Lawrence: I think for so long, you think that it's about the stage, right? You think it's about the result and you want to be visible. You want to be that person that's on that, you know, in that scenario that's getting that win, that's doing that thing, that's being recognized for it. And I think when you, when you get that experience behind you and, dare I say, you're able to probably evaluate that a little bit more and put your ego to one side. I think you realize that the real success is everything that happens away from that platform. And when, you know, probably the same, when you see these amazing superstars that are doing the most unbelievable things and everyone's like, wow, they can, you know, they can really just turn it on. it's like, they're not turning it on. This was crafted when no one was looking. Like this was crafted in thousands of hours of repetition
Dwayne: Welcome to the Sporting Mindset Show. In this episode, I speak to businessman Lawrence Mohiuddine who's been a CEO previously and is currently consulting. He's worked in the design and architecture space in the corporate world. And what I want to do with this discussion is talk about the contrasts and comparisons between the business world and the sports world and the underlying principles in psychology. That both deal with, enjoy. Lawrence Mohiuddine Welcome. Nicknames. Do you have any?
Lawrence: you know, speaking honestly, probably not. Probably got a few friends, people I've known through work for a long time, probably referred to me as, one in particular calls me boss, which I try and get away from. Nice term of endearment, but at the same time, probably put you on a pedestal. I'm not so sure you're deserving of. Probably Larry to those that know me really well. which is always quite a kind of a nice one, quite endearing. And probably the only one I really remember is probably from family, like going back a long time. My father's from Pakistan. And so when I was first born, I was about a year old and I went back to Pakistan. My dad drove us in a red Bedford van all the way from London. And I think the one thing that came out of it with the family afterwards. was everyone used to refer to me as, obviously, Lala, which is a short version of Lawrence, and then they'd refer to me as Kakababu, which is kind of a thing, so I could been Bengali term, but it was like Lawrence, little master. So it was like a term of endearment, but obviously it was a sign of respect, right? And that kind of, yeah, that's probably stuck. That's something my family still kind of reference to this day. kind of, dare I say. my respect before I'd actually done anything. So, yeah, that's probably the only one I really remember, which quite, you know, in itself, probably some of kind of hold it held on to. When you think about it, you know, with the people that I've worked with and things I've done in my career, you know, given that level of respect first, you know, maybe even before it's earned, before it's been kind of a big proponent of that, you know, given people the space to kind of feel whether it comes from that, who knows. But that's the closest thing you'll get to a nickname with me.
Dwayne: Yeah, nice, very good. And like th I I look at that and I think to myself that you've you talk about the respect side of things there and and you earned it before you sorry you you earned the nickname before you'd earned the respect. But do you think and I I want to go back to the one where you mate who called you boss, obviously that comes from a level of respect.
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean that one comes from a lovely place. mean that person in particular was, yeah, Luka's been a very pivotal person in my career. I think when you go through things with people, and dare I say, I think it's good to give that respect out and just have that. I've always looked to do that with people that I've spent time around. But at the same time, when you can then earn it through the things that you do. I think it changes the dynamic. I think you can give the belief first, but then there are said like the end authority afterwards. When you've been through that with a team and with people, it takes on a slightly different meaning. So I think in that regard, you to hear that terminology. Yeah, like I don't just see it as a sign of maybe respect. I see it as a sign of maybe what we've been through together and that we've kind of heard that kind of mutual understanding of kind of, you know, where we are, where we've been, the things that we might have achieved together in that moment. that's probably quite endearing to me to hear that.
Dwayne: I l now look at that because you you're you're not actually coming from a sporting point of view here. I've got you on board because I want to talk to you and look at the comparisons and the contrasts between the commercial world and the sporting world. And and your world is, you know, you've been a CEO, you're you're now consulting, you've been in in the working space environment, so you project management. You've you've been in positions where I look at it and I say, Look, as a CEO, you know, you're a head coach. there and and you've got to work with people up and down and and then from a a consulting point of view you're almost like the assistant coach. So I I want to sort of e have an example from that commercial world where we can discuss the psychological principles. Now you talked there about relating to people who you've had experiences with and you've earned the respect through those experiences. And to me that's no different to a sporting environment and I'm really keen to understand how the experiences you've had have bonded you with those people you've worked with and that you work with now. So what type of experiences are you talking about there?
Lawrence: think it's a good, the analogy they gave is good. When you're a, dare I say, a coach position, senior leadership, managing director, CEO, it is a slightly different position than when you're an advisor into a business. mean, ultimately when you're an advisor, you're not calling the shots, you're guiding on the shots. Someone else is kind of pulling the trigger on those. You'd like to think that the logic of what you're giving across. It's going to work, but I found out in my career that logic's a very poor form of persuasion. I think we all know that kind of people use kind of passion and emotion before logic. So if you can bring that to your advisory, you're probably a little bit more likely to succeed with the outcomes that you want. But I think if you go back to, there is a clear distinction because ultimately, you you're playing with other people's businesses. And I think when you're... when you're given that position to call those shots, there's a big burden that comes with it, right? And you've got to stand by that. And I think over the course of your career, you probably learn more from your mistakes. And that's quite cliche than you do the successes. But at the same time, you've got to that belief and stand behind it. And I think that's what you probably see in, dare I say, in a sporting environment. You probably see the good coaches. They can be decisive. But at the same time, they can be very decisive in what not to do and what not to say. And I think that's a critical point. Through the advisory work that I do now, you can often see the path forward, but you're not as close to it because the people that are in that kind of hot seat have got that emotional pull. They've got that day-to-day connectivity with individuals. They've got the repercussions that come with it. dare I say, the reference to the individual who called me boss, that was probably one of my first highs in quite a difficult situation that I was in, in joining a business and growing it to P exit. A lot of pressure that comes with the private equity exit. And at the same time, you're given that kind of mantle of making those decisions to get to that point. And one of the first decisions I took in, dare I say, a CEO position was a mass reduction in headcount. which is difficult on so many levels. When you're coming into a business from fresh and you're looking to remove 45 people, you've got to be right, that's the right thing to be doing. And dare I say, doing that and bringing in three people that set the culture, the tone, and did everything that you needed them to do to kind of drive you to that end result, that's a decision that a CEO takes. As an advisor, you're not going to pull that trigger on that situation. You might advise again around it. And I think that kind of assistant coach position now, you know, is really where you bring your experience, know, years of experience to see in these situations play out and you're able to guide and govern and what you're looking for, I guess, on the other side, the people that can form a good team and be respect respective. sorry, respectful of that. they can evaluate that and they can kind of deploy in their, in their own way. And I think that's what ultimately that's what makes good teams, right? People that can work well, can work well together. And that's no different in business.
Dwayne: And I I wanna go back to that that you you spoke about the logic there and you said, you know, a lot of people well, we find that a lot of people will use that emotion and that passion before logic. Is that most people's downfall?
