20 | Situational Leadership can make big Changes

Welcome to Face Forward, the inspiring change podcast on all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change. Hi there and welcome to this edition of Face Forward. This is edition 20, and it's funny, we've spoken to so many people across so many different sectors and followed largely the same format. For all of those first 20 episodes. So today we're going to try something a little bit different. I'm really lucky to be joined by Dez Moore, the CEO of Cumberland Building Society. I'm not going to do Dez the disservice of trying to describe his company. I'm going to let him do that in a second. But they're at the start of a really interesting change journey as an organization. And today is really about that change journey where Dez, who took over only earlier, in 2018, where he wants to bring the company, where he sees it going, where he sees its strength, and what the organisation needs to do in order to move forward. So I kind of see this as a two-parter where today we'll use this to set the scene, where the organisation's been, where it wants to get to, how you're going to get there, and then perhaps in 6 or 9 months' time, in the middle of, maybe the middle of 2019, we'll come back, have another chat, and see how far you've gotten. So Des, good morning.

Good morning, Scott. Thanks for coming on. Delighted to be here.

Great to see you again. I suppose we should say that you and I have some prior history in AIB, or as it was in the north, First Trust Bank, when you were MD up there.

We do indeed, and I'm delighted to see that your business is doing really well and delighted to have the opportunity to speak with you this morning. Absolutely privileged.

Thank you very much. Thanks. Why don't we kick off with just a very quick— for the listeners, a very quick bit of background about where you've come from personally, about Cumberland, and about, you know, where the organisation is today.

Sure, so I'm a banker, but I've reflected, I'm a banker for 18 years and I've been a leader for the subsequent 18 years. I've mainly had my career in the Republic of Ireland, but the last 5 years have been in the UK, and I think I specialise in big leadership and change roles. That's where my interest is. So as you say, I was most recently FMD of First Trust Bank from 2013 to '18, and then the opportunity came up to become CEO and Executive Director of Cumberland Building Society. So it's the 10th largest building society in the UK, and I suppose unlike Ireland, the building society sector in the UK is very vibrant. It accounts for about 25% share of the stock of mortgages. And 20% share of the stock of savings. And actually, effectively, the building societies are in competition with the big banks for mortgages and savings. And really, there's nowhere to hide there. It's really raw, tough competition.

And it always amazes me how in the UK— and I'm obviously from there— that regional organizations that you've actually— I'd never heard of Cumberland before. And actually, it's a big regional building. As you say, the 10th biggest in the UK.

Yeah. Yeah, so I think that if you go back to the origins of the building society movement, that building society was founded to help working-class people secure a home. I mean, that's a fabulous purpose to have in your heritage. We've brought that purpose, we've redefined that purpose over the past few months as part of the change journey that we're on. Our redefined purpose is to help improve the lives of our customers, communities and our people. And that has really strong resonance in our heartland, which is Cumbria, and also parts of southwest Scotland and north Lancashire.

Okay, interesting. And I love, I love that purpose because it really calls to the why you do what you do. Back to the whole Simon Sinek thing, we spoke about that before at length, but that whole idea that actually your people then come to work knowing that they're, they're making a real difference.

I think that was one of the most appealing parts of this role compared to previous roles I had, that really as Chief Executive, the buck really does stop with you. There is nowhere else to go. Clearly I'm part of a board, but in terms of the decisions, and that's why having a really high-performing top executive team is really important. But actually that purpose, it had the effect of bringing us together and getting us aligned around a common purpose. And then when you develop that, then we reset what we call our core values and had those fit into the purpose. So when you've got a purpose and you have values in an organization where people actually look really strongly for the match between the values and what they do every day, you don't have to work too hard on customer experience in that regard because it's already there.

Yeah, it's back to that Branson thing about— because obviously where you and I came from is very much about customer first. But you look at the Branson whole take on that, and Branson's take is actually it's about people first. Let's put people first and then let them look after the customer.

And I'm unashamedly supportive of that, and I presume we'll talk about it later, but one of the big 3 themes from what I did when I arrived in Cumberland first, and if I can describe that for a moment.

Yeah.

