go, and I'll just leave it at that.

Sam 1:20

Good. I like those. Richard, welcome.

Richard 1:24

Thank you. I'm ready to be hosed out. Um so just just to fill in the gaps, it is raining here. Um and and I agree. There was a weird ball of fire in the sky the other day. Uh yeah uh that I only showed briefly. Um, it's really good to be here to see both of you. Thank you very much for having me on. Uh looking forward to uh to a good old catch up and and chat about uh good good old NATA.

Sam 1:52

Yeah, yeah, fabulous stuff. Maybe you could bring our listeners up to date with a sort of a canter through your career, you know, what you've done.

Career Tour And The CTO As Translator

Richard 2:01

Yeah. Uh wow. Well, um, if it's a job in IT, I've done it, I think is the simple one. I mean, it literally started, you know, so it's almost uh cliche. Uh it literally started with tearing reports off a mainframe printer whenever when uh back in the day. But I I guess um it's been an interesting career because I always was trying to figure out why things were the way they were, and then trying to get earlier in the process. So, you know, I be went into support from operations, and it was like, well, why am I having to fix all these problems, right? And it's and it turned out to be because um the projects were had problems in delivering change. And so I decided to get Prince2 certified and I ran projects, and then I still was delivering problems, and it and it turned out the architecture was wrong, so I became TOGAF certified and I did enterprise architecture, and but then the you know the the technology we were being supplied with had issues, and so I went into the system integrator space and you know, and then eventually all the way back kind of into the tech vendor space. Um at first, like CTO for cloud, um, things you know, roles like that, um, running solution pre-sales teams, etc. Um, and that was very much about you know taking what we had and helping customers to adopt. Um but then again, there was a awful lot of that is but why are things this way? So I, you know, I I ended up in kind of a CTO office, um, really looking not just at what's there today, but what comes next, and expanding that into why would this matter to people? What's the value of this to a technology executive, to uh to an engineer, to a to a business as a whole, right? Just looking at the kind of the value of technologies, where the trends and directions are going, and uh kind of articulating and being ahead of really not just what is there now, but what comes next. So uh good summary.

Sam 4:03

Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, you've covered some serious ground. Yes, architect project manager, you know, CTO. I always used to say CTO stood for chief talking officer. I don't think I made that up. I think I stole it from someone as I stole most of the time. That sounds like a Joe B Joe Bagley. Yeah, it may even be, may even be a Joe Bag a Joe Bagley fang.

What Storytelling Really Means

Richard 4:24

Um I think I think it's it's a good point because you know, a CTO, I mean it there's technology has always been interesting, right? Because technology in and of itself is I I liken it to a language, right? And two techies could could have a conversation, and uh anybody not in the tech industry has no idea what they're talking about. And if you think about the role of the CTO, right, then you also need to act. So the CTO should be helping the rest of the C-suite to uh kind of account for and factor in technology choices, technology decisions. And so they've got to perform a translation service. Yeah, if you put that in a vendor relationship with someone like Joe, Joe has to take completely novel concepts, completely novel technologies and paradigms, and explain that to all sorts of different people, right? So I do think that that talking point is actually really important, and it kind of links to, I guess, you know, what we're gonna touch on today around you know, but how do you talk about things and you know the the uh kind of the architecture of storytelling and things like that? But I I think talking is a woefully underappreciated part of the tech landscape.

Sam 5:39

Well, I always used to say that you know the one thing that I was any good at was translating translating technical stuff into business stuff. Right. And business stuff into technical stuff. Yeah, exactly. You know, are you a storyteller? Is that your if you could distill down what you do?