Lawrence: that's an interesting one. I mean, you've looked at it from a couple of perspectives. I think, what, when you look at it from like running a business, the other, you look at it in terms of the attainment of objectives and goals. And I think when you, when you, when you within a business, I think you've got the time, to balance all of that. You've got the time to make calculated decisions. I think when you're engaging. metaphor being when you're on the sporting field or when the clients that I work with, when they're in front of their clients and they're looking to execute, you don't have necessarily the time to bring logic to the table. And most people will understand facts and figures, but they definitely will remember the way that you made them feel or dare I say, the story that you brought to the table rather than the logic. And I think that's where very often with the clients that I work with, We do talk a lot about the passion and it's not the passion that wins, by the way, you know, we've all heard terrible singers turn up on talent shows and they've got passion, right? I really want this, you know, but you can't see, you know, and it's that again, that's no different in business. But what we do want is the balance of, of there are say a good foundation, which is all your prior preparation. And that's massive for me. I mean, that is living life in the margins, right? That's, that's performing when no one's looking. But if you can bring that to the table and you can bring that emotion coupled with it, I mean, those are the kind of critical moments that start to really influence people and redirect outcomes. And I'd say that probably been no different on a sporting arena.
Dwayne: And and so look, is that in you know, you when you talk about the emotion and that, is that reflected in a lot of storytelling, really? Because it's it's not about the numbers, it's not about, you know, you talk about not about the logic. Is it about the storytelling and creating an image in the mind of the people that you were working with? You know, and from a if you look at it from a working space point of view, this is you know, imagine the finished product of the working space that you will be putting your your clients in or or your your employees in. Is it is it the storytelling? That that is the real difference
Lawrence: Yeah, you know,
Dwayne: there?
Lawrence: I think storytelling is essential for most situations, right? And the amount of businesses that I see, know, for continents of working with companies is not a geographic thing. You know, this is a very human thing. You go to so many organizations and I see it, you probably see it with sporting teams. You start with the outcome in mind. And there's too many organizations that I go into and that I work with and they don't have a really clear picture of what they're looking to achieve. You know, what, what is their story? And I think a lot of people have got a good backstory. You know, they know where they've come from, albeit they probably don't know a lot of the kind of influencing factors as to what's led them to the point that they're at. And that's a lot of the work that I do with clients is to better understand their, their past, their triggers, their performance, things that have happened. to better define the future. But what's missing in so many people is that, there I say, a North Star, you know, that picture, as you said, you know, how do we tell a story and set that scene where everyone knows where we're going? Like we know who we are, we know our identity and we know what we're there to achieve. And I think most companies get that wrong, not because they don't understand that they need some form of mission statement, but I don't think they... They realize the power of what that can create. And one thing is for certain, when you go through a private equity exit, you've got to have your story. You've got to know why you exist. You've got to know what the end looks like. And that's kind of a mutual benefit for those that are leaving the business and those that are buying a business. And so I think starting with that position, but that really rallies people. And too many people think that setting KPI is goals, objectives. is a North Star. That's not a North Star. That's just keeping score. I you've got to keep score. Another thing that businesses do particularly badly. But I think that storytelling and that North Star is essential. it's with every successful team that I've been involved in, I think we've always had a really clear identity of where we're going. And that's not financial, by the way. Financial is an element of it, know, even a performance revenue. But it's it's it's what does this feel like? What does this look like? What would we be doing in those moments? And when you start to move towards it, like viscerally, you feel it. I think that's where the emotion and the passion draws together with that really clear vision of what you're looking to achieve.
Dwayne: And so this to me, this reflects because obviously anyone who supports a sporting team, whether they win or whether they lose, they ride the wave with that team. And so for me, when you look at it from a sporting point of view, there there has to be a North Star, there has to be a real identity. So obviously there there's a direct comparison between that commercial world and that business world and that sporting world, which are exactly the same. What is it that and you spoke you spoke about, you know, the the winnings in the margins, it's it's what happened when what happens when nobody's looking. You can have your North Star, you can have your story, but what is what underpins that? What are the behaviors that you see in the business world which underpin that successful North Star?
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, that's a, it's an area that I think, like you reflect, right? You get, you get a certain period in your career and you reflect on the different phases that you go through. I think for so long, you think that it's about the stage, right? You think it's about the result and you want to be visible. You want to be that person that's on that, you know, in that scenario that's getting that win, that's doing that thing, that's being recognized for it. And I think when you, when you get that experience behind you and, dare I say, you're able to probably evaluate that a little bit more and put your ego to one side. I think you realize that the real success is everything that happens away from that platform. And when, you know, probably the same, when you see these amazing superstars that are doing the most unbelievable things and everyone's like, wow, they can, you know, they can really just turn it on. it's like, they're not turning it on. This was crafted when no one was looking. Like this was crafted in thousands of hours of repetition and things. And you you hear the most amazing stories of sports people that have got that kind of, that rigor about living in those margins. Or Steph Curry from the age of like seven, not leaving a basketball court unless he could land like, what is it, like 10 perfect shots. Not hitting the rim. I mean, you do that for life. I mean, that's in the margins. People don't see that. I think it's very similar like metaphor with, with, with regards to work. And once you see it, you can't not see it because then in the successes that you do see, you recognize the things that you were doing away from that situation. And it's the foundation building. And I think that one thing, whether you're a CEO or you're an advisor, assistant coach or a head coach, you can't play the game on the pitch. Like you can have a contribution, you can stand on the sideline, you can scream and shout. see plenty of people in leadership that do that. And it probably comes back to my first point. If you can set those foundations and you can look at that rigor and those meticulous moments and how they change outcomes, and you can empower teams, I think that's really important. When they turn up on that pitch, that's your work, right? And you're giving them the best opportunity to then perform. to the best of their ability. mean, that for me is high performance, right? Can they live their best self in the moments when no one's looking? And if they can do that, they're gonna perform. As long as you can take the nerves out of the situation, you can humanize what they're doing. But that's a great coach for me. And then not sitting and screaming and shouting on the sidelines. I think as a CEO, one of the things I was quite keen to always do was make sure that I knew when not to talk. and when I needed to kind of sit back and just let what we had put in place just flood through in those kind of critical situations.
Dwayne: And did you did you have to train yourself to know when to zip it or when to put your two bobsworth in? And in in in training yourself to do that,
Lawrence: Yeah.
Dwayne: work out a way that worked for across the board, or would you individual individu individualise it based on who you were working with at the time?
Lawrence: Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Because I think, again, you see so many people that are just pushing hard on so many fronts and they want everything to be the best. And you see it, right? Half of it comes out of the textbook and they're pushing, you know, they want the performance, they want the language, you want the foundations, they want everything just again, better for better sake. And there's a challenge with that. You know, I had a conversation with one of the clients this week and we were talking about balance. And we were talking about, wow, the business was amazing at this level when it was a little bit easier. And we were doing an amazing EBITDA performance. Revenue was good, but the environment was great. And we enjoyed our work. But actually, while we were then pushing hard for like a bigger revenue, for example, EBITDA is dropping. We're making investments we don't like. The atmosphere is gone. The enjoyment's dropping. And you're like, Guys, so where's the benefit here? Like, where's your North Star? Like, how does this play? Because this doesn't feel like a good North Star. And if you can bring that back into balance and you're looking at, dare I say, like the foundational capacity of a business. And in the same way, you'll look at like the foundational capacity of a team. Are they a good team or are they a championship winning team? But they're a team, right? They have a foundation to them and how they perform. You couple that with the time and the investment you can put into them, the ability of individuals, that balance will give them their level. And you've got to assess what is that level against the outcomes you're looking to achieve. And I think too often, you're seeing businesses and individuals that, if you know your football analogies, for example, are trying to teach Ronaldo how to score with his left foot. And you say, well, he's done pretty good scoring like nearly a thousand goals with his right foot in his head. So do we really want to spend time and effort like trying to get him a few more on his left? you know, do you teach Lionel Messi to be a better defender or better header of the ball? Like you probably don't, but I think business is falling into that trap. where they're pushing in all the wrong areas versus looking at it and saying, well, actually that is in balance and that's working. And we're, we're getting as much as we can get and as we need to get out of that area, but let's focus on rather than the long tail, which is where the effort goes, but we're getting very little results. Let's focus on the impact areas. Now I'm not suggesting you focus on just 20 % of your business with 80 % of your kind of focus, but it is, is where do we double down and get the big, the big wins or the big movements? and a lot of that is you've got to give over to individuals and you there's got to be trust. There's got to be trust. And that probably brings us back full circle to that position of respect. You know, I think it's missing in a lot of businesses. I think it's like, okay, you know, earn it. And it's like, well, okay, that doesn't breed teamwork. You know, I think giving people the respect of what you've got them there to do and nurturing and understanding them. is really what does it and letting them kind of flood through. yeah, so I think that balance, that balance and those kind of foundational elements are so important to kind of knowing what you're looking at, what you need to be working with individuals on. mean, then at an individual level, you're not stressing one individual of your team or your business. about doing something that isn't either relevant to them, their future career or the performance of the business, just because it sounds like a good thing to be doing. And so, yeah, I'd like to think that teams we've worked with have been really good at understanding that and really playing where we need to play to play best.