I did nothing for 6 weeks. And don't be horrified at that. I did nothing except travel around to our various 34 locations. And listen to what staff had to say. Because what would I know about what was going on in that part of the world if I had come in with a master plan already written? That doesn't speak very much to empowerment or listening or reacting to what you heard. So that was the most powerful thing of what I did, to travel around to all those locations, get to know the people, listen to what they had to say, get to know the geography, and also I suppose get to know the physicality of our branches. So brilliant way of gathering all that information kind of in one place. And the 3 themes that emerged from that were, one, that we had brilliant people. I know every organisation says that, but so many examples of cases where you could see how much trust was in place between our customers and our staff. And trust is very high up in that differentiating factor, I may say, from big banks, because in a mutual a company owned by its members like, like ours, that trust factor is really palpable. You can touch it and feel it. So our people were brilliant, our customers loved us. However, we'd been underinvested for quite a period of time. So phase 1 was to address the people issues, and we chose to do that for very simple reasons. We needed to bring the hearts and minds of people, bearing in mind the transformation we were going to go under. So we took a number of steps to put things right on the people front.

Okay, so before we get into that, tell me a little bit about where the business is today. So you landed, you listened, and actually it's really interesting because I was only listening back to episode 19 last night with Ger Mitchell, who I know is an old contemporary of yours, and he talked about listening being one of the least talked about parts of communication. So I think that to take that 6 weeks to go out and listen to staff, to meet them, just to understand the business, is for me is critical anyway. What did you find out in terms of where the business is today? What's the line in the sand? What's the starting point?

Well, Cumberlands has been around since 1850, and one of the reasons I took on this role was to make sure that we had a sustainable business. I tend to focus on the next big milestone, which is 2025. Why 2025? Because it's 6 or 7 years away, and that if we could create a sustainable business to 2025 and beyond, then we could find a way to be relevant in the rapidly changing financial services world. I think that the building society sector, which is 43 distinct building societies still in place, has a huge amount of change to go through. And trying to generate a sense that change needed to happen required really getting in at base level with the staff. Staff, with the management team, and really understanding what was going on. So you found a business that was financially successful, had had the same senior management team in place for 15 years, and they had done a great job in making the business financially successful. But underneath that, there was things that clearly needed to be fixed. And as I said, the three themes were, were people. There was something about what I call our operating rhythm, how we reach decisions efficiently and effectively, or not as the case may be. And then there was a big question about what strategic direction we were going in, if any. So they were the 3 big questions that needed to be lifted out. And I communicated those to the senior management team, to the board, and then we actually communicated them out to the staff. And we actually said, we don't have the answers here. We need you to join with us on this journey so we can figure out how we're going to do it together.

Good God, vulnerability.

Absolutely.

Madness.

Yeah, it was very interesting. And it was quite a different approach than had been taken before. Whereas before— and I'm not being critical— before it was, we have all the answers. We're the smart people in the room. And we're going to tell you how we're going to do it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that whole, for me, that top-down communication piece is fine sometimes. But actually, when you're talking about the grassroots, when you're talking about winning hearts and minds, actually there is huge power. When I spoke to the former communications director of Rolls-Royce, Paul Diggins, he said exactly the same. Actually, if a leader can show a bit of vulnerability, actually staff tend to forgive you most other things. And actually to be able to put your hand up and say, look, this is what we have to do, but we don't have all the answers, can be really, really powerful. Yeah.

We had a— just to bear that point out— so we had a significant moment in talking about the change journey where we met all our management colleagues at Carlisle Racecourse. And we painted the incomplete picture. We drew out the themes of what we wanted to do, but actually said, this is what we'll be working through. And at several points during the journey, then took their feedback and asked them for their opinions and views and tried to build those in in terms of the program we were creating. But it did create exactly that resonance, which is, wow, you mean you're telling us you don't I don't have all the answers, so it was a really interesting point.

Yeah, and actually I think from a staff perspective, if you had arrived into the business and said, "I'm here, here's the answer," having not done the 6 weeks, having not put your hand up and said, "I don't really know what the answer is yet," having not done all of that work with the people, I think it makes you a lot less plausible, a lot less believable, a lot less trusted in the organization. Who's he coming in here and telling us? What to do when actually he doesn't know what we deal with every day in a branch or dealing with customers.

