From Microsoft to Xero: Steve Vamos on Leading Through Tech’s Toughest Moments

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book, Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life, nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to the Lead On Purpose Podcast. I'm James Laughlin, former seven time world champion and now coach to entrepreneurs, CEOs, professional athletes all over the world. This show is for people who refuse to settle, people who are driven, people who want to grow, who know that there's so much more to learn and want to learn from the world's best. Each week I bring you insights from a special guest who's at the top of their game with whether they're in Formula one, whether they're a billionaire, whether they've started a company from scratch and take it to the top. I bring them to you so that you can rewire your mindset, take action and lead a life of purpose. Let's get started. In today's episode, you're going to get to hear from Steve Vamos, former CEO of Microsoft, Apple and Xero. Enjoy the show. The Lead on Purpose podcast is sponsored by NZ Mortgages. Learn more at nzmortgages.co nz.

Steve, a huge welcome to the Lead On Purpose podcast.

Thanks for having me, James. It's great to be here.

I'm glad you're here. Thanks for flying in from Sydney and I've flown in from Christchurch. So we're gonna have a bit of fun talking about going through the shifts and shocks of life, of business, of work. You've wrote an incredible new book through shifts and shocks. It's amazing. I've read it. It took me two days. And the reason it took me two days is, was I just didn't wanna put it down.

Oh, that's awesome to hear.

That was really valuable. And I look at what you've done and go, you've been through so many different challenges, crises, and I'm starting out in my journey and I'm going, you've got so much to teach me. And what you did in the book was you distilled a lot of these complex issues and challenges that we have as leaders, as people, into really simple and actionable things to do. So much Appreciated.

Oh, thanks for that. I do appreciate that. And in a way, I didn't set out ever thinking I would write a book. But during my journey, I started to feel this responsibility that I had to capture. The things that really stood out in my journey because the domain of leadership, teamwork, change, is so broad, and there's so many different things you could worry and think about and do, and they're all good. That really, the standout things to me were the ones I wanted to make sure that people don't take their eye off. And that's kind of how it evolved.

It's beautiful. Interesting. I was chatting with a friend of yours over the last couple of days, and they were talking about adversity, and he let me in on a little secret, and it's something that you're very fond of. And this is the New York Jets. Oh, yeah, you're a big fan.

That goes right to the heart, that one.

Okay, great. So being a fan of the jets, what has that taught you about adversity over the years?

It's really interesting because this is a team that has had 15 years of failure and poor performance. Even this season, where the hopes were so high, has turned out to be a disaster. In fact, they've lost seven out of eight games that were decided by less than one score, one touchdown. And.

It'S kind of funny because I think in a weird way, it goes a little bit to this whole journey I've been on, which is being in the great places at a rotten time or at a tough time. And it's so inbuilt in me now that it's kind of not that weird that I would suffer through year after year of following a football team that just finds ways to lose. So there's something about that. You know, my brother and I are both big fans, and we just look at each other and go, why are we.

What keeps you committed to them and not, you know, jumping ship and being a glory hunter?

I think it goes back to my father childhood, the way that I was brought up, you know, that you don't. You know, my dad used to say, you never, ever, ever give up. That was one of his expressions. Whenever I wanted to quit or I'd had enough, he'd say, never, ever, ever give up. So I think that's part of it, you know, that. That I was raised to persist and wasn't ever given an easy way out by my parents. So that's the only excuse I can come up with at this point.

I love it. And this idea of persisting and never giving up, you know, what do you think led your dad to be a big believer in that?

Well, he was. It's a really good question because I've never specifically asked. I never specifically asked him that as to why do you see it that way. But I think his story of being a refugee fleeing Hungary in 1956 after the revolution there, and being a stateless person for six months, not knowing what came next and persisting through that and then finding his way to Australia with my mum. They were both very young. Dad was 20, mum was 18. They got married when they were refugees. And I think that, that, that journey and finding the way to Australia and then my father being able to get educated in Australia because the university path wasn't open to him in Hungary. I think all those things of battling through and seeing the positive outcomes from the struggle gave him that conviction that, you know what, if you persist, you don't give up, good things will happen.

And he's right. I mean, you look at the greats in sport, in business, in leadership and yourself, like, keep on going, keep getting back up and eventually good things will come.

Yeah, it's really. It's an interesting one, sort of in your psyche that, you know, you. I talk about this, I know James, you would too, in many different ways, talk about this whole notion of, am I a victim or am I going to lead my way out of this? And we're all human, we all go through that phase of being hit with adversity and, you know, feeling the emotion of that and the negativity of that. And then the question is, how quickly can you pick yourself up and move forward? And I think that fortunately, with my upbringing and learning through what my parents expected of me, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It's about how quickly you shift across to acceptance of what has happened and what you can do about it that matters most.

I have to agree with that. And it's interesting when we look at your career. IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Zero, all in senior executive positions. It's the who's who, the A list of organizations. Did that ambition start young? Did you want to be successful? Were you competitive? Were you driven from a young age?

It really is interesting because the short answer is not really, but it was interesting because IBM, which was the first company.

First company post university that I worked for, had an amazing approach to developing talent. And that was because the IT industry back in 1980 didn't have lots of people out there with capability and skills and experience. So the Big techs back then were like schools. You would go there straight out of university and they would put you on a program to develop you. Now at IBM they also did this thing, which I've never seen anywhere else, not at Apple, not at Microsoft, which was for each individual, they would assess their ultimate potential and identified the next two or three roles they might do in the company that would develop them to that potential.

Wow.

Didn't matter who you were, that was everyone. And at some point early in my career, they started to see some potential in me. And so they invested in my development and did that in many different ways. But even the whole area of becoming a people leader, before I was a people leader, I had to go to a, a course for aspiring managers. Then when I became one, I had to go to a course for new managers. Then six months in, I had to do feedback, mandatory feedback, to find out what my team thought of me as a manager. So that sort of thinking and discipline around talent development, and I'm not sure whether they still do it today, but back then it was really industry leading. And because of those interactions with me and managers who managed me and were curious about my potential and my aspirations because IBM expected them to be like they weren't good at that. They wouldn't stay people leaders for long because they had those conversations with me, I started to think, oh, okay, yeah, I wouldn't mind, you know, having more senior roles and getting into management and then executive leadership at some point. But it was not like this blind ambition that drove me. It was in a sense, the encouragement and then the enjoyment that I got from doing those roles along the way that made me in a sense, evolve to being what I've become.

I love that. It's almost like people are planting a seed in you. Like we believe in you. We see something that maybe you don't see yet.

Yeah. And when I look at my influence on others, you know, I remember and I'm not sure that she would be upset at me mentioning, but Pip Marlow, who's very successful executive CEO and now board director, she worked for me at Microsoft and we were having this conversation about her career aspirations. And what I did on the whiteboard was just put down a couple of pathways or steps she would have to take to get the CEO of Microsoft Australia role. And she says at that point she started to believe that that path for her was there and that she should aspire to it. So the, those conversations managers have with you can make a huge difference.

They're game changing and I guess the same goes for managers who don't care and who don't invest. There's going to be a similar outcome and people will probably leave and it'll not be so good for everyone involved.

Yeah.

So it's interesting, we look at some of the people that you have worked for and with. They are the who's who of innovators, of leaders. They've had ups and downs. But when I look at what you've done, literally you've always led through some form of crisis. We're talking financial, gfc, earthquakes, Covid, terrorist attacks, the lot. So almost like wherever you've went, you've been tested. Where did this ability to be resilient come from? Is that a learned trait? Is that an inbuilt trait? Is that something you read in a book? How did you learn to navigate?

Yeah, it sort of goes back to what we talked about a little bit earlier, just in terms of that.