Dwayne: And and so from a CEO, we'll go for just a CEO's point of view where you do you do the pull the trigger on some sort of thing, some issues, is like we talk about autonomy and and we have coaches who want their players to be able to decision make for themselves and they want the w problem solved for themselves because you can't be on the field with them. As a CEO, how are you doing that? Like, how are you actually saying you've got you're a CEO and you've got your line managers or whatever they might be called, or division managers. How are you developing that autonomy? How are you developing those decision-making skills so that you can trust what they're going to do in their performance, in their little world?
Lawrence: Yeah, that's a great question and it's a question that's often missing from a lot of the businesses that I would see. If you, you, you again, for me, so much of the high performance can be attained through, dare I say, operationalizing things. Now, most people would see operationalizing as being kind of red tape. it's process. But actually, if you frame it slightly differently, why do I want a talented individual or team taking up the thinking space to do the basics? I want them for their talent to make a difference in a moment. And so if I can take care of the baseline, if I can take care of just the foundational elements, that should just happen. That's going to be amazing for the individual because they can do that then autonomously. And I think that's really where we've looked to get any business is how do we implement the structures? How do we implement how we all play together? so that so much of it just happens and it becomes second nature. Now a lot of people will say it's too administrative and I mean it's not about an admin process but it's just about getting that kind of repetition of when this happens what's our outcome and how do we act and you find that the one thing that's missing in those organizations is a decision-making matrix. So it's fine for me to say it and say, look, this is what you are going to train you up and we're going to do the foundations and this is how we win and this how we want to perform. And then we leave it to the individual, but the individual is still standing there saying, Hey, I've been well trained and I understand that, how do I make my decisions? Like that doesn't appear in my role description. It doesn't appear in my KPIs and you know, how does that play out when I'm in front of 20 people when I may not want to talk about it. And so introducing, even though they're really like simple level, like you take something like a rapid decision-making model. You can learn through that and you can use live experiences. You can get a team together and you can actually say, look, when that happened, let's do a retrospective. how do we treat it that differently? And if we can put it through the lens of not, hey, we would have made a different decision, but let's go through the steps to that decision and let's record it so that if anything like-minded happens, then we can go back and we can check it. And what that basically says is, you're trying from, again, from a leadership perspective, you're trying, or I was always trying, to drive the decisions to the cold face. Like I wanted the decisions taken by the team and I would rather that they, you know, begged forgiveness and approval and we missed an opportunity. So I would always be encouraging as a fact that, as long as we're recording how we're doing that. And so anyone I'd like to think would feel a little bit more empowered to make a recommendation to do something, but they would know not to just like run it straight up to the top of the tree and come, you know, knock on my door or your door and the coach's door and say, hey, look, you know, can I get approval for this? It's like, you know, it's a great thing, you know, recommend something, you know, align with someone on it. You look at the process you go through for decision making that they can do on their own. You seek input from others and I might be an input to that. You we want to do this. I've aligned with someone else. This is the process I've run through. Larry, know, give me your input on this. And then ultimately the decision. Like, don't look to me for the decision. Look to yourself for the decision. Like if you followed all of those steps and that can be done in a heartbeat. If you're then empowered to make those decisions. then I think the business is a better for it. And the challenge is saying someone's got the ability to make a decision and then doing it two different things. But
Dwayne: Could be.
Lawrence: they'll learn through that. As long as you're not going to score them the first moment it goes wrong and they can go, actually, I did it. did it it kind of worked. And meanwhile, I'm focusing on the bits that happen in the background. You're empowering that. that kind of individual performance. I think no one really links the two together to say, look, you you have autonomy in that moment. You can script a lot of it. Absolutely. You and a of actually, you would say the sporting moments that the big sporting moments that we look at it go, wow. know, Johnny Wilkinson's drop goal, probably a sore point for your Aussie listeners. But you know, that's a, you know, that, that, an amazing moment. that came off the training pitch 12 months before, if not longer, you know? And so That's a critical part for me. It isn't process and administration. It's doing the prior preparation that allows individuals just to bring that key moment that is theirs. And that's what you're them for. You're hiring for that moment. don't want robots. We want those kind of moments of human interaction and decision making.
Dwayne: And do you think that comes down to then cr do using that storytelling and having that North Star is to to give them the opportunity that they see something out there that they really like the looks of and and they want to go for. But you've given them the basic tools to make life easy so that when they are when they are getting close to that moment of of reaching that north star or making that decision that they can do themselves in the moment, is that you've made life easier because of those processes and those structures and whatever whatever the principle might be, whether it's rapid or whatever, that that has been sold to them to allow them to, you know, you're almost saying, well, this is the big picture. This is where we want to get to. We have these processes. So you don't use your bandwidth on the processes. That's automated. You that's easy for you. When you're in that moment and it might be that clutch moment. It might be the Johnny Wilkinson drop dog or whatever it might be. Is that The easy stuff or the s the st the the basics and the the you know, the foundation has been set in, you know, the work out, you know, in the darkness where nobody sees, so that they can make that decision. And that comes from a really good story that you've told, you know, at the start of the season or at the start of a project or whatever it might be, that you go, This is our North Star. When it comes time to you to shine, we're gonna equip you with the tools. that doesn't use your bandwidth. And you can you can shine then with your decision making or your your response to a situation.
