42 | The Qualities Of Great Leaders | Pedro Angulo

Before, if you say, oh, get your finance department all to work remotely or all your HR department to work remotely, you would have thought, are you out of your mind? We show now that it can be done. I keep asking myself, how many assumptions do we make that are holding us personally, as teams, or as organizations, and they're not allowing us to be the best that we can be?

Welcome to the Inspiring Change Podcast, where we talk to leaders about all things internal communications, engagement, leadership, and change. Hi there and welcome to this episode of the Inspiring Change podcast. It's no secret that over the past few months, obviously with all the COVID thing going on, and we will eventually, I guess, get sick of talking about the COVID thing, but it is here, it's probably going to be here for a while. And we've been, I think many organizations have been struggling with the fact that this is a monumental change that none of us have seen the like of before, that there's no precedent for because never happened before. In fact, the last time something like this happened was obviously the Spanish flu, and that was 100 years ago now, over 100 years ago. So, you know, it's one of those things that for me, it's a real opportunity. And, and, and people who listen to this podcast regularly will know that I'm a huge supporter and proponent of the power of leadership and leaders in organizations. And this has been a huge opportunity for leaders to step up, to really bring their teams on that journey with them, or perhaps to not step up, to actually fall over, to perhaps not lead very well. And as a result, people do get demotivated, productivity goes down, heads do drop. So for me, that cohort of people in any organization, that middle management layer, are so critically important. So I'm really pleased today to have back mi amigo Pedro Angulo from AIB. I'll let Pedro introduce himself in a second, but He'll be pleased to know that he is still the most listened to episode on this podcast. I have him on Zoom. He's got a smile from ear to ear. So, I'm really, really excited to have Pedro back on the podcast today to talk a little bit about leadership, something he's really passionate about, but particularly in the context of COVID And actually, probably just moving on from that, the context of big change. So, Pedro, good morning.

Oi, Scott. Thank you very much for Thank you for having me back, and a big hello to all your listeners. I hope you all and your family and yours are keeping well during these very challenging and stressful times. For those that don't know me, Pedro Angulo is obviously the name, not a scary name as you can guess by now, and I am the head of leadership development in AIB Bank. My job really is to work with people to help them be the best they can be. That's the way I describe it. So I do a lot of everything, you know, coaching, leadership development, whatever it takes to help our people to be the best they can be. My main, obviously, area of responsibility is to work with the leaders to show up in a way, as Scott has described it, that is engaging, that is respectful, that is caring, and that brings our people along through what it is, a very challenging and very difficult time for people. I just want to start by saying that I am You know, it's just, it's not a surprise, but people are amazing. When you look at the things that people before COVID had in their minds, the stresses they had, the pressures they were under, then COVID hits and you have more stress, more pressure, you worry sick of your family and friends, and yet they are able to step to the place and deliver amazing results. So just to say that we should never forget how wonderful and how brilliant people are. I suppose in the context of leadership, the focus of leadership then is to get away from that, from getting in the way of that goodness, unless you have something to add to that that is enabling it and making it even more positive. So just to say, I think at times like now, leadership has always been important, but at times like now, leadership is even more important. And it's not about management, it's about leadership. So delighted to be here, and hopefully I can add some value to you today.

Super. Thanks, Pedro. And I think that definitely that whole idea of leadership versus management is something that certainly we've touched on before and something that you believe in very strongly, that whole idea of just clear the way and then get out of the way unless you've got something to add, as you said, and you can assist and support. If you think about back over the past 16 or 18 weeks since the pandemic happened, since we had this lockdown, what do you think has been the impact of this pandemic on how leaders lead? Has everybody stepped up? Have we seen across the board that leaders are doing a wonderful job, or is that just a pipe dream?

