The Essence of Strategy: More Than Just Plans With John Meacock

The business model should flow from the strategy. The operating model then should support the business model. Most organizations are doing way too many things. They're doing 15 things around ESG. They should only be doing the ones that absolutely core to strategy. If you look at most organizations that have done a major pivot, they've failed. Everything's digital now. If businesses haven't gone and really adopted everything online, digitized everything that they can, or Automated everything they can; they're in trouble.

What do you see as some of the big future trends that people should be considering? Yeah.

Hi, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us today. We've got John Miko joining us here in the studio. John's the prior head of strategy globally for Deloitte and also turned VC and all all-round advisor. So. Alex, what are we going to talk about today?

Today we're going to talk about strategy, what good strategy looks like and how it interacts with innovation. We're also going to talk about some future trends as well and how that plays a part when developing strategy.

Hope you enjoy the show.

Enjoy. Thanks for tuning in.

Okay, John Miko, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's great to have you down from Sydney and thank you for making the time to speak with our listeners today. We're going to get straight into the content, knowing you're the strategy expert. I've got the The great question, what is strategy?

So strategy's an integrated set of choices. It really is choices about what is our direction, what are the things that we are going to do? And the trouble is that often people see strategy as a pick list of initiatives, but it's actually a set of choices that you make. And a choice means there are things that you will do, but there are also things you won't do. But it should be an integrative set of choices that set a very clear direction for the organisation.

And what makes, well, how do you get good choices instead of bad choices to make? Like what defines that?

Yeah, well, I mean, strategy people see as a creative process, which there is an element of creative process, but in fact it's also based on deep analysis, deep research. And that's the challenge. People think that it's often just sitting around doing a workshop and dreaming these things and think we'd like to be this or we'd like to be that rather than really understanding in great depth about the organisation and its capabilities, about the market, and then making choices around which way you're going to go that allow you to win. And I think that's the other word that I often, people don't like, but it's about playing to win. And I would argue that most strategies I see are about playing to compete. Rather than playing to win, particularly in Australia. And I think where are you going to win? In which parts of the market? For which talent? Which capital? It is about winning. And people say that sometimes it's an ugly word, but it really should be about what you're about.

It's funny you mentioned that actually. And I'm not sure if this is related, but it comes to mind. We're currently planning a 7-year-old's birthday party and talking about pass the parcel. And so So I was gonna wrap something up and put it in the middle and the winner gets a big prize. But the feedback was that no, everybody gets a prize and everybody gets to play. Okay, so how do you form, like where do you start from with that strategy process?

Yeah.

Yeah, how do you sort of go about thinking about it? And you would've seen many different Yeah.

And look, I'd say, and this hopefully doesn't sound arrogant, but I've seen very few good strategies. Most good strategies aren't what I would call really clear. And a strategy should be relatively easy to execute because the choices should be very clear and the direction should be very clear and the destination should be very clear. So I think it's really about making those choices and picking a destination you want to be. The criticality of that is you have to have the capabilities to allow you to get to that destination. So it really is that thing about do you really understand the organisation's current capabilities and then what capabilities can we build on and build on readily that allow us to actually win in the areas we've chosen? Because you can create this great strategy that we're going to be this, but if you don't have those capabilities to get there, then it's a waste of time.

Yeah.

So it's being really clear about where you have that advantage and that ability to create a strategy, a direction and choices that you will win in. And one of the things I always say is if you read most strategy documents, they're ridiculous because if they did ever come true, you'd own the whole market, which makes no sense, right? You should be able to very clearly say, Here's where we are going to win in this area and this is where our competitors are going to win because they have different capabilities, different strengths. And it should be quite clear where you will win and they will win. If you can't do that, then your strategy doesn't make sense because you, as I said, you pick up most strategies and it will be, oh, we'll own 100% of the market and that's not going to happen in any competitive industry. But it's really picking those areas where you will win and you will dominate. And I always say to people, it's really interesting, right? If you say, look, there's 4 big companies, we're going to end up with 25% of the market. The last thing you want is 25% of the market. What you want is say, where are those areas we're going to have 70 or 80% of the market?

Yeah.

There'll be others we'll have 0 to 10, right? Now overall that might add up to 25, but where are those areas we're going to win that allow us to therefore get superior profits in those segments? The last thing we want to try and do is own 25% of a whole market. So it's being really clear about those choices and those places in the market where we actually will win and have a dominant position.

Yeah. Do you think that's taking a step back? Do you think certain industries or companies try and be all things to all people at certain times in their lifespan and then dial down to be very specific in others?

Yeah, look, I think it is. just again, poor strategy. They do look at, oh, well, we've got 25% of the market or 20% of the market. We've got to maintain that rather than— and then what you end up in is often effectively in a price war because you're all trying to just maintain market share rather than saying, well, how do I use my capabilities to get 70%, 60%, 80% of that segment? Therefore I make superior profits. And yes, that means I will have to not have any or a very small percentage of another segment. But that's a far better strategy than just trying to protect 20% market share.

Absolutely.

So it's really changing the thinking, changing the mindset around how you develop a strategy. Yeah.

And I guess that's also, yeah, I mean you see that a lot as well in a lot of companies recently who have these crazy pivots as they're called to reinvent themselves as companies. Would you argue that that's because the original strategy was poor or do you think they still haven't quite—

Well, interesting enough, most organisations really struggle to articulate what makes them great. And it's part of a critical part of a strategy. What is it around the various capabilities or the set of capabilities or the way that we operate that allow us to be great and to win? And you find that most people can't articulate that. I mean, it's not easy.

Yeah.

But it's often why you find Australian companies particularly, I think, really fail overseas because they've become quite a big player in a market, often in a market which has got oligopolies and say, well, because we're good at this in Australia, we'll go overseas and go into that industry. Not really understanding how they codified the things that really make them great and what those capabilities are. And then they get into a foreign market where you don't have the same sort of linkages and industry structures, et cetera. You don't really understand what your core capabilities are and then you fail in that market. So I think the trouble is too much of it's around, well, we've been in this industry, it's the way we've always operated, but you haven't really sat back and said, well, what is it around those capabilities that make us great and allow us to win in the areas we've chosen?

Yeah.

And so then I think when people just pivot, yeah, often they're pivoting but not really understanding what are the capabilities I need to win in that market, right? If I'm not winning here, well, why do I think I'm going to win there if I haven't really understood the dynamics and what are the things that allow me to be successful? Yeah, thanks, John.