Yeah, I think having that understanding of the challenges that people face every day and being able to say, no, let's figure this out together, I think that's quite powerful. I think one of the things that I've learned is around that power of asking questions, and particularly an organization that's done things the same way for a long time. I'm not sure if it's called the 5 whys or the 7 whys, but you keep asking why you're doing it that way. 'Because we've always done it that way.' They are the lines in any business that you know you're in trouble. If the answer to the question is, 'Why are you doing it that way?' 'Because we've always done it that way,' then you need to probe quite deeply and really get to the root of that. And you'll find very often it's based on some pretty shaky foundations. So it's that constantly inquiring, constantly asking questions that gets you to the root or the nub of what's going on in the business.

So you had these 3 themes. The great people, the operating rhythm, and the strategic direction.

Yeah.

So it was fairly evident that change was needed.

Yes.

What is it that— tell me about the change journey, because many organizations are on change journeys. What does yours look like? Where are you today?

Yeah, so the thing about change is that, and particularly I call it transformational change, and some people say every change is transformational change, is in an organization like ours that has had stability for 15 years, First of all, you've got to create that movement for change. And I call that initial process, you've got to build supporters within the business. You have to find supporters within the business. And that means meeting lots and lots of people and having lots and lots of conversations, predominantly in listening mode to listen out for those clues that you're looking for in terms of are they up for it or not. So obviously in terms of meeting all branch staff, traveling to 34 locations, meeting the bunch of high potential people that we had in the business and clearly speaking to senior management and the board. Board, you were able to form that view and create that case for change. So at an early stage, we realized that communicating what we were doing was going to be really, really important. And if you recall, you and I had a couple of conversations at that initial stage about how best to go about that. I think it was aligning around the 3 themes that we've spoken about, outlining a plan, bringing in people and experts in the area of change. So obviously we took on consulting partners, for for example, for the strategic change. And we took those on because they would drive us and challenge us to be the best we could be and to challenge our own fixed mindsets about what direction we would be going in. Now, it's not a huge surprise. Our rules say that we have to do 75% residential lending because we're a building society. But within that, there's quite a lot of scope. In our building society, we do estate agency. We do car finance. We have a personal current account and a business current account. They aren't normal things for a building society to do. So we had to find a way to see how they fitted into an overall strategy. And you asked me how we did that. There was a lot of engagement with the executive team, a lot of challenge sessions facilitated by external colleagues. To make sure that we really challenged our own mindset around what we could do and where we could get to. And that started to drive out, as I said, the type of themes and the type of things that we wanted to accomplish.

And when you were out talking to people, whether they were the senior team or whether they were people out on the ground, what type of culture did you face in the organization? How did When you arrived in talking about change and say the change word, which generally in my experience of working with clients makes people clam up. How did you find that? How did they take that?

Yeah, well, first of all, I suppose it's not my first time round the change journey, if you like. So I talked about, you know, you're looking for the signs, you're looking for the indications of where people are. In terms of how it how it felt, because there had been stability for a long period of time, there probably wasn't— and the business had been financially successful— there wasn't really much of a view on change and much of an appetite for change.

No burning platform, I guess.

Exactly. So when you point then to traditional horizon scanning, you know, what's happening in terms of customer expectations, you know, the type of customer— our average customer is probably 55 years of age, nothing wrong with that, but it's It's not a customer base that's going to continue sustaining itself unless you bring in new people. What are people doing on their mobile apps? How are they engaging with financial services organizations? It's not necessarily through branches and through paper and through process. It's through a completely different way of doing things. So when you talk about that pressure, customer expectations, regulatory pressure, I sometimes think we feel more like a pharma industry or telecoms industry than a than a financial services industry in terms of the level of regulation. And then the competitive nature— the ring-fenced banks are now surplus with capital and they're driving down the price of mortgages in the UK. And the UK market is entirely different than the Republic of Ireland market in terms of competition. When you look at those, then you're building a story and starting to tell a story about what we need to do to create that business for the future, that goal that aligns with the purpose and it's consistent with the core values.

And I think, for me, once you've done those two things, once you've actually painted that picture of the future, even though people are comfortable today, actually when you show them, and it's almost a case of that people don't know what they don't know. It's not until you paint them that other picture that you say, here's what the future could look like. Is that not something that paired with this purpose is something that would really drive you to get out of bed on a Monday morning? They say, oh yeah, I hadn't really, I guess, thought about that too much. But it takes that bit of visionary to be able to paint that future and show people, look, we don't need a burning platform because there isn't one. We're not going down the pan. But if we did this, wouldn't that feel like a better place to work?

