WEBVTT
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Responsibility is unavoidable in leadership and influence.
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In all kinds of roles, from surgeons to CEOs to judges.
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What matters isn't whether it exists, but what it creates and where it travels.
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Responsibility creates an emotional load.
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That load doesn't disappear.
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It shifts and someone carries it.
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Welcome to carrying it when responsibility doesn't stop.
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That's what this podcast is interested in.
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Not how hard leadership is, but what responsibility creates.
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This conversation is about distance.
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What happens when responsibility reaches further than your ability to fully see its impact?
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Today I'm joined by Stephen Rose, CEO of Render Networks, who leads across teams, decisions, and consequences that inevitably travel beyond direct visibility.
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Welcome, Steven.
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Yeah, great.
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Great to be here.
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Thanks very much for inviting me.
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Alright, let's dive straight in.
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Obviously, your role CEO traditionally top of the tree in most organizations.
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You can't have direct relationships with everybody and everything within your organization.
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So what changes what have you noticed change in yourself and in other people and in the way that you lead when responsibility goes beyond those direct relationships?
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Yeah, it's really interesting.
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I think there is a number of misnomers that come along with, you know, what does a CEO do?
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Yeah?
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How much power do they have?
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How much responsibility do they have?
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And I typically say to people, actually, you have all the power, but you have none of it.
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You have all the responsibility, but you have none of it.
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You have all the accountability, that is for sure.
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And you have all of that, 100%.
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You have all of the budget and you have none of it.
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So it's really interesting.
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You have to actually appreciate that, you know, the role of a CEO is really to make sure that everybody else is loaded up with all the things that they can do to do their job effectively, and then actually get out of the way to the maximum extent you can.
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So it's a great is a number of things that you need to do in there.
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You need to make sure that you understand how the controls are going to work.
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What are the points of intervention that really matter?
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Do you have a solid understanding of the capabilities of your leadership team around you?
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And to what extent do you need to then marry yourself to that problem if you can, or how do you other get you know combinations of of other skill sets to support each other?
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So you're really meshing an organization and you're trying to understand what at what point do you need to really intervene and whatnot.
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But for the most part, your job is to set direction with the team, you know, be collective around that, and then get out the way.
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And that takes a great deal of trust to be able to do that.
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So, you know, probably as the classics sort of say, starts with culture and it ends up with structure.
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Focus on those things first.
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That's the most important part of being a CEO role.
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So the distance is actually a good thing, right?
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Uh how much distance then do you think is the right level of distance?
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In much distance.
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I think it's about really just setting up the conditions and the agreement between you and your leadership team as to what is the point of intervention that matters.
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Yeah.
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Now, you know, there's a few things that you can think about.
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There's the classic of up on the balcony, down on the dance floor.
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So the one of the things that you do have to do is to is to remain close to the heartbeat of the organization.
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There are a couple of ways you can do that, of course.
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A great believer in being able to, you know, go out and actually see how the work is being done.
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So getting close to somebody that's, you know, two and three levels below you and and and just working with them for a little while, talking to them, making sure you understand what their environment is.
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I'm not a great fan of skip level meetings.
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I know that that is a way that uh people trying to close the gap and then come back away from it again.
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But skip level meetings, in my view, typically just end up becoming performance and management assessment of the leader that actually uh you're engaging with, and it becomes a a rather negative, almost nervous experience for the employees because they don't know how much they can say, and for the team leader whose team that you're actually engaging with.
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So I'm not a great fan of those meetings, I have to say.
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And typically you only get one or two voices.
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If there's a team of ten, you'll get one or two voices speaking up, the rest will stay silent, yeah.
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So it's not a great way.
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So I think keeping a distance is enough to recognize that, again, your intervention can be positive, but it also can be not necessarily harmful, but it certainly can be abrasive or it can have unintended consequences.
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I think the other thing that comes with distances is more about you also appreciating the you you just don't have to know, and you will never know what's going on at that granular level.
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So how customers will use your product, how your teams understand the environment where your customers are using the product and maybe what's going on technologically in the world.
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I mean, there's just too much happening at once.
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So again, you've got to you've got to become comfortable with the idea that you're probably the furthest away from the customers to some extent.
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I mean, not again, you're going to be engaging with customers, but at the granular level, the use of your product is going to be something that somebody understands way better than you, how the product should evolve.
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And those types of things are are really important because otherwise, what you do is you bring in a very heavy assessment of where the market's going and what do you think, and you you start to do things like introduce anecdotal evidence.
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So there's a real danger, again, of of when you're talking about distance, if you're so close to it and you think you're on top of what the market needs and wants, you're probably deluding yourself.
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So that distance actually is a protective mechanism.
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It isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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I'm with you on skip level meetings.
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I think the negative consequences of those far outweigh any possible benefit you might get.
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But the the one-to-one, you know, going out and and living a day in the life of one of your employees, that that's an interesting way of doing things.
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You have a lot of demands on your time, right?
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Before we hit record, we were just saying it's uh not a good work-life balance in your situation.
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How frequently can you do those types of things?
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Well, I think every time you're on a trip, there's the opportunity to do so.
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So I want if I'm going on a meeting with a client, you know, one of the things is obviously we'll go and meet the client, but then you take that time to spend with the team that you that are there locally, right?
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So I would say that I'm spending every month, at least twice a month, working with somebody that is two or three levels below me and having that granular discussion with them about how's it going?
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What's, you know, tell me, tell me how you experience employment life.
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What is your perspective on where the market's going, how the customers are using, where we could be improved, what are the things that are getting out in your way of being successful?
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Being genuinely curious that the person that you're interacting with has a perspective and it's really, really valuable.
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The harder thing is when you are doing this and you're running an international business.
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I can do it a lot here in the US, but half the team is in Australia.
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Now that makes it harder.
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And so the the way to do that is you've just got to make sure that the people understand that you are available even though you're 11,000 miles away.
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I was talking to one of our finance team last night on a Slack message, and she wrote to me and she was asking me about something simple, you know, hey Steve, I need your thoughts on something.
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And instead of saying, here's the answer, the first question I ask is, Hi, how are you?
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Yeah.
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And that simple question of hi, how are you?
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Let's go there first, and spending that two to three minutes of Slack interaction and making sure that you use that window.
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You had that window.
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It wasn't presented to you in a structured way, it was an organic way.
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And asking that question first makes people think that this person actually cares and they do want to really know about those things.
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And and you'll pick up on that, and you do that enough, and then you'll get send people the signal that that you're actually asking the question because you really want the answer.
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You're not just going through the motions of that.
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So just that's where it gets harder, but that's where you have to then exploit every small opportunity, not just the big ones of a visit down in Australia.
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I came into this thinking I was going to talk about distance, vertical distance, the hierarchy of an organization.
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But actually, there's there's so many different ways you can measure distance in an organization.
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11,000 kilometers, that's a hell of a distance when you run businesses like that.
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When you do those things, whether it's in person or that little example you just gave uh in a Slack message, what do you think that that does with the employee in terms of the responsibility that they feel and the load that they're carrying in terms of their job?
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How does that help them in what they're doing?
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I think there's there's two things.
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There's the confidence, you give keep people the confidence to speak up about the things that they're bothered about.
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And they are.
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First thing to really consider, and that's very important, is that most people come to work.
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I would say 99% of people come to work every single day wanting to do a great job.
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Not a good job, they want to do a great job.
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And they have concerns and they would love to solve for those concerns.
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They don't always necessarily feel empowered, they don't necessarily always have the confidence, whatever it happens to be.
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So those questions, asking those questions gives people the confidence to say, hey, I see a problem and I'd love to do something about it.
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And your role as a CEO or any leader for that matter isn't to solve the problem for them, is to ask them the questions that are going to enable them to say, hey, I've got a problem here.
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Okay, what do you think we should be doing about it?
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I'm all ears, yeah?
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You don't have to agree always.
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But then at the end of that discussion, you've got to really wrap it up with, okay, I agree or disagree with your ideas.
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If I agree with your ideas, I'm not just gonna sit there and say, okay, great, after you.
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It's I think that's a great idea.
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I'm I'm you know, gonna back you to do it.
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By when will you come back to me and give me an update on how far you've got with this?
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Because they may come up against other problems that they can't, you know, so they they take the problem away, they might try and solve it in different ways and find there are new obstacles.
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And you're obliged at that point to step in and help them.
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Getting difficult obstacles out of the way of a particular problem, of solving a particular problem is part of your charter.
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So I think people would want to see whether or not you really care about the problem they specified by showing that there's follow-up and that you you want to see the follow-up, you want to see the action.