Rewriting A Keynote And The Rise Of AI

Richard 5:54

I I so I've been called that. Um I think storytelling is it me or is that making a bit of a comeback at the moment? I keep seeing storyteller on various people's LinkedIn bios and stuff. Um I so yes, I think storytelling is really important, but I think most people don't really understand what it is, right? So I think when people think storytelling, what they're thinking is what I describe as the last bit, right? It's an articulation of something. Um but that's more copywriting, isn't it? Storytelling, I think I honestly feel it's it's an architectural discipline. So if I think about what storytelling is, uh and what I've done all through it, and and it's really interesting because we call it storytelling at some levels, we'd call it something else at different levels. But firstly, right, you you understand the landscape of where you are, right? What's around me, where am I, what's happening, what might impact me. You you have to understand where you are. Then because of the nature of the world we live in, you have to understand, okay, what human factors. And I differentiate those because they're very, very different, right? One is very logical and science-based, and the other is not. And um, so you are you understand your landscape, you understand what human factors, and then you need to basically be able to sift through an awful lot of uh chaos and ambiguity to try and find patterns in what's happening and what's going on, and then somehow infer out of all this incomplete data, you need to infer the correct pathways of action to kind of you know to dig out of that. You can't just say, because I think so, right? So you need to, from that inference, you then need to say, and why would this matter? What's its value to different stakeholders and people? What's going to change? And then finally, finally, because you've just done a whole load of jumps and things that people just haven't done, right? Now, finally, you need to explain that whole story in concise form to the people that need to hear it. And that storytelling, now you can apply that at a really basic level. Uh uh the that you would say, Well, I wasn't even telling a story to someone, but in in I was on gardening leave not long ago, and uh I had a problem with my header tank in the loft, right? Now I my plumbing skill exciting. Yeah, but I I was actually thrilled. Um you know, my plumbing skills were were next to zero. But you know, I went up and I and I looked at this whole unit of a header tank and a main tank, and you've got the the the valves and the overflow pipe and all the rest of it. And I just had to figure out well, what's what? Because I I know nothing about this stuff, right? So I figured out my landscape. Um the human factor was easy because it's me. It's really annoying to have people everywhere. But the, you know, the the same principle was still there. And then I had to just try, bearing in mind I had no plumbing experience, had to try and infer, okay, well, what's going on? Why is there this problem? What can I do about it? Right. And then the the articulation was more a case of, well, I chose which parts I'd I'd need, and I and I gave it a go and I fixed it. But it's the same process, it's an architectural process. You understand the architecture of what you're working on, understand where the problems and risks are, come up with an execution plan to remediate those risks, and then try it. Right. That's that's basically what we do. We think of that as kind of architecture. But the same thing applies at the top level, it's the same principles of storytelling. So we were um, I was in the the uh office of the CTO at VMware, and I was responsible. We had this um quite famous in the industry event every year, and it's called radio. Uh, you probably know radio. Yeah, but so the research and development uh off-site, basically, the innovation off-site. And the idea was it's a bit like an event, a bit like a dragon's den. You just have everyone showcasing the art of the possible things they've been working on, and it's a really, really powerful event. Um, or it was. And I was responsible for the keynote. Now, again, if you think about a storyteller, I don't just mean building slides, although I make nice slides. I'm just gonna put it out there. But I'm responsible for slides. I had to build something, right? I had to build a message. What are we gonna talk to all these engineers about? How are we gonna give them a focus, get them excited? Right. So so the whole, the whole, whole thing. Um, and uh ChatGPT had just come on the scene. This was a few years back, so it was just starting to get noticed of hang on, there's something happening. So we were we were like trying to build um a you know, I was trying to try to build this keynote. So we'll just add 10 minutes to make some mention of Chat GPT. Now, I'll tell you right now that the um the predominant thought and feeling around that was that it had nothing to do with us. Right. So because there hadn't been this big dawning realization at that point. So I kind of went ahead and as I was building my story, which was how do I, you know, how do we inspire innovation based on where we are, what we can do, value propositions. Um, I couldn't do anything with this thing, Chat GPT, because I didn't really know enough about it, and I couldn't fit it anywhere in a story. So in the end, I thought, right, I'm just gonna have to turn my attention to this. What is it? So I went through the exact same process again, right? Was this thing arriving? Where are we? What does it affect? And it turns out it was super relevant. It turned out I could I could infer that this was just gonna be a massive, massive industry-wide phenomenon. And I was able to um identify that actually, as a company, we had a ton of value to offer this. And I could see how you know the customers that we were trying to represent and work for were going to struggle with some of the concepts of this brand new technology. So suddenly everything exploded to the point where I rewrote the entire thing. This was about three days before. I rewrote the entire thing to have AI as a central uh thematic throughout the whole thing. And to make that point between um, you know, storytelling and strategy, um, I actually had to text the CEO, uh, Ragu at the time, yeah, two days before to say, Do you mind if I change the company strategy? That's what I think people. Yeah, really. Well, it had it had to be because it it became so big. This storytelling isn't about copywriting, it's about all those things I talked about. You know, but uh I think people often think that company strategy is like lots of smart people sitting in a room with data sheets and stuff and decide making decisions together collaboratively about where we're gonna go. It doesn't happen that way. I don't know what your experiences are. It really doesn't happen that way. It's always storytelling. So, you know, in this case, in fact, we saw um we needed a partner. So once we came, we came up with private AI, was the result of that, right? The need for privacy around AI, the the need to change the commercial models so that it was far more viable than just paying for these tokens in massive public clouds with massive LLMs. Even came up with um agentic AI long before anyone said anything about it. I think I called it semi-autonomous um remote API interfaces. I think I called it that. So Snappy, Snappy. No points for naming, right? But you know, all these things came out. But uh and we were talking to um NVIDIA because we wanted a partner as we were going to launch something around it, it was that big. Um, and you know, talking to Jensen Huan, so CEO of NVIDIA, I'm sure everyone knows. Yeah, you know. What does he know about AI? Well, what is what he actually said was he he kind of flopped back and said, damn, I wish I'd thought of that. And the answer is that to be honest, is that well, we wouldn't have if I hadn't needed to do some storytelling. The only reason we thought of that, the only reason we thought about an you know an industry impacting, societally impacting concept is because I had to do some storytelling. And it was the same whenever we did, you know, if you come up to any of the big events like the VMworlds or the VMware Explores, it was uh I promise you, like a month before, throughout the year, you had BUs that were business units that were kind of you know self-interested, trying to work together, but they they had conflicts that would not resolve, which meant that we didn't have a company strategy. When we need to tell a story that we're now presenting to the world, right, you overcome those. There's literally six people in the room, and in fact, I you know the typical route would be that it'd come up with a story that that is strategically sound that appeals to the market, and then the BUs aligned to the story, not the other way around. We don't see what the what people are doing and what a product is, and then you know, figure out a story that matches, it's the other way around because the stories we're coming up with are what the customers and the market need, right? We need.

