Doing Hiring Differently

[00:00:00] Hi, this is Matt. Just before we start the show, I want to tell you about a free white

[00:00:05] paper that I've just published on AI and talent acquisition. We all know that AI is

[00:00:11] going to dramatically change recruiting. But what will that really look like? For example,

[00:00:16] imagine a future where AI can predict your company's future talent needs, build dynamic

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[00:00:31] automate recruitment marketing. The new white paper, 10 ways AI will transform talent acquisition,

[00:00:38] doesn't claim to have all the answers. But it does explore the most likely scenarios

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[00:00:50] the future of your talent acquisition strategy. You can download your copy of the white paper

[00:00:55] at mat-older.me-transform. That's mat-older.me-transform.

[00:01:21] Hi there, welcome to episode 511 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Many aspects of

[00:01:30] how companies hire talent have been set in stone and unquestioned for decades. Even if

[00:01:36] talent acquisition wants to drive change, the power of accepted wisdom amongst hiring

[00:01:41] managers and the C-suite is difficult to challenge. So what happens when the CEO

[00:01:47] of the company champions a completely different way of doing things?

[00:01:52] My guest this week is Jeff Duing, Group CEO at Cloud FM. Jeff's story is amazing and

[00:01:59] his approach to business is encapsulated in the title of his book Doing the Opposite.

[00:02:04] When it comes to hiring, Jeff has challenged conventional wisdom around skills and hiring

[00:02:09] head on with some spectacular results. I love this conversation and it's an

[00:02:15] absolute must listen for everyone. Hi Jeff and welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:20] Hi, how are you doing? I can't wait to get into the chat.

[00:02:24] Absolutely. Well, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you perhaps

[00:02:28] start by introducing yourself and telling everyone what you do?

[00:02:32] Certainly. I'm Jeff Duing. I am an entrepreneur. I run quite a large business in the base

[00:02:40] in the UK but also operates across Europe and Singapore and Asia Pacific. I began as a

[00:02:47] fridge engineer when I left school with no qualifications other than a maths O level

[00:02:51] and I've got no idea how to achieve that. Since then, I just went into the world of

[00:02:56] learning very, very quickly. Absolutely. Tell us a little bit more about what your

[00:03:01] business does but also the back story behind setting up and growing it.

[00:03:05] Certainly. I don't know why it must have been in my genes but I was born very ambitious.

[00:03:12] I've got no way of actually articulating why or how but I just always wanted to progress.

[00:03:19] I didn't know what progressing was other than being better or more well paid than I was

[00:03:24] previously but as time went on and you become more mature, you start to find your way

[00:03:29] and understand what that means. One example is I was 16 year old. I was an apprentice

[00:03:34] in a refrigeration company. My trade was refrigeration and at 17 years old after I'd

[00:03:40] sort of been making the tea for a year, I thought why am I here? I made a statement

[00:03:45] to a group of guys in the canteen who were installing some refrigeration

[00:03:49] at the same time and I said, I'll be a supervisor by the time I'm 19. These guys

[00:03:53] started laughing and heckling me, calling me stupid as they did because I was

[00:03:57] an apprentice. I was a bit cocky. They said we've been here 25 years and

[00:04:01] we've never made a supervisor. What's the matter with you? Anyway, and it was

[00:04:05] something at the time I didn't think about it or reflected back but what I'd

[00:04:07] done is I'd set a goal and nothing was going to stop me getting that goal.

[00:04:13] My birthday's in February. I went to a meeting. I was 19. In the February,

[00:04:18] in July, I went to a company meeting. There was 45 engineers there and the

[00:04:24] service manager started and said, we've got an announcement to make. We have

[00:04:26] a promotion and we have a new supervisor and everyone was looking around

[00:04:32] and then suddenly he looked up at me and he chucked me the car keys because

[00:04:35] where the supervisor comes in his state car as opposed to a van. He threw

[00:04:39] these keys to me and I went, oh my God. All it had was I just had this

[00:04:43] focus on becoming, I had to become a supervisor. I'd set it out loud

[00:04:48] therefore I had to deliver it and that sort of shaped the rest of my

[00:04:52] life although I didn't know why until later in life when I was able to

[00:04:56] articulate the importance of setting goals. That was sort of the start of a

[00:05:02] journey of realising when you have a goal and you laser focus, you can

[00:05:05] achieve anything. Then moving on to where I am today, I then started, I worked

[00:05:09] for 10 years as an employee. I then started my own business and there's

[00:05:13] a backstory to that as well. It's all in my book but I run a business. It

[00:05:16] was very successful. I grew it from zero to about five, six million turnover

[00:05:21] as a contractor installing air conditioning. I was living like a king.