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And of course, that's a great opportunity for you to see whether the person was just complaining or whether they were really taking the accountability and the responsibility to solve it with you, uh, and then that's a good way to see the productiveness of that discussion as well.
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A good way of marrying the needs of the business with the the needs of the employees and the human side of that emotion versus the strategic nature of the business.
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So that's all great, right?
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And if you can have those moments with every single one of your employees, great.
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You're not gonna be able to see everything though.
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I think that that's clear.
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There's just too much going on for you to be able to see everything.
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So have you noticed anything in particular where you miss things and then when you've discovered that you miss them, you make a extra effort to make sure that you're a bit more focused in a particular area or in a particular way.
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Yeah, so knowing where and and how to spend your time is the most critical decision that you make at the beginning of every single day.
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And the way that you do that is you you you've got to be able to set things up in such a way that you have a balanced perspective of the performance of the business.
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And for me, there are four measures that are actually kind of simple for that.
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Employee MPS, yes, a net promoter score, customer MPS, ebida, and top line.
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If you have an understanding of where you lie on any one of those metrics, and you start to be able to dig down, you'll be able to see where your focus needs to grow.
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So, you know, employee MPS is generally speaking a factor of how well people are being left, led, how happy are they in their roles, to what extent do they feel that they have mastery and autonomy in their roles, etc.
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That's a really, really easy way to figure it out, and you will see the difference between function A and function B and whatever else, and then you know you can start to analyze the problems over there.
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Customer MPS.
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Is the service quality where it wants to be?
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Is the product doing what it should be?
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Uh are we resolving issues?
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Bottom line performance and top line performance, you'll be able to see very, very quickly which part of the businesses are struggling.
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So that's how I manage the business.
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I just have those four key metrics.
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I'll use those, I'll find out where the issues are behind them.
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And the most important thing is you're doing it with the team, is that you're not doing it to the team.
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Yeah, that's not the point.
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The point is if there's an issue, you want to discover what the root cause of that issue is together, and that's where you get to put your focus in.
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Which of those four metrics do you think gets sacrificed first?
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I don't know which one gets sacrificed first, but I can tell you the if you sacrifice employee MPS over customer MPS, a customer MPS will suffer in the end.
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And so with the other two metrics.
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I know that there are certain organizations and they'll say customers always ride and we're customer-centric, and that's what even one of our values.
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If you have an organization that is so harshly driven by every single piece of anecdotal feedback, or or even if there are patterns, you rotate too harshly on them and whatnot, all you'll do is you'll demotivate and demoralize the uh organization.
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So I think employee engagement and employee MPS is where the product becomes the best it can be, the service becomes the best it can be, you'll make great decisions, and and so as a result of that, you know, your revenue and your margins will improve accordingly.
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So I think for me, it's not which one suffers the most, but which one gets invested in the least.
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I can tell you the one that will, if you don't focus on that, it will destroy the other three KPIs pretty quickly.
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And that one, the employee NPS, is that sort of emotional connection to the company.
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Customer NPS and the financial side of things, very fact-based, as you say.
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You can look at one chart or one table and see, are we doing well or are we not doing well?
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Employee NPS is is much more nuanced than that because, well, it's dealing with human emotions, right?
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You can ask different questions in the same way or the same question in different ways, and you get different responses from that.
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How do you stay close enough to that to make sure that you can trust the numbers?
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It's really easy to interrogate financial numbers, much harder to interrogate employee metrics.
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I'm not sure I agree.
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I think you can.
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I think you just have to decide that actually social science, which is really what we're talking about here, is actually a lot more scientific and a lot more measurable than you would perhaps expect.
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If I'm looking at how much leadership development are we doing in a single year, do we have an innovation curve?
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And if we have an innovation curve, to what extent is everybody participating?
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Something as simple as, and I had this feedback just in the last three or four weeks.
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It's taken our employees way too long to fill in an expense claim form.
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Super frustrating.
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They go on a long trip, they come back, and guess what they get?
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They get all the thanks by saying, and here's a really annoying way of having to finish off your trip rather than doing the follow-up from the trip, you're doing expenses instead.
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That's the sort of thing that will really irritate people, and you'll get feedback on that, and that's the sort of feedback you need to work on.
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So there are many ways in which you can truly measure whether or not your uh employee engagement score is going to be good.
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I think what we have a tendency to do is to over-rotate on the obvious things.
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Are people incentivized enough?
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Yes, absolutely they should be, and there should be enough money on the table that it doesn't become a topic.
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I think it was Dan Pink that said that.
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But if your other motivational conditions aren't correct, you know, if there is a poor alignment between employee expectation and the targets that we have, that's where you're going to have really, real, real big problems with pulling in an employee engagement score up.
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We shouldn't be looking for the most obvious things.
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Bother to dig into the small things that really affect people's everyday ways of working.
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That's where you'll uncover small but very, very important issues to be cleaned up.
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And that's those are the things where you're going to get your employee engagement going up as well.
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Everybody would naturally focus on the bigger picture and think the bigger picture is where you make the biggest gains, and tinkering around the edges actually doesn't change much.
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But what what you've just explained there is that it's often the tinkering around the edges that can make a much more significant difference to people in in their everyday lives.
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Yeah, I mean it's both.
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You can't have a really, really efficient expense claim form and a terrible pay scale.
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I wouldn't advocate for that.
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But what I am saying is that it's not just the big things, it's really the small things.
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It's how often do you communicate with your teams?
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To what extent do they understand what's going on in my mind?
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How transparent are we with what's going on in the business?
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And truly having a very transparent discussion with the employees about how I feel, what I think, how the others' people, and then inviting other people to share.
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It's all of those things combined, really.
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Like your pay scale versus expense form scenario, but what if you flip it around?
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There's probably a lot of companies that have very good pay scales for their employees, but have lots of painful processes and systems.
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And they think that the pay scale almost justifies that.
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And it's like, oh well, they're well paid, they've just got to suck it up.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, I don't I mean, I I just don't think that works.
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In the end, it doesn't work.
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I've worked in companies where they pay really well, but there are just too many other issues, and the general assumption was if we keep paying enough, people will overlook those things and whatever else.
00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:10.079
Well, first off, that just ignores all manner of thought around what motivational theory is.
00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:13.920
So motivational theory, as far as I remember it, was drive to acquire.
00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:20.160
But drive to acquire might not just be money, it might be knowledge, it might be certification, it might be any one of those things, right?
00:18:20.400 --> 00:18:22.640
But then you also have to look at the the drive to belong.
00:18:22.799 --> 00:18:26.160
People want to actually feel that they're in a community and that they're doing something.
00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:31.039
Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are just as important as each other.
00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:35.599
And to and to overrotate on thinking that money will get you everywhere.
00:18:35.839 --> 00:18:46.079
I think people's values have changed enormously, and they're looking at their employers as do I align through my value system as much as I do anything else, and money won't get over.
00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:51.839
Do you think there's uh an emotional detachment on behalf of some of those employers?
00:18:52.000 --> 00:19:05.680
They've been making those decisions for long enough that it's actually the connection between the decision and the impact to the employee has been fundamentally broken and can no longer be repaired, so they just kind of carry on.
00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:08.000
Maybe they're not even aware that it's been broken.
00:19:08.319 --> 00:19:11.440
There are firms, no question that that is more of an issue than others.
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:12.480
Are they aware of it?
00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:12.960
Probably.
00:19:13.119 --> 00:19:16.640
The question is, do they really understand how to solve the problem?
00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:25.119
Aligning organizational objectives and employee objectives, you know, we all have very different wants and needs, and wants and needs change over time.
00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:31.279
What I wanted at 20 years old was to grow and to learn and to go fast and all of those things.
00:19:31.359 --> 00:19:38.960
And then you hit your 30s and then you want to have children and all of that sort of good stuff, and suddenly your motivational criteria changes again.
00:19:39.119 --> 00:19:57.759
The trick is having leaders that truly understand where people are in their stage of life, what's motivating them, whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic, and then maintaining that understanding over the period of the life cycle that you're with that employee and with that you know that part of their career.
00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:03.279
Firms that don't invest in leaders to gain that understanding because they have an underappreciation for it.
00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:10.960
And I've seen too many firms in my career where they just look to HR to say, solve this problem for me, and they'll always go to the extrinsic.
00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:15.200
This person's at the top of the pay band or at the bottom of the pay band or somewhere in the middle.
00:20:15.359 --> 00:20:17.359
That's the reason why they're not happy.
00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:29.599
We all know that if you and I got pay rises, doubled our pay tomorrow, within six months, you'll have adjusted that to become the norm again, and then you'll be back to being miserable or at least less happy.
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:32.240
I'm gonna go back to that emotional connection.