So on that articulation, John, I imagine you are sort of working with clients to strip it back to its core. What does that process look like? And as a consultant sort of trying to narrow in a business, helping them pull that strategy together, how do you strip it back to what it really is and test it?

Yeah, look, it's really testing where we think we've been successful, but then really understanding what are those set of capabilities that allow that and proving that it is. I get an example of a company that came to me, this was a number of years ago and said, look, we are really good at X. I won't name what X was because I don't want to disclose. And we've done all the analysis and we've seen that when we do X in a series of things, we've been successful. And so I went down the path and said, well, have you got the capabilities codified? What makes you good at X? Oh, we are good at X because we're more successful every time we do it. They couldn't actually answer the question.

Yeah.

So I said, well, I said, being quite flippant, but I said, look, how do you know you just haven't got 2 65-year-old blokes sitting in the back of the office who are really good at that and about to retire? And they sort of thought that was funny and walked away. It was the CEO and the executive team. Anyhow, about 3 days later, I got a call from the CEO who said, this is a bit embarrassing. We haven't got 2 65-year-old blokes sitting in the back. We've only got one. And asked us to then send a strategy team in because yes, they were right that when they'd done X, they were more successful, but they didn't actually really understand what had made them successful and what were the capabilities and had they codified them in a way that would allow them to go and replicate X.

Yeah.

So I think that in some ways that sounds a silly story, but it's a true story. But it's what you see very often is really understanding just because we've been in an industry for a long time, we sort of know what happens, but have we really codified it? And how we then understand the ability to actually pivot a bit or shift a bit if the market changes or we go into a new market. Do we really understand how we replicate those capabilities? And most organisations don't.

Yeah.

Okay. For fear of being compared to the length of a piece of string, how long does it take to formulate a good strategy?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's probably 3 months or so because it is, there are really interesting bits of strategy, there are boring bits of strategy, which is incredibly deep analysis of the organisation, the organisation performance, the market. I remember doing a strategy in 2015 for Deloitte. Now that's an industry that everyone full of financial people, et cetera. But we really showed that in fact the professional services firms had been losing about 1% gross margin a year for 10 years.

Wow.

But no one had focused on it. I know that sounds, because partner profits were going up, profits were going up because they were increasing leverage. So instead of having 1 partner to 10 people, they'd move it to 1 to 15. They'd grown the size of the firms, they'd reduced back office costs, they'd taken more offshore. So profits going up, everything fine. But what we looked at it and said by doing, analysing in every way saying, hey, in fact what we called it the jaws of death, the cost of staffing was growing faster than pricing.

Mm.

And in fact your gross margin was actually declining.

Right.

And so it's that interesting of really getting in and understanding it and saying, well, hey, we had to shift the whole strategy, the whole game and the whole business model was going to have to change. And people hadn't done that analysis to the level that they really should. The upfront analysis, everything's fine. The world's getting more profitable, firms are growing, partners' incomes are going up, everything's great. In reality, The underlying business model was broken and needed to shift. Wow.

How often should you be revisiting your strategy doc?

Well, I think you have to do it every year. I mean, you should be setting long-term strategies. My view is you should be setting even sort of 10-year type visions. You should be doing sort of 5-year strategies, but then you break it into very short-term sort of 3-month type sprints. But then there should be an annual review. I mean, it's a pet subject, but strategies, business plans, budgets often are a waste of time. Because one of the things you always say, and budgets are my favourite, that people spend this inordinate amount of time getting it down to the final dollar.

Yeah.

Yet they're generally a waste of time. The whole thing should be around what are the assumptions we've based it on? Because if someone hits their budget, they could well have done incredibly poorly because the assumptions that they based it on, they probably should have done twice what their budget was or they could have done incredibly well because the assumptions. But to me it's going and looking at the assumptions.

Yeah.

And then the same with the strategy. What have we based the assumptions on around what's happening in the market, what's happening in the economy? what's happening with competitors. So we should be looking at that on an annual basis to review it and say, well, do we tweak? But the aim should be, even in this day and age where we've got such rapid shifts, you should still have this long-term vision that you are heading in a direction. Now it won't be a straight line to that, you will vary, but you should clearly be basing it on a long-term perspective around what the mission and and vision for the organization is.

So John, knowing that you're sort of involved in both ends of town, it sort of feels like you're talking about that annual plan, which might be a listed business or a significant sort of local hirer versus your 1 or 2 person startup or a lot of the venture capital sort of businesses that you're supporting through venture capital, I mean. I imagine that they're much more nimble, much more reactive, much more shiny object, chase it down. Or are there things that go through it?

It shouldn't be much different. And interesting enough, if you look at most organizations, you used the word pivot before. If you look at most organizations that have done a major pivot, they've failed. Pivots don't work generally. Now that doesn't mean the people who haven't pivoted work as well, but But it really is around someone being very clear around what the vision and mission is, very clear around what are the capabilities that they're going to need to win in that and really going and focusing and building those choices.

Yeah.

So yeah, if you're a smaller organisation, you're not going to have the same levels of capacity to analyse and that sort of thing. But in some ways it's not different. It's really around being really clear around What are we going to do and what are we going to focus on? It goes to one of my perverse laws though, interesting enough. Some ways big is harder. I mean, my view is the bigger you are, the more you have to focus. So there's a perverse law that when you're small, you can do lots of things. As you get bigger, you need to focus down on only a few things. So there's some perverse laws in strategy in terms of the way it works.

I see you've implanted your first analogy. So I'm looking forward to them keep flowing out. Maybe just, I'm really curious about that articulation piece because obviously that's, if you can finally articulate what it is your strategy is, then obviously it's very clear and everything falls out of that. Are there any examples, just to put you on the spot, any examples you think, oh, company X had that down pat or a bad one you think as an example to illustrate what good articulation could be?

Yeah, there's a few things. Perhaps answer it more generally first, but there's a few things that I always think. I think there has to be a really deep underlying question you need to be able to answer that the strategy's answering. So I think there has to be a very clear single, and one of the first global strategies that did with Deloitte, and I obviously use the Deloitte example there, but we went out to globalise the firm. There was a very clear perspective that we had an issue, that we had to globalise the firm if we were going to be successful. So there was an underlying theme, underlying question that was very clear, right? The one that I'd mentioned, the first one I did with Deloitte was the jaws of death and the fact that the declining margin, we had to have a strategy that changed that. We were able to reverse that. So there's got to be a really clear underlying theme that I think has to go with a strategy, particularly when you start talking 5-year strategies. I think the other thing that's really critical is there has to be very clearly, people have to be able to, when you articulate the strategy, sort of have a clear view of what the destination is. And so that one I used when we were going to globalise the firm, people may have slightly different views of what that meant, but But they could see that in 5 years if we'd globalised the firm, they had a picture of what that could be. Whereas often those strategies is you find it, there might be a pick list of initiatives, but trying to work out exactly what's it going to look like when we get there can be really difficult for people. So I think they're the sort of things that I think become really critical. And it's not just everyone, oh, we're going to be number one and we're going to be the most profitable and we're going to be there. I think you have to have something that makes it very tangible for people to really understand, what's it going to look like when we get there and what are we really trying to solve?