Whole notion that you don't give up, that you accept the fact that things aren't going to be easy all the time, and there are setbacks and there are things that go wrong, and then what you do is you put your mind to, okay, so what will I do now? What's my ability to respond? And so whatever it is in me that has enabled me to kind of bounce back quickly from things that are setbacks is very hard for me to actually specifically say, identify. I think it really has been that upbringing and then also encouragement from and examples of good leaders.

Who confronted tough times and how they responded to that. So you just see that for whatever reason, I've just come to understand that things will get better. They don't stay the way they are in a particularly bad time, and it's just worth pushing forward and pushing through.

You have such an optimistic, learned optimism. Almost like, I don't think it's what I would call toxic positivity where everything's gonna be okay all the time. It's like, hey, this is tough, this is sad. This is. Whatever it might be, you acknowledge that it's tough, but then you go, okay, where to? How do we start moving towards the next thing? Yeah.

And the thing is too, James, it doesn't. It's like where I am today is different to where I was 30, 40 years ago in the face of those things, you know, like, there were times where, you know, I was, you know, definitely rocked and struggled a bit to get my head around. Okay, so now what? And then I look at where I was at zero with COVID and I was Incredibly calm. And I thought, wow, you know, all these experiences I've had, and the reason why I called the book Through Shifts and Shocks is that essentially everything I've learned, the most important things I've learned have been through being in these great places at the worst of times and just seeing that, you know, you can face into these difficult situations and then, you know, try and take a breath and look at, well, what are the things we can do rather than the things that this is gonna stop us doing, and then put your energy into that. It's really interesting because you can reset goals and objectives, and when you do.

When a setback happens, it requires you to perhaps go from thinking, that's where I'm heading. This is when I want to get it done by. To a different set of objectives that reset emotionally and physically makes a huge difference. It's like it takes a weight off your shoulders. So the quicker you can do that and maybe let go of what you hoped for in the past and then set something up that is a positive way forward. It's incredible how much. How quickly you can leave behind those negative emotions and the difficulty of what happened.

I really relate to that. I think sometimes I've been guilty of being stubborn, and that's maybe this Irish kind of. You're a bit too.

Are you sure? Sure.

And it serves me in some places, and it probably hinders me in, but I think when it comes to setting big goals, whether it was when I was a competitive performer or running a business, sometimes I'm so set on that goal and it might not even be close or something might have changed, that means I'll never get close to it, but I'll stick at it doggedly for too long. And there's a cost. There's a physical cost, an emotional cost. What I'm hearing is it's important to have the eyes up and elevate our awareness and realize that sometimes we need to change course.

Yeah. And it's also stubbornness, in a way, isn't all bad. Right. That could be a strong sense of belief that drives you. And the challenge you have then is, okay, at what point do I compromise on that or let loose on that? Because experience is showing me that that belief that drove me is now perhaps not serving me as well, given the experiences I'm having or based on the feedback other people are giving me. And so that's. I reckon that's the really interesting.

Challenge for us as people, because you look at founders. Founders create businesses because of deep belief. Belief is the currency of a business, because without belief, there is no product, there is no customer, there is no money. So belief is the currency. So at what point does a founder's belief in themselves, their idea is, have to start to give way to those of others so that the business can go beyond that individual to being something bigger and perhaps different. And I think that that's where a strength, which is conviction and belief, can become a weakness if it isn't one that can be tempered based on the feedback of others. And you'd also know this goes to coachability. Right. Can you coach someone you know, and when their beliefs are entrenched to the point where they just don't want to move, it's really hard to coach them. And I always think that a real test is where people have changed their beliefs or their views, and is there evidence they have or they will?

I love that there's two types of people. They're coachable or uncoachable.

Yeah.

And it's a choice. You choose to be coached and choose to receive feedback. And is that something that's been natural for you, or do you feel that at times you've been maybe a bit resistant to feedback?

Oh, I've definitely been resistant. I think it's a human thing as well, because you.

Start by trying to justify why the feedback might not be right. And that's because, in a way, it's an assault on our ego. So this is where, you know, we were talking earlier about, you know, the challenge we have of being human.

Being the best that we want to be and can be in this crazy fast changing world we live in because we face into it often, often these changes or the feedback we face into it, a bit of fear like, oh, no, here it comes. And then a need to protect ourselves because of our importance of, in a way, our association with our.

Knowledge and our successes in the past. So what happens then is that when feedback hits us, it's not a comfortable experience. And in a way, a lot of people have said it now you've got to become. To deal with what we are facing into, you have to be more comfortable being uncomfortable. So I've got better at it. But that doesn't mean that this afternoon I won't get feedback from my wife that I'm gonna react badly to. So it's a constant struggle. It's a constant one where you've gotta stay conscious of the fact that people are trying to help you. And if you can accept and learn from what they have to say to you, you'll be Better for it. It's a gift. And it's a sad thing that there's not more free flow of feedback between us humans. Because we'd all be better for it.

Yeah. Because we fire up and protect.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we don't want to hurt people's feelings, so we don't tell our mates or our family members or people we're working with. We don't tell them the truth because we don't want to hurt them.

You talked about this in the book and I want to get into it in a minute. The idea of being and doing. But one of the doing things was having difficult, tough conversations. And do you feel that the reason we don't have those tough conversations is often we don't want to hurt others. We don't know what the outcomes might possibly be.

Yeah, exactly. Fear is a big part of it, and.

It'S being human and not wanting to hurt other people. For sure.

What I loved about you, so I went to the book and I love to go to the back of a book and look at the sources and see what the author's interested in. In reading this really blew me away. So I love Nicole Lapera's work. Do the work. Joe Dispenza. I've been studying with Joe for five, six years. I love the way he looks at the world and, you know, quantum and epigenetics. There was another one in there that I was really impressed with. Gabor, mate. Oh, yeah, Phenomenal. What? Like I don't meet too many incredible leaders and executives like you who are deeply interested in that broad array, but particularly in the emotional piece, because Gabor and Nicole very much looking at emotions. What has led you to looking at that and being open to that? Is that a natural thing or someone in your life kind of encouraged you to do that?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop, please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I'll also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

Well, my brother John, he has Been a business coach for years and he now specializes in helping family businesses, large family enterprises, put in place the important processes. They often don't that deal with things like the role of family members in the business and what basis do they have, the jobs they have. Is it based on skill or not? Succession planning and all of this. And John's written books on the whole notion of the brain and how, in a sense, we aren't necessarily in control of what we think at all times. And so that was sort of the early, in a sense, the influence definitely that made me interested in that domain and then reading his stuff and then reading other stuff, but also some really good people I've worked with that, you know, encouraged me by saying, oh, you've got to read this stuff, you know, and. But the book that you mentioned from Nicole Lupera, that one for me really was. I know people that that book has made a significant change in their lives to. And what I loved about it was in my journey, when I've come across executives or people that are struggling to overcome whatever issues, traumas that they experienced as a kid, you know, could be. For example, one I write about is a woman senior executive who had issues with the way she reacted to difficult situations. And it was because growing up, her parents didn't show her the same interest and support they did her brother. And so whenever people would say things to her that challenged or threatened her, she'd react really badly.

Those sorts of things in the past, I'd just say, oh, you need to go and see someone, you need to go and get help. I didn't really have anything I could give someone, but now I can say, hey, here's a book. Go read that and go do the exercises and do some work, because you can help yourself. Oh, by the way, it's still great to talk to someone now that can help you too. But books like that, which also James talks. If I'd have written my book, finished my book five, 10 years ago, I wouldn't have focused on the being bit. But reading Mate and reading Nicole d' Perez works. And then the influence of my brother has made me realise that this whole notion of. Of leadership is a journey of discovering who you are as a human and what makes you tick and why do you react the way you do to negative or difficult situations. So it really is something that has a much stronger place in what I say, what I do, what I think now than ever before. And it's kind of picked up a lot, you know, in recent years, as there's More and more really good stuff out there that we can lean on.