[00:05:25] I went off and bought a football club and not only football club was living

[00:05:29] the dream but during that time, some of my things, my wife said, why are you

[00:05:33] buying a football club? The honest when I put the mirror up was I was bored.

[00:05:37] I was bored of my own business. I couldn't get it beyond five million.

[00:05:40] I'd employed great people that were better than me but still couldn't

[00:05:44] solve the problem. I lost interest, bought the football club to try

[00:05:48] and stimulate a bit of energy. As a result of that I took my eye

[00:05:52] off the business and the business as a result failed because I wasn't there

[00:05:56] and I took my eye off it. That sent me into bankruptcy which was the worst

[00:06:00] time of my life and at the time I felt the most guilty because I'd let my

[00:06:04] wife down, my family down. I had three young kids and I felt terrible.

[00:06:08] Went hiding for about nine months until eventually I just woke up and said

[00:06:11] you've got to sort your life out. I then started, the first thing

[00:06:16] I said what do I do? I realised that during that 10 years of running

[00:06:20] business and living in big houses and having flash cars and stuff and

[00:06:24] believing that I knew it all because I was so successful was that

[00:06:27] realisation that I knew absolutely nothing and I needed to go and learn.

[00:06:32] So I went back into the world of employee-ship and because of my

[00:06:35] position and my experience, I was able to secure senior board positions

[00:06:39] and went on a journey of seven years of learning all the things

[00:06:43] that I needed to have learned in the first place.

[00:06:46] And as a result of that I then started my current business cloud in

[00:06:49] 2012 and we now employ a circuit of 200 people.

[00:06:54] We grew from zero again to 80 million in four years.

[00:06:59] So it was a roller coaster journey applying all the sort of lessons

[00:07:04] I'd missed earlier when we were all young and yeah, and living the dream.

[00:07:11] Absolutely. Now your podcast and your book are both called

[00:07:15] Doing the Opposite.

[00:07:17] Give us some examples of how you do the opposite in the in the business that you've got.

[00:07:22] Let's think of one example.

[00:07:25] In our world of facilities management, it's a similar world to construction

[00:07:31] and in construction or facilities, you tend to offer a service to a client

[00:07:36] and that client will pay you in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days,

[00:07:40] only 20 days subject to who they are.

[00:07:43] And payment is obviously a big issue because cash is king.

[00:07:45] We all know that.

[00:07:47] So I decided that one of the challenges I had in my first business was

[00:07:51] you know, I spent 70 percent of my time chasing money to pay the salaries,

[00:07:56] the VAT and revenue and therefore I was spending 30 percent

[00:08:00] of my time doing what I loved and doing what I was good at.

[00:08:02] So when I started the second business, all the lessons I'd learned,

[00:08:06] I said, right, there's one thing I'm going to do.

[00:08:08] I'm never going to have to chase money

[00:08:10] and I want to spend a hundred percent of my time building a business,

[00:08:12] growing a business and doing what I love.

[00:08:14] So the way I did that was I broke all the rules

[00:08:17] and I basically built some technology

[00:08:19] that enabled us to do the things that we do that's different in the industry

[00:08:23] and created something that the clients wanted so badly they would agree to anything.

[00:08:28] So in our world now, we carry out a service for our clients.

[00:08:33] We invoice on the Monday, they pay us on the Tuesday.

[00:08:37] So we give 24 hours credit

[00:08:39] and this is global brands.

[00:08:42] Right, so this is not just local people.

[00:08:44] This is global brands that we're talking about.

[00:08:46] So we were cut an invoice for a million quid on Monday.

[00:08:48] We get paid on the Tuesday.

[00:08:50] We then pay a supply chain 30 days later.

[00:08:52] So I've now got negative working capital.

[00:08:54] So I've got cash in the bank, which means I never have to chase money.

[00:08:58] So that's one example of doing the opposite.

[00:09:00] And when I suggested to my colleagues when we build the business,

[00:09:03] that's what I wanted to do.