It's quite interesting because we ran this exercise in one of the CEO workshops and we brought up some businesses with their vision statement. And it was interesting, the ones that were quite less refined. We saw that they maybe hadn't done great financial performance. And so there was an interesting exercise to do that. But is a vision statement also the articulation of strategy? Is that how you see that playing out?

Yeah, I mean, I think there's, I always look at it and say, well, you've got a mission. There's a bigger mission that you hopefully galvanise people around. Then you've got a vision statement that really should absolutely punctuate the strategy, if you like. And that's what it's going to look like when we get there. And then you go down to your strategy. But I mean, I think the fascinating thing with most of these, and you've heard me say this before, but if you go into any industry, right? If you went into retail, I would argue most strategies, you could just change the name between competitors and it would look fine. Whereas I argue that you should be able to take the name off a strategy and you still should be able to read it and say that undoubtedly has to be Deloitte's or Woolworths or whoever's strategy. Because the capabilities that are articulated, the choices are articulated.

Yeah.

The only one who can complete that is Deloitte or is it Woolworths or whoever? whoever you want to name. I would argue most strategies, if you put Coles name on the Woolworths strategy, it'd look fine, right?

Yeah.

Sorry. And please, I'm not commenting about the Coles or Woolworths strategies when I say that, but just using those as examples. And that's what you find why I think most strategies are poor. They are very generic. They are not really saying, hey, that is absolutely suiting the capabilities that that organisation has. And therefore it can only be that organisation.

And why do you think that is, John?

Because I think they are seen as these big creative exercises that we're going to just, and it's mainly PowerPoint rather than seeing strategy as a real discipline. Everyone thinks they're quite good at strategy rather than really saying, well, hey, this is a It's a discipline around deep analysis and then really understanding what are the things we need to do to win in that sector or that industry or within those domains. Yeah.

And the actual business model, how does the business model in terms of whether it's delegations or whether it's regulated or the restrictions that are put on what the actual doing of the work is versus how flexible this strategy needs to be. I think I'm confusing myself with my own question, but yeah.

If I'm totally right, I mean, the business model should flow from the strategy, right? And then the operating model then should support the business model. So by that I mean, you should be, what we are seeing in a lot of organisations at the moment, I would argue, is a shift of business model where we're shifting to more of the sort of subscription type model, for example.

Yeah.

Which makes so much sense. Apple basically doubled their market cap without shifting revenue because they shifted their level of subscription revenue from about 6% of revenue to 20%. Complete rerating. But that's a massive shift of business model.

Yeah.

Because what it says is then instead of selling product to someone, effectively they're subscribing to iTunes, increasingly subscribing to hardware, they're renting it effectively rather than buying it. What it does though is incredibly powerful because you lock them in, you lock them in for very long periods of time. You've got monthly touchpoints, so you continually then the ability to upsell and on-sell. So it's a huge shift. So I would argue that's the business model shift. An operating model is then those delegations of the rights, responsibilities and how the business operates to actually undertake that business model. But both of those should be dictated by the strategy around what are we trying to achieve and how we're trying to get there.

Yeah.

So the terms that I think are often misused and confused. But I think being really clear about our strategy, being really clear about what is the business model. And then the operating model is probably one of the most powerful things that is often not done by organisations.

Right.

That they shift their strategy a bit or they shift their business model a bit. They don't even go and try and rearticulate the operating model. But then there's complete confusion within an organisation and people wonder why sometimes they struggle with the strategy. because the levels of responsibility and accountability aren't clear and you've changed things around but haven't shifted the operating model and shifted the delegation rights. Yeah, yeah.

Awesome. So like a recruiter that has seen many, many CVs can spend 3 seconds on a CV and say a lot about that CV. Are there things that you look for in a strategy? or truthisms that you know that if that's not there, something will happen. Are there any insights around that? What you might—

Yeah, look, it goes to some of the things I've already said, but very clearly, is there a core underlying issue they're trying to solve? Is there a very clear direction? I think really understanding, I always call them refining rods, but Are there some clear capabilities that run through the organisation and therefore whatever divisions or business units attach to those defining rods that actually make them stronger? Otherwise, why are they in that organisation? They should be in another one. So I look for those sort of things, right?

Yeah.

Real clarity of measures and the realism of measures that saying, okay, well, everyone wants to be number 1, but in Australia, in Deloitte for a long time, we had the motto of number 2 and different, right?

Yeah.

Because we were realistic. We were not within a 5-year period going to get to number 1. So why put it out there? Most people do and you immediately, that's ridiculous, right? You're not going to get to number 1, right? But our thing was, and different was all around that we knew we had to be innovative and do things differently. And that would take us, and that was taking us from number 4 to number 2.

Yeah.

But it was, you know, so I think there's a level of realism and realism of where your starting position is, what the capabilities you've got that will get you there. You can go through that pretty quickly and work out whether this thing is really just a, you know, nice feel-good PowerPoint, but it's got no reality and therefore not gonna happen. Or is it something that's been anchored in a lot of depth of analysis, a realism of where you're at and then what are the capabilities you have or need to build to get to where you want to go? Yeah.

I was going to ask a bit more of a personal question, I guess.

Sure.

How did you get into strategy?

Look, I was fortunate. I came out of uni and went into accounting, but I'd done some marketing and strategy at university, which sadly in those days was probably a bit unusual. But then they gave me a chance across into consulting after 2 years, which in those days consulting tended to be done at a much more senior level.

Yeah.

So I got an opportunity very early on to get in consulting and then work through all the strategy disciplines from there.

Fantastic.

Yeah, it was lucky. And then sort of went and started my own business. And then when you start your own business, you realise that you've got to make the right choices and head in the right direction. You've got limited capability, well, limited capital, limited capability. So you live strategy pretty hard when you're trying to run your own business.

Yeah.

Coming back to what it is that you don't do in terms of the challenges. Yeah, very much. And that's the thing. I mean, people always seem surprised by that, but I spend as much time in a strategy writing down, this means these are the things we won't do.