Lawrence: Yeah. Do you know that is exactly it. That's what you're trying to get through, right? That's what you're always trying to get through, whether you're advising, whether you're leading and like come back to that storytelling. we could sit here and we could say to people, know, so Rugby is probably a good example, right? In the same way that, you know, I've worked with teams that are winning complex deals, projects. you know, up to $150 million and the pressures on in those situations. And you look at it and you can kind of talk to them all day long about, you know, golden threads of key touch points with, you know, clients and decision making and how those moments play out. And, you know, but they've got to do a lot of the, the kind of imagination to bring to the table as to what does it really mean? And they know what, you know, what good would look like and how we want to kind of influence those decisions. But when you talk to storytelling, I remember we, We brought in a guy called Kirk Vallis who works for Google and he's a creative and he uses creativity as a force for good with businesses. And so he coaches and works a lot of businesses. He came in, he worked with us. You can find him on YouTube with some of his speeches and stories. He was amazing, but he did work with the England Rugby team. And it was something that always resonated really well with our team when he came in. He told a story about they put up on a board, England 99, the New Zealand All Blacks zero. How do we do it? And obviously everyone fell about laughing, right? You know, it's impossible to do, you'd never be able to do it. But it's like, okay, come on, just, know, scribble, like work with me. And then you've got people saying, you know, we would give the other team food poisoning so they couldn't turn up. We, know, we've gotten into the stadium, we were, you know, all these crazy ideas. And one of them was we would bribe the referee. Now, of course you can't bribe the referee, right? But he rotated on it and he kind of went, all right, why would we bribe the referee? And when you then get into it, like the team are now using their imagination, right? Now they're in like this free flowing state, just, you know, spirit-balling ideas. And they were like, well, we'd influence the referee because I guess in sport or in rugby, just the same as in business, it's the marginal decisions that you need. the game is littered with 50 50s. It could be seen or called either way. And that's no different to, you know, working in a competitive business environment where the client has got like amazing decisions with amazing vendors and providers. You know, what chooses one over the other is a marching call. And so when you look at it, go, well, how would we influence without bribing? And they came up with a notion that they, think they were one of the first rugby teams that had a match day approach to referees that was very different. They met the referees at the airport. had ex professional referees would meet and greet them. They would privately escort them to the stadium. They would have England jerseys with their children's names on it in, you on the seats with their families looked after. They renovated the sporting facilities for the referees. So they were world-class. They got a match, they walk at the pitch with an official, you know, all these little experiences, they wanted it to just be perfect. And why was it perfect? Because they wanted in that moment when the rubber hit the road on the pitch, there was a margin call to be made that they wanted those moments to matter. And that came all the way down to like how you talk to the referee on the pitch, who talked and how they talked and all the rest of it. We would say that approach in business and people would understand that. approach to those margin decisions more than they would understand me telling them it just needs to be better or showing them like certain examples. If they can bring it to life in that way, they would know the power of influence. Actually a project of that magnitude isn't made across a thousand decisions. Of course, there are a thousand decisions. It's probably made across a handful of what we call golden thread decisions and golden thread decisions are the ones that turn the tide. If you can get the teams focusing on those moments. They've got to play a 90 minute, 80 minute match. Okay, everyone's playing that game. But if you can get them well drilled, yeah, look, the baseline's there, we can run, we've got our performance, our fitness, but these are the moments the game's gonna turn on. That's no different to business. do enough businesses understand those kind of golden thread moments? Probably not. And that's the retrospective. Go back, look, you know, what was it? Why was it, you know, win ratios, you know, when we got turned over, then what was happening when we didn't win or when profitability was low? What was the scenario size of project time geography? So if you can better understand yourself, you can better kind of prepare and position those golden thread moments in the future. And I thought Kurt Wallace was amazing at doing that because he used the power of storytelling and everyone, everyone resonated with it.
Dwayne: th I think that's that's a brilliant, brilliant story and a brilliant brilliant example and one that can be related across like, you know, you could talk about business across every part of life, really, I think. And yeah, a really good story. But we we are running out of time and I wanna I wanna have one question for you and I want it to be a bit a bit more of a personal question. And I want you to think back to when you first started in you know, your your career, you're in design or whatever it might have been at the time. And then now you look at yourself now. What is what would be the psychological superpower for you that you would will have developed and if you looked into the future that you would want to continue to develop to deal with people? Like what's the psychological skill, the number one skill that you would go to to be able to influence people or or or change people's outlook so that they can get an outcome? What would be yours?
Lawrence: yeah, that's a tough one. Didn't see that one coming. I mean, first of all, like when we're starting now in anyone's career, I mean, I look back now at things that you thought how you were, appearances, all the rest of it. I mean, it's challenging. You see how much you've kind of grown when you see those pictures of old. think resilience is a massive thing. And I think it's one thing that a lot of people overlook. I mean, you're dealing at the end of the day with humans and Like you need to understand and it's really interesting because they say like leadership roles are very lonely places and I've had leadership roles for very long portions of my career. It is a lonely role and the things that you experience.
Dwayne: What makes it lonely? What makes it lonely?
Lawrence: it's really, I mean, there's so many dynamics to it. I mean, so much of the time your business card walks through the door before you. So your job title walks through the door before you. And that's always a problem. And I see that get to a lot of people's heads, you know, the title, the CEO that, know, we've spoken a lot about being a CEO today. You know, I don't really resonate myself as a CEO of running businesses in North America and Amir. And at the end of the day, I'm no different to anyone else. and I think you need to be humble. think humble's a massive thing with me. Probably wasn't always humble. know, wanted that center stage. I think that changed a long time ago. But you realize... You know, I think it's people how they treat you rather than how you treat them. I think they put you on a pedestal. They feel that they can't talk and they can't push back and really spend so much of your time in leadership roles, just trying to break that down because you want the feedback, you want the honesty. And if you can understand the situation better, then you're a much better leader to be able to adapt to it. you know, if you take a big step back and not to get kind of too emotional about it, but And we all go through the same things over the course of your time, either running businesses or working in businesses. mean, you have setbacks, you have health problems, you lose loved ones, people that are close to you, bad things happen, and no one really sees that. And you've got to show up. I think probably my most formative period, which was COVID, because you know... That was when I probably felt most comfortable because suddenly everything became about the people and you you're their wellbeing and looking after them and putting them first. And then really that I would say for my latter career that a lot of the things that I was doing was always looking to put people forward and put them first. And like I'd say to anyone that even joined our business, you know, you're gonna leave. I was going to leave. there would be no bones about it. You know, you can do all the &A deals in the world and be winning the biggest deals in the world. There comes a time for everyone when it's time to go. And what's really important is that that individual leaves in a better place than when they joined and that they are more employable. They're a better human. I use that term, you know, better humans. We want to make better humans. And at the same time, we can leave the business, he, her. in the place that we've been, you know, kind of governed to take it to. And I think everyone can get what they want. And, you know, there's a lot of psychological issues that I think probably come with that as well, because you don't want to believe your own hype and it can be challenging stepping away when the business card doesn't walk through the front door in front of you. But that's when I think it then reflects well on you in that you haven't let that go to your head. It's a bit like the big wins. When you win big, just be a good human. And when you lose, be the same. Because if you don't do that, you're going to have a rocky ride when something happens to you and you don't get what you want. I'd like to think that people I've worked with and look to inspire to do good things. And you see it in the industry. They go on to do amazing things. And if you're a part of that, you've done your job. It's not just about the championships you win. It's about the way you're playing the game.
Dwayne: good. What a good way to finish. That was awesome. Thank you. mate, really appreciate your time. And and yeah, like it's a I'm really intrigued to get different views on and and relate it to the sport. And you've done that really well this on this call. So mate, appreciate your time, all the best. And I I dare say we will catch up in a couple of years to re rehash this and see what has changed for you. and that that
Lawrence: Yeah, amazing.
Dwayne: could be anything. That could be anything at all. So appreciate time.
Lawrence: Thanks, right now. Cheers.