[00:09:04] They looked at me like I've got two heads.

[00:09:06] No one will ever agree to that.

[00:09:08] And yet everybody agrees to it.

[00:09:10] And but it is it's not as simple as that, but that's the principle.

[00:09:15] And I was relentless on making sure that happened.

[00:09:18] When someone says, why do you do the opposite?

[00:09:20] I'd have said to you, I don't know until I wrote the book.

[00:09:23] And I am writing a book.

[00:09:25] I was told to go and research my childhood

[00:09:28] where you go back and you look at pictures

[00:09:30] and you reflect on your childhood, a lot of which you've forgotten

[00:09:32] because it's just buried somewhere in your mind.

[00:09:34] And the best way to free that mind is to look at, you know,

[00:09:37] every photograph your parents ever took of you and so on and so on,

[00:09:40] which I did over about four weekends looking at hundreds and hundreds of photographs.

[00:09:43] And I couldn't believe the memories are unlocked.

[00:09:46] But one memory unlocked was when someone said to me,

[00:09:49] why do you do the opposite?

[00:09:50] And I didn't know I then reflected on something happened in my childhood

[00:09:53] that then gave me clarity on why I do the opposite.

[00:09:56] So I was a young kid, young 13, 14 year old.

[00:09:59] And actually, I was I was 15, I was 15 at the time.

[00:10:03] And I had some friends at school

[00:10:05] that were a couple of years older than me and they'd left school

[00:10:07] and they had their, you know, RD 250 motorbikes and live in the dream.

[00:10:11] And I'm still at school in my school uniform.

[00:10:14] And they were then going up the pub because they were no longer at school.

[00:10:16] And they come to me and say, do you want to come to the pub, Jeff?

[00:10:18] And I went, yeah, yeah, I'll come up the pub, but I've got no money.

[00:10:21] And they said, oh, don't worry, we'll buy your point.

[00:10:22] So I'm at the pub and I was lucky enough to be at a getaway.

[00:10:24] We've looked in old enough to go in the pub.

[00:10:26] So in the pub, I went there, a few beers, get a few,

[00:10:29] you know, get a bit drunk, go home, the room spinning, go to sleep

[00:10:32] and so on and so on.

[00:10:33] And that was all part of feeling grown up.

[00:10:35] And then after about a week, I realized I couldn't keep going

[00:10:38] at the pub side, no money.

[00:10:40] And my dad run his own business at the time, an electronic shop in Tottenham.

[00:10:44] And he used to come home every night for a briefcase.

[00:10:45] And that briefcase was a brown paper bag full of the days

[00:10:49] takings in one pound notes, five pound notes, ten pound notes and so on.

[00:10:52] And I stupidly as a kid at the time, through desperate

[00:10:56] want to keep up with Joneses and my friends,

[00:10:59] I would get up at six o'clock in the mornings,

[00:11:00] but dad never got out of bed before nine.

[00:11:02] So he worked until two o'clock in the morning

[00:11:04] and I'd take a fire out of his case.

[00:11:06] And now I've got five of us and beer that last

[00:11:08] about three days before I got caught red-handed by my mum.

[00:11:13] And she said, I think you better go to school now

[00:11:16] and your father or talk to you and get home.

[00:11:18] And of course, my dad, who was a great father,

[00:11:21] never ever laid a finger on us.

[00:11:22] But oh, my God, was we frightened about what he was going to say.

[00:11:25] So I was off to school now.

[00:11:26] My whole day's ruined thinking that's it when I go into my own dead.

[00:11:29] And anyway, I went home four o'clock, three, thirty, four o'clock.

[00:11:32] No sign of your dad's car.

[00:11:33] What results? He never gets home to one o'clock in the morning.

[00:11:36] Next day, same thing, no car.

[00:11:38] Next day, same thing, no car.

[00:11:39] Something in wow, I've got away with this.

[00:11:42] And then finally on the fourth day, I'm walking down the road

[00:11:44] and it's 345.

[00:11:45] I have my dad's cars outside.

[00:11:46] I said, that's all over. I'm done.

[00:11:49] So I walked into the kitchen.

[00:11:51] I said, hello, son. Hello, dad.

[00:11:53] He said, what are you doing?

[00:11:54] So I said, I just got to do my own work really.

[00:11:57] He said, how long that take?