And it's interesting you say that, because in my previous role, it was more of a burning platform situation. Things had to be done because it was very clear from a P&L perspective that they had to be done. Here, the P&L looked quite healthy. The issues were they were almost the far side of the hill and you can't see them, but you know from your experience elsewhere and from scanning that wider world that staying as you are simply isn't an option. And the other message we had to get, that change wouldn't be for 6 months or for 9 months. We'll be at this state of change forever. We all talk about VUCA in terms of the way the world is going. And there's just such a level of change. You've got to help and lead and inspire people to see what it is they need to do to lift their game. And there is that piece about personal challenge too. If you don't challenge yourself, you'll never know how good you're going to be. And I think some of those messages, they take time. You have to allow quite a bit of time, Scott, for those messages to get through. But you stay with it. You get your team aligned around you, your senior team. You make sure they're demonstrating and role modeling the right behaviors. Slowly but gradually, you're building that case for change, and you're bringing people along that conversion.

So you're absolutely right. I think that whole piece around VUCA is absolutely true, and we see it happening, and change is happening quicker and quicker and quicker. In fact, there's a slide when I do the change workshop that I've been running recently, there's a slide that I use from LinkedIn, and it's about how long it took for various technologies to get to 50 million users. You might have seen it. And airlines, it took 68 years. Angry Birds app, it took 35 days. Pokémon Go, it took 19 days to get to 50 million users. So I think the pace of change is accelerating. It's getting quicker and quicker. And it's that whole idea, to pinch something from the Netflix playbook, you know, it's that whole idea that change is the new black. You know, it's just that's just how we need to be because Regulation's changing, competition's changing, we as people are changing, customers' needs are changing, markets are changing, economy's changing, Trump, Brexit, China, you know, they all have an impact, albeit we don't see it, they all have an impact on what we do every day in our building society in the, you know, in the Northwest of England. So I wonder, how do you get people comfortable with that change?

I think the answer, as all your listeners will be expecting me to say, is communication. You can't over-communicate in a time of change. We've talked about dealing with hearts and minds and how people are feeling. So this is going beyond what's going on. It's how are you feeling? And it's a phrase— I'm a big believer in asking the right questions. It's a phrase I'm using a lot now with the management team, so much so that the senior team will come and expect me not to talk about what's going on what's going on in the cold world of financial performance. It's more about how are you feeling on this change journey? What does that mean for you? Almost to the extent, what's your physiological reaction to change? Is cortisol increasing and circulating around your body faster every time you see a meeting? Panic setting in. Are you getting shortness of breath? But those physiological reactions, clearly important. But yes, regular communication. When we had our earlier conversations, we were in the process of appointing, you know, a permanent internal communications executive. That person has made a difference because, like I've said already, they're going beyond the what into the how and people's feelings, being very clear. We're in an organization that's small enough where we have 300 people in head office. I and the senior team can lead We can lead face-to-face briefings. We can take questions. I'd like to think of an open style. You know, people ask me questions, I'm going to give them the answer. I always say, you might not like what you hear, but you'll know that is what we're doing. So they're the kind of features. I think we did something interesting around our consulting partners. We talked about a transparent process, and we made that come through literally. So we didn't put our consulting partners in a dark room feed them in pizza and coffee and keep them there till 9 o'clock at night and nobody would see them. We put them in actually a fully glass, glass-walled room downstairs in the middle of where all the change and IT teams were working, and we literally called it, because it was, a transparent process. In addition to that, we put up a change wall outside there where staff and our colleagues could put up their own ideas in full view of the consultants. We opened up the consultants then to actually have the staff come in on a couple of lunchtimes and have chats with them. So to demystify the whole thing about this being done to us, we were leading a piece of strategy work with a consulting team, but it was very much about working together and getting the best results in that kind of open and engaging way. So I talk about communication, about openness, about transparency, and about authenticity. We've made mistakes. The pace has gone too fast. We've had to slow the pace down. We say, actually, do you know what? That went a bit fast. We can only go at the pace of our slowest follower in many ways.