Dwayne: Thanks for joining Lawrence and myself for this episode and what a great episode it was. Having a look at how the psychological principles of the commercial world can be very similar to those in the sporting world. One thing we do know for certain is that mindset matters. So as you move through your week, please have a think about you the mindset that you're bringing into your sporting life, your business life, or your life in general. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who you might think it will work for and continue being part of a community that values growth and development in high performance done the right way. I'm Dwayne Nestor, and this has been The Sporting Mindset Show.
Dwayne: Welcome to the Sporting Mindset Show. In this episode, I speak to businessman Lawrence Mohiuddine who's been a CEO previously and is currently consulting. He's worked in the design and architecture space in the corporate world. And what I want to do with this discussion is talk about the contrasts and comparisons between the business world and the sports world and the underlying principles in psychology. That both deal with, enjoy. Lawrence Mohiuddine Welcome. Nicknames. Do you have any?
Lawrence: you know, speaking honestly, probably not. Probably got a few friends, people I've known through work for a long time, probably referred to me as, one in particular calls me boss, which I try and get away from. Nice term of endearment, but at the same time, probably put you on a pedestal. I'm not so sure you're deserving of. Probably Larry to those that know me really well. which is always quite a kind of a nice one, quite endearing. And probably the only one I really remember is probably from family, like going back a long time. My father's from Pakistan. And so when I was first born, I was about a year old and I went back to Pakistan. My dad drove us in a red Bedford van all the way from London. And I think the one thing that came out of it with the family afterwards. was everyone used to refer to me as, obviously, Lala, which is a short version of Lawrence, and then they'd refer to me as Kakababu, which is kind of a thing, so I could been Bengali term, but it was like Lawrence, little master. So it was like a term of endearment, but obviously it was a sign of respect, right? And that kind of, yeah, that's probably stuck. That's something my family still kind of reference to this day. kind of, dare I say. my respect before I'd actually done anything. So, yeah, that's probably the only one I really remember, which quite, you know, in itself, probably some of kind of hold it held on to. When you think about it, you know, with the people that I've worked with and things I've done in my career, you know, given that level of respect first, you know, maybe even before it's earned, before it's been kind of a big proponent of that, you know, given people the space to kind of feel whether it comes from that, who knows. But that's the closest thing you'll get to a nickname with me.
Dwayne: Yeah, nice, very good. And like th I I look at that and I think to myself that you've you talk about the respect side of things there and and you earned it before you sorry you you earned the nickname before you'd earned the respect. But do you think and I I want to go back to the one where you mate who called you boss, obviously that comes from a level of respect.
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean that one comes from a lovely place. mean that person in particular was, yeah, Luka's been a very pivotal person in my career. I think when you go through things with people, and dare I say, I think it's good to give that respect out and just have that. I've always looked to do that with people that I've spent time around. But at the same time, when you can then earn it through the things that you do. I think it changes the dynamic. I think you can give the belief first, but then there are said like the end authority afterwards. When you've been through that with a team and with people, it takes on a slightly different meaning. So I think in that regard, you to hear that terminology. Yeah, like I don't just see it as a sign of maybe respect. I see it as a sign of maybe what we've been through together and that we've kind of heard that kind of mutual understanding of kind of, you know, where we are, where we've been, the things that we might have achieved together in that moment. that's probably quite endearing to me to hear that.
Dwayne: I l now look at that because you you're you're not actually coming from a sporting point of view here. I've got you on board because I want to talk to you and look at the comparisons and the contrasts between the commercial world and the sporting world. And and your world is, you know, you've been a CEO, you're you're now consulting, you've been in in the working space environment, so you project management. You've you've been in positions where I look at it and I say, Look, as a CEO, you know, you're a head coach. there and and you've got to work with people up and down and and then from a a consulting point of view you're almost like the assistant coach. So I I want to sort of e have an example from that commercial world where we can discuss the psychological principles. Now you talked there about relating to people who you've had experiences with and you've earned the respect through those experiences. And to me that's no different to a sporting environment and I'm really keen to understand how the experiences you've had have bonded you with those people you've worked with and that you work with now. So what type of experiences are you talking about there?
Lawrence: think it's a good, the analogy they gave is good. When you're a, dare I say, a coach position, senior leadership, managing director, CEO, it is a slightly different position than when you're an advisor into a business. mean, ultimately when you're an advisor, you're not calling the shots, you're guiding on the shots. Someone else is kind of pulling the trigger on those. You'd like to think that the logic of what you're giving across. It's going to work, but I found out in my career that logic's a very poor form of persuasion. I think we all know that kind of people use kind of passion and emotion before logic. So if you can bring that to your advisory, you're probably a little bit more likely to succeed with the outcomes that you want. But I think if you go back to, there is a clear distinction because ultimately, you you're playing with other people's businesses. And I think when you're... when you're given that position to call those shots, there's a big burden that comes with it, right? And you've got to stand by that. And I think over the course of your career, you probably learn more from your mistakes. And that's quite cliche than you do the successes. But at the same time, you've got to that belief and stand behind it. And I think that's what you probably see in, dare I say, in a sporting environment. You probably see the good coaches. They can be decisive. But at the same time, they can be very decisive in what not to do and what not to say. And I think that's a critical point. Through the advisory work that I do now, you can often see the path forward, but you're not as close to it because the people that are in that kind of hot seat have got that emotional pull. They've got that day-to-day connectivity with individuals. They've got the repercussions that come with it. dare I say, the reference to the individual who called me boss, that was probably one of my first highs in quite a difficult situation that I was in, in joining a business and growing it to P exit. A lot of pressure that comes with the private equity exit. And at the same time, you're given that kind of mantle of making those decisions to get to that point. And one of the first decisions I took in, dare I say, a CEO position was a mass reduction in headcount. which is difficult on so many levels. When you're coming into a business from fresh and you're looking to remove 45 people, you've got to be right, that's the right thing to be doing. And dare I say, doing that and bringing in three people that set the culture, the tone, and did everything that you needed them to do to kind of drive you to that end result, that's a decision that a CEO takes. As an advisor, you're not going to pull that trigger on that situation. You might advise again around it. And I think that kind of assistant coach position now, you know, is really where you bring your experience, know, years of experience to see in these situations play out and you're able to guide and govern and what you're looking for, I guess, on the other side, the people that can form a good team and be respect respective. sorry, respectful of that. they can evaluate that and they can kind of deploy in their, in their own way. And I think that's what ultimately that's what makes good teams, right? People that can work well, can work well together. And that's no different in business.
Dwayne: And I I wanna go back to that that you you spoke about the logic there and you said, you know, a lot of people well, we find that a lot of people will use that emotion and that passion before logic. Is that most people's downfall?
Lawrence: that's an interesting one. I mean, you've looked at it from a couple of perspectives. I think, what, when you look at it from like running a business, the other, you look at it in terms of the attainment of objectives and goals. And I think when you, when you, when you within a business, I think you've got the time, to balance all of that. You've got the time to make calculated decisions. I think when you're engaging. metaphor being when you're on the sporting field or when the clients that I work with, when they're in front of their clients and they're looking to execute, you don't have necessarily the time to bring logic to the table. And most people will understand facts and figures, but they definitely will remember the way that you made them feel or dare I say, the story that you brought to the table rather than the logic. And I think that's where very often with the clients that I work with, We do talk a lot about the passion and it's not the passion that wins, by the way, you know, we've all heard terrible singers turn up on talent shows and they've got passion, right? I really want this, you know, but you can't see, you know, and it's that again, that's no different in business. But what we do want is the balance of, of there are say a good foundation, which is all your prior preparation. And that's massive for me. I mean, that is living life in the margins, right? That's, that's performing when no one's looking. But if you can bring that to the table and you can bring that emotion coupled with it, I mean, those are the kind of critical moments that start to really influence people and redirect outcomes. And I'd say that probably been no different on a sporting arena.
