Transcending Through Transformation: Innovation, Disruption, and Excellence with Adam Bennett

When leading change, the first point I would say is you have to acknowledge it is different to leading business as usual, where you might have an existing culture that is very much rooted in the past. And I'm not saying you don't, you throw out the past, you don't respect the past. Of course you do, but not to the extent where you live in it. You have to move forward and our organizations have to move forward. Harvard Business School would suggest that 80% of transformations fail And I think people accept that it's hard. I think it's hard for 3 reasons.

Hi, Dave here. Hope you're enjoying the show. Thank you for tuning in. If you like what you're hearing, you want to become part of the conversation, please just click the show note link and we'll connect there. Bye. All right, well, welcome Adam Bennett here to the studio today. It's fantastic to have you here.

Thanks for having me.

Thanks for flying all the way down from Sydney. We appreciate you making the trek and hopefully Qantas or whoever will have looked after you today and got you here in one piece.

All aboard here.

Great to have you. So today's sort of overarching theme, we're sort of talking around this transcending through transformation. I had to look down because transcending is a word I tend to struggle with for some reason. But Adam, I'd love to know, you know, you've written the book on change and we can sort of get through in this recording sort of what the title was and what the title is now. And we're excited to sort of see that on the shelves. And I understand they're coming in the boxes now. But why is transformation so hard? I mean, easy question. I'll throw that to you, Adam.

Yeah, look, I think it is empirically hard and Harvard Business School would suggest that 70%, 80% of transformations fail. And I think as executives, most people know that they've tried something and it hasn't always gone to plan. And I think people accept that it's hard. I think it's hard for 3 reasons. Number one, the status quo never has to argue its own case. So it literally just plods along year after year, adding a bit of weight, bit of complexity, a bit like rings of a tree. And unless someone challenges it or changes it, it is the only option with momentum.

Right.

Secondly, I think there's a lot of corporate elements that are in place that keep the status quo working. And that might be how the company senses what's going on in the world or not. That might be how they do capital budgeting, how they do scorecards and rewards, how they manage talent. It might be some culture. some unwritten assumptions that they have within the organization. So that all makes transformation very difficult. But it's most difficult, I think, because of personalities. I think in any organization, especially large ones, there will inevitably be a group of people who resist the change and do so for reasons that are rational to them. And that might be because they're going to lose their own power or prestige or influence or empire. They might be traditionalists who can't imagine their industry working any differently to how it does now. They might be autocrats who just want to tell everyone what to do. They might be rationalists who just do what's in their scorecard. So unless you change their scorecard, they're going to keep doing what they're doing. So a raft of different personalities can also make it very difficult.

Yeah, you cover those off in your book as well, don't you?

I did, I did.

Sort of like that self-interest piece, that personality bit. So I mean, that's a headline stat, 70% of transformations fail. It's kind of like, you know, do they say? 80% of new businesses fail in the first 5 years. But it's a pretty alarming sort of stat. Do you see that as, that's obviously across the board. Do you see sort of different size businesses or different industries where maybe that stat might be different sort of from your experience?

Look, I haven't seen stratification by industry, but I mean, there's typically in any given year, you'll see one in the Australian Financial Review, for example. And, you know, this year we saw the ASX write off $250 million from a project that had been going for a long time in that organization. And that leaves the organization not only out of pocket but with change fatigue. And really, they're back to square one or even negative where they have to pick themselves up and figure out what they'll do next. And that's happened to many organizations. And also transformation, don't forget, can be if you fail, you actually fail to exist. So if you think of companies like Blockbuster, the disruption turned up in their boardroom in the person of Reed Hastings in 2000, who offered them to build an online streaming part of their business for $50 million. They laughed him out of the boardroom and Blockbuster shut in 2019 and Reed Hastings went on to form Netflix, which I think is worth $195 billion.

Wow.

So sometimes the disruption and transformation going badly means you don't exist anymore. So that is the ultimate failure.

Yeah. And you mentioned sort of those corporate elements. Can you just sort of, you know, it's the second thing, can you maybe elaborate on that? Is this in a big business? Like, what are these elements that you're sort of alluding to?

Yeah, so take strategy, for example. So most organizations will have a a pretty clearly articulated corporate strategy. But actually turning that into action and implementation can be quite tricky. And something that listeners to this podcast could do if they're in an executive position is take their own corporate strategy, for example, and draw it as a pie chart in terms of if there's 3 or 4 elements, well, what are the relative weightings of each part of those strategy?

Yeah.

And now compare that to what they're spending money on with their investment slate and capital budgeting. And in my experience of large companies, those 2 things very rarely line up. So the strategy might be we want to do A, B, and C, but the investment slate and what they're spending money on could be X, Y, and Z. So in reality, X, Y, Z is in fact the strategy, not the A, B, and C. And so that's just something that's very difficult for companies to to get across. And that's— there's always things that need to be done. So that could be the technical debt left over from not investing in their technology systems. That could be regulatory requirements that are newly put in place. All of those add up to consuming the investment slate that's available to a company and makes it very difficult to focus on what really needs to be done to bring the strategy to life. And also, don't forget, At the other end of the spectrum, at the people end, how they manage talent, for example, could have an impact where talented people are moved from time to time in organizations. And if they're in their roles, for example, for 2-year stints, they'll spend the first 6 months getting up to speed with their new area. They'll spend the next year doing some stuff and hopefully from their perspective, something that will show them in a good light. So they will tend to have kind of short-termism or incrementalism. And then, of course, the last 6 months, they're looking for their next gig. So, they're really how you manage talent and the frequency and speed at which you move people can also make it more difficult to get things done and change.

Adam, you talked about obviously different personalities being a blocker for change as well, transformation. How would you go about getting those people on side or would you not?