00:20:32.319 --> 00:20:41.920
That's basically you've got to maintain that emotional connection over time through challenges that all companies go through, all teams go through.
00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:44.960
You talked earlier about that regular communication.
00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:50.160
What other ways do you use or have you seen work for maintaining that emotional connection?
00:20:50.559 --> 00:20:51.279
It's interesting.
00:20:51.359 --> 00:20:56.559
I think one-to-ones can be useless or they can be really, really powerful, and it depends on how you use them.
00:20:56.640 --> 00:20:59.920
I have a 15-minute one-to-one with my team most weeks.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:02.400
I know some people that do a one-to-one once a month.
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:03.839
That feels really odd to me.
00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:05.200
I never quite understood.
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:07.200
Let's do 12 checkpoints a year.
00:21:07.359 --> 00:21:14.400
Because actually, what happens is when you do 12 checkpoints a year like that, it actually becomes a performance evaluation.
00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:18.559
It stops becoming a one-to-one discussion.
00:21:18.799 --> 00:21:22.000
You're actually talking about, so what did you do at work in the last month?
00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:22.960
How's it going?
00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.200
Tell me about this particular issue or that.
00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:28.640
I don't have those discussions in one-to-one when I can avoid them.
00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:34.400
What I typically do is I'm trying to understand the emotional state of the person in that short period of time.
00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:35.599
How's your week?
00:21:35.759 --> 00:21:42.160
What's going on in your life that really matters and is affecting positively or negative your emotional state?
00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:47.920
Second question is, what are you doing to build your skills and your and the repertoire of skills?
00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:49.359
So that's all about the person.
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:51.359
It's not about the job that they're doing.
00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:53.599
It's about how are they investing in themselves.
00:21:53.759 --> 00:21:57.279
And then the third question is what actions that they're taking to build their career?
00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:04.960
And people will say, wow, that seems like a really Odd discussion that you would have a career discussion on an every week basis.
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:08.240
But of course, you're not going into this massive part of the discussion.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:12.400
What you are doing is you're saying, is it still true that you're thinking about doing this next?
00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:15.039
That's really you're just confirming that part of the discussion.
00:22:15.119 --> 00:22:24.400
And in any given week, maybe something happens with that employee that they say, Well, actually, I had a thought or I came into contact with somebody and they gave me a different idea.
00:22:24.559 --> 00:22:27.599
But that middle part, what are you doing to build your skills?
00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:31.359
And that skills is really not just about are you going on training courses?
00:22:31.519 --> 00:22:34.160
Are you building your network externally and internally?
00:22:34.319 --> 00:22:37.119
Who are you using as a mentor at the moment?
00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:39.039
What articles are you reading?
00:22:39.359 --> 00:22:54.000
Really using that part of the conversation to make sure that the person is building a repertoire of skills, network, and knowledge to be able to then navigate whatever things that they're doing and their jobs every single day, but also to help them build their careers.
00:22:54.079 --> 00:22:54.720
It's all about them.
00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:55.359
That's the whole point.
00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:57.200
That one-to-one discussion is all about them.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:22:59.599
It's not about the performance of the business, it's not in their role.
00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:01.920
That's what the monthly MBR is for.
00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:13.920
Yeah, we've all sat through one-to-ones that turn into pipeline reviews if you're in sales or project reviews if you're running a campaign or code review if you're a software engineer and you've written that kind of thing, right?
00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:15.759
I remember some of those indeed.
00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:20.079
You taught there a little three-point agenda for all of your one-to-ones.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:24.160
What about flipping it around and letting the employees set the agenda?
00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:26.240
I mean, no problem at all.
00:23:26.559 --> 00:23:30.720
Actually, generally speaking, the first question I ask is, what do you want to talk about?
00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:32.960
In many respects, that means that there is no agenda.
00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:39.200
The point of a one-to-one is not to prescript it, you know, in such a way that I'm getting something from that discussion.
00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:50.640
The only thing I get from that discussion is I want to be able to walk away feeling like the employee that I'm was in the one-to-one with felt heard, listened to, understood.
00:23:50.799 --> 00:23:53.200
Then I know that that was a successful one-to-one.
00:23:53.519 --> 00:24:01.200
But if they want to sit there and say, actually, I've got one topic that I want to talk about today, and it is whatever it is, this is what's keeping me up at night.
00:24:01.359 --> 00:24:04.079
This is, you know, the thing that really matters to me most.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:05.119
I'm all in.
00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:06.079
It's got 15 minutes.
00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:06.720
Use it.
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:10.319
And how do you encourage uh your employees to prepare for those?
00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:10.880
Or do you?
00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:15.920
Is it just uh let's turn up and and see what happens, or is there some advanced preparation?
00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:16.960
No, not really.
00:24:17.039 --> 00:24:24.640
I mean, advanced preparation is for something that's much more structured and a lot more intense and probably requires evaluation and all that sort of stuff.
00:24:24.799 --> 00:24:25.839
It's not meant to be that.
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:34.400
This is the one moment in the week where you just get to free flow discuss between two people what's going on and again, whatever matters most to the employee.
00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:35.359
So no, absolutely.
00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:40.400
This shouldn't be a cognitively intensive, stressful event.
00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:47.759
If there's stress, it's because there's something in the discussion, you know, that the employee wants to bring forward and they need to get it off their chest.
00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:48.400
Perfect.
00:24:48.559 --> 00:24:49.759
I'm all is, yeah?
00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:51.440
But that's where the stress should come from.
00:24:51.519 --> 00:24:54.160
But the event itself should be completely stressless.
00:24:54.799 --> 00:24:57.519
I'm gonna bring it back to the distance again.
00:24:57.759 --> 00:25:04.799
We've talked about the emotional side and you know, the making sure everybody's got the warm and fuzzies, if I can paraphrase it in that way.
00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:10.480
But there's a point where you need to make decisions in a business, and not everybody's gonna like those decisions.
00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:15.279
The question I asked at the beginning was some distance is good, what's the right amount of distance?
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:23.680
I'm gonna change it slightly and say, can you lead without having some emotional detachment, some distance?
00:25:25.119 --> 00:25:27.359
Leading without emotion is impossible.
00:25:27.519 --> 00:25:35.839
I mean, literally, unless you're a psychopath, and there are many CEOs that have been called psychopaths in the past, and they're probably right, by the way.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:36.720
But should you?
00:25:36.880 --> 00:25:38.000
No, absolutely not.
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:41.920
But that doesn't mean that you will then have to be led entirely by those emotions.
00:25:42.079 --> 00:25:46.079
Most of the decisions that you start with are anchored in data.
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:50.160
There's emotion behind them, but you are there, you are there to do a job.
00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:54.400
Uh, the role of the CEO is to make sure that they create shareholder value over time.
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:58.319
That is their primary legally bound duty.
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:02.079
If you look under the law, that is what is um I'm required to do.
00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:09.519
And so that will lead to tough discussions and it will lead to decisions that make you feel really, really upset and really, really miserable.
00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:19.680
But anchoring your decisions in data, being able to explain them in a logical way that shows that the decision making that has been done has been done well.
00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:23.839
That is a critical part of maintaining trust during tough times.
00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:28.720
And and then, of course, you need to over over-rotate on communication during periods of tough times as well.
00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:30.960
Yeah, so there's there's no question of that.
00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:32.559
But should it be emotionless?
00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:33.119
Will it be?
00:26:33.279 --> 00:26:34.240
No, absolutely not.
00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:39.359
Not and again, not unless you're a psychopath or you're all about the money and you're not about the humans.
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:41.279
I mean, that will come through in your work.
00:26:41.440 --> 00:26:46.240
People will feel that, they'll sense that, and it will, it will be a big turn off real, real quick.
00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:51.440
So some distance is healthy, some emotion is definitely healthy.
00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:59.279
What does that do to the visibility of responsibility and and the pressure and the stress?
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:07.359
So let's say you're taking a difficult decision, you've worked through that, you've done it for all the right reasons, it it may well make you feel miserable.
00:27:07.519 --> 00:27:12.000
How do you stay aware of any further consequences from that?
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:21.119
I think having a constant dialogue, and again, that's that's back to the early part of the discussion about moving off of the balcony and down onto the dance floor.
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:35.200
As soon as you're going to make tough decisions, you've got to get down to the organization, start having one-to-one discussions, start picking up the pulse, making sure that your leaders are also communicating a lot, extra emphasis on the one-to-one.
00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:43.440
We've all been guilty of going through a busy period where the one-to-ones get skipped because you're on a flight, you're really, really busy, you met yesterday.
00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:44.640
Those things happen.
00:27:44.880 --> 00:27:50.079
But if you start skipping two and three meetings over a number of weeks, you'll lose trust.