Right.

And I always used to say, look, if we were up against, when I was in Deloitte Global, et cetera, right? If we were up against Accenture, in most situations it should have been a no-brainer who won, either us or them, right? There are clearly some areas of overlap, but in a lot of areas they should never have competed against us in some of those and we probably should never have competed against them in others, right? It should be almost that clear. Clear. Now, as in, there is grey areas, but you should be very clear that that aligns with where your real capabilities and strategy, and you should be able to articulate that very clearly. But sadly, most people can't. They wonder why they don't win something or aren't successful, but they haven't really worked out what their core capabilities and what their competitive moat is.

Yeah, it's interesting. In that professional services industry, which is sort of probably taken a little bit of a reputation battering, I guess.

Sadly, yep.

Sadly, after your time there, obviously. What's your view or perspectives around having the accounting auditing with the strategy consulting practice together as the one entity? And there's been examples of of professional services trying to split them out or bring them back. And it's sort of like this ongoing thing. What's your view on that?

Sadly, they're trying to solve the wrong thing. And I've been working and trying to work with regulators around the globe. The issues are not around the fact that you've got consulting with audit, right?

Yeah.

I mean, the simple thing is all you do is you actually ban and say, well, if you're auditing Woolworths, then you can do no other services for Woolworths. Simple as that. That's it. But a firm can't audit Woolworths or any other company you name without accessing a broad range of skills. If they stand up standalone audit firms, you are going to see the quality of audit diminish drastically. And that's really sad. So the firms need to be able to call on a whole raft of capabilities to do an effective audit. And so they're sort of tackling the wrong thing. They're trying to create this separation that actually will diminish the quality of audit rather than saying, let's just have some clear guidelines that, you know, that's it. And, you know, sadly, some of the things that have happened are a fault of process, but they're not a fault of the structure. You shouldn't leak information or share information across. Every profession has a range of standards that they should uphold and that's what should happen. So you can't create a structural shift for bad behaviour and you actually will diminish— Audit's been one of the critical components of our capital structure and capital markets. And I think you are going to really damage that if you actually split the firms. And that's not said from a firm perspective, it's said from a skills perspective and what's really needed. So yeah, I think there's some, it's interesting that there's a hammer trying to find a solution, but they're not, it's not a nail they're looking for. Yeah.

And on that audit, there's this concept or idea with the advent, well, not the advent, but the wide sort of adoption of AI around this sort of real-time auditing versus each 6, 12 months bringing in the auditing firm and putting them in the dark room in the corner. Do you see the merit in that?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, you can do it now. I mean, there can be a 100% audit of transactions, right? You don't need to sample and that sort of thing. This continuous auditing, this continuous monitoring.

Yeah.

I think that's fantastic. And that should easily happen. The benefit of that is you can spit out a whole range of insight from monitoring every day. The company should be doing that anyhow. But no, I think these, I don't understand why we completely reliant on technology systems, AI to run a business and then we audit manually. So yeah, I think continuous monitoring, continuous auditing makes huge sense.

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Is there any companies or industries where it's just not possible to move to that recurring revenue type of business?

Yeah, look, most can, right? I mean, there will be some, but most can. It's interesting, you go in the US, big things like Rent the Runway, clothes have gone to a rental model, right? You pay a subscription and go and get some clothes and take them back at the end of the month. I did some work in the US with Nissan, came out with Nissan Switch, which was they worked out that people were paying a few hundred dollars a month for car insurance, a few hundred dollars a month for lease. So for $699, you got a new Nissan car, fully insured, fully maintained. They called it Switch because if you had a sedan and you needed to shift some furniture on the weekend, you could switch it and take an SUV. And so you've seen that, you've seen a whole range, clearly things like Music industry's gone there, increasingly laptops. So there's a lot that can be done. There may be some things, but increasingly it's really around how do I get that ability to have touchpoints with my customer every month? And then I can upgrade them every couple of years and they're continually getting the newest of service, the newest of product. I mean, a lot of services are going there. Clearly things like professional services are moving into what they call operate managed service models where they're continually trying to get that sort of 5-year license where they're operating something. So increasingly you're seeing that as becoming a huge model. Now there'll be other models coming along, but it's really that the more data you have, the better AI, the more understanding you've got, then the more you can start to sort of work that model. So yeah, I think so the digital, the business model, I mean, clearly, I think we are seeing this experience economy. You hear a lot about it, but from both a customer and an employee, this understanding around creating experience for them, it's no longer just about a product or a service. It's how do you, and again, it's around data and AI. How do you think about that? What is that that really allows your customer and your employee and even broader stakeholders to be really engaged and buy into your brand, buy into that understanding of what the experience is going to be? And again, very— so most of my things end up being very data and AI and analytical-based, I think becomes critical. I think the geopolitical is a big issue as we've seen. But I think people just look at it very simply rather than really trying to think about it, not just supply chains, but the whole value chain. Where does value flow? How do you flow value? How do you think about that from a geopolitical area? And it's really interesting for me, the number of organisations that I talk to that are doing in Australia that are getting huge benefit from things like Five Eyes. The US is now coming to a lot of Australian companies to buy stuff that they may have sourced from all around the rest of the world now.

What's Five Eyes?

The security we've got with US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. And because they're part of the Five Eyes, US is buying more stuff from us. So it's interesting when you start looking at how these geopolitical blocks will play out, everything from technology, from supply chains to value chains. I think you really have to think about that in those choices around how you play internationally. So I think that becomes quite critical.

Yeah.

So I think that's important. Inflation, interest rates is clearly a key area. And really thinking about that and understanding how your business responds. Again, I think I'd argue most people don't analyse their business particularly well and they have these truisms that our business responds this way to inflation or this way to high interest rates rather than really understanding it. And I had a beautiful one the other day, a business leader who I really admire, And he's in a very margin-sensitive business and they've been doing really well through the rising interest rates and rising inflation. I said, well, how do you do it? And often it's a really simple answer. So he went, he got 2 guys out of Venezuela and flew them out with his leadership team 'cause he said they've been dealing with high inflation for years.

We haven't had it.

We haven't had it, right? So he said, I got these guys, we spent a week with 'em, masterclass, and then they've put principles in and they've done really well, right? So often it's simple, you looking for those examples of where someone's done it and how do you, 'cause the challenge is most businesses, they've lost the muscle to reprice and reshift. Whereas clearly you go and grab a couple of guys out of Venezuela and come and talk to us.