Dwayne: And and so look, is that in you know, you when you talk about the emotion and that, is that reflected in a lot of storytelling, really? Because it's it's not about the numbers, it's not about, you know, you talk about not about the logic. Is it about the storytelling and creating an image in the mind of the people that you were working with? You know, and from a if you look at it from a working space point of view, this is you know, imagine the finished product of the working space that you will be putting your your clients in or or your your employees in. Is it is it the storytelling? That that is the real difference
Lawrence: Yeah, you know,
Dwayne: there?
Lawrence: I think storytelling is essential for most situations, right? And the amount of businesses that I see, know, for continents of working with companies is not a geographic thing. You know, this is a very human thing. You go to so many organizations and I see it, you probably see it with sporting teams. You start with the outcome in mind. And there's too many organizations that I go into and that I work with and they don't have a really clear picture of what they're looking to achieve. You know, what, what is their story? And I think a lot of people have got a good backstory. You know, they know where they've come from, albeit they probably don't know a lot of the kind of influencing factors as to what's led them to the point that they're at. And that's a lot of the work that I do with clients is to better understand their, their past, their triggers, their performance, things that have happened. to better define the future. But what's missing in so many people is that, there I say, a North Star, you know, that picture, as you said, you know, how do we tell a story and set that scene where everyone knows where we're going? Like we know who we are, we know our identity and we know what we're there to achieve. And I think most companies get that wrong, not because they don't understand that they need some form of mission statement, but I don't think they... They realize the power of what that can create. And one thing is for certain, when you go through a private equity exit, you've got to have your story. You've got to know why you exist. You've got to know what the end looks like. And that's kind of a mutual benefit for those that are leaving the business and those that are buying a business. And so I think starting with that position, but that really rallies people. And too many people think that setting KPI is goals, objectives. is a North Star. That's not a North Star. That's just keeping score. I you've got to keep score. Another thing that businesses do particularly badly. But I think that storytelling and that North Star is essential. it's with every successful team that I've been involved in, I think we've always had a really clear identity of where we're going. And that's not financial, by the way. Financial is an element of it, know, even a performance revenue. But it's it's it's what does this feel like? What does this look like? What would we be doing in those moments? And when you start to move towards it, like viscerally, you feel it. I think that's where the emotion and the passion draws together with that really clear vision of what you're looking to achieve.
Dwayne: And so this to me, this reflects because obviously anyone who supports a sporting team, whether they win or whether they lose, they ride the wave with that team. And so for me, when you look at it from a sporting point of view, there there has to be a North Star, there has to be a real identity. So obviously there there's a direct comparison between that commercial world and that business world and that sporting world, which are exactly the same. What is it that and you spoke you spoke about, you know, the the winnings in the margins, it's it's what happened when what happens when nobody's looking. You can have your North Star, you can have your story, but what is what underpins that? What are the behaviors that you see in the business world which underpin that successful North Star?
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, that's a, it's an area that I think, like you reflect, right? You get, you get a certain period in your career and you reflect on the different phases that you go through. I think for so long, you think that it's about the stage, right? You think it's about the result and you want to be visible. You want to be that person that's on that, you know, in that scenario that's getting that win, that's doing that thing, that's being recognized for it. And I think when you, when you get that experience behind you and, dare I say, you're able to probably evaluate that a little bit more and put your ego to one side. I think you realize that the real success is everything that happens away from that platform. And when, you know, probably the same, when you see these amazing superstars that are doing the most unbelievable things and everyone's like, wow, they can, you know, they can really just turn it on. it's like, they're not turning it on. This was crafted when no one was looking. Like this was crafted in thousands of hours of repetition and things. And you you hear the most amazing stories of sports people that have got that kind of, that rigor about living in those margins. Or Steph Curry from the age of like seven, not leaving a basketball court unless he could land like, what is it, like 10 perfect shots. Not hitting the rim. I mean, you do that for life. I mean, that's in the margins. People don't see that. I think it's very similar like metaphor with, with, with regards to work. And once you see it, you can't not see it because then in the successes that you do see, you recognize the things that you were doing away from that situation. And it's the foundation building. And I think that one thing, whether you're a CEO or you're an advisor, assistant coach or a head coach, you can't play the game on the pitch. Like you can have a contribution, you can stand on the sideline, you can scream and shout. see plenty of people in leadership that do that. And it probably comes back to my first point. If you can set those foundations and you can look at that rigor and those meticulous moments and how they change outcomes, and you can empower teams, I think that's really important. When they turn up on that pitch, that's your work, right? And you're giving them the best opportunity to then perform. to the best of their ability. mean, that for me is high performance, right? Can they live their best self in the moments when no one's looking? And if they can do that, they're gonna perform. As long as you can take the nerves out of the situation, you can humanize what they're doing. But that's a great coach for me. And then not sitting and screaming and shouting on the sidelines. I think as a CEO, one of the things I was quite keen to always do was make sure that I knew when not to talk. and when I needed to kind of sit back and just let what we had put in place just flood through in those kind of critical situations.
Dwayne: And did you did you have to train yourself to know when to zip it or when to put your two bobsworth in? And in in in training yourself to do that,
Lawrence: Yeah.
Dwayne: work out a way that worked for across the board, or would you individual individu individualise it based on who you were working with at the time?
Lawrence: Yeah, it's really interesting, right? Because I think, again, you see so many people that are just pushing hard on so many fronts and they want everything to be the best. And you see it, right? Half of it comes out of the textbook and they're pushing, you know, they want the performance, they want the language, you want the foundations, they want everything just again, better for better sake. And there's a challenge with that. You know, I had a conversation with one of the clients this week and we were talking about balance. And we were talking about, wow, the business was amazing at this level when it was a little bit easier. And we were doing an amazing EBITDA performance. Revenue was good, but the environment was great. And we enjoyed our work. But actually, while we were then pushing hard for like a bigger revenue, for example, EBITDA is dropping. We're making investments we don't like. The atmosphere is gone. The enjoyment's dropping. And you're like, Guys, so where's the benefit here? Like, where's your North Star? Like, how does this play? Because this doesn't feel like a good North Star. And if you can bring that back into balance and you're looking at, dare I say, like the foundational capacity of a business. And in the same way, you'll look at like the foundational capacity of a team. Are they a good team or are they a championship winning team? But they're a team, right? They have a foundation to them and how they perform. You couple that with the time and the investment you can put into them, the ability of individuals, that balance will give them their level. And you've got to assess what is that level against the outcomes you're looking to achieve. And I think too often, you're seeing businesses and individuals that, if you know your football analogies, for example, are trying to teach Ronaldo how to score with his left foot. And you say, well, he's done pretty good scoring like nearly a thousand goals with his right foot in his head. So do we really want to spend time and effort like trying to get him a few more on his left? you know, do you teach Lionel Messi to be a better defender or better header of the ball? Like you probably don't, but I think business is falling into that trap. where they're pushing in all the wrong areas versus looking at it and saying, well, actually that is in balance and that's working. And we're, we're getting as much as we can get and as we need to get out of that area, but let's focus on rather than the long tail, which is where the effort goes, but we're getting very little results. Let's focus on the impact areas. Now I'm not suggesting you focus on just 20 % of your business with 80 % of your kind of focus, but it is, is where do we double down and get the big, the big wins or the big movements? and a lot of that is you've got to give over to individuals and you there's got to be trust. There's got to be trust. And that probably brings us back full circle to that position of respect. You know, I think it's missing in a lot of businesses. I think it's like, okay, you know, earn it. And it's like, well, okay, that doesn't breed teamwork. You know, I think giving people the respect of what you've got them there to do and nurturing and understanding them. is really what does it and letting them kind of flood through. yeah, so I think that balance, that balance and those kind of foundational elements are so important to kind of knowing what you're looking at, what you need to be working with individuals on. mean, then at an individual level, you're not stressing one individual of your team or your business. about doing something that isn't either relevant to them, their future career or the performance of the business, just because it sounds like a good thing to be doing. And so, yeah, I'd like to think that teams we've worked with have been really good at understanding that and really playing where we need to play to play best.