Vic 15:11

Yeah, exactly.

Richard 15:12

Sorry, that was a big ramble.

Sam 15:14

Storytelling to me is so did you just did you just tell us a story to illustrate storytelling? I may well have done. Perfect, perfect. I love it. Still got it. That's fantastic. That's brilliant. So this is a lot of businesses, Sam.

Private AI, Partners, And Market Shifts

Richard 15:31

I think a lot of businesses, they it I my personal belief is that this happens everywhere, but how well it happens is really mind-length. For some people, it's that classic case of it's happening, but it's happening to them. They're not in control of the process, they're reacting to oh, but we've got to say something about this or what whereas uh the real advantage is you know being fully aware of the intentional and deliberate. Yes, intentional. I love that, Vicky.

Sam 16:02

Like a choose your own adventure book, if you remember those.

Richard 16:05

I I certainly remember those. They were great.

Sam 16:10

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So is is this analogous to the you know, the sort of the start with why thing? Give people a reason to work together to join up. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, yeah, you know, we we've talked about him before on the on the pod. So I like maybe we should maybe we should get him on someday, Vicky.

Richard 16:33

He might not come on after this. Uh listen, I mean you're gonna call him out. Well, I think what he says is right. Um, but I do feel there is a gap. If if you look at how people so storytelling in sales, okay, that's one where a lot of people say, Oh, you need to do storytelling in sales, but I still think there's some there's some missing elements there. So Simon says Simon says Simon Seinick says, uh, you know, start with why. Uh that's where we disagree. Okay.

Sam 17:03

Because I mean that's fairly fundamental. That is his kind of core.

Richard 17:08

Well, I think I think he builds from there in very, very well structured ways, and maybe you know, I'm sure we could have a discussion and he could explain why we're saying the same thing. So let me go there. But yeah, yeah.

Vic 17:19

I'm fascinated by this.

Richard 17:21

Well, let's talk to the common perception of of what he says. Now, it it says start with why. So you know, let's take something really easy. In fact, I've got a brilliant analogy that I'll I'll run through in a second, but let's start with something even easier, right? The let's say you're a human, you you want to stay alive, right? So you've got your why, I want to stay alive, and we know that um you know you can survive without food for a few weeks, but you need water for you know in a few days. So the why is going to drive you towards water. But what if you're on the moon? Or what if there's a lion nearby? Okay, your why is now irrelevant. You don't need water if you need to hide from a lion. Okay. So what you actually need to do is start with where. It's that context that I was talking about. If you have no contextual basis for understanding where someone is today, then you can't really understand their whys. So I think understanding that contextual basis is the most important thing you can do. That's why if whenever you know I'd see uh a customer, I wouldn't just read the here's how many licenses they bought. I want to know, well, who are they? Who are the humans? What have they gone through, what are their ambitions, you know, personal ambitions, business ambitions, who are their rivals? You need to understand the landscape in which they're going to make a decision. Now, here's the the analogy that I think is phenomenal for this is um yachting monthly. Okay, so yachting monthly. I don't know if you're into yachts.

Sam 18:50

We'll we'll we'll go with it. I'm not sure where this is going, but we'll go with it.

Start With Where, Not Why

Richard 18:53

So yachting monthly, I I'm not massively into the sailing, but uh I I was close enough for a while to be familiar with this. So so yachting monthly is uh a magazine that talks all things yachts, as you would imagine. But they decided to do a really, really good exercise. Now, on yachts, a lot of things can go wrong. Okay. Um, but nobody had ever really tested what you do. People had said, oh, if this happens and you do that, but nobody had really tested what you do. And one of my favorite ones, apart from when they blew up the yacht at the end, which by the way was much harder than it sounds, like all those gas canisters in in the in the galley, um, very hard to explode, as it turns out.

Sam 19:36

Yeah.

Richard 19:36

Um the one that I really liked was well, what happens when you demast? Okay, so if you so it's you know, it's a big stormy weather, your mast cracks in half. Now, the most critical thing you have to do is get rid of it because that's going to drag in the water, it's gonna turn you broadside on, so the rolling waves, it's it's an absolute nightmare. You've got to get rid of that really, really fast. And the technologies on the market ranged from you know a few hundred quid to tens of thousands, and it was really, really interesting. So some of them were like massive pneumatic pincers that just had tons and tons of pneumatic pressure that would just snap the thing in through. Some of them were more kind of you know oscillation related. So it's like no, it's got ropes in there, it's gonna cut through this. And you know, they had all these different uh phenomenal technologies that could slice through anything, didn't matter, you know. You could have you could have a mass made of titanium and it's gonna cut through it. Phenomenal stuff, and people would pay thousands and thousands for these tools. But you know what won that category? A hacksaw. Now and as soon as you think about where am I, it makes sense. Why have you demastered? I'm in a storm on a yacht, the boat's being chucked all over the place, my master snapped in half. You know the thing all these tools had in common? Two hands. Two hands. Oh what are you gonna do? You're gonna hold on for digital. Yeah, right? Which means you've got one hand to do things with. Now, this is where I link it back for us, right? Because you're probably still thinking, what the hell? Um I can see it completely. I bet you every one of those companies, in fact, I know because I looked, every one of those companies were not competing for customers, they were competing with each other. Well, we had this many pounds of pressure, or our battery lasts this long, and how that they were competing with each other in stuff that was completely irrelevant to the customer. Right. And and if you're a technology vendor, how much are you selling what you think is important about technological impressive statistics?