00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:52.400
People will start not to believe that really matters.
00:27:52.559 --> 00:28:01.200
Using those ways of communicating and those windows of opportunity uh during periods of stress, super, super important.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:02.880
They should not be compromised.
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:07.039
As tempting as it might be, they absolutely should not be compromised.
00:28:07.599 --> 00:28:18.160
The follow-up to that is making sure that you're doing things like double down on some of the discussions around career advancement and career opportunity or growth of some sort.
00:28:18.319 --> 00:28:31.599
And it might feel oxymoronic because, hey, you just made some redundancies, or we've just decided to sell a part of the business that lots of people liked, or whatever it happened to be, and then you're turning immediately to, hey, and let's discuss your career.
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:40.720
But of course, what you're really demonstrating in that moment is yes, a tough decision got made, but it got made so that we can have this discussion, not the other way around.
00:28:41.119 --> 00:28:57.119
So really, I think what we're saying is that distance is as close or as far as you personally make it, and there will be people who let that responsibility and those decisions travel beyond their visible range and either don't care or or don't realize it.
00:28:57.279 --> 00:29:07.440
But what we all need to do as humans and as leaders and employees is make sure that we're keeping visibility over as much of that responsibility as possible.
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:20.240
If you're a hierarchist and your whole way of setting yourself up as a CEO or any leader is that you only hear what comes from your first line of hierarchy, your N minus one organization.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:23.440
And then whatever happens underneath that, that's their problem.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.559
That's an almost guaranteed way for failure.
00:29:26.799 --> 00:29:32.319
You will be very distant from the entire organization very negatively if that's the way that you want to operate.
00:29:32.559 --> 00:29:36.880
Um so it is getting a balance between that and then moving down into the organization.
00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:43.680
There are real simple ways to get to know people in an organization, especially in a let's say small to mid-sized company.
00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:47.200
You know, you'll have special problems that go through the year.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:52.319
Instead of actually just going directly to your next line of leadership and saying, can you solve that problem?
00:29:52.559 --> 00:29:57.039
Is well, if you've decided as a CEO, that's a really important thing to think about.
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:02.880
Go and recruit two or three people from the organization and find out who would be the right person.
00:30:03.119 --> 00:30:04.319
Invite that person directly.
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:08.720
And if I spoke to somebody and I would say, Hey, I, you know, I'd love to invite you to come and join me on this project.
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:10.240
It's a problem that I need to be solved for.
00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:13.279
And you're going to have a combination of different people on there.
00:30:13.519 --> 00:30:21.359
There are just lots of opportunities that will get you to the lower organizations without just making random phone calls and doing skip level meetings.
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:23.920
It's just whether you choose to be a hierarchist or not.
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:28.640
And on that very practical note, I think that's a good place to wrap it up for today.
00:30:28.799 --> 00:30:31.440
So, Stephen, thank you very much for joining me.
00:30:31.759 --> 00:30:32.960
Fantastic conversation.
00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:34.079
Really enjoyed it.
00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:35.359
I hope you did too.
00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:36.400
Indeed, yeah.
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:37.680
Thanks very much for inviting me.
00:30:38.079 --> 00:30:46.160
Each episode of Carrying It supports organizations working to improve how responsibility and mental health are understood and supported in real systems.
00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:47.759
Links are in the show notes.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:55.519
This conversation was about distance and the uncomfortable reality that responsibility often travels further than visibility does.
00:30:55.759 --> 00:31:01.039
Because when pressure moves through organizations, someone else eventually has to feel it.
00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:14.000
Responsibility is unavoidable in leadership and influence.
00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:18.000
In all kinds of roles, from surgeons to CEOs to judges.
00:00:18.239 --> 00:00:22.960
What matters isn't whether it exists, but what it creates and where it travels.
00:00:23.359 --> 00:00:26.079
Responsibility creates an emotional load.
00:00:26.239 --> 00:00:28.000
That load doesn't disappear.
00:00:28.160 --> 00:00:30.399
It shifts and someone carries it.
00:00:30.640 --> 00:00:34.000
Welcome to carrying it when responsibility doesn't stop.
00:00:34.799 --> 00:00:36.799
That's what this podcast is interested in.
00:00:36.960 --> 00:00:40.640
Not how hard leadership is, but what responsibility creates.
00:00:41.280 --> 00:00:43.439
This conversation is about distance.
00:00:43.679 --> 00:00:49.439
What happens when responsibility reaches further than your ability to fully see its impact?
00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:59.600
Today I'm joined by Stephen Rose, CEO of Render Networks, who leads across teams, decisions, and consequences that inevitably travel beyond direct visibility.
00:00:59.840 --> 00:01:00.640
Welcome, Steven.
00:01:01.119 --> 00:01:01.600
Yeah, great.
00:01:01.840 --> 00:01:02.399
Great to be here.
00:01:02.479 --> 00:01:03.840
Thanks very much for inviting me.
00:01:04.719 --> 00:01:06.319
Alright, let's dive straight in.
00:01:06.799 --> 00:01:12.159
Obviously, your role CEO traditionally top of the tree in most organizations.
00:01:12.400 --> 00:01:18.560
You can't have direct relationships with everybody and everything within your organization.
00:01:18.799 --> 00:01:28.560
So what changes what have you noticed change in yourself and in other people and in the way that you lead when responsibility goes beyond those direct relationships?
00:01:28.879 --> 00:01:30.079
Yeah, it's really interesting.
00:01:30.400 --> 00:01:35.760
I think there is a number of misnomers that come along with, you know, what does a CEO do?
00:01:35.920 --> 00:01:36.239
Yeah?
00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:37.519
How much power do they have?
00:01:37.680 --> 00:01:39.439
How much responsibility do they have?
00:01:39.680 --> 00:01:43.840
And I typically say to people, actually, you have all the power, but you have none of it.
00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:46.719
You have all the responsibility, but you have none of it.
00:01:46.879 --> 00:01:50.239
You have all the accountability, that is for sure.
00:01:50.480 --> 00:01:52.480
And you have all of that, 100%.
00:01:53.519 --> 00:01:56.159
You have all of the budget and you have none of it.
00:01:56.319 --> 00:01:57.519
So it's really interesting.
00:01:57.599 --> 00:02:12.240
You have to actually appreciate that, you know, the role of a CEO is really to make sure that everybody else is loaded up with all the things that they can do to do their job effectively, and then actually get out of the way to the maximum extent you can.
00:02:12.400 --> 00:02:15.120
So it's a great is a number of things that you need to do in there.
00:02:15.199 --> 00:02:18.240
You need to make sure that you understand how the controls are going to work.
00:02:18.400 --> 00:02:20.879
What are the points of intervention that really matter?
00:02:21.120 --> 00:02:26.479
Do you have a solid understanding of the capabilities of your leadership team around you?
00:02:26.639 --> 00:02:35.120
And to what extent do you need to then marry yourself to that problem if you can, or how do you other get you know combinations of of other skill sets to support each other?
00:02:35.280 --> 00:02:42.879
So you're really meshing an organization and you're trying to understand what at what point do you need to really intervene and whatnot.
00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:49.280
But for the most part, your job is to set direction with the team, you know, be collective around that, and then get out the way.
00:02:49.360 --> 00:02:52.319
And that takes a great deal of trust to be able to do that.
00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:57.840
So, you know, probably as the classics sort of say, starts with culture and it ends up with structure.
00:02:58.000 --> 00:02:59.360
Focus on those things first.
00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:02.639
That's the most important part of being a CEO role.
00:03:03.039 --> 00:03:06.639
So the distance is actually a good thing, right?
00:03:06.719 --> 00:03:11.120
Uh how much distance then do you think is the right level of distance?
00:03:11.840 --> 00:03:14.159
In much distance.
00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:23.199
I think it's about really just setting up the conditions and the agreement between you and your leadership team as to what is the point of intervention that matters.
00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:23.599
Yeah.
00:03:23.680 --> 00:03:25.840
Now, you know, there's a few things that you can think about.
00:03:25.919 --> 00:03:28.719
There's the classic of up on the balcony, down on the dance floor.
00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:34.479
So the one of the things that you do have to do is to is to remain close to the heartbeat of the organization.
00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:36.639
There are a couple of ways you can do that, of course.
00:03:36.879 --> 00:03:41.919
A great believer in being able to, you know, go out and actually see how the work is being done.
00:03:42.159 --> 00:03:50.800
So getting close to somebody that's, you know, two and three levels below you and and and just working with them for a little while, talking to them, making sure you understand what their environment is.
00:03:50.960 --> 00:03:54.080
I'm not a great fan of skip level meetings.