Look, I think tales of redemption are great in terms of where you have someone who for example, resists transformation. And as I mentioned earlier, that could be because they don't believe the industry is going in that direction or they don't agree with that or they don't have the skills or the natural curiosity to see what could be for an industry. And therefore, or they run the biggest traditional part of the business that is going to be either dismantled or changed or challenged in its kind of in the future. It can be very difficult for that kind of person to to change. And I think that's because we really all kind of come to our lives as we're adults pretty much fully baked in terms of what we believe and what we don't. And as I said, tales of redemption and someone getting behind a big transformation where previously they weren't is great. But the reality I've seen is they rarely do. And therefore, the leader is faced with a choice. So how important is that person in terms of weighting that against all of the requirements of the organization, their shareholders, their customers, their employees, and the need to transform, especially if there's an existential threat to that organization. You kind of have to weigh it up and say, well, what's more important? And so sometimes I think if someone can't change or won't change or won't get behind the transformation, then it's inevitable they've got to leave the organization. Now, that might seem harsh, but again, every organization I've been in and every executive I've ever spoken to has never— I should have kept the white ant longer, said no one ever. If someone's going to really kind of chip away and passively resist and be a real obstacle to progress, I think it's better for everyone, themselves included, that they part ways and get on with their lives.

Yeah. You mentioned existential threat there, Adam. And it's sort of anecdotally, it's like we've got this new threat every 3, 6 months. Like, from your perspective, and is that getting quicker like that, or was that always the case? Like, um, you know, when you sort of started your leadership career, was there always an existential threat? And this word unprecedented, which is sort of used, um, Or overused at the moment? And probably the second part of the question is, is that there's this thing around change fatigue. Are they interrelated, do you see, or what's your perspective on that?

Yeah, I guess the 2 parts to your question, is it accelerating? I do believe it's accelerating. And I think we've not reached peak change yet. So it'd be very easy to kind of look back and say, wow, we've come through so much change and transformation since Certainly around the time I started working, late '80s, early '90s, there were big fractures in the world, like whether the fall of the Berlin Wall or geopolitical things across the world. Then we had the internet and then we had the dot-com bust and the GFC. And all of these things have been seismic impacts to business. But I also think as we look forward, there's more coming and those things are potentially bigger. And not only are they bigger, they do transcend industries. So it won't be just one industry impacted, it will be many industries simultaneously. And what do I mean by that? If you just take AI, so AI is, I think, going to impact every single industry. And if you think of that through the lens of not just AI in terms of smarts and processes, but things like full self-driving that is coming, what does that mean? So Andrew Yang in his recent book basically highlighted there's probably about 3 million truck drivers in the US who could be dislodged. And there's another 7 million, I think, people who work in truck stops, motels, service stations that serve those truck drivers. All of those people could potentially be impacted, right? As so are the people in the law firms and the medical practices and businesses and And, and, and, and all being impacted together. So I think it's going to be quite big. And obviously there'll be new jobs created as well, but there'll be a lot of impact on a lot of organizations simultaneously.

So there's that sort of halo effect and then bringing that, so that's sort of happening. And so the strategy is trying to push, which is driving a potential transformation. And then there's this change fatigue. Yeah, how have you sort of experienced that either personally or whether it's yourself or dealing with running a large-scale transformation and any tips or tricks or views on how that can be effectively done?

Yeah, look, I think the change fatigue works out in several ways. One is people in organizations that feel as though things are continuously in flux. So, I'd use the example, if an organization is changing its organization structure every 6 months or so, where people's reporting lines, how the organization works, they're changing, and they do that over a number of years whilst also implementing new technology, those people are going to somewhat get exhausted. But I think at the more individual level, especially in many businesses and certainly white-collar businesses, I think it's going to shine a light on people that they are the ultimate ones accountable for their own personal and professional relevance. And I think the days of kind of going to uni, getting a job, staying in that organization, and basically hoping that you never have to retrain or you never have to kind of put yourself out there or kind of deal with uncertainty or ambiguous environments, I think those days are gone. And I think That's going to shine a light on people's ability to take on new skills, be prepared to be uncomfortable, challenge their views of their industries and how they work. And how we frame that can be either very, very daunting, like, oh my God, or it could be very, very exciting, as in, whoa, this could be cool. And I think that how people frame the change and how they get to get their heads across it, I think is going to be really important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

From a, obviously, personal philosophy standpoint, you mean, in terms of how you approach change? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And sometimes the same event can happen, and we all know this from our personal lives, people can frame the event totally differently. But if you're positive and curious and energized, you might frame it one way. If you're a bit kind of concerned or daunted or, you know, unhappier, you might frame it the same thing differently.

Absolutely. Probably leads into the next question about what sort of mindset do you need to lead change?

Well, I think when leading change, the first point I would say is you have to acknowledge it is different to leading business as usual.

Yeah.

And it's not better or worse, it is just different. And what do I mean by that? If I think about business as usual, The business as usual of an organization is typically, it's resourced, it's formal, it's defined, it is set up with all the apparatus of an organization to support it because that's what the organization does. And you go through a budgeting process at the start of the year where you pick up last year's budget, you pull it forward, and you think about what you're going to do. But you're then also well supported with all the functional support around IT and finance and HR and regulatory and risk and all those types of things. When you start a transformation program, you're essentially starting from scratch. So a leader will be assigned and then they have to basically pull together the right team, figure out what they're going to be doing and get on with it in a way that is far different to BAU.

Yeah.

And it's far more transparent. The burn rate, the financial burn rate is far more visible, and it's just completely different. And if you think about the dual roles of many executives, which is both management and leadership, and I think those 2 things are very different. Management is about getting people to be as efficient and effective in their organizations as possible, whereas leadership is actually about taking people on a journey and getting to be adaptable and to change.

Right.

And so they're 2 very, very different things.

Yeah.

Can you be a good manager without being a good leader?