Vic 21:50

Yes.

Richard 21:52

Here's the difference I can to you, and here's why it works in your situation.

Vic 21:57

Yeah.

Richard 21:57

Speeds and speeds and feeds.

Vic 21:59

Yeah. So we did we did a podcast probably a a year or so ago with Paul Reefles from the Chasm Group, you know, the business partner of um Jeffrey Moore.

Richard 22:08

Yeah.

Vic 22:08

And Paul, um, who's been on a couple of times, he's a great supporter of ours, said the trouble with because we and the the topic was every organization wants to sell a platform.

Richard 22:21

Yeah.

Vic 22:22

And he said the problem is corporates are all looking in the mirror instead of looking through the window. That's exactly your point.

Richard 22:29

That's exactly yeah. And and and that's that's why, you know, I don't want to discredit Simon because he's done fantastic work, but that's the problem I have. Like as soon as you start with why, you're probably already taking assumptions about what you think is important, not taking assumptions where your prospective customer thinks is important.

Vic 22:46

Yeah.

Sam 22:46

So I guess I guess what you what you're saying is you can't plan a journey without knowing where you where you start.

The Yachting Hacksaw Analogy

Richard 22:53

Well, Alan Barber had this tale, didn't he, of being in Cork when he said to somebody, how do I get to the Cork office? And they said, Oh, I wouldn't start from here, right? And it's like your customer, your your customer is where they are, you know, and and the the utopia is wonderful, right? But it it's your customer is where they are, and and that's at multiple layers, right? There's the there's those kind of physical, tangible layers, but then there's the human layers, you know. Yeah. There was a big uh contract um that helped a large insurance uh company with, and I'll be honest, IT were very, very resistant, but they they had a a business leader responsible for joint ventures. And joint ventures are spun up, shut down, or like right, ideal for cloud services. And it was recognizing that that person had a problem that that wasn't a technological question of price and cost. They had a problem, which was that they had a dependency in their pipeline for how fast they can do things. Right. And that was a differentiator for that organization. So you know, it's you really need to that that's the bit that's missing for me. You can't just say, oh, follow X, Y, Z. You have to have contextual understanding, otherwise, honestly, you've got nothing. You're you're you're throwing darts blind, hoping that the dart board is where you think it is.

Vic 24:12

No, that makes it makes so much sense. But I mean, um last week we we had a podcast with Cliff Keist.

Richard 24:21

Oh, Cliff, yeah.

Vic 24:22

Yeah, and and actually he was talking about the role of enterprise sales and how every every we were talking about orchestration of a deal and how there isn't a blueprint for it. And actually what we concluded is the reason there hasn't got a blueprint for it is to your point, you have to have the context because every customer's different.

Richard 24:42

Yeah, you can have architectural principles.

Vic 24:44

Yeah.

Richard 24:44

I I yeah, maybe you don't even need to call it architectural. My background says I call them architectural pieces. Yeah, but you can you can have really good strong principles, but you you have to be able to adapt it to the context uh on which you're trying to get anything done. And like I said, uh is whether it's plumbing, whether it's setting a company strategy of one of the biggest organizations in the world, whether you're trying to close a deal, it's the same every time. Like understand where you are, understand the value propositions, understand the motivations. Uh and you know, there there is still a bit that's very hard to learn. That's the inference, you know, to be up in things people don't see and stuff like that. But that's okay. That we're allowed to have people with specific skills. Um, you know, that that's an important part. But those principles are the same. Um, and they're really poorly recognized, in my opinion. Most people just let this stuff happen to them like this, or or even when they are in control of it, you know, then then they'll they won't even realize, like, yeah, we're when we're doing um re-establishing private cloud, like there was people going, oh, that's lucky, people are coming back to private cloud. There was no luck. We we rebuilt the market category. Yeah, but even the even in the company that took the actions to rebuild the market category, they're they're still like going, oh, that was lucky. It's like, no, it wasn't lucky. We you know, we set out deliberately, we understood where we are, we understood where our customers were, we understood where the market was, uh, we were thoughtful about it, we sifted through the chaos, we inferred the right directions, identified the value, and executed. That's storytelling.

Vic 26:20

I'm kind of thinking, Richard, perhaps your next thing to do is a book.

Richard 26:25

It could be, maybe proper storytelling. Yeah, I I it's interesting. You never know. Um, you know, you never you never know what's what's going to work for people um to kind of get these things across and and to help. Um the reason I like the analogy is like the the yachting one, you know.

Vic 26:46

It's brilliant, it's so powerful.