Well, listen, let's be honest and realistic. Like in any situation, you have the good, the bad, and the ugly, right? But in fairness, we have had much more goodness and much better, you know, a lot of leaders, in my opinion, most of them have really stepped up to the plate and have done tremendous work in terms of delivery as well as in terms of leading. I think when the crisis hits us, you know, you go into a chaos mode, as I call it. So if you think of the Twin Towers, when the planes hit the towers, the leadership has to kick in to do what? To restore safety, to restore control, to make sure that people are safe. And what that invokes in the leader is to be resolute, make quick decisions, take almost like a very much direct and control approach to restore peace and make sure that people are okay. Funnily enough, what gets you good to do well during chaos, which is direct and control, it doesn't work when we come out of this, when we move into a, you know, a more complex environment. So for example, if you look at the Twin Towers, you know, People have to clean up the Twin Towers, the buildings. And in a normal day, you bring people that are technical experts, get the technical experts to remove all the gravel and all of that. But as we know, it wasn't just the technical piece that was required. The buildings weren't just a building, it was a cemetery. So you needed people, leaders that were not just technically brilliant, but you needed people that led that work with empathy, with care. With humility, with compassion. And that is exactly what is now required of our leaders. We need leaders to be human and authentic. We want them to be calm. We want them to be optimistic in a realistic way. We want them to show empathy. We want them to be adaptable. And we want them to be resilient. But above all of that, we want them to be human and to show that they care. So showing care and empathy is even more important than technical ability, in my opinion, at times like this. Like now.

And it's really interesting, I'm thinking back to an episode of the podcast, maybe 2 episodes ago, with Jane Sparrow from the Culture Builders. And she was talking— we, we talked a lot about leadership styles. And I thought what was really interesting was that she said, you know, you may have some leaders that are very democratic in how they lead. They are what we— what you and I might describe as a really good leader. They do clear the way and then get out of the way. And she said what was interesting was at times like this, sometimes what you have to do is not ask what we might term a bad leader or a manager to lead better or lead differently or be more democratic, but sometimes you have to actually ask those democratic leaders to be a little more autocratic, to be a little more directional. And that's something that for somebody who's very much that hands-off, listen team, you know what we have to do, just go off and get it done. For somebody who's like that as a leader, that can be really hard because you're effectively asking them to revert to something that through all their leadership training and upskilling they've been kind of pushed away from.

You could have articulated it any more clearly. And to me, that is the challenge of leadership, is that we all have a preferred style that we tend to revert to when the shit hits the fan, as they say. And actually, that style that you revert to might not be the right style. And for me, I think that the biggest challenge for leaders now is, as you say, exactly that. We were in a chaos environment, very directive, you know, quick decisions, a lot of times without a lot of information. We just had to make all of that and be very directive. I think the biggest challenge now for leadership is to know how to move away from that into a much more coaching, in a much more inspiring, in a much more caring way. Also, when you are in chaos, it's all about short-term. Horizon 1, Horizon 2, Horizon 3. Everybody was operating Horizon 0.5. You just face whatever was in front of you. You just have to deal with it. Forget about tomorrow, it's today. And to get you out of that operating theater and to remove from there— well, not to fully remove yourself because there are still things that are hitting us fast and we have to react. But it's about knowing what leadership style to use but also in what horizon to operate. And are you spending your time and your energy operating, spreading yourself across those horizons in the right way? Because if you spend too much time in crisis, that will have impact. If you spend too much in horizon, you know, future planning, that's no good either. So it's about knowing, are you operating in the right horizon? Are you leading the right way? Are you doing too much directing? Are you doing too much hands-on? And that's the complexity, and it's not easy.. And most of us get it wrong quite a number of times, but that's okay. That's part of the reflection that we need to do as leaders. Learn from the things that we did well on the day. Think about the things that we didn't do maybe so well and how can we better tomorrow.

Do you think that people reflect enough? One of the things that I see often is that self-awareness isn't particularly high among leaders, or sometimes isn't particularly high among leaders. And I wonder how much time is spent actually reflecting on, was that the best way I could have done that? Was the outcome the one that I wanted? If I'd wanted a different outcome, what could I have done differently? Is there enough of that, do you think?

It's very interesting, you know, Scott. I think now that we're, a lot of us, working from home, the day and the nights have come together. Our boundaries are less clear. They're becoming blur. We're going from job to job. It's become relentless. We are not disconnecting anymore. We're totally 100% most of the time connected. We are encouraging people to take time off to disconnect. You need to disconnect. It's like any sports figure. You cannot be performing to your best if you don't take time to reflect, to replenish that energy, to think about what's working well in your game, what can you do better, get a bit of replenishment of that energy and thinking and Yeah, just taking stock. I would say that for the last 2 to 3 weeks, most of us have gone from decision to decision, from Zoom call to Zoom call, and most of us, a lot of us probably haven't taken enough time to really reflect and think about all the good things, all the challenges, and how can we better be, you know, be better at leading our people into the future.