Yes, I think you can. And I've met many managers who are awesome at managing the BAU and extracting every last bit of drop of efficiency and effectiveness. But if you ask those people to change that machine that they work, They're not up for it or they've not got the skills. And likewise, not all leaders are going to be good managers. So they are very distinctive skill sets.

Just sort of playing in that space and sort of being known around transformation, does that sort of shorten your potential lifespan in a specific role? And does it sort of, once the transformation's done, phase 1, 2, 3, For someone like yourself who I would sort of say is known for transformation, then when it's done, are you like, well, now it's BAU, I gotta go, I gotta get out of here? Or like, how does that sort of play out for you?

Oh, look, well, for me, 100%. So my most recent executive role was running New South Wales Land Registry Services. And I was specifically hired to run that and lead that transformation. And I remember many times throughout that transformation where I was there for just short of 5 years, having very constructive conversations with the chairman about the transformation. And when I felt the transformation was done and not just felt, but empirically it was done, i.e., the metrics that I had set and the measures by which you could objectively say that transformation is now done. And that was in terms of degree of digitization, customer satisfaction, employee engagement, EBITDA of the organization. Once that transformation was done, I was kind of like, I'm not sure I'm the person here to stay here watching the dials and now managing this business in its steady state. So I resigned and moved on.

And wrote the book. And wrote the book. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I guess that probably lends itself to the mechanics of change is having an eye on those metrics. What does good look like? What does success look like at the end of the day? Are there any others that you want to speak about?

Yeah, look, I think there's— well, the way I would approach it is I think there's 5 what I would call mechanics around leading a transformation. And number one is personal commitment of the leader and both doing the work and being seen to do the work. And that seems like an obvious point, but I think the leader has to get out in front and be personally vested and personally and symbolically connected to the change, to the transformation, where people looking at that person know they can't be successful unless this transformation works. And that certainly dials up the heat in terms of accountability and ambition to actually succeed.

Yeah.

Number 2 is I think that leader has to facilitate choice. So all strategy is choice. And I've always been of the view that it's better to move 1 or 2 things forward a mile than 50 things forward an inch. So it's the role of the leader to choose and then communicate a clear strategy. And by clear, I mean it is as simple as because of X, Y, and Z happening in the world, We're going to do A, B, and C. And I think too many people try and communicate a big change program using a 40-page PowerPoint deck when they should actually think about it in a couple of sentences.

Yeah.

Number 3, I think they have to obviously build the right team around them. And that's getting people with the right skill set, people with the right temperament, being aware of what are all the people aspects around the transformation, who could resist, who are the kind of fulcrum roles in the organization around which this whole transformation will move. And then being really thorough and using some proven methodologies to really pull the right levers and levers of change. And they're things like business process or technology, organization structure, facilities, people and culture, and knowing which of those to pull to actually create and sustain change. And ultimately, number 5 is keeping score. So using KPIs to really align the team and give regular feedback. And the transformation has to be describable in numbers and empirically obvious and objective. It can't be just give me another $50 million and we'll get this done. It's got to be measurable. It's got to be, we are doing A, B, and C, and can you measure A, B, and C definitively To prove that when you've done it, you've done it.

Yeah, thank you for that. How would you go about sort of, I guess, just to press on one of those points a bit more, like building the right team? I mean, you talked about sort of temperament. Is that obviously you're recruiting from the inside of the organization, or would you be looking outside as well?

I think you should do both. So I think there's probably 3, in my experience, there's 3 people who tend to make it onto a project. First are the really talented people. in an organization. And I would say companies that are really serious about transformation should start with their best people, i.e., who are the women and men that you can least do without running your business as usual activities?

Yeah.

They're just the superstars of the organization. And I think if you pull them out of the line and start to put them into the transformation, you're off to a good start. Now, they won't always have— they may have the right temperament and experience of the organization, you also want some people to challenge and challenge the industry norms and the company norms. So you might also recruit a series of experienced practitioners from the industry to complement that team. And I think the companies that do best at transformation use a combination of those 2 skills. The ones to avoid are what I would call the journeymen. And they're the people who've been in an organization for for many, many years. They're perhaps doing a job that's lower than they had in the past. They're doing some kind of special project. They may even have a live redundancy letter in their top pocket now.

Right.

And their current boss is happy for them to go on the project immediately because they're kind of, yeah, off you go. I'd rather you do something else. So if you fill your transformation project with that type of person, I then think you're off to a bad start because everyone else in the organization will watch who you put on the transformation to gauge your seriousness.

Right.

So if you put the kind of C players, D players on it, then you're sending a very clear message to everyone. This isn't that important. Whereas if you put the very best people you have in the organization, they will both have the nous, the personal networks, and the cachet to really demonstrate to the rest of the organization, this is serious.

Yeah, that comes back to that communication piece and sort of personal responsibility. Do you believe in using consultants?

Yeah, absolutely. I say that because I used to be one, but I would say don't overuse them. And I would say, and this is where the first part of my methodology, if you like, which is the leader doing the work. There's certain parts of transformation and leadership you simply cannot outsource to a team of consultants. The consultants are there to consult with you and help you, not to become the substitute for your own leadership and your own personal energies and getting out and leading a transformation. Is there a role for consultants? Absolutely. But I would also be wary if they're in the permanent phone book, they've been there too long. That's also a sign you're perhaps not getting best use of them.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Adam, just on sort of picking the right team, transformation, do you see it, what's your views on where that sits in a business in terms of, is it an area of the business that's sort of brought together for a specific project or is transformation an ongoing thing? And I'll give you sort of one example, which is where a corporation will bring innovation into a central hub.

Yeah.

That versus having innovation sort of flowing through the BAU functions or, yeah, what's your sort of view on that with a transformation lens?