Great idea.

But thinking about that and how that plays out and understanding it rather than just, knee-jerk reaction of, well, this is how we will deal with it, is I think a really critical component. So there's some of the trends that I think become really important for people to think about and learn from and sort of understand how their business is going to respond in areas.

Is that part of the strategy's responsibility in your view in terms of stress testing the business?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And basically I said the whole premise of the go-forward strategy should be around, well, you have to take a view. Now, I always like the exercise too. I've always done exercises where you have quite extreme examples.

Yeah.

And then you look at 4 different scenarios and then you say, well, what are the things that are true across any scenario? So you might have, a 2 by 2, one end on this axis, it's highly regulated and this end it's deregulated and this might be low inflation and high inflation. So you end up with quite 4 scenarios, but you'll find 2 or 3 sort of common factors around how the business should respond. So you should be trying to always test those things and say, well, what are our assumptions? What happens if that doesn't occur? How are we going to play out? But The interesting thing is strategy. I always argue people think a strategy is a, you get a team in, do a strategy and away it goes. Whereas most organizations should have a strong strategy group that's continually evaluating things, continually looking at little projects, doing things that allow them to be continually evolving and doing what they're doing.

Yeah.

But stress testing is an absolutely critical component.

Yeah, it's quite linked to sort of a crisis management scenario.

Yeah.

Training as well.

Well, the simple thing is I always say that risk is the flip side of strategy, right? And so it's, you know, so generally people who are in strategy should be good at risk as well because you're looking at, they are absolutely the flip side. What are your major risks? They're obviously, a lot of that's got to do with your strategy and your strategy not working and how do you respond? So, you know, they are very much, Yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

And what's your take on the, I'll throw in an analogy just to get them flowing, culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's the most ridiculous statement, right? I mean, culture is incredibly important. Strategy is incredibly important, right? So, you know, creating a strategy without having a great culture is incredibly hard. But having a great culture but no strategy is a waste of time, right? Everyone's happy, but no one's going anywhere, right?

Yeah.

So I mean, people just make this statement. Often the reason I think that it's been used is often the strategy's been poor. And so people have done things because they've worked hard to try and move the organization forward, but they're just doing it in a way Without clear strategy. If you've got clear strategy, generally it's easy for people to understand where they're going and work towards something. But you need both. But this idea that one ranks above the other, I think is a ridiculous statement.

In the same vein, there's sort of a similar sentence I hear a bit, which is around execution will beat strategy every day. Like some version of that.

What's your view on that?

Well, again, what are you executing?

Right?

Yeah. And generally that's again there because people are executing projects that may actually have very little relation to the strategy because the strategy's not clear. I mean, you should have 4 or 5 initiatives that come from the strategy that are incredibly clear that what needs to be done. Yes, you need to have the execution plans and execute it, But, you know, that then requires focus and it requires focus and clarity that, hey, you know what, we are going to do that, but we have clearly said we're not gonna do that. So, you know, what you find in this whole thing when people say that is the strategy's not clear. They've executed well on a few projects, but, you know, are they heading to the right destination? They wouldn't know. And, you know, it's because the strategy's been unclear and the clarity of choices has been unclear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess coming back to that clarity section as well and the implementation maybe of strategy, but how does that link into leadership?

Well, leadership, I think clearly it has to be led from the top. But again, leadership's much easier when you've got clarity, right? And you go to a business unit and they know how they fit in within a strategy and they know what's expected of them and what's the boundaries within which they've got to operate.

Yeah.

And I would argue that so much of poor leadership is the fact that there is lack of clarity and people are making it up as they go. And therefore it becomes, there's a lack of decisiveness, there's a lack of clarity of direction. I think people like, I always go back to even in politics, You like someone who sets a clear direction. Even if you don't like the direction, you then know how you can work to either combat or work within that direction. But you want someone who's set a clear direction. And it's the same within a company. Have you got a very clear strategy, a clear direction that people can follow or at least people respond to?

Just one last question from me before I hand over to you, Alex. This social license, so putting together corporate strategy or business strategy, ESG, social license, and the other sort of influences that play into that are these sort of stakeholder groups, whether that's shareholders, employees, customers. How do you bring all of that together in a strategy that—

Yeah.

has these parties all aligned where there may be conflicts of interest across the board.

Yeah. Well, and it's probably the other trend I didn't mention, but so thank you. But yeah, ESG I think is generally poorly done because it's, again, it has to be core to strategy, right? So I think what you find is most organizations are doing way too many things. They're doing 15 things around ESG. I mean, there was something like 450 different ESG measures in corporate reporting last year.

Wow.

Yeah. So my view is organisations should be doing 2 or 3. They should only be doing the ones that absolutely core to strategy. And very often they're given to an ESG manager who sits off the side, maybe not even on the exec, which I think is ridiculous. And then you have to be really clear around, well, how does that add value to the organisation and value to shareholders and value to stakeholders? I think you've heard me before, but I recently sat down with the CFO of an ASX 10 who was very keen to tell me about all the things they were doing. And I said, look, they're all fabulous, right? They're great. Show me that they're more than social licence. Show me that they're actually adding real value, which that person struggled to do. And so it should be very clear that it's core to strategy, it's core to value, it's core in the end then to getting the right capital, that people will have capital preferences that will attract capital.

Yeah.

So I think that sadly, and I understand it because there's so much stakeholder and employee pressure that people end up doing 15+ different measures and different things and they're effectively just dipping their toe into a whole range of things rather than saying, you know what? Yeah, those 3 things are really important, but we don't have the capacity to do it. These 3 are absolutely core to our strategy. We're putting huge effort and money into it. And therefore they're going to add value to the organisation in the end. And yes, those other 3 things are great things, but they're just not going to fit our organisation, which is the same as going back to core strategy, right? There are, you know, there's 100 initiatives we can do, but we're only going to do 5 because they are the things that we have the capability for.

Yeah.

They fit within our core. So again, it's a choice thing and people are really hard at making choices. They sort of want to do everything or want to think they can do everything rather than making those choices.

And just before I end up, Alex, just a follow-up to that, although it's not related, so I'm sneaking one more in. Just, you've had the pleasure of working in strategy sort of across the globe. CEO tenure here is sort of around that 6 years, very different to what it might be in Japan and the US. Do you see that the one in the top job, does that influence then how effective a strategy is or the ability to plan longer term? Have you noticed subtle differences there?