Richard 26:48

It just makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, it's like it's a really obvious thing you can understand, and all the way through where you're talking about these pounds, and nobody thinks, yeah, but you've got to hold on for dear life with one hand. Yeah, you just don't think of it, yeah, and that's the trap we all fall into. But I also think the um, you know, the at that very top level scale, this recognition that there are no what what smart people in the C-suite do when they sit down is they figure out short-term business. Yes, strategy doesn't happen that way, it really doesn't. And um I think the most underrated skill in technology, particularly, but arguably everywhere, is going through a proper, rigorous storytelling approach to uh to kind of form up that strategy. Yeah, like my Microsoft when when we're doing um hybrid and multi-cloud, so take another company. By the way, you mentioned Jeff Moore earlier, and yeah, he's great. Um, and we certainly had some good conversations about around his zone to win. I think it's hugely relevant with eye at the moment.

Vic 27:57

It really is, yeah.

Customer Context Over Speeds And Feeds

Richard 28:02

But if you, you know, when when you think about that, um we were doing this hybrid and multi-cloud stuff, and at the time, you wouldn't have a hyperscaler use those words, right? They they absolutely refuse to use those words. Uh, Microsoft, to their credit, decided that they would come in. Obviously, they have a good uh they had a big on-prem side of their business at the time. So they said that they'd come in. We were doing some partnerships with them. Um, but I'll never forget that I had the um hybrid and multi-cloud storytelling slides again, right? And it helps serve nice slides because it's it's the end point again. It belies everything that's built them, right? So it was nice as the slides, and I'll never forget um that Sajin Nadella was standing as close as I am to this laptop, just looking in the green room and going through every slide, and he's spent ages on every single slide. And within a couple of weeks, Microsoft's messaging and narrative all shifted now.

Sam 29:02

Interesting.

Richard 29:03

I I am inferring. Yeah. Um, but I know what I saw, and and the language was the same and all the rest of it. And I don't object to that at all. I think that's great. It for me, you know, because I've well wanted more. There's always the who am I working for? What do I I uh you know, who what do they get? But I've always been wanting to make sure that what I do has has a wider impact, that other people understand that it helps customers that you know, and I think that's always done better when you have multiple people recognizing what the right pathways are, yeah, and working together on that, you know, in competition or in collaboration, it doesn't matter. Let's just make sure we're all on the right pathways.

Sam 29:43

It kind of validates the market to some extent, doesn't it?

Richard 29:45

It does. It does, yeah, yeah. And um, you know, I but the the market to me, you know, has to serve what we refer to as the customers at the end of the day.

Vic 29:59

Like it's got to be customer led.

Richard 30:00

It's it has to be customer led. If if if we build a market, you know, that that it has created a uh kind of a financial impact on its own, but it's not serving customers, we're on dangerous territory. Right. So customers have to benefit, it has to be accessible to all because that's how you get kind of much wider societal productivity and growth versus it just being in the hands of a select few. And I've always been fairly passionate about that. Um, and so that's why I've never objected to you know seeing kind of words and concepts represented by other companies and things. I honestly think it's great. It's not even an imitation flattery thing. It's a like good, we've got recognition, we've got agreement. That's that's always a positive step.

Sam 30:47

But it must make it easier to take the customer along a journey if you know you've got various admittedly competing tech organizations advancing the story together between them.

Richard 30:58

Yeah, that's a really good point, Sam. Yeah, it's uh it's um you know, do you want to be a lone voice? Or or do you want to be a strong voice in a in a chorus, right? And it's the strong voice in a chorus, you're much more likely to be able to get where you want.

Sam 31:12

That's a that's a really good analysis.

Richard 31:14

Well, there is a time where you have to be the lone voice. I when a number of times I have been physically laughed at in the room by analyst firms and people like that, when I've said, Hey, it's gonna go this way, and then they literally laughed at me. And a couple of years later, they're writing their op-eds about why things are going that way. Um, yeah, you know, and that's okay. You you do have to be a lone voice sometimes, but it's uh it's great. I I honestly think success is when there's more widespread acceptance, not when you turn around and go, I was right. You know, that doesn't help anyone, but when you get it That's not your style at all, is it? No. But that that acceptance and then this people going in the right direction, you know, that helps them. I think that's always a good feeling when you get to that point.

Vic 31:59

Yeah.

Richard 32:00

That makes sense.

Sam 32:01

Have you learned anything about leadership in all in all of this that you've done? That's obviously something that's that's relevant for our listeners.

Lone Voices, Choruses, And Market Validation

Richard 32:08

Yeah, I love also I've done a number of I've managed very small high performance teams, I've led very large divisions of hundreds of people. Um, and I think there's a couple of key takeaways, you know. I I I already know you two, right? So I that you have to have a certain passion for things. And um, but that's really that's much easier said than done because if you describe any job, right, then there's not a lot of reasons to you can't immediately say, oh, that's something that you're gonna be supremely passionate about. That's not really how it works. Um, I know I do, you know, I've I've read um about you know how Amplified Group helps with the five behaviors and Team X is and I love all that. They're they're process driven. But I I tend to, I guess the lesson I've learned, the biggest lesson, is that um for an individual, happiness comes first. If you're on great teams, right, you need happy individuals.

Vic 33:04

Yes.