Yeah, so, well, actually, let me step back and actually define transformation because we're kind of using this term and it'd be good to kind of be on the same page. And I think of transformation, I think of 3 important things. Number one is there is some kind of disruption. There are some kind of forces at play that are creating either a threat or an opportunity to your organization. And so you need to be sensitive to the world in terms of what those things could be. And as I said before, that might turn up in your boardroom and present to you, or it might be something that's in the back page of the Fin Review and no one sees some kind of quirky little development. Secondly, you need to develop a corporate strategy. So you need to identify and acknowledge those forces and then develop a strategy or a kind of intent of how you're going to deal with them. And most organizations, step 1, step 2 are quite straightforward. Step 3 then is how do you take action? Because don't forget, the status quo is the one just bubbling along.

Yeah.

So nothing happens until you actually then start to take action. So back to your question, I think all organizations should be sensitive continuously to what's happening in their world. And this is part of why transformation can become quite difficult, or there can be quite difficult corporate elements. If you had someone's job in the company as external world watcher, it's kind of an unusual thing to have someone tasked with. And people might argue, oh, well, that's the strategy team's kind of remit. And to a certain extent it is. But because of the way organizations work, those strategy people also get drawn into working with the business units, to frame kind of what they're going to do here, what they're going to do there, and they get pulled into the budgeting process. They get pulled in all these different directions.

Yeah.

So it becomes very difficult for someone to have a very sensitive antenna as to what is going on in the world and how are we going to change it and what does that mean for us. So I think part of that could be central in terms of some big organizations if the industry is big enough. But I think all senior executives in an executive team, frankly, should have their sensitive antenna always attuned to what is going on in the world and actively scanning their own environments to figure out what's going on. I don't think, again, I don't think you can outsource that to everyone, to anyone else. Sorry.

Adam, how do you provide space in your day or your week to have that sort of strategic I find it really difficult and I've always found it difficult.

And it's that old adage that the price of focus is loss of peripheral vision.

Right.

So I remember when I was in consulting, I used to scan a couple of different industries. So I'd make time to scan the media, scan kind of industry journals, read the news, all those types of things that arguably we should all be doing. When I came into banking, I started then scanning banking and then over time it became Australian banking and then it became Big 4 banking. And then eventually it was kind of what's going on in the bank today? Like, it just pulls you away. So I think being disciplined in actually creating habits where you are continually scanning the newspaper journals and following different industries, not just your own industry. And I think all executives can learn from every other industry. And of course we've seen many examples where a development in one industry has proven to be disruptive to another industry.

Definitely.

And so when that happens, you've got to be across it.

Yeah, that makes sense.

So I just had a question just following up and thanks for sort of defining it and I like it how you break it into 3 sort of separate steps. That might be the consulting history sort of coming back. It's a nice way to sort of preframe things. And that quote, the price of focus is the loss of proliferative vision, that's fantastic. I did write that down. I might use that. Thank you, Adam. But it sort of sounds like, you know, that 3rd step, once the disruption's sort of been acknowledged or the opportunity, the threat is there, the corporate strategy's been sort of pulled together, then you as the incumbent, What advice would you have for that individual that now has to go and make traction? What would you be thinking about from a 90-day perspective around how to start getting that moving?

Yeah, so good question. I mean, the things that I would think about, and the 2 things are quite different. So one is recognition of if you're accountable for a transformation, you have to inevitably take an organization or a group of people on a journey. And that has its own challenges and it's difficult. And actually, one of my favorite quotes is, well, actually, I'll say the quote and then talk about its provenance. But basically the quote is this, and one must bear in mind that there is nothing so difficult to execute, dubious of success, or dangerous to administer than to introduce a new way of doing things. For he who does so has only enemies of all those who profit from the existing way of doing things and only lukewarm allies in anyone who may profit from the new. So that quote kind of describes transformation really well. And it was written in 1532 by Machiavelli.

Right.

And I don't think anything has changed. So as the leader of a transformation, you have to be cognizant of those 3 things, it is kind of dubious of success, difficult, and somewhat personally dangerous. So having taken account of that, you have to take the people on the journey. And that is really about building a compelling case for change and being really clear that because of X, Y, and Z, we need to do A, B, and C. And being very tight and clear and precise around what it is you're trying to do. And it can't be, because of the world, we're going to improve the organization. It's got to be specific so people can kind of understand it. And that's going to be the first, I guess, sharp intake of breath where some people will hear that and go, ooh, what does that mean for me? And I think if you're honest and you're transparent when you're pushing into a transformation, you have to acknowledge that not everyone will be a winner from the transformation. And that's where I think some people can get themselves into trouble. And it's a little bit like when, you know, I've got nothing against government or politicians, but a politician stands up and says, look, we're going to do this great policy, but no one's going to be worse off. Whenever you hear that, you kind of go, well, actually, probably no one's going to be better off either because it's going to be medium vanilla. And I think corporates are the same where Inevitably, if you're pushing into transformation, someone somewhere in the organization is not going to come out of it a winner. And so being honest about that, and that doesn't mean you don't treat them fairly and respectfully and transparently. Of course you do. But you have to acknowledge that there may well be losers from a transformation program, and that's the price for the organization to continue and thrive in a changing world.

Yeah.

Besides those personalities you were mentioning before around, you know, the rationales, the self-interest, sort of, that's immediately where it sounds like in that scenario where they're going.

Hey everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. If you're loving this podcast, please give us a 5-star review. Adam, you touched on that quote from Machiavelli. Obviously you're into your history as well. Are there any other lessons that you'd bring and apply to driving change?