I have to agree. And I'm glad that you did include that in the book, and I'm glad that we're talking about it, because I think young leaders and leaders who are starting off on their journey or midway through their journey should be really conscious of the being side of it and the emotional side of leading. Because at the end of the day, whatever energy we bring into a room or to a team, it impacts them. They can feel it.

Yeah, you bet. And it's one of those things where. I'll give you another example here. So I'm in my 60s. I recently learned how to breathe, and I'm angry. I'm angry because breath, work and breathing is so central to everything about being human. I go, why aren't we taught this? I've learned now that there are breathing techniques that can help you get to sleep at night when your mind is really busy. And everyone should know these things. Everyone should practice this stuff. So, you know, the human side, the being side of being human is something that I really think has so many benefits to everything that we do that it is, in a sense, frustrating to look back on my journey and, you know, I had a great education. I've got no issues with that. But there's definitely been big missing chunks of learning about myself as a human. And we need to get onto that because change is constant, it's accelerating, and being the best version of yourself is really where your ability to respond and take advantage of these things is really important.

Yeah, well said. Yeah, I noticed you'd. In the book, you mentioned James Nestor, the breath.

That's a great book.

Yeah, we had him on the show about a year ago.

Awesome. I'll watch that.

Did you?

I will watch.

And it's just literally him talking about the mechanics of breath and then showing us like, hey, here's how you actually do it. I thought to myself, some of my friends back in Ireland would go, james, are you mad? You know how to breathe from the minute you're born, but actually you don't, and you lose that natural ability as a kid. Most kids, babies breathe way better than you or I. They belly breathe and they know how to manage their stress through breath. But you and I, we hold it together and we, you know, don't breathe throughout the day and we take on stress. So his work is very important for leaders.

Yeah, I agree with you. That was a great book.

Agree. Now, Apple, Microsoft, Xero, I'd like to jump into each of These individually. So Apple, what was one of the toughest moments at Apple? What did you learn from that?

Toughest moments at Apple.

The toughest moments were really, in a sense.

When we were trying. We had a good business in Australia that had good clients, large clients, as well as obviously the strengths in education that Apple had and other markets like desktop publishing. And the company had lost its way and reported massive losses. And the speculation, the international media. And the reality was the company was in real trouble, into survival mode.

So the question that.

I had to deal with was how do I maintain a positive view by our customers in Australia and our team in Australia of the future of our business when they're reading and hearing all this stuff? I had an HR leader who worked with me back then, Marie Taylor, who was fantastic. And she said to me, steve, the only way we can respond to this that's really going to make a difference in is to be really clear about our vision and belief about the future. We're gonna create clear about the actions we are going to take, given what we're facing, to reinforce our relationship with customers, to build that confidence with them and to also instill confidence in the brand while we're going through this. And back then, Apple was pretty loosey goose right before Steve came back. You know, you could run a subsidiary of Apple and decide which products you were gonna sell, which ones you weren't. I even with my team, built an Apple TV brand campaign.

Wow.

Now we used senior executives of companies that were big Apple customers to. So we put their faces on television saying how much they love Apple and what Apple was doing. And that was all part of the response to this narrative that, boy, these guys are going to be out of business. So it was smarter, faster, better was the tagline of the campaign. And we also documented our strategy. This really nice little glossy one pager. And we communicated that constantly. And that really helped keep things together and get through that. And that's something that importance of connecting your purpose and your priorities to what people do every day was really grounded in that experience. And I've carried that on further in other roles because I came to realize how powerful it really was. This whole notion of how you turn where we want to be into what the work we do is really, I call it alignment. That alignment between the individual's day at work and the aspirations you have is often the missing thing. It's a really powerful thing if you get it right.

And how do we, you know, if you think back again, focusing on Apple, how do we take some of Those lessons and drive alignment. So if we want to create alignment and drive it in our teams, is there a tactical way that we can do that?

Yeah, this is really one of the areas where I think CEOs and leaders of organisations need to get really serious. Because.

The act of taking an intention, a strategy could be better. Customer service could be to be more operate with excellence. Whatever high level language you use, you have to break that down into action and you have to break that down to action at every level through your management ranks till it hits the right individual, whether they're a professional or a management. But it has to go all the way down and they have to be held to account. Now that's not for everything everybody does every day, so it's not quite that broad. But for anything to do with a different outcome, a change, unless you go through that discipline of cascading and debating at every level of management, what does doing this mean? What's the trade off with other things we're doing? What additional resources do we need? Unless you have those conversations, what happens is middle management looks up and sees all these expectations showering down, looks down, sees all the work that they've got to get done and they do the best they can, which generally means they don't do the change stuff. And what happens then is middle management gets blamed off on this whole notion of the frozen middle.

Yeah, I've heard it many times. Yeah.

And when I always say, whenever a CEO or a senior executive uses those words to me, I say, you're to blame, don't blame them, you are to blame because what you're not doing is getting deeply enough involved in the trade offs and the resource contentions that are there every day of life. As middle managers, their jobs are often harder.

Yeah.

So to me alignment is about that. And there's an example in my book, that was an experience I had working with Tom Daunt, who is now co CEO of Aldi Sud, which is Aldi south based in Europe. And Tom was running Aldi Australia at the time. He saw, he heard me speak and he rang me up, he said, steve, I want to talk to you about the one thing you said that interested me.

I love it. Slight compliment there.

Yeah. It's like he said alignment. Talk to me about alignment. And then I went on the journey with Tom and he was phenomenal at uncovering this real issue of all the bottom up stuff, hitting the top down priority stuff and going nowhere because of too much activity and not enough focus. And he dealt with that and very successfully. And he's told me he's now using that practice in the new global role. So, so that's a really, you know, if there's, there's one thing that every CEO ought to really have a good hard look at is how much effort are you putting into aligning the individuals in your organization with the things you want to change that are most important.

That seems so simple. But you and I chatted about this off air was that common sense is not often common practice.

Yeah, that's the problem. And there's another one I like which is the simple things are often hard to do. And they are. And the reality is that driving alignment is really hard work. I spoke to a CEO of a pretty large organization, very large organization, recently and he was talking about how.

He had a team of champions rather than a champion team. And so then I said, okay, talk to me a little bit more about that. And then I started to ask him questions. I said, well Tommy, how does your team drive alignment around executing your most important strategies? Because the other thing I didn't mention is that most of the change stuff is not one function. It requires your team members cross functional collaboration to be really good, which means that the executive team needs to buy in to those priorities too. And he said that's our weakness. And I said, well, fixing that is really important. And what you're gonna find is that as you're fixing that you will evolve to a champion team. But it may not be with the same team players because really getting aligned in any organisation means sacrifice. Every function sacrifices for the good of the group. You know, if you think about any business, if you optimised for finance, you wouldn't extend credit. You know, if you optimized for marketing, your marketing budget would dominate now. So every function has to sacrifice something or be sub optimized for the whole to be optimized. And.

They'Re some of the things that I've picked up from driving alignment and seeing how hard it really is.

It's interesting you say this and it's exciting to hear you explain it like that. So earlier in the week I was chatting with Craig Hudson.

Oh yeah, obviously love Craig. Yeah.