Richard 33:05

And you don't get happy individuals by doing a lot of work and then having an end result. You get happiness first, and then the great work's gonna come.

Vic 33:13

Yeah.

Richard 33:13

That's the biggest lesson that I ever learned.

Vic 33:16

Yeah, yeah.

Richard 33:16

And I I always used to say to people when I uh took over Teams or hired, I'd I'd always ask, like, what's your you could say what do you enjoy during the week, what parts of you, but that's not really the thing. The thing is, what in a week gives you that fist pump? The bit where you go, yes, right? Yeah, and I really mean that specifically, because you can say, Oh, I enjoy presenting, but what about presenting? Is it like when people applaud at the end? There's one bit that makes you go, yes. And um, you know, I don't know if you two have ever thought of that, but that's the most important bit. And you if you can identify and lock in on that one or two fist pump moments a week, if you're doing that, you're gonna be happy. And you know, you can look for ways to kind of reinforce that to make more of them happen. To and that really, really drives um satisfaction and productivity, like you wouldn't believe. That's when people are all getting their fist pump moments, that's when they'll align around a mission, that's when you'll all be charging in the same direction. Um, but it's really recognizing that the mistake I see quite a lot with team leadership is they say, right, well, if we all work really, really hard and we achieve this, we'll get a chance to celebrate. Celebrate now. Yeah, right, because you are a small group of people, you've got such a range of skills, and we've got this challenge in front of us. Let's take this on with a big old smile and celebrate our way to it. And and that works. The other way for me doesn't work. It's just the other way just gives you a problem and problem and problem. Here's why we can't reach our destination. So get that out of the way first and and really take it on as a team. Um, so yeah, happiness comes first and talk to your teams, find out what their individual fist pumps are, think about what your own individual fist pump moments are, and uh double down on that.

Vic 35:04

I think that might be our theme of of the podcast, actually. I I really find your fist pump. Yeah, and and Richard, you you talked about um when we were doing the prep key moments versus meetings. Is that what you're talking about? The fist pump moment was that no, no.

Richard 35:21

So the key moments versus meetings is really about strategy and storytelling, right? Where people think that you know key moments are forcing functions for storytelling.

Vic 35:31

Okay, got it.

Richard 35:32

Um, but the the uh the fist pumps is more uh, you know, it is an individual behavioral thing, but you can you can adopt it as a team, you can really celebrate it and you know we see it in the teams we work with, and you can see if they've got it or not.

Vic 35:46

I mean, we measure it through our our um speed checks, and actually, depending on who we're working with and what resonates, we're either measuring team X or we're measuring speed of execution. But if they've got that happiness and that because the the speed checks almost uh it's a leading indicator, yeah. Because it is actually a measure of the happiness, because if they're happy, they've we could even tell by how quickly the team fill it in. How on the ball, how happy are they to tell us where they are.

Leadership: Happiness First And Fist Pumps

Richard 36:14

Well, I it's it's it it's really interesting because it's such a it sounds it's another one, it's a bit like storytelling. I think it's really undervalued. I took over a team a little while ago, um, you know, and they they were they were doing okay, but they were largely invisible. And within a couple of weeks, so there was people in tears on the phone saying how like they love the fact that we were finally doing something, we're finally getting somewhere. But all it was was I was talking to them about let's do the fist pump, let's do this, let's get going. And they turned into, you know, they they were always were a brilliant team, actually. But they suddenly turned into a really visible, brilliant team that are doing ever greater things. Yeah, and it's remarkable how quickly you can do that, how quickly you can empower these incredible people.

Vic 37:03

Yeah, it comes from within though, doesn't it?

Richard 37:05

It does because celebrate at first, uh the things you're gonna celebrate later, right? It's is a route to unhappiness, honestly. It's it's it's toil. It's just toil to get to some arbitrary place, and then you start judging the reward as well. It's like, okay, I'm gonna celebrate. Well, was my pay rise enough? Did I get a bonus? Why did that person get an award? I didn't get an award. Are you full of problems? Just celebrate them now, celebrate the brilliant things now, and enjoy them as you go.

Vic 37:33

I think life is way too short to not be enjoying what you're doing.

Richard 37:37

Yeah, yeah. And uh, but it could be hard if you think of the whole thing. Yeah, it is because I've I've had jobs where I said, Oh, this job really sucks right now. But there's still a couple of little fist pump moments in there. Yeah, so you just kind of focus on those, you try and make more of those happen, and it can turn your whole perspective around on whatever role you're trying to perform.

Vic 37:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool.

Sam 38:00

Makes sense. Have you got any advice for leaders of tech organizations, high performing or wannabe high performing um teams moving quickly?

Richard 38:11

The opportunity is there to be different, right? So there's so many people that just do the same things the same way, and if they haven't found happiness first, they're usually quite miserable while they're doing it, right? So it's a very giving up. We're also in a world where things like integrity is increasingly for sale. Um, there and so you mean by that? Well, I just saw some coverage recently that you know there's this 996 craze spinning up in New York where you have to work nine years ago.

Sam 38:41

I read that article the other day nine for six days. 72 hours a week or something.