Oh, look, I've been fascinated by history since I was a little boy. So I've tried to bring a lot of historical stories and vignettes from my reading of history into my book. And I've quoted all kinds of people from Machiavelli through to Dr. John Snow in the 1800s with the cholera epidemic. Sir John Monash, a famous Australian general who really was the first to pull all these different levers simultaneously to to achieve great outcomes in World War I. Barbara Jordan's one of my favorite, most inspirational women, and she was involved in the Nixon impeachment trials. And so, yes, I've tried to weave a lot of history into the book. And I think basically the reason I've done that is because we're grappling with transformation and change. And it's very tempting to think that we're the first to grapple with it. Whereas I think history is full of examples where men and women throughout the ages have had to deal with uncertainty, ambiguity, disruption. They've had to craft a strategy and then they've got to actually implement stuff to move either society forward or their organization forward.

Right. And I was very impressed. I mean, you weren't reading that off a piece of paper before. That's ingrained in your brain, that McAleer Valley.

Yeah, I do like that quote.

Yeah. I think you've lived that learning as well in your experiences. No, so thank you for that. Yeah, like those first 90 days and sort of what we should be looking for. Is there anything else you'd sort of go to as a, you know, this sort of talking about that burning platform or the compelling case? Is there a Other elements you might sort of think, well, okay, I need to look at B and C as well?

Yeah, look, I think, well, actually the first 90 days, I think there's 3 things I would approach the first 90 days with in terms of, in a view of really trying to build momentum. And they would be similar, I guess, to some of the things I've written in the book around mindset, mechanics, and mistakes. And from a mindset perspective, I think the first thing to ask yourself in your first 90 days, why did you want this job? And it seems like a kind of counterintuitive question because you've probably just signed up for it and said, hey, great, I've been promoted, I've got this. But really reflect deeply, why did you want this job and what do you want to do with it? And do you want to kind of be the custodian of this role as either a manager, i.e., to make it more efficient and effective, or do you want this role to be a leader and change it and make it more adaptive and relevant to a changing world? And I think answering that question is important. I think entering a new job with a degree of humility, curiosity, certainly ambition for the organization and for your role in that organization is important as well. I think some urgency.

Right.

And I think urgency can sometimes be an underutilized corporate resource. where people just take too long to do stuff.

Yeah.

So I'd suggest that really people build momentum. And then I'd also think about mechanics. And when I think about mechanics, I always write down my first 90-day plan, which seems odd, but I think the fact of writing it down and being somewhat intimidated by a blank sheet of paper forces you to do some deep reflection. And I always approach it in terms of 3 distinct months and being clear on what do I want to achieve? What do I want to achieve at the end of my first day, my first week, my first month, and then the second 2 months?

Right.

And that's typically understanding the current state is month 1, developing some hypotheses is month 2, and confirming the team is month 3. Now, it doesn't mean you have to cut off each kind of month. Well, I've got no more time to That's not what I'm talking about. But what I'm talking about is being thoughtful and planful about how you spend your time. So in the first 90 days, the first month, get out and about, talk to everyone up the chain beside your colleagues down into the organization. And typically, if you're a CEO or a senior executive, you just ask them a couple of questions, but ask everyone the same questions, which is, what do you hope I do in this job? What do you hope I change? What do you hope I don't change? And any other thing that you would like to tell me? So those 4 questions are a really good starting point. And when you're talking to people, my simple advice would be listen and take notes and be seen to take notes. And again, just— it's easy to forget that when you're meeting all these people, you're getting a sense of them, but they're also getting a sense of you. And so when someone who's been meeting with you goes back and sits back at their desk and they say, hey, what's the new guy like? What do you want them to say? Do you want them to say, oh, he just never stopped talking? Or do you want them to say, oh yeah, he asked me a question, then I spoke for the hour and he wrote all these notes? What do you reckon is going to be more beneficial to entering the organization and building connection with the people? So it's very simple. to do that. Develop some hypotheses, but don't be holding onto them too tightly.

Yeah.

You might come into a role thinking, oh, I might be able to change this, that might need fixing, this, this, this. But don't hold them so tightly that they become dogma and you kind of become inflexible. Well, I assumed I'd do this, therefore I must continue to do this. And thirdly is confirm the team. You've got to get the right team around you and get the right team around you as quickly as possible. I'm not a big fan of taking a year, for example, to get your organization structure sorted because the organization is in flux until all those people are in place and the team's formed and you need to get on with things. And again, to quote Machiavelli, I mean, it's far better to do all the bad news in one go and then drip feed benefits.

Right.

Much, much better approach to get all the bad news done. So if there's going to be people leaving, team or leaving the organization, do them all quick and then everyone settles down. You just get on with it.

Yeah, definitely. Well, you sort of touched on a couple of the human elements there and I guess, yeah, sort of listening to sort of some of your conversation, there really is that human element of change that sort of is coming in whilst there's a corporate strategy and, you know, we're identifying this thing at the end of the day. It's I guess that human component to whether it's certainty or uncertainty or whatever that human need is. But what's your experience been in sort of developing how to sort of learning about yourself to then be able to sort of help others, humans change? Probably not the best question. I'm struggling to ask the question, but it's It's from that human element perspective.

In terms of development or transformation?

Well, just reluctance to change on a personal level.

Yeah, look, it can be challenging. I mean, I remember when I was at NAB many years ago and we were outsourcing a big part of NAB IT into IBM. And we were doing that for very strategic reasons because we came to the conclusion that we simply didn't have the skill set and the strategic skills to do what we needed done, as well as an IBM whose core business is doing that. So NAB's core business, banking.

Yep.

IBM's kind of infrastructure, IT management. So we decided that we would outsource about 532 roles, which is material. And I remember during that process doing regular town halls where I'd talk to all of the people in technology and then especially all the people impacted. And we took them on this journey, which was the first set of conversations was, we are looking at this, we don't know what we're going to do yet. And there was outrage, uproar. What do you mean you're looking at this? Uncertainty.

That'd be unionized slightly, wouldn't it?

Yeah, there was a whole raft of different things. Then the next set of meetings would be, we're really now thinking we're going to be using a partner to do this. Oh, more outrage. Then over time, we've narrowed it down. We're going to be looking at IBM and a couple of other companies. And then we've struck a deal and then the deal's going to look like this and then here's what it means. So we took people on that journey. Now, when we took them on that journey, IBM, and they eventually all did transfer into IBM. So 532 people.

