148 | Harnessing Organisational Success Through People | Scott McInnes & Iain Kirkwood

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients build work cultures that bring out the best in their people. We created this podcast to share real stories and insights from those who are shaping better workplaces every day. So grab a cuppa and pop in your earbuds wherever you are. You're very welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast. We're excited to have you with us. Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you and thanks a million for being here. Before we get into today's guest, if you are listening, please just take 30 seconds, whatever platform you're listening on, just take 30 seconds, 20 seconds just to give us a wee comment and a rating. It's amazing how much it helps to get the podcast out there. And as I've said before, and I'll say again, we do put a good bit of effort into it. And I hope we bring you good guests who all have really, really practical insights and ideas for things that you can take away and do in your workplaces. So just 2 minutes of your time would be very, very much appreciated. Thank you so much. I often talk about the fact that we have 3 different, kind of generally 3 different groups of guests. The kind of famous people are one kind of group, like rugby captains and that kind of stuff. We'll be talking to my guest in a minute about the rugby, I suspect. We also have kind of people consultants who have a model or some research or something they want to bring. And then we have that group of people leaders, because often they're the ones that are actually on the ground. And they're the ones that are saying, well, that's all great, all that best practice stuff that you bring, you know, from your podcast or from your book or your model or your framework or whatever. But let me tell you what it's like working on the frontline. And that's today's guest. So, I'm delighted to be joined by Ian Kirkwood, who is the Chief HRO for EX3, who are a technology and HR and payroll consultancy based in the UK, India, Malaysia, and Dubai. So, big global organization. He's been working in the field of HR transformation and change for 30 years. You'd never guess by looking at him. His hairline, unlike mine, is much better. He's been in PwC, he's been in CGI, he's been in DXC Technology. But I think the thing that probably for me was the reason that I wanted to get Ian on today was the fact that through all of his career, it's always been about the people side of business and digital transformation, about operating model transformation, about leadership, culture, workforce transformation, and organizational change. So, you know, to really delve into, I guess, the real-life side of some of those topics, which we talk about academically quite often, but we, you know, it's great to be able to get into the coalface stuff as well. So, Ian, hello, how's it going?

Very well. And as you mentioned, the rugby, very well.

As a fellow Scot, we probably shouldn't mention that Scotland creamed England in the rugby at the weekend. Listen, thanks for joining. Really, really nice to have you on. Let's start with a kind of a big question and we'll just see where this goes. How do you set a company up for success through its people? The age-old question.

Yeah, it's a good one. I think from my perspective, first of all, clarity around what the company is trying to do. Where they're going, and then making sure that all the people are lined up behind it, getting everyone on the bus, as I like to say. And you do it through a number of ways. So, you know, strong leadership with a clear vision— where's the company going, what are the priorities, ambition, goals, etc. And therefore, people can understand their role in terms of what they do and how that fits into, you know, what the business is trying to achieve. So there's that bit of it, but there's a case of how you do it as well. So there's the leadership giving the strong view and trying to get people engaged, but there's also looking at making sure you've got the next line of leadership behind. So, you know, people leaders, for example. It's not just about the sort of the executive board or the founders of a company, it's making sure the next level of leadership beneath, who are essentially the sort of the link between senior management and the rest of the organization, making sure they're all bought in, lined up, and are able to articulate the story. I think making sure you've got the right people, you know, you want to get everyone bought into the story, and not people who are just technically good, But, you know, we talk about culture and making sure that people are culturally fitting into the company as well. So what does successful hire look like in a particular organization? What does that look like? And hire for it. They say, what is it Simon Sinek talks about? You know, you don't hire for skills, you talk for attitudes. You can teach skills, but you can't teach attitudes. So I think it's very key to get the right kind of people on board in an organization. And also think strong performance management. You know, you've got to be able to make sure that if you've got clear objectives around what the company is trying to achieve, a clear and structured way to make sure that you're managing positively and negatively, so positive performance management, but also managing bad performance, that you're actually managing people with clear objectives aligned to what the company is trying to do. So I think it's all, for me, it's always about people. I've worked in technology businesses for most of my career, but it's always, you know, when we talk about transformation, be it business transformation, tech transformation, For me, the difficult bit is always the people, getting the people bought into it, aligned. So from a company perspective, you need to get everybody on the bus, I would say.