And he feels the same way about you. He's obviously spent a lot of time working alongside you and with you. And the one thing he described almost exactly like you did was say. He said one of Steve's greatest assets is being able to speak with a team organization, go into the silos or the divisions and go, oy, let's look at the big picture. What do you need to give up. What are you not seeing that's going to help the greater good of the team? And he said that was one of your big standouts, was your ability to not only highlight it, but then to get buy in. And the idea of influencing, you know, what do you think leaders need to learn in influencing? Not persuading, not manipulating, but in influencing and inspiring people to take action.

Yeah, look, I do think it comes down to being clear about purpose and why, but not through edict. The thing I learned on my journey a long time ago was that you have not really communicated until someone communicates it back to you.

And that you can tell people all you like, but until you've had a conversation where they've expressed their view and shared their thoughts, you're not bought in. They're not bought in. So you've gotta take a little bit more time than you want to get people to buy in. And also by listening and opening your mind to them, you'll find you'll end up with a better result. So getting the why, the purpose, the, you know that picture, right? And then similarly, with priorities, collaborating around, okay, so if this is why we're doing what we're doing, or this is our purpose or ambition, getting the priorities right involves again, a lot of collaboration. Because, you know, there's no CEO that knows as much as the individuals on their team combined. I mean, no way. So.

There'S that process. So what happens then is people, because they're involved, because their opinions have been respected, even if they're not accepted as what you do, they've bought in. And I'll put more energy into what you're trying to do. So it's very simple. It's not easy to do again, because as a leader, you wanna rush, you wanna, and sometimes you just know the answer, right? And you just wanna get on with it. And sometimes in a crisis, you might have to push a bit harder at that time to just act on what you believe. But generally speaking, any transformational change or serious change, you've got to get people around you to participate, involve, get involved and communicate with you and help shape what it is you're doing.

So, well said. And I think about change. We're in a very interesting time right now with a lot of change, a lot of volatility, geopolitically, economically, with technology and the development of pace. If Steve Jobs was here, so obviously he worked for Steve, you've met Steve. If he was here right now and he was looking at the big picture and chatting to corporate Leaders around the challenges and the opportunities. What do you think he might say or what might he ask?

It's really interesting because, you know, Steve had this view that customers aren't the ones who are going to tell you what you need to build because they just won't see it. That's not where they spend their time. Look, I would, I really don't know how he would see the world today. I don't know that I could do that justice. But I would, I would probably hope that it would be around this whole notion that.

Technology enables people to do amazing things now. So what is your organization doing to enable your people to take advantage of that? I would think that certainly from a tech industry viewpoint, I was really interested in this whole domain because I saw how technology implementations in organizations failed or succeeded based on how effective the leadership was in embracing change. So with the good stuff that is out there and even now with really interesting, with AI and the productivity gain that's potentially there for professionals through the use of these tools, the question is who's going to get the productivity benefit? Is it their leadership, the organization they work for, or is it them as individuals because they don't have to work as many hours to get the job done or because the free time they have enables them to start their own side hustle? So that's, I do think that I would hope it'd be something to do with the state of leadership and how leaders have a responsibility to.

Provide their people with environments where technology can make a difference and do good.

I like this concept. We should look it up because I think a lot of leaders will be interested in this. So you've got these tools, LLMs, you've got your ChatGPT, you've got all these different functionalities that do essentially give us as individuals back more time, which should in turn then mean that we've got more individual time to do more for the company. However, there might be some that are working from home. There's hybrid, they're not essentially being watched or there's no shoulder to shoulder activity. So they might say work a three day week, get all their jobs and tasks done and the other two days they've got their side hustle, they're building. What do you think we need to focus on as organizations or teams, leaders, Instead of productivity, what would be a better metric to focus on?

Yeah, it's a good question. Look, I think that.

First of all, I think in response and reaction to what you just said, it's really important that we engage all our people in the bigger picture of why they're doing what they're doing and what the organisation or team they're on is trying to accomplish, and then ask them what's possible, what do you think you could be doing to help us on our journey? So. And then out of that, can start a conversation about tasks. But I wouldn't start with tasks because you will never tap into that potential unless you do. So I think that's a really important thing. Productivity is really an interesting area right now because there's a lot of talk by government that, you know, productivity is not growing as fast as it should. And there's a whole range of questions about how we measure productivity as well, because there's no question technology has taken some inefficient revenue out of a sense. The money that organizations generate, because there's less friction in the process, there might be knowledge is more available, therefore things are cheaper. So measuring productivity, I think, is something that needs a lot more thought because it's a little bit heavily weighted right now to, in a sense, you know, your income divided by the number of people you have. When there are other aspects to productivity that are more subtle, which is how much work did I get done in a day where it might not reflect in revenue in the short term or medium term. So there's a lot more to be said about and done in that domain. But I think that all of this in the world we live in now comes down to being clear about what are we trying to accomplish. What do we want, for example, at a national level, what do we want to be as a country, what do we want to see? What are our priorities to drive us towards that aspiration? And. And how do we operationalize those? And it's a really, really challenging, challenging situation to drive that alignment, because alignment at a national level makes alignment at an organizational level look a lot easier.

100%. And let's take a little look at Microsoft. What was the biggest crisis or the toughest moment that you had to navigate there?

Microsoft.

Was probably.

The most challenging thing for me at Microsoft was.

The culture at the time I was there was so heavily oriented towards the success of Windows that being in a newer part of the business that I was in, which was the digital media, the MSN side of the business, you kind of felt a little bit like a kind of a poor second cousin to the Windows machine. And constantly, in a sense.

Yeah, not constantly, but often meddled with. So a great example was when we had this amazing thing called Hotmail, was the biggest free email service on the planet. And Microsoft powers that be in marketing decided we're going to rename it and they called it Windows Live Mail.

I remember it.

Yeah. And we just, we flipped our lid and said, are you serious? Like, we know it's one of the execs, but there are others as well. So then they compromised and called it Windows Live Hotmail.

What a mouthful, right?

Yeah, yeah. And you just sort of and sort of that. It was a really interesting study in how. And Bill Gates actually is quoted as saying, success is a lousy teacher. And this is an example. Microsoft now are doing a phenomenal job and they've really bounced back, probably bigger and better than ever. But for a good 10 to 15 years they would lost their way when it came to the Internet and digital media. Definitely. And ideas that we had. For example, there was a company that Google acquired that was phenomenally important to digital media advertising. And people in Microsoft had been screaming, we should go and buy this company. Buy this company. It's called DoubleClick. We should buy it, we should buy it. But anyway, Google bought it. And the day that that was announced, I was still relatively new to Microsoft Corporation at that point. And I can remember how depressed people in my division were because they said, well, you know, if only we'd done that. So, so that was the biggest challenge, was just being caught in a culture where the part where I worked was really not the core culture, it was a subculture and where the momentum was so strongly in the Windows camp that, you know, that success meant that the ideas were less and less open to the things that we thought we could do and should have done in a number of those areas related to digital media and the expansion there.

And if you could go back, would you do anything differently?

Look, I, look, I have to say that I love Microsoft as a company and I loved it then. And Steve Ballmer was the CEO. And Steve is kind of cops a bit of criticism for those things that Microsoft, those opportunities that Microsoft missed. The reality is though, that everything Steve did was core to setting Microsoft up for the success it has today, which was a presence in large corporate enterprise technology. But I went to, I would have meetings with Steve one to one, and there was two levels of management between me and him. And he would, you know, invite me and we'd have a chat. Not with, you know, other guys in the room, it was just the two of us. And I'd say, you need to do the following five things. You know, I'd say, Steve, you gotta do these things. This is what's going on? And he would always listen and he would even go further than they'd say, I'm gonna do 1 and 2 and 3, but I'm not doing 4 and 5. So he would respect my view. So there's probably nothing that I individually would do a lot different. Cause I was the loudmouth Aussie that would walk into rooms in Seattle Redmond and say things that people preferred I didn't say. So there was no doubt that I kind of put it out there. And I think that that's kind of reflective of how I've always been, which has been someone who operates well within the corporate structure, but also can be a bit of a rebel rouser at the same time.