Okay.

93% of them signed on to work for IBM. And IBM said it was the highest number of people they'd ever had from a client company transition into their workforce.

Wow.

Which was great. But the reason for sharing that was I had one of the people who was kind of been with the bank for about 25, 30 years, and he came up to me and said, you know, oh geez, I'm really worried about this. And I never thought I'd have to go for another job interview. And I, I think he was expecting me to say, oh, you know, I'm really sorry about that. And I, and I kind of, I think, took him by surprise, not because I was unkind, but because I was probably honest. But I said, well, what do you mean? Like, what do you mean you never thought you would have to go? Did you just think you would get to do your job forever until you retired? And it comes back to that personal and professional relevance that The onus is on all of us to, in a changing world, continue to manage our relevancy. And that can take us into uncomfortable, kind of challenging things. But that's probably the pathway to a more meaningful career and actually lifetime learning and lifetime development and not getting stale in roles and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And just reflective of the changing world, the world will keep moving. And we're kind of, the onus on us is to keep moving as well.

Yeah. And I guess, yeah, flow-on question to that is, you know, with maybe younger generations coming into the workforce with tenure expectations being a lot shorter. So we're not necessarily coming out of university now thinking it's a job for life in a blue-chip corporation. It's, you know, 18 months here, 6 months here. Do you think that makes transformation easier, harder when you sort of have a different mix of duration and expectations?

Yeah, look, I think that's a really good question and I haven't thought of it in that way. But if I think about it now, I think it will perhaps make it easier to transform. And why do I say that? I think many organizations, and this might seem controversial, and many organizations, large organizations, many industries, There's a lot of people who can claim 20, 30 years experience in those industries and those companies when what in fact they've got is 1 year 20 times. And they're 2 very, very different things. So 20 different years in an industry, you're going to know a lot about that industry. But if you've been in 1 job for 20 years, you probably have 1 job 20 times.

Right.

So I think the young people and the millennials are less likely to fall fall into that dynamic, which then means they're probably less vested in the status quo and how things work now and more open to, why doesn't it work like this? And I think they will bring a curiosity and an openness of mind that perhaps can sometimes, not always, but sometimes be missing from large organizations where if you've been in an industry for a long time, You start to self-identify as an expert, it can be very hard for you to reimagine that industry.

Yeah. Wow. That's very, very interesting. And then on the flip side, I'm thinking, well, okay, what is that? It's usually those 20 years one time, which might be a cultural ambassador for the company. So what does that mean for culture and from your experience managing large-scale transformations? What is the corporate culture? How does that influence sort of how you go about delivering that change?

Yeah, that's a— well, let's define culture. So let's define culture first, which is probably best defined as the behaviors and symbols that are celebrated that are hopefully related to the strategy of the organization and its place in the industry and what it wants to achieve. That's probably not a bad kind of definition. If you think of culture then in those senses, then most organizations entering this period of more rapid accelerated change are going to need a culture where people are far more attuned and open to change. And therefore, you might have an existing culture that is very much rooted in the past. And I'm not saying you throw out the past, you don't respect the past, of course you do. But not to the extent where you live in it. You have to move forward and our organizations have to move forward and our leaders have to be focused on what should the organization look like next and be custodians of their roles to challenge and push and probe and constructively provoke what could the company be.

Great.

Does that answer your question?

It does. Yeah, it does.

Absolutely.

I was thinking back to my first few days at Telstra when I joined and This sort of comment of the good old days was just sort of rolling around off the tongues of people. I'm like, what are these guys talking about? And then I started saying it 5 years later. I knew it's time for me to move on.

But exactly, it's gonna be part of the furniture.

Yeah, I'll pause for you, Alex. I'm hogging all the questions.

No, it's all good. Adam, I guess when you're driving change and you're helping people develop, mistakes are going to be made. So how do you sort of go about confronting them or or making space to learn from them? What's the—

Oh, look, mistakes will always be made. And I, I think about my own career, and I've made a metric ton of mistakes. And I've been a pretty balanced approach to mistakes as well, because there's things I should have done and didn't, right? And things I shouldn't have done and I did. So I've done both types of mistakes. Um, look, I think if you, if you have a culture where mistakes are prohibited or punished or sanctioned too heavily, then no one's going to put up any kind of change.

Yeah.

Now, there's also judgment required. So there should be some things that if it's a mistake that is so existentially threatening to the organization, that might be something you can't afford to tolerate. And so if someone did something like that, despite the culture, you want certain mistakes to be made or allowed to be made, you've got to take action on it. And it's that old adage, shoot one to encourage a thousand. So people realize, well, that kind of mistake's not going to be tolerated. But on the whole, if you want to move things forward, mistakes will be made. And the only people who don't make mistakes are people who don't try new things.

Yeah.

So you have to balance it out. And I think It's like mistakes or innovation, not every single thing's going to be a winner. And it's a little bit what I would call the roulette approach to innovation in some respects, where if an organization is expecting every single innovation project to be successful, they will be the most conservative set of projects ever known to business. And even the language we use, if we say, oh, we're going to do all these pilots, everyone knows in corporate speak a pilot means something you try, you love it to death, and then you keep it going because to kind of stop the pilot is really bad. Whereas why not use the language of experiments?

Yeah.

Where an experiment, just the language is so much better than a pilot because everyone knows experiments can fail. And when it fails, great, it failed. We'll try something else. But like back to the roulette wheel, if you have your chip on 26 black and it comes up, that will pay for all the other innovations that perhaps didn't proceed. So the one that really succeeds will pay and make good on all the little ones that didn't.

Absolutely.

And that should be a very energizing kind of environment for people to do interesting and innovative work.