There's tons in there, and I'm scribbling, I'm scribbling because I forget things all the time. So let's go back to the very top of what you just said and talk about purpose, because I think that there's a lot of purpose washing going on that, you know, you just— and people, almost organizations inventing what they believe to be a Simon Sinek, you know, start with why-esque purpose. How do organizations that do, for example, your organization, you're a software company, how do you create a motivating, engaging purpose for employees when they're writing software? How do you bridge that?

Yeah, I think it's to, again, back to my other point, making sure they understand that what they do and how that fits into what the business is doing. So, you can have software developers, coders in the weeds of coding, but it's kind of, so what? They're always blinkered and doing what what they do, but actually how do they do— how does what they do impact the customer in a positive way? And I mean, the purpose is a great one, and I love to talk about— I love that there's analogy. Simon Sinek again, there's analogy he uses with a car. You don't buy a car to put petrol in, you buy a car to get somewhere, right? So you're on a journey. So your purpose is to get on that, a destination. Your car, if you like, in the analogy with an organization, you need to create money in an organization to put fuel in the car to get from A to B. But you don't ultimately buy a car just to put fuel in it. So your purpose is not to make the money, it's to get you from A to B. So I think people who actually buy into what they're doing rather than just here to sort of to make money. And I think there's a lot of organizations really focusing on purpose.

Yeah, yeah. It's always an interesting one for me. I like that Simon Sinek analogy and it isn't always about making the money. You're right. It is about making a difference and doing something over and above profit. And that's what, that's what Simon Sinek will say. I think that alignment piece is so, so important, making sure that people understand the work. And you talked about it in a second. We're going to talk about that in a wee Mile about middle managers, about making sure that people are aligned, making sure that everyone's aligned and really clear on what they're doing, pulling in the same direction, and that people then understand the difference that they are making. And that's really important. Something else you touched off was performance and what if I get the wrong people? That's the question. What if you get the wrong people? I don't think we are good enough in organizations, and that's organizations and employees. And I'd love your perspective on this from the internal side of things. Having a conversation that goes something like, I'm not sure that this is the place for you to continue spending your career. There are better, different other places where you could do that really effectively. Yeah.

Yeah. You mean having the actual, the people conversation?

Yeah. Having that actual conversation with another human being who just isn't fitting into your culture, who just isn't fitting into the organization, who probably isn't happy there, who they're not getting the most from you and you're not getting the most from them. But we never sit them down and go, maybe you should continue your career, you know, continue your career elsewhere. How does that sound? And legislation aside, why don't we have that conversation?

I think, and it's a really interesting point, and I think that plays to the importance of people managers, strong people leaders within the organization. We are at EXtree, we've recently gone through a bit of a restructure and we're at that kind of inflection point. You know, the company's grown, you know, very, very well over the last 8 years, but now we're about to kind of take off, if you like. So we're at that point, we're getting this people leader layer really right because these are the people that I think are going to make or break the organization. And to your point, there are a lot of people I've seen over the last 30 years, even senior people, senior leaders in organizations that struggle to have the difficult conversation. It's all very good to have, you know, we all love to say, you know, well done, you've had a fantastic year, have a pay rise, have a bonus, etc., be promoted. That's all great. But people struggle with kind of having that difficult conversation. And I've seen it in organizations where, for example, you've got a typical performance rating of 1 to 5. I actually went into an organization and the general view was, let's just give everyone a 3 because that's fine. We don't have to have the difficult conversations. But actually, because we haven't really done performance management particularly well, so we haven't got the evidence to support promotions, we haven't got the evidence to support managing the difficult conversations. So it's all very easy just to have "Give him a 3," which is fine if you're performing as a 2 or a 1. "Oh, got a 3, didn't need to do much." Sends the wrong signal, but happy days. But for those people who are really outperforming and performing very well, you're sort of rewarding mediocrity or underperformance by just bringing everyone down to the same level. All of that, a lot of it comes down to managers not being able to have that difficult conversation. So, actually, to the point, is someone right for an organization? I think, you know, you're not doing an individual any favors or the organization any favors by having— by not being able to have that conversation. So I think certainly in our organization, getting that people leader role with the right people with the right skills that can have the difficult conversations is key.