Dwayne: And and so from a CEO, we'll go for just a CEO's point of view where you do you do the pull the trigger on some sort of thing, some issues, is like we talk about autonomy and and we have coaches who want their players to be able to decision make for themselves and they want the w problem solved for themselves because you can't be on the field with them. As a CEO, how are you doing that? Like, how are you actually saying you've got you're a CEO and you've got your line managers or whatever they might be called, or division managers. How are you developing that autonomy? How are you developing those decision-making skills so that you can trust what they're going to do in their performance, in their little world?
Lawrence: Yeah, that's a great question and it's a question that's often missing from a lot of the businesses that I would see. If you, you, you again, for me, so much of the high performance can be attained through, dare I say, operationalizing things. Now, most people would see operationalizing as being kind of red tape. it's process. But actually, if you frame it slightly differently, why do I want a talented individual or team taking up the thinking space to do the basics? I want them for their talent to make a difference in a moment. And so if I can take care of the baseline, if I can take care of just the foundational elements, that should just happen. That's going to be amazing for the individual because they can do that then autonomously. And I think that's really where we've looked to get any business is how do we implement the structures? How do we implement how we all play together? so that so much of it just happens and it becomes second nature. Now a lot of people will say it's too administrative and I mean it's not about an admin process but it's just about getting that kind of repetition of when this happens what's our outcome and how do we act and you find that the one thing that's missing in those organizations is a decision-making matrix. So it's fine for me to say it and say, look, this is what you are going to train you up and we're going to do the foundations and this is how we win and this how we want to perform. And then we leave it to the individual, but the individual is still standing there saying, Hey, I've been well trained and I understand that, how do I make my decisions? Like that doesn't appear in my role description. It doesn't appear in my KPIs and you know, how does that play out when I'm in front of 20 people when I may not want to talk about it. And so introducing, even though they're really like simple level, like you take something like a rapid decision-making model. You can learn through that and you can use live experiences. You can get a team together and you can actually say, look, when that happened, let's do a retrospective. how do we treat it that differently? And if we can put it through the lens of not, hey, we would have made a different decision, but let's go through the steps to that decision and let's record it so that if anything like-minded happens, then we can go back and we can check it. And what that basically says is, you're trying from, again, from a leadership perspective, you're trying, or I was always trying, to drive the decisions to the cold face. Like I wanted the decisions taken by the team and I would rather that they, you know, begged forgiveness and approval and we missed an opportunity. So I would always be encouraging as a fact that, as long as we're recording how we're doing that. And so anyone I'd like to think would feel a little bit more empowered to make a recommendation to do something, but they would know not to just like run it straight up to the top of the tree and come, you know, knock on my door or your door and the coach's door and say, hey, look, you know, can I get approval for this? It's like, you know, it's a great thing, you know, recommend something, you know, align with someone on it. You look at the process you go through for decision making that they can do on their own. You seek input from others and I might be an input to that. You we want to do this. I've aligned with someone else. This is the process I've run through. Larry, know, give me your input on this. And then ultimately the decision. Like, don't look to me for the decision. Look to yourself for the decision. Like if you followed all of those steps and that can be done in a heartbeat. If you're then empowered to make those decisions. then I think the business is a better for it. And the challenge is saying someone's got the ability to make a decision and then doing it two different things. But
Dwayne: Could be.
Lawrence: they'll learn through that. As long as you're not going to score them the first moment it goes wrong and they can go, actually, I did it. did it it kind of worked. And meanwhile, I'm focusing on the bits that happen in the background. You're empowering that. that kind of individual performance. I think no one really links the two together to say, look, you you have autonomy in that moment. You can script a lot of it. Absolutely. You and a of actually, you would say the sporting moments that the big sporting moments that we look at it go, wow. know, Johnny Wilkinson's drop goal, probably a sore point for your Aussie listeners. But you know, that's a, you know, that, that, an amazing moment. that came off the training pitch 12 months before, if not longer, you know? And so That's a critical part for me. It isn't process and administration. It's doing the prior preparation that allows individuals just to bring that key moment that is theirs. And that's what you're them for. You're hiring for that moment. don't want robots. We want those kind of moments of human interaction and decision making.
Dwayne: And do you think that comes down to then cr do using that storytelling and having that North Star is to to give them the opportunity that they see something out there that they really like the looks of and and they want to go for. But you've given them the basic tools to make life easy so that when they are when they are getting close to that moment of of reaching that north star or making that decision that they can do themselves in the moment, is that you've made life easier because of those processes and those structures and whatever whatever the principle might be, whether it's rapid or whatever, that that has been sold to them to allow them to, you know, you're almost saying, well, this is the big picture. This is where we want to get to. We have these processes. So you don't use your bandwidth on the processes. That's automated. You that's easy for you. When you're in that moment and it might be that clutch moment. It might be the Johnny Wilkinson drop dog or whatever it might be. Is that The easy stuff or the s the st the the basics and the the you know, the foundation has been set in, you know, the work out, you know, in the darkness where nobody sees, so that they can make that decision. And that comes from a really good story that you've told, you know, at the start of the season or at the start of a project or whatever it might be, that you go, This is our North Star. When it comes time to you to shine, we're gonna equip you with the tools. that doesn't use your bandwidth. And you can you can shine then with your decision making or your your response to a situation.