[00:11:58] I said about 20 minutes.

[00:11:59] So I go do your own work.

[00:12:00] So I did my own work for an old course.

[00:12:02] I'm struggling to do my own work next.

[00:12:03] I'm wondering what else is going to happen.

[00:12:04] So I then go back down.

[00:12:05] So the kitchen said, I've done me a which is right.

[00:12:07] Let's go for a trip.

[00:12:08] I'll take a little drive.

[00:12:10] Something he's going to tap in the woods and kill me.

[00:12:12] I just had no idea.

[00:12:14] And so anyway, we went on this drive

[00:12:16] and went to Laitingstone High Road,

[00:12:18] which was where I lived at the time.

[00:12:20] And there was an air fix shop there.

[00:12:22] And some people may remember an air fix shop.

[00:12:24] You get all air fix models, airplanes or so on.

[00:12:26] And there was this huge plane hanging from the ceiling,

[00:12:28] which was in kit.

[00:12:29] It's all put together, but you bought it in kit form.

[00:12:31] And it's like a ready-controlled aircraft.

[00:12:33] So you put servos in it and you had,

[00:12:35] you could fly this thing

[00:12:36] and so you had a little petrol engine and so on.

[00:12:38] He said, do you fancy that?

[00:12:40] And I went, well, hell yeah, of course I do.

[00:12:42] I'd love to do that.

[00:12:43] So he said, we're going to buy that.

[00:12:45] He bought the airplane, bought loads of servos.

[00:12:47] We got back and said,

[00:12:47] we're now going to spend the next month

[00:12:49] building this plane

[00:12:50] and then we're going to go up to Chingford Plains.

[00:12:51] We're going to fly it.

[00:12:53] So I said, oh wow.

[00:12:56] He never once mentioned anything about the money.

[00:13:00] And that night, the first night we sat down

[00:13:03] and we've got all this kit out

[00:13:05] and all this bullshit stuff like that.

[00:13:07] I got a phone call.

[00:13:08] My mum said, I had Jeff for call for you.

[00:13:09] And I went and my mate said,

[00:13:10] did you come out the pub tonight?

[00:13:11] I went, no, no, I'm not coming out the pub.

[00:13:13] I'm working with my dad doing this thing.

[00:13:16] So anyway, we spent the next three or four weeks

[00:13:20] and two things happened.

[00:13:21] He suddenly was home at four o'clock every day,

[00:13:24] which he never had been all my childhood.

[00:13:26] We were building this plane together

[00:13:27] where we was having a lot of fun.

[00:13:29] We then took it out and we flew it.

[00:13:31] And then suddenly this relationship just grew into something

[00:13:33] that I could have only ever dreamed of.

[00:13:36] The down side of course,

[00:13:37] I got my two sisters saying, hang on a minute.

[00:13:39] He's still not alone in money

[00:13:41] and he's now been given presents.

[00:13:43] I don't get it.

[00:13:44] But what he did was he stopped me worrying about

[00:13:47] going to the pub.

[00:13:48] He changed the whole dimension about whatever.

[00:13:50] Whereas most parents would have said,

[00:13:51] in your room you ground it for a month,

[00:13:54] so he did the complete opposite

[00:13:56] and had a spectacular result.

[00:13:58] That's fantastic, well, fantastic story.

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[00:15:12] Focusing in on the people part of your business,

[00:15:16] obviously lots of people listening,

[00:15:19] working, recruiting,

[00:15:20] probably trying to do things differently.

[00:15:22] It's very dynamic time in the world of recruiting right now.

[00:15:27] How important a part of your business is recruiting

[00:15:31] and how do you do it differently

[00:15:33] to your competition, for example?

[00:15:35] I guess like everybody, we all go on a journey, right?

[00:15:37] We learn every day, every day is a school day

[00:15:40] and the one thing that really hit me hard

[00:15:42] in the last 10 years of building this business

[00:15:45] was realising that command control doesn't work

[00:15:48] and people do not wanna be told what to do.

[00:15:51] They never will

[00:15:52] and therefore how are we gonna do things differently?

[00:15:55] So there's three things that every human being wants and needs.

[00:15:59] They need autonomy, they need mastery and they need purpose

[00:16:04] and they're different,

[00:16:05] they mean different things to different people

[00:16:06] but that's what every human being wants and needs.