Yeah, look, it's interesting. I mean, our problem is partly the structure of our funds mean that we are short-term. People talk about the fact that the US has sort of quarterly reporting, but We have funds that have to report performance monthly. So it has got to the point where I think strategy has become too short-term. And I say there's a perverse thing where we used to think that private equity was short-term and public company was long-term. I'd argue it's flipped now.

Yeah.

You want to restructure a company, you take it private because they'll give you 5 years to get it done and get it right. Whereas you don't have that ability to do it in a public company because you've got funds measuring your share performance on a monthly basis and reporting it. So I think that is a real challenge is tenure and the way people are rewarded has become a real issue. I'm not sure the US is a lot better. And Japan obviously by nature has had this long-termism. And probably a place like Canada is quite an interesting one to look at because they have a very similar market structure to us, but they have some of their big pension funds and those sort of things are much longer term. And I think therefore probably give you a longer term ability to look at performance. But no, I think it is a challenge around the fact that our public companies are becoming short-termism. Sadly, what that's doing in a way, and I know I'm branching from your question, but sadly what that's doing in a way is reducing the number of public companies we've got and therefore making almost the stock exchanges sort of subscale. And so you're just pushing more and more money into the private markets. And I I think that's a trend that we're seeing, have been seeing for a while and will continue to see. So I think people will see the fact that private, big private ownership is the way that they can actually grow a company and transform a company and don't really need the public company money access that we've had in history. Yeah.

And that's all sort of stemming down from who's putting the money in, the funds, the managed funds.

Yeah, managed funds. And they can take a much better long-term hold rather than just marking to market on a daily basis that the stock market gives you, right?

Wow.

Yeah, that makes sense.

I guess I've got one more question before we jump in. Coming back to what you were talking about earlier about sort of making smart choices, whether that's in the VC sphere or talking about strategy, do you have a strategy for making the right choices?

Well, I think I think it's an interesting one. And again, I observe it from good CEOs that I've worked with, et cetera. They have a process about making decisions. And it's an interesting one that I think people don't reflect on around thinking, how do I make a decision? And so I think it's that interesting one around, do I have to make a binary decision so early? So is there a way of making it maybe delaying a decision so that I've still got some optionality. I think it's thinking about what's the sort of information that I need to make a decision and then trying to understand what is the process that I go through to make a decision, which is again, not that different to strategy. But I think even in a— and it is interesting, I don't know how you reflect it, but I know one thing I often reflect on is I can look at some decisions and because it's in an area I know well, can be a really big decision, but I can make it quickly. At other times it can be quite a small decision, but you know it's in an area that's not yours and you actually struggle to it. So it's quite interesting to reflect on decision-making and how you make decisions and what's the process to make decisions. And I don't think we do that enough.

Yeah.

And often that also goes into things like, I think when you've got really hard decisions, how do you break the decision down into a range of different parts? So that what you're doing is making a series of small decisions that then add up rather than just trying to make these big complex decisions in, which is just plucking something out of the air rather than actually saying, look, this is a considered choice rather than just a pick list.

Yeah.

So long-winded and maybe a bit garbled, but I think there is thinking more and more about it. Well, how do I make that decision and what are the things that I need to make it and what's my process?

Absolutely. I guess especially when there's incomplete information anyway.

Yeah. And there always is. I mean, you're always, in essence, I think in any decision you're taking a projection forward. But I think again, that ability, like in a strategy to say, well, what are the assumptions I'm making? And therefore in 3 months' time, if suddenly I found that I've been assuming that interest rates are going up or that doesn't happen, well, Then reflect on that decision. Was it the right decision? Most decisions are not completely irreversible. So you really, if you understand the assumptions you've based the decision on, then you've got an ability to reflect and change rather than just knee-jerk on the basis of, well, that looks wrong now. Well, yeah, it's wrong because I thought interest rates are going up and now they're going down sort of thing. Yeah, yeah.

No, that's fascinating. Thank you, John. Anything to add?

No, I think we'll get you into your short-form questions because I'm excited with one of them. Well, all of them, but there's one in particular I want to see what John says.

Awesome. All right, John, these, as you say, sort of some shorter-form questions. Please do expand, as the why is always very interesting. Do you have a favorite quote?

I've got a lot of favorite quotes, actually. But There was one I used for a long time that it was always a bit strange, but it was think Benetton, think sheep, right? And people would look at you strangely, but it was around when this sort of whole connected economy was emerging. And it was the way that Benetton had at that stage, who were sort of the leading fashion provider, had their information systems so well organized that They said when someone was buying a woolen jumper off a shelf in Scandinavia, they were sending a message to an Australian farmer to shear another sheep sort of thing. And it was a strange one, but it was one of those things around how well connected you had to be, what data you had to have, those sort of things to be successful in business.

Yeah.

So it was a bit of a strange one, but that was always a favourite one of that real essence of how did you think about business and how you should run a successful business.

Absolutely. That points to the whole sort of 3 alignments of strategy, business model, and operations.

Yeah.

Actually, Messina has that sort of from paddock to plate sort of thing where they have their own dairy farms and they massage the cows and to get the right consistency of the—

Yeah. And you can do it by being integrated or you can do it as in that case by saying, well, You treat the whole ecosystem and value chain, supply chain as part of, and you're informing them and sharing that. Cisco were incredibly good at that. 99% of products or of our product Cisco didn't touch, but they had their ecosystem working so well that they owned the customer and the IP, but they had manufacturers and putting together. And so that understanding of how you make that work by sharing of information, sharing of data is a really critical bit that most people don't think about. Very true. Thanks, John.

What book would you say has had the biggest impact on you either personally or professionally?

Look, there was one years ago, it's back in the beginning of 2000 that was called Funky Business. And it was written by a couple of Swedish professors. But again, that was the same thing. And it was, I suppose it was really at that start of this whole technology revolution, shift of the way business worked that, you know, I'd be the last to ever call myself a technologist, but, you know, I'm vitally interested in it because it's how you change models, how you create strategy. And it was a funny book, but it was one of those ones that really brought home this massive shift around the way the world was going to go in terms of online and digital. And yet it was written in probably, it was probably in the dot-com boom, but it was written around probably '99, 2000. And yeah, it had a huge impact on the way thinking about business models and and technology impact.

I think it's safe to call yourself a technologist if you're second to stage behind sort of Jack Ma and who's the Tesla guy?

Elon. Yeah, no, I know a bit about it. But I'm much more a strategy and business model junkie than tech.

Well, I guess you can't really get away from it if you want to be good in that. You kind of have to be the—

Talking about trends.