00:03:54.240 --> 00:03:59.280
I know that that is a way that uh people trying to close the gap and then come back away from it again.
00:03:59.520 --> 00:04:18.399
But skip level meetings, in my view, typically just end up becoming performance and management assessment of the leader that actually uh you're engaging with, and it becomes a a rather negative, almost nervous experience for the employees because they don't know how much they can say, and for the team leader whose team that you're actually engaging with.
00:04:18.480 --> 00:04:21.360
So I'm not a great fan of those meetings, I have to say.
00:04:21.519 --> 00:04:23.360
And typically you only get one or two voices.
00:04:23.439 --> 00:04:27.519
If there's a team of ten, you'll get one or two voices speaking up, the rest will stay silent, yeah.
00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:29.199
So it's not a great way.
00:04:29.360 --> 00:04:43.199
So I think keeping a distance is enough to recognize that, again, your intervention can be positive, but it also can be not necessarily harmful, but it certainly can be abrasive or it can have unintended consequences.
00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:56.639
I think the other thing that comes with distances is more about you also appreciating the you you just don't have to know, and you will never know what's going on at that granular level.
00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:07.279
So how customers will use your product, how your teams understand the environment where your customers are using the product and maybe what's going on technologically in the world.
00:05:07.360 --> 00:05:09.839
I mean, there's just too much happening at once.
00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:18.000
So again, you've got to you've got to become comfortable with the idea that you're probably the furthest away from the customers to some extent.
00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:28.399
I mean, not again, you're going to be engaging with customers, but at the granular level, the use of your product is going to be something that somebody understands way better than you, how the product should evolve.
00:05:28.959 --> 00:05:41.279
And those types of things are are really important because otherwise, what you do is you bring in a very heavy assessment of where the market's going and what do you think, and you you start to do things like introduce anecdotal evidence.
00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:50.399
So there's a real danger, again, of of when you're talking about distance, if you're so close to it and you think you're on top of what the market needs and wants, you're probably deluding yourself.
00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:53.600
So that distance actually is a protective mechanism.
00:05:53.680 --> 00:05:55.600
It isn't necessarily a bad thing.
00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:57.839
I'm with you on skip level meetings.
00:05:57.920 --> 00:06:03.439
I think the negative consequences of those far outweigh any possible benefit you might get.
00:06:03.759 --> 00:06:11.279
But the the one-to-one, you know, going out and and living a day in the life of one of your employees, that that's an interesting way of doing things.
00:06:11.439 --> 00:06:13.279
You have a lot of demands on your time, right?
00:06:13.439 --> 00:06:17.920
Before we hit record, we were just saying it's uh not a good work-life balance in your situation.
00:06:18.079 --> 00:06:20.319
How frequently can you do those types of things?
00:06:20.639 --> 00:06:24.079
Well, I think every time you're on a trip, there's the opportunity to do so.
00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:36.800
So I want if I'm going on a meeting with a client, you know, one of the things is obviously we'll go and meet the client, but then you take that time to spend with the team that you that are there locally, right?
00:06:36.879 --> 00:06:47.600
So I would say that I'm spending every month, at least twice a month, working with somebody that is two or three levels below me and having that granular discussion with them about how's it going?
00:06:47.759 --> 00:06:51.519
What's, you know, tell me, tell me how you experience employment life.
00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:59.360
What is your perspective on where the market's going, how the customers are using, where we could be improved, what are the things that are getting out in your way of being successful?
00:06:59.600 --> 00:07:06.240
Being genuinely curious that the person that you're interacting with has a perspective and it's really, really valuable.
00:07:06.480 --> 00:07:10.959
The harder thing is when you are doing this and you're running an international business.
00:07:11.120 --> 00:07:15.120
I can do it a lot here in the US, but half the team is in Australia.
00:07:15.279 --> 00:07:16.879
Now that makes it harder.
00:07:17.120 --> 00:07:25.120
And so the the way to do that is you've just got to make sure that the people understand that you are available even though you're 11,000 miles away.
00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:34.560
I was talking to one of our finance team last night on a Slack message, and she wrote to me and she was asking me about something simple, you know, hey Steve, I need your thoughts on something.
00:07:34.800 --> 00:07:40.720
And instead of saying, here's the answer, the first question I ask is, Hi, how are you?
00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:41.120
Yeah.
00:07:41.360 --> 00:07:44.560
And that simple question of hi, how are you?
00:07:44.720 --> 00:07:52.720
Let's go there first, and spending that two to three minutes of Slack interaction and making sure that you use that window.
00:07:52.879 --> 00:07:53.519
You had that window.
00:07:53.600 --> 00:07:56.879
It wasn't presented to you in a structured way, it was an organic way.
00:07:56.959 --> 00:08:03.040
And asking that question first makes people think that this person actually cares and they do want to really know about those things.
00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:10.959
And and you'll pick up on that, and you do that enough, and then you'll get send people the signal that that you're actually asking the question because you really want the answer.
00:08:11.120 --> 00:08:12.800
You're not just going through the motions of that.
00:08:13.040 --> 00:08:21.360
So just that's where it gets harder, but that's where you have to then exploit every small opportunity, not just the big ones of a visit down in Australia.
00:08:22.879 --> 00:08:29.439
I came into this thinking I was going to talk about distance, vertical distance, the hierarchy of an organization.
00:08:29.680 --> 00:08:33.519
But actually, there's there's so many different ways you can measure distance in an organization.
00:08:33.759 --> 00:08:37.840
11,000 kilometers, that's a hell of a distance when you run businesses like that.
00:08:38.159 --> 00:08:52.000
When you do those things, whether it's in person or that little example you just gave uh in a Slack message, what do you think that that does with the employee in terms of the responsibility that they feel and the load that they're carrying in terms of their job?
00:08:52.159 --> 00:08:55.200
How does that help them in what they're doing?
00:08:55.679 --> 00:08:57.200
I think there's there's two things.
00:08:57.279 --> 00:09:02.000
There's the confidence, you give keep people the confidence to speak up about the things that they're bothered about.
00:09:02.240 --> 00:09:02.799
And they are.
00:09:03.039 --> 00:09:07.360
First thing to really consider, and that's very important, is that most people come to work.
00:09:07.440 --> 00:09:12.399
I would say 99% of people come to work every single day wanting to do a great job.
00:09:12.639 --> 00:09:14.480
Not a good job, they want to do a great job.
00:09:14.639 --> 00:09:17.200
And they have concerns and they would love to solve for those concerns.
00:09:17.279 --> 00:09:22.159
They don't always necessarily feel empowered, they don't necessarily always have the confidence, whatever it happens to be.
00:09:22.399 --> 00:09:29.840
So those questions, asking those questions gives people the confidence to say, hey, I see a problem and I'd love to do something about it.
00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:39.679
And your role as a CEO or any leader for that matter isn't to solve the problem for them, is to ask them the questions that are going to enable them to say, hey, I've got a problem here.
00:09:39.759 --> 00:09:41.679
Okay, what do you think we should be doing about it?
00:09:41.759 --> 00:09:42.799
I'm all ears, yeah?
00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:44.639
You don't have to agree always.
00:09:44.799 --> 00:09:51.279
But then at the end of that discussion, you've got to really wrap it up with, okay, I agree or disagree with your ideas.
00:09:51.519 --> 00:09:56.879
If I agree with your ideas, I'm not just gonna sit there and say, okay, great, after you.
00:09:57.039 --> 00:09:58.799
It's I think that's a great idea.
00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:00.799
I'm I'm you know, gonna back you to do it.
00:10:00.960 --> 00:10:04.720
By when will you come back to me and give me an update on how far you've got with this?
00:10:04.879 --> 00:10:13.200
Because they may come up against other problems that they can't, you know, so they they take the problem away, they might try and solve it in different ways and find there are new obstacles.
00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:16.639
And you're obliged at that point to step in and help them.
00:10:16.799 --> 00:10:22.960
Getting difficult obstacles out of the way of a particular problem, of solving a particular problem is part of your charter.
00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:31.519
So I think people would want to see whether or not you really care about the problem they specified by showing that there's follow-up and that you you want to see the follow-up, you want to see the action.
00:10:31.679 --> 00:10:45.120
And of course, that's a great opportunity for you to see whether the person was just complaining or whether they were really taking the accountability and the responsibility to solve it with you, uh, and then that's a good way to see the productiveness of that discussion as well.
00:10:46.000 --> 00:10:54.480
A good way of marrying the needs of the business with the the needs of the employees and the human side of that emotion versus the strategic nature of the business.
00:10:55.759 --> 00:10:57.279
So that's all great, right?
00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:01.360
And if you can have those moments with every single one of your employees, great.