Yeah, and that whole idea of authenticity, of putting your hand up, of doing the mea culpa, because actually that's what people are feeling. And I think that if people are getting cross or anxious or they're getting that, as you said quite rightly, that physiological reaction to change, when you put your hand up and say, "We were going too quick," probably the response from them is, "Oh, thank God he said it, because it's what we are all thinking." And I think very quickly it just takes that away. It just takes that pressure off. It takes that pressure out the cooker. So it's, yeah, absolutely, absolutely the right thing to do.

To build on that, was a really fascinating story. So clearly as part of this building a new team and getting us to operate as a high-performing team, which is one of the things I love doing. It's one of my favorite things about coming into a new situation is taking individuals and getting that team ethos going. But we took a day out in the Lake District. We're very near the Lake District in Carlisle in Northwest England. So we had a team day out whereby a colleague told us he was taking us for a gentle walk, and we were out for 8 hours. But the key learning in that was it was fascinating to watch the behaviors of the team during that day in a totally unscripted way. Really, the goal at the end of the day, which dawned on me about a quarter way through, was that I had to be with the last member of the team to come through at the end of the journey. It was great to show that I could keep up with the young people on the team and that, but that wasn't the point. The point was we only finished when the last member of the team arrived in an hour after the first member of the team into the pub for a few celebratory drinks. I have to But that was the whole point. And you could see that, that different array of behaviors and how some people who started off leading came back to the middle, stayed with colleagues who were struggling, and eventually there was a rump of people including myself, which is right, who finished at the end. But that was a brilliant day of learning about setting the right pace, what a leader's role is, what team members' roles are. Brilliant, brilliant example. It informed then how we dealt with the process, how we're dealing with the process.

And what's interesting is that when you— I think that whole idea of leading from the back, there's a lot of stories in the Antarctic from the old explorations of Scott McInnes and those guys. Shackleton. Shackleton, exactly. Yeah. When they actually— where they'll take a point from the back and they'll actually lead. They don't lead from the front because you can't actually see anything. So they'll take a bearing, lead from the line, and actually they're using the line to see where the actual, where the direction is that they're going. So that whole idea of leading from the back is powerful. And that whole thinking around, you know, you're only as fast as your slowest person.

Yeah.

It's absolutely true, because you leave that person behind, and they're the person actually that, from an informal leadership perspective within the organization, so maybe they haven't got the stripe, but that person could be somebody that people really follow from a culture perspective. So it's the fact that you're back there bringing them along, The fact that you're back there, they might be the slowest person, but actually they're a really bleeding important person culturally within the organization. Actually bringing them along is critical. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the role of your leaders on the journey. What are some of the skills? When you talk about communicating, and oftentimes again, if I'm running workshops, we talk about leaders and that whole David Brent-ism of to assume is to make an ass of you and me, but we just assume when we go into organizations that Well, people leaders, well, they're really, really important in the organization. You and I both know that. And then we give them a team talk kit and we say, "Deliver this with aplomb, do some storytelling, make it amazing." But actually, they don't have the skills, they don't have the experience, they don't have the confidence maybe to do that. And we kind of just land them in a hole. And I wonder from your perspective, what was your experience of leaders in the organization? What did you have to do or what are you doing to support them?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question, Scott. So we have a mixture of people who've been with the Cumberland all their lives and have brilliant insights to the business and know how it works and know everybody, you know, from child to adult. Then we have some new people or people who've joined in the last 3 or 4 years with lots of wider experience from outside Cumbria, outside the UK, and kind of molding that experience together into a cohesive unit. You know, as I said, as I've talked about, that's been one of the challenges. What I think I probably boil it down to, what I look for. So I look for someone who's able to tell a story, a big believer in storytelling, as I know, as I know you are, and simplifying things, and that ability to be able to take something complex and explain, explain it simply and bring people along on that. And it's very simple to describe it, but actually it's quite difficult to do. And so certainly look for that. You look for someone who can appeal to people's hearts and minds and is going beyond— someone with high EQ. Let's face it, I'm a big Travis Bradbury fan, he of LinkedIn fame and otherwise, that someone who can really understand where people are on a journey, to use that word again, and to find a way to tap into their motivation, to understand them well enough to know what it is that motivates them and not make the mistake of assuming that what motivates a leader themselves is the same as what motivates an individual. And someone who has that passion and energy to get over whatever challenges are there, you do need to have a level of drive and energy to overcome the daily obstacles. You talked about it as getting up on a Monday morning. I talk about it as a wet Wednesday in November, you know, that time of the year when you You've got to dig deep and get through the day, when sometimes actually standing up on that day or making one step forward is enough to maintain that journey towards that greater purpose or vision we spoke about. So there's some of the things that I look for. The big mistake, I think, is to assume that because people find themselves in leadership positions that they have those skills. Because very oftentimes, and this is classic textbook stuff, it's functional expertise that gets you into into a leadership position, you have to demonstrate an entirely different range of skills than to become a good leader. And you have to have— the biggest thing in all of this is an open mindset or a growth mindset. The biggest danger is that classic fixed mindset where you've already figured out what the answer is before you talk to anybody.