Yeah, I'm definitely hearing that people, you know, everybody I speak to, everybody I speak to, I'm so busy, I'm busier than ever, I'm just, it's back-to-back Zoom calls. Even if you call somebody for a chat, you know, maybe during the day you might catch them for 5 minutes of an afternoon, you never catch them anymore, it's all voicemail. And I just wonder, are people, you know, people are busy, but are we being busy fools? Are we being as effective as we could be?

Yeah, you know, it's funny, I was having a call with a few of my colleagues a couple of days ago, and I went back to the urgent and important quadrant, something that I learned when I was about 20, early days in my career. But now more than ever, we need to think about where are we spending our time and our energy. And the likelihood is that most of us are operating about over 70% on things that are urgent and important. And that's firefighting, and we know that that is the case. And let's be honest, Sometimes you have no choice. But how much time are you spending, you know, like, are you managing that properly? Are you trying to create more space for things that might not be as urgent but are critically important, like your own development, for example, the development of your team, leading and motivating your team rather than trying to measure and control what they do? What you will find is when the chaos is on, everybody worries, are people working? We need to check on them. God forbid. And actually, that's probably the most counterproductive thing to do as a leader, because you need to show trust and respect and know that people are going to do the right thing. And in fairness, most of the time they do. So as you said, it's very interesting that most of us probably are operating, delivering lots of results. We're very pleased that we're delivering a lot of things. Things that before took maybe 3 months to do, we have gotten done in 2 to 3 days. So the speed of decisioning, the speed of getting things done, the agility, the cross-collaboration, the common purpose to get us out of this is tremendously positive. But you know yourself, when something is too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. So we need to think about, okay, out of all of those things, what has been really, really good that we want to sustain into the future? But equally, what are the things that maybe we need to stop or slow down or do less of? In order not to make mistakes that might require a lot of rework and a lot of, you know, have negative impacts on our business.

Yeah, that point about, you know, just making sure that people are working hard and making sure they're delivering fast and making sure that, you know, there was a phrase that I coined in a webinar that I ran recently, this whole idea of checking in with people, not checking up. And I think being able to go out and say, hi, listen, Pedro, 'You know, I'm just giving you a call.' You know, we may not even talk about the work stuff because actually, you know what, I trust you and I know that you're doing it and I know you're doing a great job. I just wanted to see how you are. How are the family? How are you getting on? Taking 10 minutes to do that can be very powerful.

And it's funny, you know, even though we're physically disconnected, I've never been more connected to my team. We have regular catch-ups. I see their dogs, I see their pets, I see their kids, I see their house. It's just a deeper level of connection. So interestingly enough, I think that's one of the good things. I think in terms of leadership, for me, the way to describe leadership in a nutshell is about two things. It's about direction and energy. Give people direction, show them expectations, give them clarity, ruthless prioritization, because you need to ruthlessly prioritize, help people, you know, clear north star, and then inspire them. Give them energy, motivation, make them feel that they can achieve greater things than they thought that they were going to be able to achieve. Back them, be there for them, coach and support them. And then as you said, people deliver, people take accountability. People are, I don't think, ever the problem. A lot of the times it's the structures, lack of clarity. Actually, if I am thinking about the things that really get in the way of productivity, And my first one is lack of clarity. You'd be surprised how much we take for granted that people, we know exactly what we tell them to do. A lot of the times we just go away trying to please our boss and we actually have no rushers as to what they really ask us. And the second thing is at a time like now where people after the COVID adrenaline are running out of fuel, we need leaders that inspire people, that keep that energy, that makes them feel that they can tap into those tank reserves and keep going. So yeah, inspiration and direction. If I look at other things that I think leaders could benefit from at the moment, certainly role modeling. Monkeys do what monkeys see. I don't know what the expression is.

That's close enough.