00:11:01.919 --> 00:11:03.759
You're not gonna be able to see everything though.
00:11:04.000 --> 00:11:04.799
I think that that's clear.
00:11:05.279 --> 00:11:08.320
There's just too much going on for you to be able to see everything.
00:11:08.480 --> 00:11:24.399
So have you noticed anything in particular where you miss things and then when you've discovered that you miss them, you make a extra effort to make sure that you're a bit more focused in a particular area or in a particular way.
00:11:25.279 --> 00:11:35.440
Yeah, so knowing where and and how to spend your time is the most critical decision that you make at the beginning of every single day.
00:11:36.159 --> 00:11:42.639
And the way that you do that is you you you've got to be able to set things up in such a way that you have a balanced perspective of the performance of the business.
00:11:42.799 --> 00:11:45.679
And for me, there are four measures that are actually kind of simple for that.
00:11:46.000 --> 00:11:53.600
Employee MPS, yes, a net promoter score, customer MPS, ebida, and top line.
00:11:53.759 --> 00:12:02.559
If you have an understanding of where you lie on any one of those metrics, and you start to be able to dig down, you'll be able to see where your focus needs to grow.
00:12:02.720 --> 00:12:17.600
So, you know, employee MPS is generally speaking a factor of how well people are being left, led, how happy are they in their roles, to what extent do they feel that they have mastery and autonomy in their roles, etc.
00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:29.120
That's a really, really easy way to figure it out, and you will see the difference between function A and function B and whatever else, and then you know you can start to analyze the problems over there.
00:12:29.360 --> 00:12:30.480
Customer MPS.
00:12:30.639 --> 00:12:32.399
Is the service quality where it wants to be?
00:12:32.480 --> 00:12:34.000
Is the product doing what it should be?
00:12:34.080 --> 00:12:36.240
Uh are we resolving issues?
00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:42.639
Bottom line performance and top line performance, you'll be able to see very, very quickly which part of the businesses are struggling.
00:12:42.799 --> 00:12:44.320
So that's how I manage the business.
00:12:44.399 --> 00:12:46.240
I just have those four key metrics.
00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:49.919
I'll use those, I'll find out where the issues are behind them.
00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:54.480
And the most important thing is you're doing it with the team, is that you're not doing it to the team.
00:12:54.639 --> 00:12:55.679
Yeah, that's not the point.
00:12:55.759 --> 00:13:01.840
The point is if there's an issue, you want to discover what the root cause of that issue is together, and that's where you get to put your focus in.
00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:05.200
Which of those four metrics do you think gets sacrificed first?
00:13:06.000 --> 00:13:16.399
I don't know which one gets sacrificed first, but I can tell you the if you sacrifice employee MPS over customer MPS, a customer MPS will suffer in the end.
00:13:16.639 --> 00:13:18.480
And so with the other two metrics.
00:13:18.639 --> 00:13:25.360
I know that there are certain organizations and they'll say customers always ride and we're customer-centric, and that's what even one of our values.
00:13:25.759 --> 00:13:39.279
If you have an organization that is so harshly driven by every single piece of anecdotal feedback, or or even if there are patterns, you rotate too harshly on them and whatnot, all you'll do is you'll demotivate and demoralize the uh organization.
00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:54.320
So I think employee engagement and employee MPS is where the product becomes the best it can be, the service becomes the best it can be, you'll make great decisions, and and so as a result of that, you know, your revenue and your margins will improve accordingly.
00:13:54.399 --> 00:14:00.240
So I think for me, it's not which one suffers the most, but which one gets invested in the least.
00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:06.000
I can tell you the one that will, if you don't focus on that, it will destroy the other three KPIs pretty quickly.
00:14:07.360 --> 00:14:13.360
And that one, the employee NPS, is that sort of emotional connection to the company.
00:14:14.000 --> 00:14:18.879
Customer NPS and the financial side of things, very fact-based, as you say.
00:14:18.960 --> 00:14:23.519
You can look at one chart or one table and see, are we doing well or are we not doing well?
00:14:23.919 --> 00:14:28.879
Employee NPS is is much more nuanced than that because, well, it's dealing with human emotions, right?
00:14:29.200 --> 00:14:35.840
You can ask different questions in the same way or the same question in different ways, and you get different responses from that.
00:14:36.159 --> 00:14:42.000
How do you stay close enough to that to make sure that you can trust the numbers?
00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:47.919
It's really easy to interrogate financial numbers, much harder to interrogate employee metrics.
00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:49.360
I'm not sure I agree.
00:14:49.519 --> 00:14:50.559
I think you can.
00:14:50.720 --> 00:15:01.120
I think you just have to decide that actually social science, which is really what we're talking about here, is actually a lot more scientific and a lot more measurable than you would perhaps expect.
00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:07.919
If I'm looking at how much leadership development are we doing in a single year, do we have an innovation curve?
00:15:08.080 --> 00:15:12.240
And if we have an innovation curve, to what extent is everybody participating?
00:15:12.480 --> 00:15:16.879
Something as simple as, and I had this feedback just in the last three or four weeks.
00:15:17.039 --> 00:15:21.200
It's taken our employees way too long to fill in an expense claim form.
00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:22.159
Super frustrating.
00:15:22.240 --> 00:15:26.000
They go on a long trip, they come back, and guess what they get?
00:15:26.080 --> 00:15:34.960
They get all the thanks by saying, and here's a really annoying way of having to finish off your trip rather than doing the follow-up from the trip, you're doing expenses instead.
00:15:35.279 --> 00:15:42.879
That's the sort of thing that will really irritate people, and you'll get feedback on that, and that's the sort of feedback you need to work on.
00:15:42.960 --> 00:15:49.120
So there are many ways in which you can truly measure whether or not your uh employee engagement score is going to be good.
00:15:49.279 --> 00:15:53.759
I think what we have a tendency to do is to over-rotate on the obvious things.
00:15:54.000 --> 00:15:55.600
Are people incentivized enough?
00:15:55.759 --> 00:16:00.080
Yes, absolutely they should be, and there should be enough money on the table that it doesn't become a topic.
00:16:00.159 --> 00:16:01.840
I think it was Dan Pink that said that.
00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:18.240
But if your other motivational conditions aren't correct, you know, if there is a poor alignment between employee expectation and the targets that we have, that's where you're going to have really, real, real big problems with pulling in an employee engagement score up.
00:16:18.399 --> 00:16:20.240
We shouldn't be looking for the most obvious things.
00:16:20.480 --> 00:16:25.600
Bother to dig into the small things that really affect people's everyday ways of working.
00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:31.759
That's where you'll uncover small but very, very important issues to be cleaned up.
00:16:31.840 --> 00:16:35.759
And that's those are the things where you're going to get your employee engagement going up as well.
00:16:36.720 --> 00:16:44.879
Everybody would naturally focus on the bigger picture and think the bigger picture is where you make the biggest gains, and tinkering around the edges actually doesn't change much.
00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:54.399
But what what you've just explained there is that it's often the tinkering around the edges that can make a much more significant difference to people in in their everyday lives.
00:16:54.720 --> 00:16:55.759
Yeah, I mean it's both.
00:16:55.919 --> 00:17:01.600
You can't have a really, really efficient expense claim form and a terrible pay scale.
00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:03.279
I wouldn't advocate for that.
00:17:03.440 --> 00:17:08.880
But what I am saying is that it's not just the big things, it's really the small things.
00:17:08.960 --> 00:17:11.519
It's how often do you communicate with your teams?
00:17:11.680 --> 00:17:14.960
To what extent do they understand what's going on in my mind?
00:17:15.039 --> 00:17:17.839
How transparent are we with what's going on in the business?
00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:25.759
And truly having a very transparent discussion with the employees about how I feel, what I think, how the others' people, and then inviting other people to share.
00:17:25.920 --> 00:17:27.839
It's all of those things combined, really.
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:33.519
Like your pay scale versus expense form scenario, but what if you flip it around?
00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:42.640
There's probably a lot of companies that have very good pay scales for their employees, but have lots of painful processes and systems.
00:17:42.960 --> 00:17:46.000
And they think that the pay scale almost justifies that.
00:17:46.079 --> 00:17:49.119
And it's like, oh well, they're well paid, they've just got to suck it up.
00:17:49.359 --> 00:17:50.000
Yeah.
00:17:50.400 --> 00:17:53.359
Yeah, I don't I mean, I I just don't think that works.
00:17:53.519 --> 00:17:54.720
In the end, it doesn't work.
00:17:54.880 --> 00:18:04.640
I've worked in companies where they pay really well, but there are just too many other issues, and the general assumption was if we keep paying enough, people will overlook those things and whatever else.