[00:16:09] When they're at home and they're buying,

[00:16:10] you know, they're buying a house

[00:16:11] or they're getting them all rich

[00:16:11] or they're picking the kids up from school

[00:16:13] or they're buying uniforms, they have autonomy.

[00:16:15] They make their decisions and that's when they're their best.

[00:16:18] So I decided 10 years ago that interviews

[00:16:21] weren't fit for purpose

[00:16:23] and we stopped doing interviews probably seven years ago

[00:16:25] in their current form

[00:16:27] and what I wanna do is an interview for me,

[00:16:30] still a flip of a coin,

[00:16:31] you can ask a load of the same questions,

[00:16:33] get the same answers.

[00:16:35] I work great as an individual, I work great as a team.

[00:16:37] Really? Okay, great.

[00:16:38] So I've read that on every TV.

[00:16:40] So what do we do differently?

[00:16:42] How do we truly get under the skin of somebody?

[00:16:45] So all we did is we changed the rules.

[00:16:46] We said, if you're gonna come for a job in this business,

[00:16:48] whether it's an apprentice or a board director,

[00:16:51] you will have to come and spend two days

[00:16:52] with us and our teams

[00:16:54] and it's a structured two days where we do things

[00:16:57] and one of the things we do

[00:16:57] is we build rockets out of spaghetti

[00:17:00] and the whole point of the exercise

[00:17:03] is you'll have two or three or four candidates

[00:17:05] that are coming in for different roles

[00:17:07] and there'll be three or four of our existing team

[00:17:10] as well as the interviewer for one or the higher

[00:17:14] and they go for a structured process

[00:17:15] and what we're doing is we're working out

[00:17:16] how they behave, how they behave with themselves,

[00:17:18] with other people

[00:17:19] and how they react to certain situations

[00:17:21] which is where the structured days come into play.

[00:17:23] You create environments to truly get under the skin of people

[00:17:26] and then what we then do

[00:17:28] is at the end of that two day session

[00:17:30] we'll then sit and have a chat with them

[00:17:32] on a one-to-one for a half an hour,

[00:17:33] asking about how they found the two days,

[00:17:35] what they found about the business,

[00:17:36] how did they find their colleagues.

[00:17:38] Of course, they're free to talk to the existing people.

[00:17:40] So I'm not having to do a selling job on them.

[00:17:43] They're gonna find out for themselves

[00:17:44] and the people that actually live and work here.

[00:17:46] Then what happens is before we actually make

[00:17:48] any form of decision,

[00:17:49] we then go back to the four or five people

[00:17:50] that were part of the team

[00:17:51] that were engaging with these people.

[00:17:53] We say, tell me your assessment of those people

[00:17:56] and they will tell you things that you saw

[00:17:58] or you didn't see.

[00:18:00] So now suddenly I'm removing the risk by 190%

[00:18:05] because I've now got five sets of eyes with a view

[00:18:07] rather than the interviewer

[00:18:09] and as a result of doing that,

[00:18:11] we have a 95% success rate of recruiting and retaining

[00:18:15] because those people end up,

[00:18:18] they were behaving how they would always behave eventually.

[00:18:20] So you see the real them.

[00:18:21] You don't say, we deviate away from,

[00:18:25] wait until they join and in three months

[00:18:26] you'll know if they're right or not.

[00:18:27] Well, we've taken away all that risk.

[00:18:29] Yeah.

[00:18:30] But what about the people who go for that process

[00:18:31] and don't get the role?

[00:18:32] Do you give them feedback?

[00:18:34] Absolutely.

[00:18:35] Even if we can see on day one,

[00:18:37] they're not gonna make it.

[00:18:38] We will speak to them day one and say,

[00:18:40] look, you're not quite getting into the environment.

[00:18:42] These are the reasons why we are very candid,

[00:18:47] sensitive but candid,

[00:18:49] which means they've got absolute clarity

[00:18:51] on what they need to do

[00:18:53] if they wanted to get through that process next time.

[00:18:56] And but most of it is all down to values.

[00:18:59] It's about how they behave, what's important to them.

[00:19:02] And the philosophy we have is that you must care more

[00:19:04] about the person on your left

[00:19:06] and the person on your right than you do yourself.

[00:19:08] And if you demonstrate that,

[00:19:09] then you stand a very good chance of joining our business.