Yeah. And just quickly, in terms of maybe a percentage of time or budget that goes towards those bets, should we say, or those experiments, how would you I think it depends on your industry.

And again, I'm not an expert in innovation, but setting aside something is really important. And I don't know whether that should be 10%, 5%, 1%, 50%. I don't know. I think for some industries who are in more high-tech industries, they may have to spend a massive amount on innovation and R&D and all that type of thing compared to what some other more traditional companies that have to spend less, but I certainly would never countenance spending nothing. You've got to figure it out and what is an appropriate thing and make that part of the budget year in, year out. Don't, oh, times are tough, we cut that. Because that's a recipe for falling by the wayside.

My next question sort of linked to your comment about culture, I guess, but you always talked about being very results-driven, but making things fun. So how would you go about doing that? What was the— what made things fun?

Yeah, look, I think, uh, well, there has to be results. So I, I'd say results first in terms of then being really clear on what is the from-to story, especially if you're involved in transformation or you're wanting to change things. You have to first basically define where are we now and where do we want to get to and how do we want to do that.

Yeah.

And so Being really honest and setting clear metrics. So I think that if we put that aside for a second, it's then how do you turn up and what do you like at work and to work with and work for and all those, and what kind of colleague are you, all that type of stuff. And I would just subscribe to the fact that it's going to be a long day without some kind of laugh in the workplace.

Yeah.

And I think we've probably all seen either environments or bosses where Nothing. There's no jokes. And it's just deadly. It's deadly. And it's so needless. You can have fun and still be very serious. You can have fun and still be extremely committed to achieving good outcomes. So I think either as the leader or just as part of a team, how you turn up is really important.

Yeah.

And a lot of the research has shown that the leader doesn't have to be the funniest person on the planet. They just have to create an environment where it's okay to be funny. And if I think about mine, I'm terrible at telling jokes. I laugh at my own jokes because I want at least one person to laugh at my jokes. But I don't— so whilst I'm not funny, I still try and create an environment where it's not too serious. And I've over the years had many people in my teams who have been hilarious, and that's kept everyone's energy up and just made it fun.

Key part of the team.

We'll all be dead soon, so it's got to be fun on the way.

Exactly.

Hopefully not too soon.

Speaking of fun, Adam, maybe you'd like to sort of share a little bit about what the rationale was for writing the book before Alex gets ready with some sort of more short-form questions. But yeah, I'd sort of love to know, sort of, was this always in you or was it something The transformation was done, so I'm like, now write a book, or what was sort of the motivation behind it?

Yeah, so I can't pinpoint exactly when I started writing the book, but it was more a slow burn of effort where I just started to kind of write down certain things. And within a short while of starting, I kind of fleshed out what I thought a book could look like and just mapped it out. And then when I had time, and that might have been, you know, when I was on a plane or on holidays or on the weekend or after hours, I would just start writing down my thoughts. And pretty soon I got momentum and I found the whole thing quite fun. Back to the fun question. And quite cathartic to think about, well, actually, what have I learned over 30 years of being involved in transformation? And also some of the, uh, I guess, more, uh, again, more fun things. So I guess what I— the way I would describe my book is it's a, it's a somewhat irreverent book on a very serious topic, but it's meant to be a book that's easy to read and accessible and entertaining as you go through it. And, um, yeah, I, I kind of took both myself and Hopefully I'll take the reader on this journey of, well, how do you transform? And it was really driven also by the fact that I think it's an underserviced part of the market where there's a million books on disruption and what's happening in the world. There's a lot of books on corporate strategy and how we should respond. In my experience, there's very few books on how do you actually do stuff? How do you actually get stuff done?

Yeah.

And that's, that's how it started life. Yeah, a kind of desire to really write a book that helped people get things done.

And in the book, um, you sort of talk about a couple of sort of Japanese, uh, philosophies or, um, teaching areas. You want to maybe just share a little bit about that?

Yeah, so I've been fascinated by Japanese culture for really the last 30, 40 years, um, and, uh, when I was 17, I started doing traditional Japanese martial arts as well, which gave me an additional kind of entrée into kind of Asian Eastern philosophies and Japanese philosophies and that type of thing. So, um, and I found a lot of those lessons from martial arts are very, uh, transferable into a corporate environment. And, and, and what are some of those things? So some of those things are just like respect and courtesy, you know, treating people well, treating people how you would want to be treated yourself. is at the core of kind of the ethos of Japanese martial arts and the whole etiquette associated with that. Ambition and kind of urgency and doing all the things that come out from when you're training with others all lend themselves to an organizational environment. And so, I really wanted to bring some of those types of things into the book and kind of use them to punctuate some of the messages I've learned Yeah, from a corporate career as well.

And I, I recall when we were sort of talking about, you know, what we're going to talk about on the show today, um, the other day around, um, you thought it was interesting that if you tell people you play golf, they'll say, you know, I've played golf for 30 years, and they're like, oh great, that's good, you must really enjoy golf. And then you say, you know, I've been involved in this martial art, they're like, oh, you must be so disciplined. But yeah, you're saying that actually you just enjoy it. So coming back to that fun element.

Yeah, it is odd. I mean, and, and that's always been my response, and this is not something I've, I've spoken about a lot, but, um, someone says, oh yeah, you must be so disciplined to have trained for 30 years or so. I kind of— you'd never say that to a surfer.

No, it's like—

so I think people do what they enjoy, and so if something was so, uh, you know hard at it, kind of, oh my God, unless I'm so disciplined, I'm not going to go today. I think if it doesn't give you joy, you know, you're never going to do it. You're certainly not going to be passionate about it.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, for me, it's been a journey that I've been really felt privileged to be on, to have found something that I was so passionate about and had so many constructive uses in my life. So I feel really lucky to have found it. Not disciplined.