Yeah, well needed in many teams and organizations. We lack courageous people at times who can speak up, speak the mind and just poke at the edges to stimulate creativity.

Yeah, I love the kind of corporate renegades. Cause you do need to be able to survive in both environments at the same time.

And what about Bill Getz? You mentioned him in the book. What influence did he have on how you see technology and how you lead?

Look, I didn't have a lot of direct interaction with Bill because he'd already moved on to chairman and Steve was the CEO. I think what was interesting was Bill's another study of how someone's culture as a CEO affects an organization and how his intellectual and Microsoft's intellect was a very powerful thing. And when I joined the company, it was at a time where they realized they had to shift the culture. And it was a leader of our global sales organization, Orlando Ayala, who called it out and said we need to treat our customers and treat our stakeholders better. That we need to move from perhaps being as intelligent and transactional as we have been to being more relationship oriented, more long term in our thinking about relationships. So I would say that the Bill culture was really the culture that the company evolved from. In my time, the 10 years that I was associated with Microsoft was really about trying to become a much more well rounded organization in that context. But the, the interesting thing that Bill did instill that I think is a fantastic example is the attention to detail. So there's this process they run and Big Tech is pretty good at this, which is making sure that you're talking to detail. No matter who you are in the organization, how senior you get, you still have to be across the numbers in the detail. And that was very strong in Microsoft. And the reason why Microsoft has bounced back so well is that it's a company that is very, very good at executing strategy because it turns the strategy into detail, Detail metrics, detail actions. And that was why, you know, under Satya, with his sort of fresh approach to what the company could and should be and how it does it, has been able to really turn things around strongly.

It's impressive. And for a moment, I look at who you've worked for and with and where you've led. It's quite incredible. And it's a dream for most people to work for even one of these companies or leaders. You've done multiple. And I want to talk about just the impact that has at a personal level. So obviously, from a dad perspective, a partner perspective, when we're fully focused on our jobs, there can be really positive impacts on our families and opportunities, but there can also be negative and collateral at times. So when you look back, what's been some of the positive influences your family, and maybe what have been some of the more challenging ones?

Wow.

Yeah, it's one of those areas. I always think that when I look back at family life versus work life, there's a lot to family life that is more challenging than work life. And certainly I talk about having difficult conversations and really putting a stake in the ground about expectations and what good looks like. All those things that you try and do in your work environment are even, I think, more important in your family life in that.

Being conscious of what's going on in your family and conscious about the goals that you're setting and aspirations you have for yourself and for everyone in your family is something I don't think we. We do spend enough time on. It's, you know, again, something that I'm still learning. And.

Yeah, I think that it's challenging when you look back on it.

Just sort of thinking about, you know, being a father and do you spend enough time with your kids?

You know, I traveled a lot, but I also tried to be there for dinner every night. I could be. I didn't. I've never been one that sort of was into the. Every night you gotta be out doing, you know, something. So I tried to spend a lot of time. I've got good relationships with my daughters.

But, yeah, I think it's one of those things where you almost have to ask them rather than me. I did ask both my girls at one point to rate out of 10 their childhood.

How did that go?

One of them refused to answer. And the other one, the score was, you know, not particularly blown away. Fantastic. It was an okay score.

Did you dig deeper? Did you ask why?

Yeah, I did ask, I did ask why. And you know, again they.

You know, I think in terms of, I think with me, I think in my family and my family life, I think my kids would have probably wanted me to be more present and to perhaps deal with some issues that we had in a more.

A more proactive way. Because I think what happens is we all work hard, we go home, we're tired and we let things go because we don't have the energy. And unfortunately some of those things compound as well. So I think that's definitely something they would say about me, you know, when they read my book. And one has, and the other one is I haven't had the full debrief with them yet. I haven't really had the deep conversation about what did you think? But I'm sure they'll acknowledge that difficult conversations is something that I could have been better at in that journey.

Thanks for sharing that. It's interesting. So I'm late 30s, I've got an 8 year old boy and I travel quite a bit. But I'm conscious that I do want to be home every night if I can be. And most nights I am, but it's full on and when I am home yet sometimes I'm knackered and we don't get to maybe go as deep on a conversation. So in terms of if you could go back and talk to younger Steve as a dad, what advice would you give him?

I wish the advice is I'm not sure that I would have done things greatly differently. But what I would say is I wish I knew more about me. I wish that some of you know, for example, mindfulness and what is mindfulness and being exposed to that so much later in my life. It's something that originally when it was presented to me I thought, well, who needs to meditate? I sleep eight hours a night, I don't need to meditate. I had a really negative attitude towards it. But then I started to read about mindfulness and realized mindfulness is many different things. It's not, it's whatever works for you to make you present, breathe and be in the moment. So I think that if I'd had more discipline and more awareness of and more self awareness then that would have been great. That would have been a gift. So again I write in the book about the importance of self awareness and self awareness is something that.

Evolves as you evolve. So I think if I had those capability, better capabilities there, more self aware, more able to pause and reflect and react better in the moment, better at difficult Conversations. I would have been a better father partner in those years, for sure. Absolutely. For years, for sure. Yeah.

Thank you for sharing that. And I think it's good, you know, as a dad, there might be other parents listening to this now as well, maybe grandparents. I think it's important to look back and go, what could I do? What might I shift? And then pass that on to someone that's maybe in the thick of it. And mindfulness I find fascinating. So recently we had Dr. Ellen Langer on the show. So she's the mother of mindfulness. She brought it to the West. She's in her late 70s now and she's in her last year of teaching at Harvard. And so we would talk about mindfulness and how actually accessible it is to all of us. And it doesn't necessarily need to mean 45 minutes meditating on a chair. It's just being aware of your surroundings and focused on the person in front of you and acknowledging your breath and.

Yeah, and also sensing when you're about to say something or get angry because you feel your blood pressure rising. Being able to take a breath and stop there and okay, how do I respond here in a way that's constructive, productive, and the better version of me.

Agree. Now, this idea of being and doing so, the being part, I love the idea of, you gotta get the mindset right, like a really good mindset, and then develop self awareness. For me, self awareness is literally, literally the difference that makes the difference in great leaders versus good leaders. I came across a tool recently called Deeper Signals. And there's Hogan assessments, there's disc. There's all these different things you can do. Clifton, this Deeper Signals assessment, the science behind it is phenomenal. It's all about self awareness. How do we develop it? How do we help our leaders discover what it looks like and build on it. And I've seen it work brilliantly with teams. So from your experience, if we take the science out of it and just the actual being as a leader, how did you develop more self awareness in yourself and then in others?

I definitely think that the culture of receiving feedback that was really strong in my first 14 years at IBM was huge because I started to see the benefits of.

Learning more about yourself, seeing yourself as others see you. The first, the first time I got feedback was in that six month, six months in my first management role. I thought I was doing a great job. I thought I was the manager that people would love to work with. And the feedback came back that literally the quote unquote was, Steve uses us as a tool to get his job done.

How did that feel?

Oh, I didn't feel good at all. Like, I was shocked and, yeah, rocked me and so. And changed me. So I do think that that. And then working in the tech industry and in cultures where feedback is encouraged, I think has been the key to it. And then also, you know, I have had feedback from family members as well that you have to. Even if you don't like it, you do hear it, and then that helps you understand yourself as well. So I think that that's been really important and still is. You know, there's a technique that I really believe in, which is for the leader of a team, which is this. Do more, do less, and go out of the room, have someone facilitate the conversation. Facilitation is so important. Right. Because a leader trying to facilitate themselves or their own meetings is like.