[00:19:13] And all of it is about looking after each other.

[00:19:15] And I think that's the biggest driver

[00:19:17] where people suddenly, anyone that says,

[00:19:20] yeah, but what about me?

[00:19:21] Is the red flag that says

[00:19:23] you're probably not gonna make the second day.

[00:19:24] And what about skills and experience?

[00:19:27] Presumably people have to have a certain level

[00:19:29] of skill to do some of the roles,

[00:19:30] but how much does that factor into the decision?

[00:19:34] Skills is about 20%.

[00:19:36] Trustworthiness is probably about 60%.

[00:19:40] And the rest is driven by desire and attitude.

[00:19:45] So for me, it's about what is your attitude?

[00:19:48] Is probably the single biggest driver.

[00:19:51] We can train skills easily.

[00:19:53] So skills is not the focal point.

[00:19:55] Yes, as you say, you need a base skill,

[00:19:58] but it really is driven by it,

[00:19:59] but it's driven by attitude,

[00:20:02] attitude and the desire to help other people.

[00:20:04] That's the biggest driver for success

[00:20:06] of getting a place in their business.

[00:20:08] Fantastic.

[00:20:08] And what about sort of developing people?

[00:20:11] You mentioned you've got sort of very high rates

[00:20:13] of retention there.

[00:20:14] How do you sort of develop people skills?

[00:20:15] Is that a big part of what you do?

[00:20:17] So again, I'll give you a quick story

[00:20:19] that might illustrate it.

[00:20:20] First and foremost is this is where mastery comes in, right?

[00:20:22] Everybody wants to get better at what they do.

[00:20:24] It's a golden rule of humanity.

[00:20:26] So how do we give people the ability to get better?

[00:20:29] Well, there's loads of ways you can do that.

[00:20:30] You can spend a load of money on training

[00:20:32] and then some on training courses

[00:20:34] because that makes the employer feel better

[00:20:35] because I've sent you on some training.

[00:20:37] But what you do is you have to go for a career plan

[00:20:39] with everybody.

[00:20:40] Everyone's got to have at least a five year career plan.

[00:20:42] And that career plan can change direction.

[00:20:45] It can deviate, but there has to be a plan.

[00:20:47] There has to be clarity on what that person wants to,

[00:20:50] whether they want to get to what they want to achieve.

[00:20:52] And one of the stories I want to give you

[00:20:54] is a lady that joined us six years ago.

[00:20:58] She joined as financial controller.

[00:21:00] And her career plan was,

[00:21:01] I want to be a financial director.

[00:21:04] So, and she was reporting to me at the time

[00:21:06] and I said, right, well, let's get on that journey

[00:21:08] of getting you ready to be an FD then

[00:21:10] over the next two or three years.

[00:21:12] She said, well, I'm a little bit despondent

[00:21:14] because there's no way that I'm gonna be an FD here

[00:21:17] because you've got this person who's already FD,

[00:21:19] you've got this person who's a CFO.

[00:21:21] They're very young, very dynamic,

[00:21:23] very bought into the business.

[00:21:24] So there's not going to be an opportunity.

[00:21:26] And I went, you're missing the point.

[00:21:27] My job is not to make you FD in this business.

[00:21:29] My job is to make you an FD.

[00:21:31] And if you end up coming to the point of being an FD

[00:21:34] and there's no place here,

[00:21:35] my job is to help you secure an FD role somewhere else.

[00:21:38] That's the job.

[00:21:39] It's not about your opportunity in this business.

[00:21:42] It's your opportunity in your life that matters.

[00:21:44] Fantastic.

[00:21:45] We're sort of four years since the start

[00:21:47] of the pandemic now.

[00:21:48] And lots of businesses still seem to be arguing

[00:21:51] with themselves about whether they should have people

[00:21:54] in the office, be hybrid, be rewrote from the office,

[00:21:56] all those kinds of things.

[00:21:57] It appears to be a debate

[00:21:58] that's still unbelievably still running.

[00:22:01] What does your company do?

[00:22:02] What's your thoughts around that?

[00:22:03] How did the pandemic change your business?

[00:22:06] Pre-pandemic, we had seven offices across the UK and Europe

[00:22:10] with about 100 people in each office.