Yeah, well, it sort of comes back to your initial, one of your initial comments around how we sort of frame it and the meaning we give. If we frame it as a fun activity and yeah, it'll be a fun activity. Or if it's maybe the way you're framing, Alex, your boxer size and not making Thursday's session. So you got to think of it as fun.

Exactly.

I'll throw to you, Alex, for some short-form questions.

Yeah, great. Thanks. So Adam, with these, again, please feel free to expand on your answer. The why is really interesting. What's your favorite quote?

Well, I've shared one of them, which is that Machiavelli quote. I think the other quote that would jump to mind is the other end of the transformation spectrum. And the quote, and I should be able to do it in a German accent, but I can't. But the quote is this, after a thorough review of the nuclear plant, we regret to announce the following redundancies. Which we will announce in alphabetical order. Simpson, Homer. That is all. That's one of my favorite quotes from business.

Classic. Yeah. Always been a Simpsons fan?

Always a Simpsons fan.

Yeah. Excellent. Does any cartoon come close? Sorry? Does any cartoon come close to The Simpsons? No. Is that it for you? The pinnacle?

No. Awesome.

I mean, you've spoken about The Prince and things like that, but what book would you say has had the biggest impact on you either professionally or personally? What book?

Besides your own, obviously.

Well, I'm hoping more than my mum buys it. What book would have been the biggest impact on me? One that jumps to mind is The Innovator's Dilemma by Clay Christensen. I think that's an outstanding book for people to really reflect on how their organization works and how their organization needs to change and respond to a changing world.

All right.

Thank you. That's not one I'm personally familiar with, so I have to look that up.

It's very good.

Yeah.

It came up actually this week in Brisbane in one of our CEO groups. Someone mentioned it, so I have to get a copy.

Indeed.

Thanks.

What's next on your bucket list?

On my bucket list? Yeah, probably next on my bucket list would be doing some kind of walks around the world. So in particular, the Camino from kind of Basque France to Spain. And many years ago, I did the Kumano Kodo, which is a walk in Japan, which is like the sister walk of the Camino.

Okay.

And it was fantastic.

That's really cool. Yeah, all at once, or would you do it in stages?

I would, I'd probably set aside some weeks and shortcut it. I may not do the whole thing.

Yeah, fair enough.

On your own? Would you drag someone along with you, or?

Oh yeah, I'd definitely drag someone along.

That's cool. If you could mentor your younger self, what advice would you give when you're starting out?

I would say to my younger self, have a crack. So don't be too worried about the normal way of how things work or kind of how things work, but really be prepared to push and inject more ideas into how things could work and back yourself.

Yeah, that's good advice. Is there anything else that you'd like to touch on today that you feel like we've missed potentially?

No, I don't think we've covered a lot. It's been great to be here.

Comprehensive.

It's been great.

No, it has been. Yeah. Fantastic conversation today, Adam. Thank you for, I guess, giving us a bit of an insight into the sort of transformation and what you did at sort of land registries, obviously very well Accoladed. And yeah, look forward to sort of reading the book. And I know it's— when does it officially come out?

So it'll be on bookshelves on the 30th of August.

Great. Okay, not far away. Fantastic. And we'll have a link to that in the show notes. And yeah, look forward to reading it. So the COVID changed. Did you want to mention that? Because we're still a G-rated conversation.

The COVID did change. So the book started life as the way of transformation, a blueprint for getting big shit done. And the reason behind that was this concept of the way, which is kind of at the heart of Japanese martial arts. And in Japanese culture, there's a way of doing things, and that might be karate, do, so that the do part is, or judo, or things like flower arranging, ikebana, or the tea ceremony. There's a way of doing things. So I like that concept of the way. And when Wiley got behind the book, they didn't think the word shit would go very well from an SEO perspective. And they're the experts in publishing books. So they said, can you change the name? And so I came up with Great Change: The Way to Get Big Strategy Done. So more G-rated. But I also thought great change in 2 respects. Great as in it should be material, significant, and meaningful. In terms of an organization. So not about re-engineering the accounts payable department. And it should also be great for the individual leading it in terms of it should be energizing and challenging and motivational and again, energizing for that individual. So that's where the term Great Change came from.

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing. It's still got an S word in it, but more SEO friendly.

Yes, 100%.

You want to lead us into these rapid-fire questions?

I can do that.

Alex, I'll get my timer ready. See if you can get, uh, how many questions we can get Adam through today. Maybe catch him off guard with, uh, one.

We'll see how we go. So Adam, these are just, you know, either/or questions, just whatever comes first to mind, if that's all right. Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Here we go. Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Netflix or YouTube?

YouTube.

Phone calls or texts?

Texts.

Kick or punch?

Punch.

Beach or snow?

Beach.

Dining out or home cooking?

Dining out.

Passenger or driver?

Driver.

Sun Tzu or Machiavelli?

Machiavelli.

Electric or petrol?

Electric.

Cash or card?

Card.

PC or Mac?

Mac.

Government or private?

Private.

Transformation or status quo?

Transformation.

Golf or tennis?

Tennis.

Still or sparkling?

Still.

Entrée or dessert?

Dessert.

Tea or coffee?

Coffee.

TV or book?

I'd like to say book, but TV.

Beer or wine?

Beer.

Chocolate in the fridge or pantry?

In the stomach.

Pineapple on pizza, yes or no?

Yes.

City or country?

City.

Sleep-in or early riser?

Early.

Walk or run? Run.

Look at that. There we go.

That was a record, I think. Give me one last round of questions. I have a whole other page. Always optimistic.

I did like that you said private. So the government or private one sort of plays well into one of your last accomplishments. Yeah. Well, thank you, Adam, and look forward to having a read. And thanks for sending sort of the precursor through to Alex and I. We enjoyed reading that and looking forward to getting the whole book.

Great.

And thanks for your time today.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you. Thank you, Adam. 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.