So we both know that people end up in those people manager roles, not because they're necessarily good people leaders, but because they are technically proficient and they've gotten to a point in their career where they're now senior and now is the point where you get a team. How, on that basis, how do we give them the tools and the skills and the confidence to have those conversations that really do serve not just the organization but the individual as well?

No, I think it's a good point. And you're right, you have, you know, again, in some of the very technologically focused companies I've worked for, you get brilliant people, people that put, you know, satellites into space, technically fantastic, but they don't have those softer skills, they can't have that conversation with people. So, I think, you know, providing training is giving people the right skills to be able to have those conversations confidently. One of the things that we've done is introduced a people charter for people leaders. So, if you're a people leader, it's a really important role in the organization, and it's almost like a job description. So, these are the kind of, you know, this is what we expect, this is what good looks like for a people leader. And they're very clear around what's expected. And if it's not for them, it's not for them. But it allows us to be very clear and upfront about them and they'll sign up for it. But it's also part of their performance review, if you like, because they will be measured on their ability to perform the role successfully. Because to my earlier point, it's so important that we get this bit right. If we're, you know, to your first question around how do we align people behind the organizations and drive success in businesses, it's about making sure that people are aligned, stay aligned with objectives to support what the business is trying to do. But also when it comes to that point where we are, somebody is not aligned, then we need to be able to do something about it, either help them to realign or have that conversation, as you say, that maybe they're not right for the business.

Yeah. And we often talk about the fact that we empower people to be great people leaders. And then the charter sounds like a great idea. But for me, with empowerment comes accountability. And I wonder, how do you hold those people leaders accountable? For delivering or standing behind that charter that they've signed up to? Because it's easy to say, oh yeah, that looks great, I'll definitely sign up to that. But actually, when you're not doing it, how are they held accountable in your organization?

Well, the People Charter, they're essentially going to have some objectives around being a people leader, which we've set out what good looks like. And yes, they can all tick the box and say, I'll do that. There's giving them time to do the role properly. So we have in terms of performance management, there's I've seen a lot, certainly in bigger organizations, where they do people management really badly is because it becomes this tail-wagging dog, really administrative, takes a lot of time. Actually, it doesn't make an impact on salaries, promotions, etc. It becomes an admin-heavy chore, and therefore it's not done properly. It's left to the end of the year. People ask for feedback at the last minute when, when people to provide feedback are too busy. So you get all these kind of things. But from our perspective, it's around setting the people leader's objectives around being a people leader successfully and what we've articulated about good what it looks like. But also, we're asking the people that they're managing to provide this upward feedback. So they will be held accountable for how they do it. And we need to, in order to do that, of course, you need to create this environment towards culture of trust where they feel comfortable doing it, because not everybody is comfortable giving upward feedback, which is open and honest and direct. So that's exactly what we're trying to do, to create this, this environment where people feel that they can say what they want to say constructively.

I don't think we have worked with an organization that does performance management well. And I wonder, and you've just said it there, we don't like giving, managers don't like giving good developmental, let's call it feedback, to their teams. Teams don't like giving feedback to their bosses because they may not feel psychologically safe or there might not be trust there to do so. Why are so many companies getting it wrong when in actual fact you and I would probably sit here and go, well, it's just about having an ongoing conversation about how you're getting on. What is it that gets in the way of that happening?