00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:10.079
Well, first off, that just ignores all manner of thought around what motivational theory is.
00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:13.920
So motivational theory, as far as I remember it, was drive to acquire.
00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:20.160
But drive to acquire might not just be money, it might be knowledge, it might be certification, it might be any one of those things, right?
00:18:20.400 --> 00:18:22.640
But then you also have to look at the the drive to belong.
00:18:22.799 --> 00:18:26.160
People want to actually feel that they're in a community and that they're doing something.
00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:31.039
Extrinsic and intrinsic motivations are just as important as each other.
00:18:31.200 --> 00:18:35.599
And to and to overrotate on thinking that money will get you everywhere.
00:18:35.839 --> 00:18:46.079
I think people's values have changed enormously, and they're looking at their employers as do I align through my value system as much as I do anything else, and money won't get over.
00:18:46.720 --> 00:18:51.839
Do you think there's uh an emotional detachment on behalf of some of those employers?
00:18:52.000 --> 00:19:05.680
They've been making those decisions for long enough that it's actually the connection between the decision and the impact to the employee has been fundamentally broken and can no longer be repaired, so they just kind of carry on.
00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:08.000
Maybe they're not even aware that it's been broken.
00:19:08.319 --> 00:19:11.440
There are firms, no question that that is more of an issue than others.
00:19:11.599 --> 00:19:12.480
Are they aware of it?
00:19:12.640 --> 00:19:12.960
Probably.
00:19:13.119 --> 00:19:16.640
The question is, do they really understand how to solve the problem?
00:19:16.960 --> 00:19:25.119
Aligning organizational objectives and employee objectives, you know, we all have very different wants and needs, and wants and needs change over time.
00:19:25.359 --> 00:19:31.279
What I wanted at 20 years old was to grow and to learn and to go fast and all of those things.
00:19:31.359 --> 00:19:38.960
And then you hit your 30s and then you want to have children and all of that sort of good stuff, and suddenly your motivational criteria changes again.
00:19:39.119 --> 00:19:57.759
The trick is having leaders that truly understand where people are in their stage of life, what's motivating them, whether it be intrinsic or extrinsic, and then maintaining that understanding over the period of the life cycle that you're with that employee and with that you know that part of their career.
00:19:58.000 --> 00:20:03.279
Firms that don't invest in leaders to gain that understanding because they have an underappreciation for it.
00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:10.960
And I've seen too many firms in my career where they just look to HR to say, solve this problem for me, and they'll always go to the extrinsic.
00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:15.200
This person's at the top of the pay band or at the bottom of the pay band or somewhere in the middle.
00:20:15.359 --> 00:20:17.359
That's the reason why they're not happy.
00:20:17.599 --> 00:20:29.599
We all know that if you and I got pay rises, doubled our pay tomorrow, within six months, you'll have adjusted that to become the norm again, and then you'll be back to being miserable or at least less happy.
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:32.240
I'm gonna go back to that emotional connection.
00:20:32.319 --> 00:20:41.920
That's basically you've got to maintain that emotional connection over time through challenges that all companies go through, all teams go through.
00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:44.960
You talked earlier about that regular communication.
00:20:45.119 --> 00:20:50.160
What other ways do you use or have you seen work for maintaining that emotional connection?
00:20:50.559 --> 00:20:51.279
It's interesting.
00:20:51.359 --> 00:20:56.559
I think one-to-ones can be useless or they can be really, really powerful, and it depends on how you use them.
00:20:56.640 --> 00:20:59.920
I have a 15-minute one-to-one with my team most weeks.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:02.400
I know some people that do a one-to-one once a month.
00:21:02.480 --> 00:21:03.839
That feels really odd to me.
00:21:03.920 --> 00:21:05.200
I never quite understood.
00:21:05.359 --> 00:21:07.200
Let's do 12 checkpoints a year.
00:21:07.359 --> 00:21:14.400
Because actually, what happens is when you do 12 checkpoints a year like that, it actually becomes a performance evaluation.
00:21:14.799 --> 00:21:18.559
It stops becoming a one-to-one discussion.
00:21:18.799 --> 00:21:22.000
You're actually talking about, so what did you do at work in the last month?
00:21:22.160 --> 00:21:22.960
How's it going?
00:21:23.119 --> 00:21:25.200
Tell me about this particular issue or that.
00:21:25.440 --> 00:21:28.640
I don't have those discussions in one-to-one when I can avoid them.
00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:34.400
What I typically do is I'm trying to understand the emotional state of the person in that short period of time.
00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:35.599
How's your week?
00:21:35.759 --> 00:21:42.160
What's going on in your life that really matters and is affecting positively or negative your emotional state?
00:21:42.480 --> 00:21:47.920
Second question is, what are you doing to build your skills and your and the repertoire of skills?
00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:49.359
So that's all about the person.
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:51.359
It's not about the job that they're doing.
00:21:51.519 --> 00:21:53.599
It's about how are they investing in themselves.
00:21:53.759 --> 00:21:57.279
And then the third question is what actions that they're taking to build their career?
00:21:57.440 --> 00:22:04.960
And people will say, wow, that seems like a really Odd discussion that you would have a career discussion on an every week basis.
00:22:05.039 --> 00:22:08.240
But of course, you're not going into this massive part of the discussion.
00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:12.400
What you are doing is you're saying, is it still true that you're thinking about doing this next?
00:22:12.559 --> 00:22:15.039
That's really you're just confirming that part of the discussion.
00:22:15.119 --> 00:22:24.400
And in any given week, maybe something happens with that employee that they say, Well, actually, I had a thought or I came into contact with somebody and they gave me a different idea.
00:22:24.559 --> 00:22:27.599
But that middle part, what are you doing to build your skills?
00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:31.359
And that skills is really not just about are you going on training courses?
00:22:31.519 --> 00:22:34.160
Are you building your network externally and internally?
00:22:34.319 --> 00:22:37.119
Who are you using as a mentor at the moment?
00:22:37.359 --> 00:22:39.039
What articles are you reading?
00:22:39.359 --> 00:22:54.000
Really using that part of the conversation to make sure that the person is building a repertoire of skills, network, and knowledge to be able to then navigate whatever things that they're doing and their jobs every single day, but also to help them build their careers.
00:22:54.079 --> 00:22:54.720
It's all about them.
00:22:54.799 --> 00:22:55.359
That's the whole point.
00:22:55.440 --> 00:22:57.200
That one-to-one discussion is all about them.
00:22:57.279 --> 00:22:59.599
It's not about the performance of the business, it's not in their role.
00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:01.920
That's what the monthly MBR is for.
00:23:03.039 --> 00:23:13.920
Yeah, we've all sat through one-to-ones that turn into pipeline reviews if you're in sales or project reviews if you're running a campaign or code review if you're a software engineer and you've written that kind of thing, right?
00:23:14.160 --> 00:23:15.759
I remember some of those indeed.
00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:20.079
You taught there a little three-point agenda for all of your one-to-ones.
00:23:20.799 --> 00:23:24.160
What about flipping it around and letting the employees set the agenda?
00:23:24.960 --> 00:23:26.240
I mean, no problem at all.
00:23:26.559 --> 00:23:30.720
Actually, generally speaking, the first question I ask is, what do you want to talk about?
00:23:30.880 --> 00:23:32.960
In many respects, that means that there is no agenda.
00:23:33.200 --> 00:23:39.200
The point of a one-to-one is not to prescript it, you know, in such a way that I'm getting something from that discussion.
00:23:39.440 --> 00:23:50.640
The only thing I get from that discussion is I want to be able to walk away feeling like the employee that I'm was in the one-to-one with felt heard, listened to, understood.
00:23:50.799 --> 00:23:53.200
Then I know that that was a successful one-to-one.
00:23:53.519 --> 00:24:01.200
But if they want to sit there and say, actually, I've got one topic that I want to talk about today, and it is whatever it is, this is what's keeping me up at night.
00:24:01.359 --> 00:24:04.079
This is, you know, the thing that really matters to me most.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:05.119
I'm all in.
00:24:05.200 --> 00:24:06.079
It's got 15 minutes.
00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:06.720
Use it.
00:24:07.039 --> 00:24:10.319
And how do you encourage uh your employees to prepare for those?
00:24:10.480 --> 00:24:10.880
Or do you?
00:24:11.039 --> 00:24:15.920
Is it just uh let's turn up and and see what happens, or is there some advanced preparation?
00:24:16.240 --> 00:24:16.960
No, not really.
00:24:17.039 --> 00:24:24.640
I mean, advanced preparation is for something that's much more structured and a lot more intense and probably requires evaluation and all that sort of stuff.