I heard Steve Jobs say this. It's like doing brain surgery on yourself. You get halfway through and lights are out. It doesn't work. So facilitation's been really important to that. And then when you come back into the room and the facilitator leads the conversation about what your people want you to do more of and do less of, and even one of the most recent ones, I had feedback that one of my team members felt I was harsh. Much harsher in my expectations with her than other members of my team. The other members of the team all agreed and supported it and observed it, and I was shocked by that. Wow. I didn't really. I didn't know she was someone that I really relied on and trusted. She was a high performer on the team, and it just shows you. You learn every day. You can learn every day. If you ask people, what do you see in me that I may not see in myself?

And what did you do about that once you got that information?

I became conscious, totally conscious. And also we had our understanding, which said, if I fall into a state of unconsciousness and I behave that way, you can call me on it. Now you go, hang on, stop. I'm not gonna accept that.

And so you allowed and created a safe space for anyone at any level to actually call you out.

Yeah, look, I definitely believe that's really.

You have to go really hard and far to invite feedback that is going to be feedback you really need to hear. In fact, you need to go as far as to say, james, we just had this meeting. Tell me what I could have done better.

And I have to go further than that. I have to say, I think I could have covered this subject, or I could have covered that subject. What do you think? So almost start criticizing yourself to open the pathway for someone else to give you that feedback, because people will be fearful to do that. And they're fearful in hierarchy, but they're also fearful because they just don't want to hurt your feelings. So, yeah, you've got to work really hard to invite that of people.

That's beautiful. And before we talk about zero, I just want to just highlight to the listener or the viewer right now that they can go to the Show Notes and then get a copy of this amazing book through shifts and shocks. This is going to be valuable for leaders, people, leaders, founders. This is going to be just as valuable for parents. I was reading it going, God, it's changing every kind of year. There's major change in Finn's life, in our lives. I find a lot of the lessons, like being and doing, I could do that as a dad, I could do that as a partner, I could do that as a son to my parents. Have the difficult conversations, be more aware. So go to the Show Notes, get a copy of the book, and if you work at a company and you're a leader, grab several copies and distribute them. And then you'll actually have frameworks to work from. So back to zero. Now, interestingly.

I was working at a school and I started a little retail business on the side, a little side hustle. In 2009. My weakness is spreadsheets and numbers. And I rang up an accountant friend who said, james, you've got to start a spreadsheet and all your income and your expenses and your stock. I said, yeah, that's not going to happen. Thank God I came across Xero. So from 2009, 2010, I've been a Xero customer, multiple businesses. But man, oh man, it's changed my life. It's click of a button, it's built for an Irishman like me. It's very intuitive and it's been brilliant. Now, you stepped into Xero, you had a pretty strong relationship with founder Rod.

Yeah, we worked together for 18 months and I was coaching, advising. So he would get me in once, basically once a quarter to facilitate the leadership team meetings. But in between that, I was working on a couple of the strategy work streams that he and I had kind of identified through a process that he asked me to run.

So you'd already added value, you'd built trust. He could see how you think and operate. He'd seen you within a team setting. And then he decided he was CEO at the time, yes. As well as founder, it was time for him to step aside and do other things. And so I believe he kind of tapped you in the shoulder and encouraged you to throw your hat in the ring.

Yeah, he did, he did. And you know, the things that we did because Rod gave me a brief or asked me to help him with really what Xero needs to do to further scale around the world as a company. And so there were three areas that we talked about, you know, around strategy and planning, sales and marketing, global sales and marketing, and then how we evolved the product organisations to be a multi product, multi market company. And so a lot of that work was in a sense about putting the right people in the right roles and getting processes in place. And Rod called me in January or early 2018 and said, Steve, now I understand the work the CEO needs to do and really drive to continue to grow the business. And he said, it's just not work I'm passionate about. It's not what I love doing. You know, I'm not a big fan of, I'm not a coach, I'm not a process guy. So he said, I've talked to the chairman and I think it's time for us to, you know, find a CEO. And then he said, and I think you should throw your hat in the ring. And I did. And I was very fortunate to, in a sense, have the opportunity that would be. There's no opportunity I've had in my long career that was better than the opportunity to lead an amazing company. Also a technology company that was born in New Zealand in this part of the world. So as an Aussie, it was as close. In fact, in Australia, often they'll say, you know, to refer to Xero as an Australian company because. Because it feels like an Australian company in Australia because of the great work that the company's done to really entrench itself there. But also because Australians notoriously steal New Zealand innovation and rebranded Australian. But it was great to be able to work with. The technology business was global and based in the part of the world I come from.

Can we do a bookend for a second? So when you walked in, where was the company at, roughly in terms of subscribers and rev? And then when you stepped aside, what did you grow it to?

Yeah, it was around a million. They'd passed the million subscriber landmark when I, whilst I was an advisor and then when I finished up with the company, we were in the high 3 millions, so pretty much all the metrics in the five years, actually, no in the six, seven years I worked with Xerox, almost every metric quadrupled. Wow. Yeah. So it was phenomenal growth.

You proud of that?

Yeah, I am. But, you know, it was, you know, really, Rod takes the credit for the innovations, the product, and also the courage and belief that a founder has to have. But also what I love about Rod and really appreciate about him as founder is that. And I think it was partly because Zero wasn't his first successful startup exit. He actually had that experience before. So as a founder, he saw Zero as something he wanted to build, to be great in its own right. He never attached himself and his ego to the company to such a degree that he became the resistance to change. He always encouraged the company to change and also to become bigger and in a sense, different to him as an individual. And I think that was why he set it up well for me, as the first post founder CEO, to be able to pick up the ball and run with it and continue to leverage the momentum that he created, but also to take the company to the next level.

Absolutely. And I mean, it would have been maybe a little more linear, that growth, and maybe just more like almost predictable. Yet you walk in and 20, 20 Covid hits. What does that mean for you? What did you go through as leader of Zero through the COVID pandemic?

Well, first of all, you know, Covid was a big shock. And, you know, I still can go back to being in my Wellington apartment and sitting at the table with the screen in front of me, essentially now speaking to people, working through that screen to do everything. And on one hand, it meant that I wasn't going to travel the crazy amount I was previously, which was about half the time I was traveling to the uk, us, other markets.

So I got to be in one place, which is all right. But on the other hand, the intensity of working that way was something that even today, I can almost feel the pain of what that was like. But we really had to pretty immediately adapt. And fortunately, we were, in a sense, on the kind of right side, if there is one, of what was going on, because technology and small businesses using technology like Xerox became a very important. Well, it got momentum as a result of the pandemic. So very soon after, we learned that our business was not going to be, in a sense, in serious trouble, which really made us very fortunate. But what we did know was we had to change how we were doing business really quickly. And we did. We adapted virtually everything to being remote, remote working remotely. And that meant everything from how we Engage with our people. The things that we did for our people, to make sure they were safe and their wellbeing was all right in their home environments, through to the work we did to support our customers and our partners. And.

All the communication that we were doing had to change in the approach that we took.

And as a leader, I often hear this. People say, hey, James, as a leader, it's really lonely at the top. And I go, okay, well, talk to me a bit more about why you feel lonely. But I imagine during a pandemic, in an apartment, running a global company, there potentially could have been some loneliness that set in. Was there any challenges for you personally that you had to kind of work through or, you know, need some support with through that time?

Yeah, it was definitely. It was really tough. You know, I renamed Thursday Night Friday Eve.

I love it.

And I did a couple of things that really made a difference. I. I.