Yeah. The analogy I've been using recently is— because I completely agree. The analogy I've been using recently is, you know, you wouldn't take Usain Bolt and put him in a pool beside Ian Thorpe and expect him to win or even actually compete. I don't even know if Usain Bolt can even swim. Maybe he can't. Who knows? But the point being, we do that every day in work. We take someone who's a really good lawyer, a really good IT head, a really good compliance officer, a really good whatever, and because they're now senior, we take them and say, "Well, you now have to have a team." To which their response might be, "But I don't actually like people." I like doing what I do. I'm really good at it. But we're not giving them a team, and effectively, arguably, we're kind of taking them away from being able to add value to the organization, and we're throwing them into a situation that they're just not comfortable with. And I think you're right to assume that that's the case, that they'll just be good because they're a people leader, is wrong. It's 100% wrong.

I think there's a step beyond that too, if I may, which is if you're seeing some of your own team struggle or not coping with that, then you as a leader as a leader, have to reach out to them. And by asking the right questions, definitely not telling them the answer, by asking the right questions, get them to see that, well, actually there's something I need here. And that's something we're still working on.

So we've talked about openness, we've talked about transparency, we've talked about kind of mea culpa and hands up and admitting when you're wrong. What are some of the things that have gone wrong, do you think, so far that on reflection— and I know it's really early in the journey, so actually this is maybe a question which we'll get more into the next time we chat. But I wonder now, are there any small things that having just been in the organization for 8 or 9 months that you've done maybe not as well as you could have, that perhaps you could have done differently?

Well, we talked a lot about authenticity, so I could hardly pass up this opportunity not to talk about things.

No, I did everything brilliantly.

Yeah, you set me up brilliantly for that question. It's probably the pace one, to be honest. If we've already discussed it, you probably don't want to spend time on it again, but Pitching the pace at the right level. So I am a high-energy person and I probably get off on having other people with high energy in the room. I think culturally there's a difference between Celts perhaps and Anglo-Saxons, if I may say. And one of the things I've learned is that the energy and perhaps the informality I have at times that comes from spending most of my career and being an Irish person doesn't play out necessarily well in the northwest of England, for example. So some of those, those subtle cultural differences I've had to rein in and learn that, you know, people react differently. And if I'm a medium extrovert going into a bunch of raging introverts and ask them how they're feeling might not necessarily work. So I think there's been some tempering of that around the edges, assisted by some straight feedback from my own team, which is, which is very helpful, and generally not in the room in front of everyone, which is also really helpful. So they're kind of some of the things I've learned is that to modify your own style to the circumstances. And that's probably one of the key learnings, you know, from very early on in leadership roles. One style does not suit every situation. Having sufficient EQ to work out what style is going to be most effective in any given situation. That's probably the example I would take.

Okay. I remember once I was doing some work on kind of personal brand with Shane Barry, an ex-colleague of ours. And I said, you know, one of my things is going to be to treat people I want to be treated. And he said, but why do you think that people would want to be treated the way you want to be treated? Surely it should be treat people the way they want to be treated. And then I, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, that whole thing about treat people the way I want to be treated has been a thing for, you know, ever.

We had that exact discussion at our expo on that very point. It's a really, really interesting point.

Yeah, so tell me, last couple of questions, tell me who your leadership role models are. Who are the people that you look up to either from your own experience of work or more broadly?