Richard 38:46

You know, and you're supposed to be happy about that, and that and that's a lie, right? Nobody's gonna be happy about doing that. You might find people do that if you've given them the passion and the and the belief, um, but you don't demand that for people. Yeah, um, we're full of you know, we're full of half-truths, untruths, right? But to be the person that turns around and says, actually, this isn't going to work for you in quite that way, because I understand your situation, right? Have some integrity. Uh, it's for sale because, you know, there's there's the kind of job market as it is today, and people are becoming increasingly willing to say anything to to kind of cling on, to drink the Kool-Aid, to, you know, it's it's just it's understandable, um, it's sad, but you know, you don't have to be that person. You can you can say, well, my integrity isn't actually for sale. I'm I'm going to uh speak about, you know, if I say something, I'm gonna believe it.

Vic 39:46

Yes.

Richard 39:46

And uh, you know, and you get the opportunity to be that person. You can be that person to your staff as well, not just external, be that person internally, right?

Vic 39:54

Yeah.

Integrity, Do It Yourself, And Scale

Richard 39:55

So I think your integrity is priceless and you should never sell it. Um, so so don't be afraid to be different. Don't be afraid to stand up for kind of what's right, um, you know, uh by by yourself, by your team, by by your customers. Uh, don't be afraid to be that person, in fact. It will uh help you. Uh it'll help you stand out. And you know, if it really does mean that you're in the wrong place, well, at least now you know you're in the wrong place. Um yeah. I think I think the second thing is um so I I you know one of the things that I've often transformed is you know, problems that people say are way too big. You can't possibly fix this. Um, you always can by by tackling the thing that's in front of you, right? And so there's a reason why I know how to edit a premiere video. I'm not I'm not a video producer, but there's a reason I know how to because I needed something made, I needed to convey a message. Um, I could have raised a ticket for 10 grand for some agency to give me one or two reruns and a or I could make the thing myself because it's that important and I need to make it myself. Um most things you can do yourself if it's important enough. There's very little space to stand in your way. You got you didn't suddenly lose the ability to learn the second you left school or university, right? So if you've got a problem that's in your way and you have dependencies on other people, take care of that problem. Because otherwise you're just gonna fail because you're gonna find millions of these things. So hit the problem in front of you, hit it hard, roll your sleeves up, do it yourself. It's it's a really powerful and liberating when you start doing that. And I think the third one is we can do things at speed a lot, right? Um, and we we can have large impacts at speed. But honestly, if you particularly if you're further up in an organization, if you want it to be company transformative, are you trying to make a one-off point or are you trying to transform your ability to execute, your ability to go to market? If it's the latter, which it often is, you can't just think speed. You've got to be able to do that.

Vic 42:05

Oh no, absolutely.

Richard 42:06

You've got to think about repeatability. And you know, sometimes if you become a bit like me on the former, I was always tempted to do the perfect job on something that I wasn't willing to then go and do 10,000 more times. Yeah. I would much rather do a good enough job that's repeatable 10,000 more times than the perfect job that needs me to do it. So always think about, you know, okay, you're doing something great, but what's the scalable version of this? Because otherwise you're you're gonna you're gonna make a brilliant, beautiful, personal one-off point that means nothing to anyone after you've made it. You know, you just own the world could be different, but you can't actually do anything about that. Think speed and scale, settle for good enough if if that's what gives you scale. Um, that would definitely be um kind of my third piece of advice for leaders.

Vic 42:53

Very good.

Sam 42:56

Excellent. Brilliant. Yeah, really interesting. Really interesting. Have you got one question that you think people should be asking for themselves, their teams?

Richard 43:08

Um I think uh it's a bit tied into your fist pump. Okay, so I there there's a really simple question that nobody thinks about until circumstances force them to think about it. But I think it would help everyone to do this as well. And link it to that fist pump idea. Um what do you want to do? It's a really, really simple question. Yeah, massively complicated. Okay, so I there is there's a school of thought. Uh you know, some of the things I've said to my teams is um, you know, I'm actually the CEO of this team, right? And you and you're the so we got the CEO of the company, but I'm actually CEO of this team because I have control and and I decide where we're where we're trying to take things and what's gonna drive us, what our motivations are. What results. So I'm I'm effectively CEO of this team, but you're CEO of yourself. And that's if you're CEO of yourself, right? You're you take responsibility for yourself, for everything from your own happiness to your own productivity, because you know what business we're in, right? What if you were CEO of yourself? Think think in those terms. You get to make choices, you get to make decisions. Now, on that basis, right, what do you want to do? You know what your job description is, you know what you're being told to do, you know what other people are probably emailing you saying, Can you do it? What do you want to do? And again, if you liken it to your to your fist pump idea, right, then part of that should be something that gives me a fist bump. Um, but you know, really don't be afraid to take responsibility for saying, um, you know, I'm not defined by my job role. I'm not defined by, you know, my position in the company or or whatever, right? You're what you're actually defined by is your actions and approach for uh the things you do on a on a minute-to-minute basis, even. Um, and actually give some time to thinking, well, what do I want to do? And it can be really eye-opening to realize that you might be just in a rut drifting along somewhere. But if you think about what you want to do, maybe getting out that rut doesn't involve whole screen you know changes and moving to a different company or whatever. Maybe it's just tweaking a few things because you've now decided what you want to do, and you can do it where you are, and that gets you out the rut, um, you know, in and of itself. So I think it's um, you know, always always think about that question. It's deeper than you think. What what do you want to do? Yeah, that would be my advice to anyone.