Lawrence: Yeah. Do you know that is exactly it. That's what you're trying to get through, right? That's what you're always trying to get through, whether you're advising, whether you're leading and like come back to that storytelling. we could sit here and we could say to people, know, so Rugby is probably a good example, right? In the same way that, you know, I've worked with teams that are winning complex deals, projects. you know, up to $150 million and the pressures on in those situations. And you look at it and you can kind of talk to them all day long about, you know, golden threads of key touch points with, you know, clients and decision making and how those moments play out. And, you know, but they've got to do a lot of the, the kind of imagination to bring to the table as to what does it really mean? And they know what, you know, what good would look like and how we want to kind of influence those decisions. But when you talk to storytelling, I remember we, We brought in a guy called Kirk Vallis who works for Google and he's a creative and he uses creativity as a force for good with businesses. And so he coaches and works a lot of businesses. He came in, he worked with us. You can find him on YouTube with some of his speeches and stories. He was amazing, but he did work with the England Rugby team. And it was something that always resonated really well with our team when he came in. He told a story about they put up on a board, England 99, the New Zealand All Blacks zero. How do we do it? And obviously everyone fell about laughing, right? You know, it's impossible to do, you'd never be able to do it. But it's like, okay, come on, just, know, scribble, like work with me. And then you've got people saying, you know, we would give the other team food poisoning so they couldn't turn up. We, know, we've gotten into the stadium, we were, you know, all these crazy ideas. And one of them was we would bribe the referee. Now, of course you can't bribe the referee, right? But he rotated on it and he kind of went, all right, why would we bribe the referee? And when you then get into it, like the team are now using their imagination, right? Now they're in like this free flowing state, just, you know, spirit-balling ideas. And they were like, well, we'd influence the referee because I guess in sport or in rugby, just the same as in business, it's the marginal decisions that you need. the game is littered with 50 50s. It could be seen or called either way. And that's no different to, you know, working in a competitive business environment where the client has got like amazing decisions with amazing vendors and providers. You know, what chooses one over the other is a marching call. And so when you look at it, go, well, how would we influence without bribing? And they came up with a notion that they, think they were one of the first rugby teams that had a match day approach to referees that was very different. They met the referees at the airport. had ex professional referees would meet and greet them. They would privately escort them to the stadium. They would have England jerseys with their children's names on it in, you on the seats with their families looked after. They renovated the sporting facilities for the referees. So they were world-class. They got a match, they walk at the pitch with an official, you know, all these little experiences, they wanted it to just be perfect. And why was it perfect? Because they wanted in that moment when the rubber hit the road on the pitch, there was a margin call to be made that they wanted those moments to matter. And that came all the way down to like how you talk to the referee on the pitch, who talked and how they talked and all the rest of it. We would say that approach in business and people would understand that. approach to those margin decisions more than they would understand me telling them it just needs to be better or showing them like certain examples. If they can bring it to life in that way, they would know the power of influence. Actually a project of that magnitude isn't made across a thousand decisions. Of course, there are a thousand decisions. It's probably made across a handful of what we call golden thread decisions and golden thread decisions are the ones that turn the tide. If you can get the teams focusing on those moments. They've got to play a 90 minute, 80 minute match. Okay, everyone's playing that game. But if you can get them well drilled, yeah, look, the baseline's there, we can run, we've got our performance, our fitness, but these are the moments the game's gonna turn on. That's no different to business. do enough businesses understand those kind of golden thread moments? Probably not. And that's the retrospective. Go back, look, you know, what was it? Why was it, you know, win ratios, you know, when we got turned over, then what was happening when we didn't win or when profitability was low? What was the scenario size of project time geography? So if you can better understand yourself, you can better kind of prepare and position those golden thread moments in the future. And I thought Kurt Wallace was amazing at doing that because he used the power of storytelling and everyone, everyone resonated with it.
Dwayne: th I think that's that's a brilliant, brilliant story and a brilliant brilliant example and one that can be related across like, you know, you could talk about business across every part of life, really, I think. And yeah, a really good story. But we we are running out of time and I wanna I wanna have one question for you and I want it to be a bit a bit more of a personal question. And I want you to think back to when you first started in you know, your your career, you're in design or whatever it might have been at the time. And then now you look at yourself now. What is what would be the psychological superpower for you that you would will have developed and if you looked into the future that you would want to continue to develop to deal with people? Like what's the psychological skill, the number one skill that you would go to to be able to influence people or or or change people's outlook so that they can get an outcome? What would be yours?
Lawrence: yeah, that's a tough one. Didn't see that one coming. I mean, first of all, like when we're starting now in anyone's career, I mean, I look back now at things that you thought how you were, appearances, all the rest of it. I mean, it's challenging. You see how much you've kind of grown when you see those pictures of old. think resilience is a massive thing. And I think it's one thing that a lot of people overlook. I mean, you're dealing at the end of the day with humans and Like you need to understand and it's really interesting because they say like leadership roles are very lonely places and I've had leadership roles for very long portions of my career. It is a lonely role and the things that you experience.
Dwayne: What makes it lonely? What makes it lonely?
Lawrence: it's really, I mean, there's so many dynamics to it. I mean, so much of the time your business card walks through the door before you. So your job title walks through the door before you. And that's always a problem. And I see that get to a lot of people's heads, you know, the title, the CEO that, know, we've spoken a lot about being a CEO today. You know, I don't really resonate myself as a CEO of running businesses in North America and Amir. And at the end of the day, I'm no different to anyone else. and I think you need to be humble. think humble's a massive thing with me. Probably wasn't always humble. know, wanted that center stage. I think that changed a long time ago. But you realize... You know, I think it's people how they treat you rather than how you treat them. I think they put you on a pedestal. They feel that they can't talk and they can't push back and really spend so much of your time in leadership roles, just trying to break that down because you want the feedback, you want the honesty. And if you can understand the situation better, then you're a much better leader to be able to adapt to it. you know, if you take a big step back and not to get kind of too emotional about it, but And we all go through the same things over the course of your time, either running businesses or working in businesses. mean, you have setbacks, you have health problems, you lose loved ones, people that are close to you, bad things happen, and no one really sees that. And you've got to show up. I think probably my most formative period, which was COVID, because you know... That was when I probably felt most comfortable because suddenly everything became about the people and you you're their wellbeing and looking after them and putting them first. And then really that I would say for my latter career that a lot of the things that I was doing was always looking to put people forward and put them first. And like I'd say to anyone that even joined our business, you know, you're gonna leave. I was going to leave. there would be no bones about it. You know, you can do all the &A deals in the world and be winning the biggest deals in the world. There comes a time for everyone when it's time to go. And what's really important is that that individual leaves in a better place than when they joined and that they are more employable. They're a better human. I use that term, you know, better humans. We want to make better humans. And at the same time, we can leave the business, he, her. in the place that we've been, you know, kind of governed to take it to. And I think everyone can get what they want. And, you know, there's a lot of psychological issues that I think probably come with that as well, because you don't want to believe your own hype and it can be challenging stepping away when the business card doesn't walk through the front door in front of you. But that's when I think it then reflects well on you in that you haven't let that go to your head. It's a bit like the big wins. When you win big, just be a good human. And when you lose, be the same. Because if you don't do that, you're going to have a rocky ride when something happens to you and you don't get what you want. I'd like to think that people I've worked with and look to inspire to do good things. And you see it in the industry. They go on to do amazing things. And if you're a part of that, you've done your job. It's not just about the championships you win. It's about the way you're playing the game.
Dwayne: good. What a good way to finish. That was awesome. Thank you. mate, really appreciate your time. And and yeah, like it's a I'm really intrigued to get different views on and and relate it to the sport. And you've done that really well this on this call. So mate, appreciate your time, all the best. And I I dare say we will catch up in a couple of years to re rehash this and see what has changed for you. and that that
Lawrence: Yeah, amazing.
Dwayne: could be anything. That could be anything at all. So appreciate time.
Lawrence: Thanks, right now. Cheers.
Dwayne: Thanks for joining Lawrence and myself for this episode and what a great episode it was. Having a look at how the psychological principles of the commercial world can be very similar to those in the sporting world. One thing we do know for certain is that mindset matters. So as you move through your week, please have a think about you the mindset that you're bringing into your sporting life, your business life, or your life in general. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who you might think it will work for and continue being part of a community that values growth and development in high performance done the right way. I'm Dwayne Nestor, and this has been The Sporting Mindset Show.