00:24:24.799 --> 00:24:25.839
It's not meant to be that.
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:34.400
This is the one moment in the week where you just get to free flow discuss between two people what's going on and again, whatever matters most to the employee.
00:24:34.480 --> 00:24:35.359
So no, absolutely.
00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:40.400
This shouldn't be a cognitively intensive, stressful event.
00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:47.759
If there's stress, it's because there's something in the discussion, you know, that the employee wants to bring forward and they need to get it off their chest.
00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:48.400
Perfect.
00:24:48.559 --> 00:24:49.759
I'm all is, yeah?
00:24:49.920 --> 00:24:51.440
But that's where the stress should come from.
00:24:51.519 --> 00:24:54.160
But the event itself should be completely stressless.
00:24:54.799 --> 00:24:57.519
I'm gonna bring it back to the distance again.
00:24:57.759 --> 00:25:04.799
We've talked about the emotional side and you know, the making sure everybody's got the warm and fuzzies, if I can paraphrase it in that way.
00:25:04.960 --> 00:25:10.480
But there's a point where you need to make decisions in a business, and not everybody's gonna like those decisions.
00:25:10.720 --> 00:25:15.279
The question I asked at the beginning was some distance is good, what's the right amount of distance?
00:25:15.440 --> 00:25:23.680
I'm gonna change it slightly and say, can you lead without having some emotional detachment, some distance?
00:25:25.119 --> 00:25:27.359
Leading without emotion is impossible.
00:25:27.519 --> 00:25:35.839
I mean, literally, unless you're a psychopath, and there are many CEOs that have been called psychopaths in the past, and they're probably right, by the way.
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:36.720
But should you?
00:25:36.880 --> 00:25:38.000
No, absolutely not.
00:25:38.160 --> 00:25:41.920
But that doesn't mean that you will then have to be led entirely by those emotions.
00:25:42.079 --> 00:25:46.079
Most of the decisions that you start with are anchored in data.
00:25:46.240 --> 00:25:50.160
There's emotion behind them, but you are there, you are there to do a job.
00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:54.400
Uh, the role of the CEO is to make sure that they create shareholder value over time.
00:25:54.480 --> 00:25:58.319
That is their primary legally bound duty.
00:25:58.480 --> 00:26:02.079
If you look under the law, that is what is um I'm required to do.
00:26:02.240 --> 00:26:09.519
And so that will lead to tough discussions and it will lead to decisions that make you feel really, really upset and really, really miserable.
00:26:09.759 --> 00:26:19.680
But anchoring your decisions in data, being able to explain them in a logical way that shows that the decision making that has been done has been done well.
00:26:19.920 --> 00:26:23.839
That is a critical part of maintaining trust during tough times.
00:26:23.920 --> 00:26:28.720
And and then, of course, you need to over over-rotate on communication during periods of tough times as well.
00:26:28.880 --> 00:26:30.960
Yeah, so there's there's no question of that.
00:26:31.119 --> 00:26:32.559
But should it be emotionless?
00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:33.119
Will it be?
00:26:33.279 --> 00:26:34.240
No, absolutely not.
00:26:34.319 --> 00:26:39.359
Not and again, not unless you're a psychopath or you're all about the money and you're not about the humans.
00:26:39.440 --> 00:26:41.279
I mean, that will come through in your work.
00:26:41.440 --> 00:26:46.240
People will feel that, they'll sense that, and it will, it will be a big turn off real, real quick.
00:26:46.799 --> 00:26:51.440
So some distance is healthy, some emotion is definitely healthy.
00:26:51.839 --> 00:26:59.279
What does that do to the visibility of responsibility and and the pressure and the stress?
00:26:59.359 --> 00:27:07.359
So let's say you're taking a difficult decision, you've worked through that, you've done it for all the right reasons, it it may well make you feel miserable.
00:27:07.519 --> 00:27:12.000
How do you stay aware of any further consequences from that?
00:27:12.400 --> 00:27:21.119
I think having a constant dialogue, and again, that's that's back to the early part of the discussion about moving off of the balcony and down onto the dance floor.
00:27:21.440 --> 00:27:35.200
As soon as you're going to make tough decisions, you've got to get down to the organization, start having one-to-one discussions, start picking up the pulse, making sure that your leaders are also communicating a lot, extra emphasis on the one-to-one.
00:27:35.519 --> 00:27:43.440
We've all been guilty of going through a busy period where the one-to-ones get skipped because you're on a flight, you're really, really busy, you met yesterday.
00:27:43.680 --> 00:27:44.640
Those things happen.
00:27:44.880 --> 00:27:50.079
But if you start skipping two and three meetings over a number of weeks, you'll lose trust.
00:27:50.240 --> 00:27:52.400
People will start not to believe that really matters.
00:27:52.559 --> 00:28:01.200
Using those ways of communicating and those windows of opportunity uh during periods of stress, super, super important.
00:28:01.359 --> 00:28:02.880
They should not be compromised.
00:28:03.359 --> 00:28:07.039
As tempting as it might be, they absolutely should not be compromised.
00:28:07.599 --> 00:28:18.160
The follow-up to that is making sure that you're doing things like double down on some of the discussions around career advancement and career opportunity or growth of some sort.
00:28:18.319 --> 00:28:31.599
And it might feel oxymoronic because, hey, you just made some redundancies, or we've just decided to sell a part of the business that lots of people liked, or whatever it happened to be, and then you're turning immediately to, hey, and let's discuss your career.
00:28:31.680 --> 00:28:40.720
But of course, what you're really demonstrating in that moment is yes, a tough decision got made, but it got made so that we can have this discussion, not the other way around.
00:28:41.119 --> 00:28:57.119
So really, I think what we're saying is that distance is as close or as far as you personally make it, and there will be people who let that responsibility and those decisions travel beyond their visible range and either don't care or or don't realize it.
00:28:57.279 --> 00:29:07.440
But what we all need to do as humans and as leaders and employees is make sure that we're keeping visibility over as much of that responsibility as possible.
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:20.240
If you're a hierarchist and your whole way of setting yourself up as a CEO or any leader is that you only hear what comes from your first line of hierarchy, your N minus one organization.
00:29:20.400 --> 00:29:23.440
And then whatever happens underneath that, that's their problem.
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:26.559
That's an almost guaranteed way for failure.
00:29:26.799 --> 00:29:32.319
You will be very distant from the entire organization very negatively if that's the way that you want to operate.
00:29:32.559 --> 00:29:36.880
Um so it is getting a balance between that and then moving down into the organization.
00:29:36.960 --> 00:29:43.680
There are real simple ways to get to know people in an organization, especially in a let's say small to mid-sized company.
00:29:43.839 --> 00:29:47.200
You know, you'll have special problems that go through the year.
00:29:47.440 --> 00:29:52.319
Instead of actually just going directly to your next line of leadership and saying, can you solve that problem?
00:29:52.559 --> 00:29:57.039
Is well, if you've decided as a CEO, that's a really important thing to think about.
00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:02.880
Go and recruit two or three people from the organization and find out who would be the right person.
00:30:03.119 --> 00:30:04.319
Invite that person directly.
00:30:04.400 --> 00:30:08.720
And if I spoke to somebody and I would say, Hey, I, you know, I'd love to invite you to come and join me on this project.
00:30:08.799 --> 00:30:10.240
It's a problem that I need to be solved for.
00:30:10.319 --> 00:30:13.279
And you're going to have a combination of different people on there.
00:30:13.519 --> 00:30:21.359
There are just lots of opportunities that will get you to the lower organizations without just making random phone calls and doing skip level meetings.
00:30:21.440 --> 00:30:23.920
It's just whether you choose to be a hierarchist or not.
00:30:24.240 --> 00:30:28.640
And on that very practical note, I think that's a good place to wrap it up for today.
00:30:28.799 --> 00:30:31.440
So, Stephen, thank you very much for joining me.
00:30:31.759 --> 00:30:32.960
Fantastic conversation.
00:30:33.200 --> 00:30:34.079
Really enjoyed it.
00:30:34.160 --> 00:30:35.359
I hope you did too.
00:30:35.680 --> 00:30:36.400
Indeed, yeah.
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:37.680
Thanks very much for inviting me.
00:30:38.079 --> 00:30:46.160
Each episode of Carrying It supports organizations working to improve how responsibility and mental health are understood and supported in real systems.
00:30:46.319 --> 00:30:47.759
Links are in the show notes.
00:30:48.000 --> 00:30:55.519
This conversation was about distance and the uncomfortable reality that responsibility often travels further than visibility does.
00:30:55.759 --> 00:31:01.039
Because when pressure moves through organizations, someone else eventually has to feel it.