[00:22:12] It's 50 people in other offices

[00:22:14] and we were doing the traditional thing

[00:22:16] and everybody loved it

[00:22:17] because it was a great working environment,

[00:22:18] great culture.

[00:22:19] The pandemic come along and it changed everything

[00:22:21] and it taught us being leadership,

[00:22:23] us being the owners.

[00:22:25] Oh my God, we can run this entire business from home

[00:22:28] effectively.

[00:22:29] And we did a survey when everyone went home,

[00:22:32] we did a survey about six weeks later

[00:22:33] to see how people were and everyone, 85% said we hate it.

[00:22:36] We wanna get back to the office.

[00:22:38] Obviously we couldn't go back to the office

[00:22:39] because the law said you couldn't

[00:22:41] and we was all at home.

[00:22:43] And then in the July of that year

[00:22:46] we surveyed everybody again

[00:22:47] and 85% said we love it

[00:22:50] because they'd learned to adapt.

[00:22:52] And as a result of that,

[00:22:53] they also realized the freedom they had

[00:22:55] in picking the kids up from school,

[00:22:56] not having to offer permission, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:22:59] So what we learned from that very, very quickly

[00:23:01] was we shut six of our offices

[00:23:05] and we refitted the one major head office

[00:23:07] that we had into a collaboration center

[00:23:10] which means there's no desks,

[00:23:11] it's just counties, big TVs, portables, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:23:15] And we create a philosophy that said

[00:23:17] we're gonna give you each and every one of you

[00:23:19] total 100% authentic autonomy.

[00:23:23] You decide when you go to the office,

[00:23:24] you decide when you start at home

[00:23:26] and the rules you wanna apply

[00:23:27] is you only go at the office to solve problems,

[00:23:30] be creative and have fun.

[00:23:32] They're the only three reasons you go to the office,

[00:23:34] you transact at home.

[00:23:36] What then happens is I've had so many debates with people

[00:23:39] who said, yeah, but what about the coffee morning chats?

[00:23:41] And I very bravely shout they're worthless.

[00:23:44] They have never had any value whatsoever

[00:23:46] because it was never authentic.

[00:23:47] You'd ask how you was the hours you weekend

[00:23:49] and then say I've gotta go and have a call now.

[00:23:51] So, but what we found was that when teams

[00:23:54] have the autonomy to say, right,

[00:23:56] let's meet at the office in next week.

[00:23:58] We haven't seen each other six weeks.

[00:24:00] We wanna solve this problem or create the solution.

[00:24:03] When they turn up, they don't say good morning,

[00:24:05] they cuddle because it's such a richer environment.

[00:24:08] It's such a richer thing

[00:24:09] because you're not seeing each other six weeks.

[00:24:11] And the team bonding has gone off the scale,

[00:24:14] performance has gone off the scale.

[00:24:16] And when people say, yeah, but how do I know

[00:24:18] what they're doing?

[00:24:19] You're asking the wrong question.

[00:24:21] Give people absolute clarity on the outcome

[00:24:24] that you wanna achieve and that they wanna achieve.

[00:24:26] And then let them achieve it their way.

[00:24:29] And you'll be amazed at the results

[00:24:31] but you've got to have the courage to do it.

[00:24:33] And it's the best thing we've ever done

[00:24:35] and we will never deviate.

[00:24:36] So as a final question,

[00:24:39] there'll be lots of people listening

[00:24:41] who are trying to drive change in their business,

[00:24:45] trying to make their business think differently

[00:24:47] about recruitment or people

[00:24:48] or all those kind of things.

[00:24:50] But obviously, you know,

[00:24:51] coming up against a lot of barriers.

[00:24:55] What would your advice be to people

[00:24:57] who want to drive that kind of change

[00:24:59] within organizations?

[00:25:00] How do they get by and how do they do it?

[00:25:02] The first golden rule is, how do you eat an elephant?

[00:25:07] That's the question, right?

[00:25:08] One bite at a time, that's how you eat an elephant.

[00:25:11] And where people go wrong

[00:25:12] is they try to eat the elephant.

[00:25:15] So what you do is you have a structure

[00:25:16] and a plan to eat the elephant

[00:25:18] and then you decide where you start

[00:25:19] and what journey you go on.

[00:25:21] So the first, depending upon what the change is,

[00:25:26] I also do a lot of keynotes.