You know, I always say, you know, your kids do what they see you do, not what you tell them to do. People are the same. So, you know, people role model everything a leader does. It carries culture, carries impact, and for the better or for the worse. In terms of communication, which is an area obviously that you are true, you know, hugely passionate about, it has to be, you know, it's not about more communication. And that's the mistake I think that sometimes we make. You know, it's not just about more. It's about more meaningful, purposeful communication that taps into people's needs, that makes them feel that they have a voice, that is two-way rather than I tell you because I know best. You know all that good stuff that shows that you care. And part of this leadership at the moment, I think, as well is about— I think we need leaders that can challenge assumptions, okay? And that's been another— that's probably been one of my key learnings as we have gone through COVID is that things that we thought were impossible. We have proved that are possible. So organizations like ours with, you know, 9,500 people, we were able to get people working remotely, about 75-80% of our organization, or whatever, you know, numbers, but a large proportion of our organization working remotely very quickly and very effectively. So remote working now has become the norm. Unbelievable. We're doing digital stuff, we're Skyping, we're Zooming. We, you know, a whole department that before if you say, oh, get your finance department all to work remotely or all your HR department to work remotely, you would have thought, are you out of your mind? We show now that it can be done. So I keep asking myself, how many views and how many assumptions do we make that are holding us personally, as teams, or as organizations and they're not allowing us to be the best that we can be.

And I think that that point about making assumptions is really, really well made. And I think that actually that whole— it was a beautiful segue into the next discussion that I want to have, which is around flexible working and leadership. But the whole— for me, you know, for years and years and years, I think staff have been told, well, you know, listen, of course it wouldn't be possible for the whole legal team or finance team or risk or HR team to work from 'home' because, you know, because we need to be in the office, because that's, you know, where we can do our best jobs. You know, to be honest, your job wouldn't really suit working from home. We don't really have the technology to make it possible. And for me, actually, what a lot of it boiled down to was a lack of trust. And we know there's a huge trust deficit in organizations. It's always been possible, but leaders, I don't think, in many instances trusted that their people would deliver what needed to be delivered at the quality that it needed to be from home, that they had to be sitting in front of me or it won't happen. This whole thing has blown that wide apart because— and I've said this on a couple of calls and a couple of other podcasts that I've done— I challenge anybody— I said this the last time, feel free to email me if you know different, scott@inspiringchange.ie— I challenge anybody to show me an organization that has folded or gone under because its people were working from home. I bet there won't be any. There are a myriad of, a million reasons why businesses have gone under. That is not going to be one of them.

That is not going to be one. And I'll tell you, if you look at the top 3 up to very recently, is, funnily enough, one was that some of the SMEs, they grew too fast and they didn't have the right structures and processes to enable that growth. Obviously, an obvious one is running out of cash flow. Another one obviously is maybe the succession planning wasn't there for once you get to a point that you want to pass on your business, you have a successor. But certainly virtual working is by far not one of them.

Yeah.

And it's about saying, okay, so we know that this is not gonna go back to the old ways, so what are the goodness that we want to retain and sustain going forward? And how we, to your point, show respect and trust to work with people at their level, making it work for them, not just for somebody or an organization. And I think organizations that allow for that flexibility are going to come out better out of these turbulent times in the future.

And I think that also layered on top of that, if you think about the The best people do not all live within traveling distance of where your business is based, where your office is based. They may not live in Dublin, they may live in Galway or Donegal or Bolivia or Birmingham or wherever. Um, so actually, by limiting people to coming to an office, you're effectively limiting the pool of talent that you can tap into. So there's a huge thing, a huge piece that organizations are missing out on which is just getting the best people. And I think once you've got those best people, retaining those best people, because you're saying, listen, you know what, I know you've got young kids, I know you live in the middle of nowhere, I know that it's a 3-hour round trip for you to get to work, but look, let's just work something out because I know you're really good at your job. And you know what, that's why we hired you.

Think about that one for a moment. Before we brought people to the job, so the job is in Hungary, you have to go to Hungary. Well, hang on now, We're bringing the job to people now. So it doesn't matter where you are. As long as you can do it, we can bring it to you. That's a big shift in terms of the way organizations operate. So you can have an organization anywhere in the world. They're looking for somebody. Why not engage, bring that job to somebody who is in a total different country, if they are the right people for the job? So it's not about bringing people to the jobs anymore. It's bringing the jobs to people. That's a massive mindset shift. And that will have a huge impact on the workforce of the future, I have no doubt.

But potentially a hugely positive workforce, but if managed poorly or if led poorly, could potentially— let's not be all silver lining and rosy all the time— could have a detrimental or a negative impact on organizations. So I wonder from your perspective, if we think about organizations moving to being more flexible in terms of workforce, in terms of location, in terms of working hours, in terms of all that. What is it? What are some of the practical things do you think that leaders are going to have to do to make sure that they can maintain motivation and engagement and productivity among their people? What are some of the really practical things they're going to have to do?