But I always say to people too, I mean, I get stunned when people are going, we've got a corporate strategy, we've got a digital strategy. And I don't know, how do you do a corporate strategy if it's not digital in this day and age? I don't know how you separate those things. And so, and then they, you've heard me say this, the other thing that I always find very strange is they separate strategy and innovation. And my tagline around that is strategy is about the choices you make within constraints. Innovation is about how do I try and lift those constraints? And digital is generally the tools that you use to lift those constraints. So I always think that's a really interesting way of thinking about strategy, innovation, and digital.

Yeah.

And people get into a whole range of weird definitions about it, but they're quite simple. Choices within constraints, ability to lift constraints, and the tools I use to lift constraints.

Yeah, that's a good soundbite.

Thank you.

John, what's next on your bucket list?

Well, from a travel perspective, having just come back from holidays, There's probably only a couple. I've been lots of places around the globe, but I think, so the next one I think is going to be, I haven't done Turkey, so I think a bit of Greece and Turkey. And then the other one is go and do some of the African safaris are probably the things on the bucket list.

That'd be fantastic.

From a business point of view, I suppose put the money where the mouth is and have done started a fund that's really around investing in venture capital and venture capital investing in sort of technology-enabled and data-enabled businesses that are really transforming professional services in the enterprise market. So I suppose that's been in some ways a bucket list. You could argue it's monetising all the work that I've been doing for the last 20 or 30 years in terms of saying, okay, how do you make that work?

Yeah.

How do you really, because I love transformation and disruption and I suppose putting that into from an investment philosophy and saying, well, can you work with those organisations to grow them and really disrupt? And the main thing we're looking at, finding organisations that are going to disrupt a certain domain or sector. So that's where that's a bucket list, but hopefully it's not a holy bucket list.

What about on the people side? You name dropped Jack Ma and Elon Musk before, but know that you've met a few very well-known world presidents and world leaders.

Anyone that you haven't met or that you're sort of still on the list for? There's lots I haven't met. Look, I think the interesting thing, and I was fortunate particularly because of my role in Deloitte that I had the experience of meeting a lot of the sort of global leaders, the Xi Jinpings and the Clintons and all those. I think you do just in the end get down to they're just people. And yes, there's obviously something special about them you can argue given their role and respect them for that. But I think in the end of the day, I think it is a great leveller in the fact that you can sit down and have a conversation with them and it's— So I think that's probably the great lesson in it. We revere some of these people And we should respect them for where they've got, but I don't think there's a need to revere. They're just people and you can build a relationship with them if you have an interesting conversation. So I'm not sure that's answering your question, but I think it's a good question.

No, I think you've answered a better question.

Coming back to your VC, in terms of structure, do you have a panel of advisors into the companies you invest?

Is that how you've— Yeah, look, we've set a really quite spectacular advisory board that's working with us. So it's great. And it must have been, that's been fantastic. It just shows, and look, not just advertising Mentalist, but I think Mentalist show it too, right? If you get a group of interesting people sitting around a table and have great conversations, then you always keep learning. There's enormous value. So we It was really interesting. We set out to get a panel of 6 on an advisory board. We now have something like 14 because a lot of really great people want to come and actually just be part of it. And so that's fantastic for us. So we've got people like Siming Wong who started venture capital in Australia and the guy who ran NTT for Asia Pacific and the global chief strategy officer of Thomson Reuters and All these people, they just want to be part of great conversation. So I think that is fantastic because what you're doing is you're learning, everyone's got a perspective. And again, I think the MentorList process is exactly the same. You've got people talking about issues and even though they're in different industries and that sort of thing, the reflections, the similarities and the differences are incredibly powerful.

Yeah, fantastic.

Thank you for the plug.

That's brilliant. I'll bring it back, I guess, to our actual answer question, but thank you for indulging me in that. Do you have a passion or a hobby that people probably wouldn't know about or guess?

Oh, look, I think, look, a range. Art's been something that I've always been really interested in. And I was lucky, I was for about 10 years, I was the chairman of the Brett Whiteley Foundation. So that was really interesting. But I love sport. I grew up playing hockey and played sort of state hockey in WA and then sort of played tennis for a long time. And I've sadly just taken up golf, but that's got a way to go, I'm afraid, but still enjoying it.

That is a time commitment.

Yeah, time commitment. But it's also, it's a pretty frustrating game at times. Definitely.

John, if you could mentor your younger self, what advice would you give?

Yeah, good question. Look, I think it's about building relationships and I actually spend a lot of time, I mentor a lot of people now and I think it's the one thing that I continually sort of talking to them. I mean, most people are, it's really interesting. I always say to people, it's amazing how many people you meet, yet how many of them do you ever follow up? And yeah, they say, oh yeah, I know X, but you're saying, well, you might have met them, doesn't mean you know them, right? So I think that discipline around following up, staying in touch, I think is a really critical component there. I think the other one that I always say, and I always just say to people, it's interesting that, and I remember reading probably 20 years ago, but there was a Boss Magazine article. It was the 7 things a CEO should know, right?

Yeah.

And I can't remember what the first 6 were, but the last one was you can have all the power in the world, but the minute you use it, you lose it. And it was that view that you can order someone to do something once and that every role, it's an influence role. And I think it's an interesting one. When you're young, you probably think it's about getting authority and having the authority to do something. Whereas in fact, I think what you learn at a much later age is that even if you've got the authority, it's about influencing people and influencing them in a way that they want to do something.

Yeah.

And I think, so I think the networking and building relationships, the interesting thing about having great conversations and then that around influence are probably the key things that I'd tell my younger self.

Yeah, that's really good advice. Out of interest, should there be a cadence to following people up?

Yeah, look, I mean, within the Deloitte world, I always get frustrated with people saying it was, they'd go, oh, I've met that person 3 times and They're not interested in buying from us or something. And saying, well, I bet you what you've had is 3 first meetings, right? You've had a meeting, you haven't followed them up. You've then gone to them 6 months later or a year later and you've had the same meeting again and then you haven't followed them up again and then you've done it again, right? So you've had 3 first meetings rather than sending them something, following them up. So I always say it's actually often you build a relationship often not by having the world's best insights and great thing, but just by having some consistency that your name's floating across and that you're actually, that you're showing some interest and you are sending them something that may be of interest to them or following them up.

Yeah.