[00:25:27] One of the things, I love to drive silence in an audience

[00:25:29] and I had an audience one day where I said,

[00:25:32] I've never met a single person, a single client,

[00:25:35] a single supplier in my entire career

[00:25:38] that doesn't love change.

[00:25:40] And of course everyone goes silent,

[00:25:41] literally me like I've got two heads.

[00:25:43] I said, but everybody I've met in my career

[00:25:47] doesn't like the uncertainty of change.

[00:25:52] It's not the change itself, it's about what does that,

[00:25:54] how does that affect me on my team?

[00:25:56] So if you're gonna go through any form of change,

[00:26:00] the first thing you do is you engage your teams to say,

[00:26:04] this is how the change is gonna impact you.

[00:26:07] This is the impact you can have on you and all your teams.

[00:26:10] Once they have that clarity

[00:26:11] and they're engaged in that journey

[00:26:13] and they can have a voice in that journey,

[00:26:15] the change is simple.

[00:26:17] Makes a lot of sense.

[00:26:19] As a final, final question,

[00:26:21] because I just wanna ask you another question,

[00:26:22] how do we look to the future?

[00:26:24] What impact do you think AI might have on business

[00:26:27] or on people, what are you seeing from your perspective?

[00:26:30] What I'm seeing is the word AI being banded about

[00:26:33] and 10% understand,

[00:26:36] and I don't want this to sound condescending,

[00:26:37] and I apologize if it does,

[00:26:38] but 10% understand AI,

[00:26:40] 90% pretend to understand AI

[00:26:42] because it's the word everybody's using.

[00:26:45] What businesses need to do,

[00:26:46] like they only every business needs to do

[00:26:47] is that is the most successful businesses

[00:26:50] are the ones that fail faster than anybody else.

[00:26:53] And to fail fast, you have to try new things.

[00:26:57] If you don't try new things,

[00:26:58] you'll never fail, you'll never learn.

[00:26:59] You have to try new things.

[00:27:01] So one of the things,

[00:27:02] and we're a tech business, right?

[00:27:03] So we've got developers building software

[00:27:05] and all sorts of sexy stuff,

[00:27:06] and it's all fantastic.

[00:27:08] But I've also got a team of 180 odd people

[00:27:11] that are not techies,

[00:27:12] they're not IT, they're not developers.

[00:27:15] And currently they're just sitting back relying on,

[00:27:17] if I want something, I go to the development team.

[00:27:20] So we brought in a specialist team from the US

[00:27:24] probably four months ago now,

[00:27:26] and we brought a team of 30 of our people

[00:27:29] into a three day session

[00:27:31] where they learn how they can use AI

[00:27:34] in their everyday lives,

[00:27:35] whether they're a secretary,

[00:27:36] whether they're an account manager,

[00:27:37] whether they're a HR specialist,

[00:27:40] where they can be self sufficient in the power of AI

[00:27:44] and how it can make their jobs far quicker,

[00:27:46] far more effective and so on and so on.

[00:27:48] What that then done was expose them

[00:27:50] to the art of the possible, which blew them away.

[00:27:52] They have now become champions in AI

[00:27:55] and they maintain the governance of AI

[00:27:58] because you have to have some governance around it.

[00:28:00] Otherwise people can go off and do silly things

[00:28:01] under GDPR problems and so on.

[00:28:03] So you go for a stretch of the process that says,

[00:28:06] here's the safe environment from within you,

[00:28:08] which you can work.

[00:28:10] And now suddenly people that were spending a day

[00:28:12] to solve a problem are spending three and a half seconds

[00:28:15] solving that problem because of the power of AI.

[00:28:17] So you have to engage the average person

[00:28:21] if there is such a thing,

[00:28:22] you have to engage the people that are not techie

[00:28:23] and not developers.

[00:28:25] And it's interesting that some people

[00:28:27] that don't even know how to use Outlook

[00:28:29] were just thriving on AI

[00:28:31] because they just found their creative selves

[00:28:34] and it's powerful stuff.

[00:28:36] So my advice is engage your teams,

[00:28:39] create a safe environment and a controlled environment

[00:28:42] and let them fly.

[00:28:43] Jeff, thank you very much for talking to me.

[00:28:46] You're more than welcome enjoyed it.

[00:28:48] My thanks to Jeff.

[00:28:50] You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts,

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[00:29:19] Thanks very much for listening.

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