Walked in the middle of the day. And we were fortunate in Wellington to be able to pretty much get out for most of that period of time. So I go for a walk. Another thing I've picked up in recent years is yoga, which is just common sense stretching. Right. Which helps a lot when you get older. Helps anyone, I think. But. So I tried to really do those things with discipline. And other than that, you just look, my wife was amazing through that period of time because she was locked in the apartment with me, so she made sure that I was fed well. And she helped me a lot with the work stuff because she's got those capabilities. So when it came to recording videos and setting things up, Cheryl was able to help me a lot with all of that. So I wasn't lonely. And because of the previous experience I'd had, I felt pretty comfortable dealing with the crisis itself. But.

Yeah, that was pretty much. I think just staying physically well was the biggest challenge.

Yeah, makes sense. And it's interesting when we look at decision making, and I think a lot about decision making, and in fact, I spend a bit of time. I like looking at the origin of words. So de cide. I was like, okay, break it into two syllables. D& C. I, D, E. What does that mean? So I started looking at other words. Genocide, pesticide, suicide. All I'm like, oh, they're all pretty ugly words, and they all mean to kill. So I was like, decide. What's that? So go back to the Latin roots, the Old French word, and it means literally to kill off other options. And there's been times when I've had to make tough decisions in My life personally, in business, with clients, with teams. And sometimes those decisions have been really logical and clear, and other times they've not been. So I've put together my own little framework to help me make decisions.

Right.

So what about yourself? When the pressure's on and there's a lot on the line, do you have a process of making a decision?

Yeah. That's great. And look, I'm sure that what I'm going to say is not going to measure up to the thought you've put into this, but I do, you know, I do write in the book about making tough choices as being really fundamental because, you know, even in prioritization, you've got to. It's saying no to good things. So until you've said no. And why is that hard? It's because you're saying no to good people with good ideas. So again, I think I've grounded. I ground those decisions in really, probably not a conscious framework, but I look at why, you know, what's the purpose here? What is the bigger picture that we're trying to accomplish? And then look at, well, okay, what's the choice here? What are the choices? And often the hardest ones are bad versus badder. So if I don't do this particular. Don't support this particular activity, we miss out on significant upside revenue. If I do do it, we impact on focus, and therefore we could impact on our performance elsewhere. So, you know, which is, which is the one you want to. Which is the medicine you want to take. And so really try and look at the different pathways and assess what the likely outcomes are if you, if you take them, knowing that you'll never know once you've made a decision and really involve other people and also make sure to seek contrarian views and invite them. And there was a decision I had to make about an acquisition that I had all but one member of my team against. Sorry, supporting. So one member was against it. Seven wanted to do it. And, you know, I kept holding back my view and just listening and thinking. And then I took it to the board, and the board had their opinions. But basically, as they do in a healthy environment, boards will often say, look, this is our view, but you're the CEO, you make the call. And so I had to sit there and, you know, it was this choice between missing out on something or minimizing our focus on what we had to get done. So in the end, I said, I got everyone in the room and I said, look, I'm not going ahead with this. I can't support It. And this is why. And I'm really sorry. You guys done amazing work on this, but I just can't get myself there. And so it really comes down to hearing those around you and sharing with them the bigger picture, to the choice or decision that needs to be made and then your assessment of what the potential pathways are. So I'd say collaboration and listening would be kind of the approach I take. So in terms of your approach.

What would you emphasize that maybe isn't there in what I just said? Cause I'm really fascinated to know.

Yeah, it's interesting. So I'll share my approach. And also to kind of add to that, Shane Parish, the former spy. You and I have both read his book because I think you mentioned it in there as well. He's got a great way of highlighting that often we make decisions from an emotional standpoint, like a default, an emotional default. And so I learned a lot from his work around some decisions I was making from emotion. So I started going, okay, I've got a big decision in front of me. It needs to be made in 24 hours. Time pressure. I'm feeling a bit emotional about it, and I'm probably going to lean that way because that's exciting and that's an opportunity and there's a lot of upside. But I thought, okay, sleep on it. So that's the first thing. If I can. If it's not a crisis and the ship isn't sinking, sleep on us. The first thing. Second thing, I've got a VP filter. So values and priorities. And so what are my values? And so for me, it's mastery. The idea of, like, I'm never the finished product. I'm not the legend of everything. I don't know it all. I've got lots to learn. So mastery, curiosity, like, I want to learn more, I want to ask questions. And then connection. I don't want to do it alone. I want to be in with a team and I want to add value. So those are my values. And then priorities and in order, family, fitness, both, you know, mental and physical, financial, finances, learning and business or brand, whatever you want to call it. So look at my values. I look at my priorities. I'm writing this all down, getting out of my head, because when I'm in my head, I get often going around in circles and then emotion comes up. Just go with that, James, and get on with it. Quite reactive. So I'm writing it all down and I'm going, okay, if I go this way versus that way, I'll share with you.

It was.

I was sitting in Cape Town and with my partner and I was sitting in a cafe with the Khaleesi Foundation. So Siya Kolisi, captain of Springboks and as wife Rachel have this foundation and it's doing amazing stuff. I said, look, we listen to your podcast and we really love it and in fact we've got an event and we're going to launch the movie, see his movie, and we're going to be raising money for the foundation. It's at the Spotify headquarters in London, England. I'm like, that's amazing. James would like you to be the host and the facilitator. Oh my God, like you're serious. Like, that's amazing. So all of a sudden ego's feeling it a bit. I'm a bit excited and like, okay, when is it? What's the end of next month? So I'm sitting in Cape Town, London's way up there and I have to head back to New Zealand a few days later. So I go out to yes in principle. Now a few years earlier it would have been a hell yes. I'm there. It's a yes in Principle. I'll come back to you tomorrow. So I went home, got my values and my priorities out and started weighing it up and going, God, well, going to Spotify headquarters and I run a podcast. I'm sure I'll meet people and I'll learn lots. It'll be good for the mastery, good for the curiosity, good for the connection. But then I go, okay, what am I missing? So I get the calendar out and it's my weeboys very first school production at the Town hall in Christchurch the same day as this event at Spotify headquarters. Oh, that changes the game. So I go to my priorities and go do a bit of a waiting. You know what's more important? Sitting with all these lovely people in London and going to Twickenham to watch hopefully the All Blacks beat the Springboks, which I don't think happened, or sitting at the Town hall watching this six year old boy, you know, do his first school production. It became quite an easy decision and of course I was at the school production and I thought, I've lost out on something. I had to grieve that a little bit. But in the end they came back and said, hey, there's other opportunities in LA and New York, but we'll be doing things and let's keep in touch. So in the end it wasn't a loss and I wouldn't have known that had I not made the decision. So I don't. Honestly don't think I make great decisions, big decisions in my head. I think I make better decisions when I get onto the page.

Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, definitely. Writing down the pros and cons is critical.

Takes time, but I think it's worth it.

Yeah.

And what about yourself? What are some daily habits in terms of how you perform as a human? Certain things you might do in the mornings or throughout the day to kind of maintain your health and your focus?

Yeah, look, it's pretty basic. You know, I try and do yoga a few times a week.

And generally do going for walks. I'm big, big into 10,000 steps a day.

Try to eat well, so avoid sugar.

Yeah.

And the other is drink very occasionally. They're the things. I listen to your podcast on your experience of not drinking and. Well, certainly the narrative around this is changing pretty dramatically, isn't it?

Massively.

And so I think just those basic things are really the ones that I consciously think of. And when I hold myself to account by setting up a little matrix and ticking off each day where I achieved those four things, my discipline is much better than when I am not operating to writing it down on a. You know, on a. It's a spreadsheet, you know, just ticking off that I've done those things. So if I do that, I can get really. I've got really high compliance, so I've just gotta make sure that more often than not, I'm using the discipline I know that keeps me compliant with those expectations I have of myself. It's the alignment between what I do every day and what I intend to do.