Again, I don't know. And I look at it again, there's been a shift, as you'll appreciate, over recent years to moving from this sort of your end-of-year conversation. Everything leads towards the end of your conversation. There might be a mid-year review, but it's all, you know, there's a process and it's all around capturing your feedback and at the end of the year preparing for this end of year, but no one does it properly. So it's moved more towards this kind of ongoing continuous coaching type change in relationship with your people leader. So it's not like people leader and individualist. So what we're certainly doing is moving away from that end-of-year conversation where it's just, it's not effective, I don't think, and it's not done well, it's not done properly because the day job gets in the way, etc. But if you've got this ongoing continuous developmental conversation where at the end of the year or even at mid-year there are no surprises because, you know, you've been constantly coached and mentored to progress, you've identified your development areas and there's sort of interventions to help improve. I think by changing this relationship and this continuous coaching kind of approach, it takes a lot of the stress out of it. Yes, you need to give time to it and you need to allow people to do it properly over the year. But if you break it down through like weekly check-ins or a monthly half-hour catch-up rather than put it all in the end of the year, I've certainly seen it working much better that way because yeah, you're right. I haven't seen it done particularly well anywhere.

For me, through the year, the whole reason for having those performance conversations is to help people course correct. If we get to the end of the year and as a leader, we go, well, you weren't great at this, you weren't great at that, and you weren't great at the other, then that's, for me, that's a failure, possibly more, actually, no, not possibly, it's actually a failure more from the people leader's perspective than from the employee's perspective because they were never given the opportunity to do better. My kids always give out if we're— not generally, just with me in a restaurant often, because I will complain if I get a steak that's overcooked or undercooked. I will complain and send it back. Oh my God, I can't believe you're complaining.

That's so embarrassing.

I'm like, well, I could have waited till the end of the meal, said it to them, And then there's absolutely no way for them to redeem themselves, to actually do it better, to do it the way it should have been done in the first place. And that's why, for me, actually, that feedback in a restaurant context is a gift. That feedback in a people context, from a development perspective, is also a gift.

I think as Brits, generally, we are too polite, to your point. But I think you're absolutely right. Giving the feedback is critical. And the way I talk about the sort of continuous feedback, it's because You don't want any surprises either from the individual or the people leader. And if you're constantly managing this through, they can course correct through the year, not waiting till you've got halfway through the year, identified some development areas. Well, you could have told me that months ago and I could have been doing something about it already. So yeah, I think there's a lot of ground for improvement.

Yeah. And I don't think those developmental conversations need to be an hour-long, super formal in a booked meeting room. It's a 10-minute conversation. Come on, Ian, let's go grab a cup of coffee and go for a walk. Come on.

Go for a walk. Yeah.

How are you getting on? What's working well? What isn't working so well? What can I do to help? How can I clear some of those barriers out your way? That's what we should be doing. It's as simple as that. This episode is brought to you by Inspiring Change. We work with senior teams to help them be clear and intentional about the culture they need to be successful, to communicate change in a more human way, and to give their leaders the skills, tools, and confidence to be amazing catalysts for change. To learn more about our work and who we do it for, just pop along to inspiringchange.ie. I think it's often— we often hear that it's the system that gets in the way of really good performance conversations. Have you logged on the system? Has it been on the system? And you know, you get the ping-pong of, well, I've done your objectives. Have you seen the objectives and signed it? Have you sent the objectives back and signed it? And I signed them to say that I've seen your signing and all that. And the systems and the processes, and I think you mentioned it earlier on, just get in the way. Of us just being human and having a performance conversation. Simple as that.

Absolutely. And I think what works well as well is putting the onus for development on the individual rather than it's all the responsibility of my people manager. I'm going to wait for my— even down to I'm waiting for my people manager to put a meeting in my diary so we can have a conversation. No, you need to own your career development. And for those that are ambitious and want to progress, own it, be proactive about it. And your people leader will be there to coach and support you, of course. But it's ultimately you that should be responsible for your own development.

Yeah, we're doing some communications work at the moment for a client around a career reward framework that they are launching. And it is very much that you own your career. We're here to support you. But this is not a passive thing. This should be an active thing that you're actively managing with our support. And that's really important. And that talks to the point you just made.

I agree.

Yeah. If we think about culture, because, and this is something that, as I mentioned in your bio, has been part of your career for a long time. And we spoke about it earlier on when we touched off kind of Simon Sinek as well and purpose and everything else. We think about culture often as still being this kind of fluffy and amorphous thing that, you know, well, it's about being a nice place to work.

Eh, eh.