Sam 45:43

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think that makes sense. And I guess you're also drilling into people's individual motivations when you ask them that.

Richard 45:55

Everything it's it's an individual question. It's not a business question, it's an individual. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think people, you know, that that will get translated by many people as what does my job allow me to do?

Vic 46:08

Yeah.

Richard 46:09

And that that means that you've not answered the question.

Vic 46:12

No, so when I work with leaders, the objective is how do you get your teams to want to want to walk over hot coals for you? And that's because they they need those fist pump moments. What is it? How are you empowering them?

Richard 46:24

Yeah, yeah. You get ideas coming from people when you get fist pumps and you implement the what do you want to do? You're you're your own CEO.

Vic 46:32

Yeah, I know, exactly.

Richard 46:33

With all kinds of ideas.

Vic 46:35

Well, that's where the scale comes from, then. So I'm reading a fascinating book at the moment called Leadership is Language. Um, it comes from the guy that wrote Um turn Turn the Ship Around. And he talks about the percentage of a leader speaking versus everybody else in the room. And there's actually a cut the correlation between that and the quietest people speaking up because they've got the great ideas. It's it's really wonderful.

Be Your Own CEO: What Do You Want

Richard 47:02

Yeah, there's an awful lot of that. I I think it's um, you know, that I'm I'm giving some fairly simplified. I I could keep going, oh, another thing. I don't know, you know. I think it's the ability to be able to take a lot of these things, but I do think there's some fundamentals, right, that that um are just really worth it. We we are talking, aren't we, about Sam? You said it when you queried it, like I think you're right. We're talking about how to let individuals be individuals.

Vic 47:30

Yeah.

Richard 47:31

Right? Their motivations, yeah. And it and it's not your job, it's not I'm gonna make you happy in your job. It's like I want to make you happy, and hopefully this job's part of that, and you'll just start selling that.

Sam 47:43

Yeah, yeah. The job the job in and of itself isn't your sole purpose, motivation, what have you, but if you're fulfilled in your work, that helps with life generally.

Richard 47:54

Yeah, yeah. I don't think I've ever um worked to a job description that I was given. Yeah, I don't think I've ever done that. Work work to rule. Yeah, you you come in, you look, you say, Well, I I understand what needs to be done, and the the job description's just gone by the wayside. You know, clearly you do the things you have to do, you're aware of your responsibilities, but you know, a job description doesn't define productivity, doesn't define products. No, it doesn't community.

Vic 48:21

Um I agree with that.

Richard 48:22

You find that's that's individuals do that.

Sam 48:26

Yeah, yeah. So as Mickey's trying to persuade you to write a book, do you think do you have any books that you would recommend for us?

Richard 48:35

Uh well for the theme of the uh chat today, um, I think I I would have to go back to uh the happiness advantage. It was it's uh it's a great book. It's um you know about this set in the business context, and it uses a lot of kind of evidence and storytelling uh about what happens, you know, why happiness has to come first and what happens when you kind of turn those things around. It's it's a really good read. I I go back to it every now and then just to remind myself of the core principles. Um that's a good one, the happiness advantage.

Vic 49:11

Yeah, thank you.

Richard 49:12

And then we can we can all do with a bit more happiness these days, couldn't we?

Vic 49:16

With all this rain blyming.

Richard 49:19

It's there to be found. Um I would also recommend, by the way, if you'd ever trying to make sense of AI, fall of empires, everything that's kind of happening around us, it's been quite fascinating to revisit um Isaac Asimov's novels. Um that guy was seriously ahead of his time um in terms of AI and robotics, and also you know, how how power and technology uh intertwine with each other. It's quite fascinating. So if you really fancy a random set of reads, um, I'd also recommend going going back over the old Isaac Asimov's. Some ways it's comforting to know that all of this was predicted 60 years ago.

Sam 49:59

Interesting. Yeah, I mean, I remember reading those when I was a teen. So yeah, you know, it was not quite 60 years ago, but certainly 35 years ago. And they've been out, you know, they were my granddad's books, so they'd obviously been out for a little while. Exactly.

Richard 50:12

It's quite astonishing how much of it is is very accurate to the things we're seeing at the moment. Remarkably accurate. That's why it's fun rereading, because like you, I'd read them all when I was a kid, and uh you go back over now and you just you're reading bits and you have that absolute jaw drop moment about but that's what's happening today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for the for the motivation and everything, do read the happiness advantage. I'm sure it will explain in more detail than you know I can do on a on a quick podcast about why happiness needs to come first.

Vic 50:46

Very good. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

Sam 50:48

Yeah, appreciate that. Nice one. Thank you, thank you for your time, Richard. It was that was fab.

Richard 50:53

It really was thoroughly enjoyable.

Sam 50:56

Yeah, good, good, good, good. We you know, we hope our guests enjoy themselves. So it just remains for me to say thank you for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. As always, your comments and your subscriptions are gratefully received.