I love it. And holding yourself, I guess you're your own Jiminy Cricket. Like, you have to hold yourself to account.

You do? Yeah, for sure.

What are you reading right now?

Right now? You know what? I'm just starting a bunch of. I'm into different things, different books. I'm just trying to think. You know what? I've got a bit of a mental block right now because I've just started a couple. I'm not gonna get the exact. There's a book on AI that a friend of mine has written, which is. It's called AI Game On.

Okay, I'm gonna get a link to that. Put it in the show Notes.

Yeah, it's written by a guy called Tim Trumper, and Tim is actually the chairman of the NRMA in Australia and has had a long career in media. And I caught up with him the other day. And actually he said something which was really hilarious about what AI means. And he said, steve, all my life I've been Tim Trumper. Right now with AI, I can be Tim Trumper, but I can ask questions and review things through the perspective of other people. And it related to a conversation he had with someone, a potential to invest in a business. And he ran that proposal through the AI, but asked it to assess the proposal the way that Marc Andresen, the famous venture capitalist, would. And he said that was incredible because it was a very different response to the one when he just asked the question, just generally. So. So that's something I want to learn a lot more about. I think AI is like all technology change. It's going to be long term, formidable, short term. Obviously, we're all seeing the benefit of it, so that's why the excitement is so high. But ultimately, there'll be some way to go yet and some things to be done to really capitalize on the potential of AI around data and security and privacy and all those domains. So that's one book. A friend of mine, also, I was at dinner the other night with a bunch of my old schoolmates and found out that one of my mates had published three novels.

Wow.

Yeah. And you know what? This is terrible because I can't remember. I've just literally picked up the name of the novel and because there were three of them. And he told me to read the second one. I can't remember the name of it.

The good news for your friend is after this, you can text me the names and I'll make sure they go in the show.

Notes by a schoolmate of mine called Ian Trevena.

Okay.

He's written three novels. They're a fictional mystery novel I started reading last night. It's the second one he said to me was the one to start. And I have to say it was very, very good. So it's got me interested.

I'll have to get it.

And yes, there's a couple of other books that I'm sort of partway through and still need to finish off any classics.

Like, for me, when someone says, James management, Leadership, I go straight to Jim Collins. I love Good to Great and some of his other books that he's brought out. They're brilliant. Anything for you that comes to mind.

Patrick Lencioni and Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's been a book and everything that Patrick has done is useful. And the Advantage is another one. So two of his books, the Advantage and the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, would Be the two that I think are really, really helpful books.

Brilliant. I'll look it up. I'll make sure and put that in the show notes as well. Yeah, I love it. And this idea of AI is interesting, so I'm very much trying to learn more about it. We had Mo Gaudat on the show maybe a year ago.

I read one of his books.

Yeah, he's phenomenal. I'm a very deep thinker, very. And it got me thinking about AI and it takes me to the book for a second. So I've been working with a company out of Palo Alto and essentially they clone your voice, your face, your ip.

Wow.

And security and data protection has been my first kind of question. They assure me it's very secure. So essentially every podcast I've ever put out there, everything I've ever written on LinkedIn or put out there in some way, it's fed into this brain. And essentially you can text it, call it and even have a video discussion with it. In some ways quite creepy, but in other ways really powerful. So I thought I'll test it in house. So I said to my son, Fin, why don't you give it a call? And it has my voice, right? So he rings it up and he goes, hi dad. And it responds, hi son. And he says, hey, what should we do today, dad? And the AI goes, well, it is Saturday and we do like going to Hagley park, which is a local park in Christchurch. Should we bring the bikes like we did recently? And he's looking up at me going, what? How does it know this stuff? But clearly it picks up all these Data points. There's 3 million words of data that have been brought into that brain. Now I'm not releasing it to the world or anything like that. I'm having some clients use it. It's quite interesting in terms of a coaching tool, but I look at your book and I think if you were to not put it on ChatGPT, that would be a disaster. But we don't want that. But put it into this brain, it's a company called Delphi and you can narrate it. And all of a sudden if someone buys the book, they could pay a monthly subscription to have you as their coach, their consultant, based on the principles from through shifts and shocks. So that'd be something I'd love you to consider. Would you be open to having a clone of yourself?

This is so fascinating because the conversation I had the other day with Tim, Tim Trumper, which was just a catch up and we just shared what we were doing and we swapped books.

We talked about this and the penny dropped for me in that meeting. I thought, wow. So, yes, definitely, I think that could be really, really interesting.

I'll send it through to you.

And what you're doing sounds fascinating and I think it'd be interesting for you is at what point do you decide to open it up more broadly? And you know what the other thing is with the fear of the data being taken? The one thing about that is yes, you know, you wouldn't put it on a public cloud ever, but what is someone else gonna do with it? That's the other thing to consider application.

Right.

It's actually if it's not attributed, then they have to do everything you've done to get where you are in terms of the relevance you have, the reach you have, the brand you have, and then they have to also find where to direct it. So I'm not. I do think that we rightly worry a lot about privacy and security, particularly in the financial services sector, that makes sense. But with IP of the nature of the work you do and the work I do without us directing it, promoting it, you know, carry a lot of. I'm not sure what somebody else. And by the way, if it's stealing the copyright, well, you've got, obviously if you identify that it's actually chunks of your content being used by somebody else, you do have a pathway to take action. So, you know, it's one of those things where I wouldn't necessarily not do this because I was fearful about someone getting access to that data. I think it's still worth. And I think many people will take advantage of exactly what you're thinking and doing.

And I think my leaning on that is I'd rather give. So like this clone or this digital coach that I'm building, I'd rather give it away for free and have people access it and enjoy it and use it. And the way I look at it, people don't pay for information anymore. It's everywhere. But what they do pay for is curation, implementation, integration. That's where, you know, I think consultants, coaches, authors should really be, I think aware. Don't worry about the information. I went on to ChatGPT after I read this and said, can you give me an overview of. And it was quite mind blowingly accurate. Now what it's probably doing is pulling from Amazon in terms of descriptions and so forth, but quite incredible. I first asked it, can you tell me about Steve Vamos book? They told me who you were and they went, steve hasn't written a book. And I wrote back, you're wrong. And I went, oh. And I searched the net, brought up Amazon's listing, and so it could see your book.

Yeah. Nice.

So it's a really powerful tool. And I know that the book has just come out, but I think this book is going to be so impactful globally for leaders, for people, and, as I say, for parents as well that are trying to make a difference.

I really appreciate that that's coming from you. That means a lot. Thank you.

You're welcome. And just one last question. I want to be mindful of your time, but one last question. So I want you to pretend for a moment that you and I are going to fast forward many years into the future. You're highly aware that it's your last day on Earth and someone very young, maybe a grandchild or a great grandchild, comes into the room and says, steve, how do I go about leading my life on purpose? What would you say to them?

Look, the one thing that really comes to mind for me is to work with and surround yourself with people that you can learn from and trust. Because that, to my mind, is the sustainable path to development and to, in a sense, happiness in the work and the life that you have. That would be it.

That's beautiful, Steve. Thank you so much. And I wish you nothing but the best with the book. I hope it's the first of many over the coming years, and I'll certainly be encouraging the viewers and the listeners to go to the Show Notes and get a copy. And I look forward to welcoming you back on the show again soon.

You bet. Thanks, James. I really appreciate you having me as part of the conversation. And congratulations to you, too, on what you've achieved and the great work you're doing. Because at the end of the day, right now, leadership is the beginning, the middle and the end of everything. And the more we can get that message out, the better. So thanks for what you do, and all the best to you, too.

Thank you so much. Cheers.

Cheers.

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