Well, you know, it's about creating a nice environment. For me, it's really important that we get the values, the behaviors, the processes, and the systems aligned in an organization so that everybody knows what's expected of them. Have you seen anybody through your career, either in your consulting roles or your in-house roles, where they've been able to put kind of, I suppose, a financial value on their culture, where they've been able to say, well, if we get this right, it'll mean that our profits will go up by 2% or our costs will go down by 9%. Talk me through that. How do we make that happen?

Yeah, I mean, I've certainly— and it's a really good topic, actually, and I've seen lots of people try. I don't think anyone's actually succeeded because it's actually— how do you put a value on culture? Something that is, to many people, that's intangible. Is it what the behaviors that people exhibit when the leaders aren't around? Or there's another thing around what's the integrity? Integrity is still doing the right things when no one's looking, that kind of thing. So it's all these kind of intangibles in the organization. How do you actually measure it? And I think it's not the— you're not going to measure your culture by doing an engagement survey, for example, but it's actually how do we understand the impact of this, as you put it, sort of soft and fluffy peopley stuff? How do you sort of convert that into sort of the hard, tangible CFO metrics? And it's difficult. And I think it's not necessarily the culture itself, but actually, if you look at, if you can define what culture is and some of the other things, what is a positive culture like in an organization? It's these things, these direct things, which would absolutely positively and negatively have an impact on numbers. So, for example, in a positive culture where everyone's working well together, feels trusted, open, you'll see collaboration, accountability, going above and beyond what's expected of them. These are all going to have a real impact on the tangible value. The flip side of that, of course, if you're in a toxic culture where you see, you know, politics, red tape, people pointing the finger, blame, nothing getting done, that's always going to have a negative impact because you're not being as productive as you can, not getting things done. So I think it's actually the impact of a positive or negative culture on how the business performs rather than putting a tangible value on culture itself. That makes sense.

Yeah, it does. Yeah. And it's one of those things that it's interesting that we measure NPS, so the net promoter score from our customers, and then we measure eNPS, the net promoter score from our employees. But you could argue that actually a direct eNPS, that the culture in an organization has a direct impact on the NPS scores that your customers are giving you because they're the ones that are experiencing the service, aren't they?

Absolutely. I mean, if you look at, you know, if you've got an environment where people are held accountable, we talked about accountability earlier, people are held accountable for what they know. They've got a client problem in a consulting business, own the problem, deliver it. So if you're accountable, deadlines will be met, you know, you're going to get more satisfied customers, faster revenue recognition. If people are collaborating, they're working together, you're going to get less duplication, less waste, you can deliver things for less. If you've got this sort of blame culture where all the real issues get sort of hidden beneath the surface, you're going to have lots of reworks, things getting done again, unhappy clients, So these things, I think, are absolutely going to have an impact on your revenues. So to a certain extent, you can put a financial value. I'm not sure if there's a sort of formal equation that you can put on it, but there's definitely a connection between a positive culture and negative culture and the bottom line.

Have you seen any organizations where they've taken things like their sick leave data, for example, or your performance data? So, gosh, isn't it interesting how this team's getting all 2s or 1s and the engagement survey suggests that from a values perspective, the 'Boss isn't living the values,' and that's a pattern that we're seeing across the organization. Have you seen any HR departments doing that in a real and meaningful way?

No. What you do see is organizations where, you know, to our earlier point about people leaders not being able to have strong positive or negative conversation, difficult conversations rather, you'll see where people are not performing, But everyone's getting a 3, 4, or 5, i.e., meets expectations or achieves expectations. But the company, if everyone's getting, you know, achieving or exceeding expectations, the company in theory should be blowing its numbers out of the water. But when the company's not performing financially, but yet we're still giving people strong performance scores, there's a disconnect somewhere, isn't there?

Yeah. Somebody should be asking a question about that. Yeah.