When I think back on all the presentations that I've had and the people I've had the opportunity to meet, particularly over the last 5 years, the one that stands out for me is a lady called Baroness Sue Campbell, who's the Chief Executive of UK Sport. Certainly up around the time of the London Olympics, but around that time when Britain went from being all sprints in a lot of sports to having the strategy around sit-down sports, particularly cycling. And she led that organisation through. She gave a presentation at Something, was that about 5 years ago? And she told 2 or 3 stories, and I can remember them all now. Relax, Scott McInnes, I'm not going to tell you the 3 stories. But she had a brilliant story about her first day when she went to UK Sport and she asked 3 questions which still resonate today to every staff member right down from the top to the bottom. What do you do? What could you do? And what's stopping you? And I think they— that is a brilliant set of questions to ask anybody, universal application and some something to really get you thinking about. So she's certainly someone who stood out. She had lots of other stories that I'm not going to go into today, but she's certainly someone who stood out. And you could see then that the approach she'd taken, you could see the results that it was having in terms of development of UK sport and its increasing competitiveness in the UK. Probably the other person, if you'll indulge me for a second, and it was certainly topical at the end of last year, was Theresa May for her doggedness and persistency with the greatest challenges ever faced probably by a modern UK Prime Minister. But it's not just the doggedness, because that potentially could be a blind spot. It's the fact that she's able to compartmentalize every challenge into the time that she's facing it and deal with it one day at a time or one unit at a time. That's the real skill, that when you're in a bumpy period of time, you simply take one chapter. I will deal with that. I won't let my thoughts run away with me and figure out what the next challenge is. I think she's done that brilliantly. And I'm a big fan, which is not something I would have said 2 years ago or ever imagined myself saying.

Interesting. Yeah, that whole idea, I think that we still see people talking about multitasking. And we know the science says that actually multitasking is not a thing. You can't do it. And men are actually more rubbish at doing it than women. As you and I both know from bitter experience. But you know, that whole idea of actually just focusing on the one thing, getting it done, and moving on to the next thing, it must be terribly hard to do when you're in such a fast-moving, pacey world as something like Brexit, where there's stuff coming at you from all corners all the time. It must be so hard.

Compartmentalize. A brilliant way of dealing with high-stress, difficult situations, I would have thought.

Yeah. OK. Last question, this is one that I like to ask to all my guests. What's the one piece of advice that you would give to your 20-year-old self knowing what you know now?

Well, luckily enough, because you ask everybody this, I've had some time to think about this one, which hopefully makes for a better quality answer. I think the one piece of advice I'd have given to myself all those years ago is that nobody gives you self-confidence except you. The clue is in the name. And how do you get it? And if my kids would listen to me, this is what I would say. You get it by doing bloody difficult things. That is the only way you become confident is by that worst thing that you don't want to do, get up and bloody well do it. And I talked about this before, this idea that you need to challenge yourself. How do you know how good you could have been if you don't try it? So there's that phrase, I think, from Marlon Brando on The Waterfront, you know, I could have been a contender, but you actually don't know. If you don't try, you don't push the boundaries, and you don't take on really, really difficult things, then you'll never know. I have a little story about that, if I may. Yeah, go for it. When I was MD of First Trust in Northern Ireland, I got called in front of the Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee, which effectively is a parliamentary setup in the House of Commons committees in the Palace of Westminster. And for a guy who grew up in deepest southern Ireland, the idea of going into Westminster and addressing a parliamentary committee might have been a little bit daunting. But I remember some advice and coaching that would have been involved, some colleagues from our previous organisation, was go into the room, be clear about your facts, make 2 or 3 points, Shut up and listen, and you'll acquit yourself well. And I have to say, while it was one of the biggest challenges I ever faced, I can't think of anything that gave me more satisfaction. And it was that bit about challenging yourself to do it, because on several occasions I could have opted out. Somebody said, listen, I'm going to do that for you. But it was a brilliant opportunity, brilliant challenge. And that's how you get self-confidence.

Take the bull by the horns. Take the bull by the horns. Des, thank you so much. I'm at the end of my list of questions, but as we said at the top of this episode, we are going to come back in 6 or 9 months just to see how you're getting on with your change journey. So I look forward to that. For now, thanks very much for coming on, really appreciate it, and we'll talk soon.

Thanks, Scott. I look forward to coming back.

Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please take a minute to rate it and maybe even leave a comment. To learn more about Inspiring Change, to read our blog, And to hear more podcasts, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.