So the cadence is really important that people just let it way too long. And yeah, they may have remembered it, but it's to the person at the other end who's busy meeting lots of people, they met you a year ago. That's nothing. So my argument is if you, within a 6-month or 6 to 12-month period, if you've had some contact with someone over 6 times or something, you'll have probably built a relationship without actually having to do anything fantastic. So it's just that weight of contact and showing of interest that becomes really important. Yeah, that's really powerful. Thank you. Yeah, I was always famous in, Deloitte for recommending people that they had a little spreadsheet and just marked on a monthly basis. Very good. Have I followed them up? Have I sent them an article? Have I invited them to something? And just having that discipline to do it. And it's amazing if you do that, you do build those relationships.

Yeah, that's great advice. Yeah, it's like the spreadsheet, it's like a mini personal CRM.

Yeah, but it is quite interesting because I used to know yourself that in fact, But some people you would go and there'd be 3 months where you hadn't ticked a box, right? And so you think, oh, that's interesting. Therefore, have I got a relationship? Have I done the work to build it? And so, and that classically, if you hadn't, then you realised that you weren't seeing, the name wasn't top of the list. It wasn't floating across their desk and you weren't building the relationship.

It's a good self-check.

Yeah.

John, what are your predictions in the next 5 years? What's coming down the pipe?

Hopefully the Sydney Swans are going to win a grand final. But look, it's going to be a challenging time, obviously. I think we'll really see the impact of AI over that time. I mean, at the moment, AI is massively overhyped. I keep telling people it's massively overhyped, but it's also the most important shift that we're probably going to see in this generation.

Yeah.

So I think that's going to be really interesting the way that plays out. And so I think that's going to impact around the way that business works. So I think that's going to be really critical. I think we've got a pretty rough time over the next 12 months from an economic perspective, but certainly through the 5 years, you will be clearly out of that and back into a growth phase. I know Dave was keen for me to use this analogy, but I always say to me, the next 12 months are really interesting because one of the analogies we've always said is that when rafts go into whitewater, they never come out in the same order. So people who are really smart about how they think about this time and work through is a real opportunity rather than just looking at it as a threat and hunkering down. It's often in these threats that people back away from innovation rather than actually this is the time to innovate.

Yeah.

So I think that's going to be really critical. But so those are the sort of things I would really hope that we see a settling down of the geopolitical. But that is a wildcard that I think people have to be planning for and saying, well, where is that going to go? you would hope the China-US balances. But yeah, so yes, I think it's that great line about preparedness over prediction. Have you done the scenario planning? Have you?

Yes.

What have you done? Because predicting the outcomes politically and with some of the shifts in technology is going to be hard, but are you prepared? And is Are you as match fit as you can be to really take advantage of what's going to happen? Excellent.

Thank you, John. Yeah, fascinating.

Yeah, thanks, John. Was there any— did you have a strategy for today and was there something we didn't ask you that you thought actually— so it's more of a reverse question. Anything that we didn't ask you about, you think actually, I think your listeners might sort of get some value from that.

Yeah, no, I think that's pretty right. I mean, I think the— I suppose I'm interested around what you are seeing. I see strategy and innovation inextricably linked, yet I see, and I'm interested in your thoughts on it, I see a real lack of clarity around what is innovation. And most organizations, particularly in this country, are not good at innovation. So I'm not sure, I mean, do you get a lot of talk about innovation in terms of the groups or what you're hearing people ask about?

Maybe like general conversation around where innovation sits is that, you know, and there's different approaches, whether it's a centralized way to capture and then, you know, have an environment that fosters and cultivates innovation. Versus, which is working in some corporate structures. And then the complete opposite one is trying to get that innovation really flowing through the operation, through every part of it. Yeah, I'm not sure if that answers your question.

Because I think it's often seen as a cultural thing, which is how do we, rather than, and certainly again, I have a strong view that it should be directed innovation, which again, Yeah. Links to the strategy that, hey, we made this choice within this constraint. How do we actually focus around trying to shift that constraint? Yes, you need an innovative culture in trying to foster that. But a lot of innovation doesn't deliver anything, which sadly, where it should, it should be clear. But again, I think it's an interesting reflection having worked in the States for a while, Corporate innovation is very strong in this country. Most of the innovation is more done at research and innovation is more done at university level rather than corporate. And I think it's an interesting step that we've got to get corporates to be much clearer and work much harder on the innovation side.

Yeah, that probably links into what you were saying about timeframe and reporting time in terms of Yeah, time spent and budget.

Yes. Yeah.

And there's certainly a lot of pressure not to do big write-offs and there's a bit of coverage which will lead to a bit of the appetite for risk may not be as high as it could be if there was a culturally wider than the organisation, if the company took a to punt on something and I'll bring up the ASX for example, huge write-downs there, very publicly covered. What does that do for the staff at ASX around, oh, let's have another go? I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to comment on that one, but it's interesting, right? It's, again, it was an interesting one that it seemed to be You would think they would have really understood. I mean, using an innovative technology is important. You think they would have really understood its implications before spending a lot of money. Now, maybe that's a little unfair, but interesting how far that got before someone actually said, hey, maybe we're going down the wrong path.

All right, Alex, I think it's time to switch into the 60 Seconds of Madness and see if we can catch our talent today off guard.

Thanks.

So, so, John, these are rapid-fire either-or questions. Please just, you know, say whatever first comes to mind.

Okay, I'll get my alarm going. One second. That's my, uh, yes. 3, 2, 1.

Here we go. Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Netflix or YouTube?

Netflix.

Strategy or culture?

Strategy.

Phone calls or texts?

Phone calls.

Beach or snow?

Beach.

Chicken or the egg?

Uh, chicken.

Dining out or home cooking?

Sorry, I missed the first bit.

Dining out or home cooking?

Home cooking.

All right. Electric or petrol?

Electric.

Cash or card?

Card.

PC or Mac?

PC.

Still or sparkling?

Sparkling.

Entrée or dessert?

Entrée.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

TV or book?

TV.

Beer or wine?

Wine.

Chocolate in the fridge or pantry?

Pantry.

Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

No.

Bond or Bourne?

Bond.

90-day plan or 5-year plan?

Yes.

In-house or external consultants? External.

Okay.

Thank you very much. Went through a few.

You got to read the last one. Billable hours or long lunch. All right. Well, yeah, thank you for your time today, John. Really appreciate you coming in and speaking to the members. And yeah, I'm sorry if Alex and I went overboard with questions, but we'll get it right in the end. Fascinating conversation.

Thank you, John.

Thank you.

Appreciate you coming down. Great.

Thank you, John.

Thanks very much. Hey, this is Alex. If you enjoyed the content so far and you want us to do more, if you want to hear more, click the subscribe button. It allows us to bring on more guests in the future. Thanks.