And equally, if everyone's not performing, people shouldn't be expecting bonuses. And I have this conversation with many people actually, which I find fascinating. And I think it depends on where people have come from in terms of organizations, big organizations, small organizations. And I remember having a conversation many years ago with my boss in a big organization I worked in, and we were talking about the people in the team. And his view was, and he had a very strong American view of the world, of all-around performance. And it was, you know, we pay people a salary to come to work and give the best. And absolutely right. You come here, you get paid a salary to work hard, give your best. To solve the psychological contract approach, if you like. The bonus is kind of for exceeding, going above and beyond, which is absolutely— I completely agree with that. So why, why do we, why do we reward poor performance? If someone's underperforming, yet we still give them a bonus. I'm kind of— that's kind of always kind of flummoxed me a little bit. Your bonus is a bonus, and if you give somebody a bonus for mediocre performance, or they expect it, well, it's not really an incentive to work harder, is it? So it's kind of It's a vicious cycle.

It's not an incentive for those working hard to work harder. And actually what it does is undermine trust in the organization and actually lower the benchmark of what good looks like in the organization.

To my point earlier, if you give everyone a 3, so the high performance, who should be on the 4s and the 5s, well, they're going to be demotivated because, you know, I could have done nothing and coasted and got a 3. That's not the kind of high-performing culture or team that most people want to be part of.

Yeah, definitely. Talk to me about your thoughts on what role values and behaviors play in driving strong and aligned cultures. What thoughts have you around that? What have you seen through your career?

Yeah, and I think it's not just one, it's because it's the values in themselves. You know, lots of organizations have, you know, clear value statements and you go through sort of value exercises and you get posters on the walls. But, you know, I bet if you go into a lot of, certainly the bigger companies, and you'll see some very glossy pictures around, these are the company values. If you ask most of the people, they probably didn't know what the company values are. They're the kind of things that get sort of put into an RFP response, so this is what we believe in as this company, but actually how many people in our organization really believe it? I think where it makes a difference is we can actually convert these into behaviors. So how do they sort of convert into what do people actually do rather than just the values? And there's one, there's more about behaviors and values. Do you know the book Change the Culture, How to Change the Game. You familiar with that one? Corners and Smith? Where they talk about trying to define what culture is. And it's actually— so your experience, what you experience, will sort of inform how you behave in organizations, at least your behaviors, of course, which then inform the actions, what you actually do, which will drive the results. So it all comes down to experiences and what you see in an organization rather than just a sort of pretty values poster on the wall. I think a lot of it as well, it always comes back to what do people reward, or what was seen as success. So if you don't see leaders living the values, or what people, you know, how they treat failure, or, you know, things like that, that's what people kind of respond to, um, rather than just sort of a value statement on the wall. So I think values are important, but only so far as they lead to changing behaviors in terms of what we expect.

For me, that's— I completely agree, that's, that's all values are for. They are a wraparound for your behaviors. That's all they are. Having honesty or integrity or passion or innovation plastered all over your walls is utterly pointless. Save the money.

Yeah. And I read somewhere, I can't remember who it was, but if you've got integrity as one of your core values, you've got bigger problems in your company.

I think honesty is the one that always makes me laugh. I was like, what? So if we don't have honesty, does that mean that People are going around stealing from each other's desk drawers, like, you know, unbelievable. I remember Karen from Denison Consulting, we do a lot of work with them. I remember her saying to me once, and it was a quote, I think, from guys that wrote a book in the US in the late '90s. And the line was, your culture is dictated by the worst behavior you're willing to put up with.

Is that right?

That's your culture. What are you willing to walk past? So every time we see, and it comes back, and what's really nice is actually that we can loop back to suddenly performance management. And performance conversations about pulling people up and saying, "Your behavior wasn't acceptable." And what's really, I think what's really nice about that is that we're separating the person. And they'll always tell you, when you do Performance Management 101, they'll tell you, you don't focus on the individual, that's personal. You focus on the behavior because that's about what they're doing in the workplace. And to me, that's really powerful to be able to say, "I saw this behavior. The impact of that behavior was this. And what do you think about that? And where do we go from here?" That's a much easier conversation to have when you're giving that developmental feedback, I think.

Yeah, it's all around what you actually do and how you're— so the link between values and behaviors, I think, is absolutely right. It's how you behave, not just a pretty statement.

Yeah, definitely. And of course, all of that feeds into EVP or an employee value proposition, you know, so that answering that question about, well, why would I want to come and join EX3? And when I get there, why would I want to stay? And what are your thoughts on why you need, or why an organization needs, an EVP? And how do you ensure that it doesn't end up in a drawer gathering dust? Because I think these are great, you know, we need an EVP and we do it and it's great. And it's a 14-page, beautifully presented PowerPoint document. And it goes around the organization, gets launched, and it's all a big flurry, goes on the website, and then nobody looks at it ever again. How do you keep it real and out there?

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, it is really important. And I think it is that thing, why should I join a company and why would I stay if I'm here? And it's a differentiator, of course, in the marketplace. But I think it's a number of things. It's not just what you're paid. I mean, that's fair. We all know the short-term reaction of rewards. It is important, but it's everything. It's almost like The kind of work you get, you want meaningful, interesting, challenging work, you want opportunities to grow, develop your career, learn, work-life balance, recognizing that actually there's— I've got a lot going on outside of work which is just as important to stuff inside of work, and this kind of creating this environment with strong leadership, psychological safety, all these things that actually mean something that, you know, people— I always look at it, you know, would you invite your friends to come and work here, or are you proud of the company they work for, and all these kind of things, and I think I think there's something I did from a study years ago, which has always stuck with me. I can't remember where it came from, but it was around performance. I was looking at what drives performance and it was performance is a function of— it was P FAMO was the equation. Performance is a function of a combination of ability. You've got the right people in the organization, the right skills, we upskill them, all the things around financial reward, interesting work, and opportunity, opportunities to grow. These are the things that I think you can encompass that and articulate that. That's really attractive. And I think a lot of companies do a lot of really good things. They just struggle to articulate it. When I joined DXC, which is one of the things that we're working on at the moment because we've got, you know, big, big ambitions to grow, etc., they do lots of really great things. But you'd ask 10 different people, what's the EVP here? And you probably get 10 different answers. So do lots of great things. So we're just pulling this all together to articulate actually what it means to work here, why people should join us and why people should stay. And in terms of keeping it up to date, one of the first things I did, being sort of the new guy in the organization 3 months ago as the CHRO, It was I could ask the stupid questions. So it was literally I went out and we set up these sort of sessions with the teams in the UK, India, Malaysia, and saying, what do you like about here? What don't you like? And what can we change? These kind of things. And it's not sort of the high-level corporate things. What are the things that really matter to you? So we're working, we've got big works we're working on at the moment to try and pull this in together as some clearly articulated employee value proposition. So, you know, it's a tough market out there. We want to sort of attract people, but 'These are one of the things I believe. So why join here rather than there?' And it's size important, as I say, but there's more to life than salary. There's the bigger picture. And so I think, you know, from my perspective, keeping it current is we just keep asking people. And if you're with a customer or a client and you've got this, you know, you're always, 'Are we still delivering? Are we still meeting your needs? Are we understanding your customers' needs?' You keep asking them in terms of what's changed. Otherwise, it sits as like a nice printed document which sits on the shelf somewhere, much like your values posters.

Just put them in the bin. If you're not going to actually live them, you're not going to bring them to life. I love the idea of just every 6 months or a year actually presenting your EVP back to staff and saying, does this still feel true?

Yeah.

Does this still feel— does this feel like the place that you work in? Does this feel like the place, to your point, you'd want to ask your friends to come and work in? And if they say no, then it needs a wee tweak. And that's okay because the market and the context is changing all around you all the time. And the fact that your EVP needs to be updated, that's all right.

Yeah. And I want as well people to be proud of the organization they work for. I'm a huge fan of this. You spend so much time in work nowadays, you really need to enjoy what you're doing to give your best, if you like. And you hear all these sort of stories around the Sunday evening 'Oh, work tomorrow.' I don't ever want to work in a company that you're just thinking of Sunday evening, 'Oh, work tomorrow.' I want, you know, it's not proven, but excited to come to work. But you know what I mean? It's a positive experience that people actually enjoy what they do. And the EVP, I think, is a key part of that, that makes people make sure they're working for the right—

Let's not let people have the Sunday scaries. That's a good place to finish.

That should be our sort of— we don't do Sunday scaries here.

There you go. You just got your EVP strapline for free from a podcast interview. Listen, Ian, it's been great having you on. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat to me.

Thanks very much.

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