Well, I mean, I'm going to start by saying the obvious, right? That it is about people. I don't care what work I do, I do care about what work I do, I care where I work from, I care about a lot of things, but the one thing I care most about is that I work with somebody who shows me respect and who shows me that they trust me. So without that, I think everything else, you know, you can be in the nicest office, if you work with somebody that doesn't trust you or respect you, it's game over, right? So unless that basic most important thing is not there, then everything else falls apart. Once you have that good trust and good chemistry, then for me it's about enabling people to establish new routines and new habits or new rituals. And for me, that is critical because I think boundaries are becoming very blurred. So to make it okay for people to schedule and to set routines and help them maintain those routines it becomes absolutely critical. So one thing that you can do very practically, as we have done, is go to your staff and say, hey, look, it is okay to take an hour for lunch. It is okay to, you know, to put your out of office if you're on holidays. It is okay to disconnect. It is okay to do some of these things. It is okay to go for a walk at lunchtime. Make it okay for people. And actually encourage leaders not to set meetings at times, you know, when it's lunchtime, for example. So, you know, help people set up those routines, help them to establish their routine, and encourage your leaders to support those. So that's another easy thing that could help. In terms of things that organizations have been doing for the last 3 months or so, well, there's been a lot of stuff. Some of it has been more meaningful than others, depending on who has done it and who you've done it with. But you can do quizzes, you can do competitions, you can do all sorts of social things. And by the way, they're very powerful and they're very helpful. But again, they carry different meaning for different people. For me, the key thing is to offer a variety of things that tap into the different cohorts that you have of people. So for example, you know, there are people that are very happy to be at home on their own forever because they love that space. They're happy to be in there. But there are other people that really struggle. So obviously very different needs. And there are people that need different things. There are people that love talking and having quizzes, and there are people that would never join a quiz. So I suppose it's about providing enough variety of things that allow people to connect. I think for me, it's that ability to help people connect in a meaningful way, whether it is through social or through maybe a lunch and learn. So some people you can say, look, we're gonna cover a topic that is of relevance to a group of people, put them into a virtual room, and that could be a really meaningful way of connecting certain people. So in summary, connect, be respectful that different people have different needs, allowing people to set routines and enable them to stick to those routines, to clarify boundaries. And the most important thing is Yeah, just treat people with respect, make them feel you care. And that's the— I think, you know, anything else, take it from there.

Your feedback's important to us, and I'd really appreciate it if you could please take a couple of minutes to rate this episode of the Inspiring Change Podcast and perhaps leave a few words of feedback. Thanks so much. Yeah, and you know, for me there was, there was another couple of things because of that monkey see monkey do thing that you mentioned earlier. Um, you know, people, people do look up still today, um, even though we try to, you know, we talk about flatter hierarchies and we talk about, you know, flatter organizations, and, and people still look up the hill to the top to see what people up the top of the hill are doing, and then they, they emulate that. So things like, you know, saying yes take a lunch break, go for a walk, do whatever, is really important. But actually seeing your boss doing that is more important. And things like, you know, don't send emails in the organization, don't send emails after 7 o'clock or 6 o'clock or 5 o'clock. And if you do receive, yeah, if you do receive an email after 5 o'clock, then you don't have to, you know, as an organization, we don't expect you to answer that until tomorrow morning. So what happens then is that that's undermined when the CEO perhaps sends an email at 7 o'clock in the evening or 8 o'clock in the evening. That's not playing the monkey-see-monkey-do game, that's just actually going outside the realms of, well, here's what we say everyone else should do, but actually now as leaders we're going to do something different.

So just to that point, Scott, one thing that we have realized, and you know this only too well, is that different people have different working patterns. And we didn't want to regulate for some in the context of others. Because there are people that can do their best work once they put their kids to sleep. So we are saying to people, we're not gonna get in the way of that. If that is the best, most productive time for you, well, again, make sure that you take the right breaks and all of that. But if you need to send emails after hours, maybe write the emails, maybe even send them, but maybe put a little signature that says, hey, look, 'it suits me because I'm working flexibly to send this email right now, but don't feel that you have to respond to me until the morning or Monday.' And that just makes it okay, as you said, for people to say, 'okay, I understand this guy has sent it,' but it is okay not to go back. Because you and I know that when you get an email at any time from your boss, you have that kind of a thing to say, 'I better get back quickly.' And to your point, sometimes no matter how much we tell people not to do it, And if somebody wants to do well in their career, they feel under pressure to get back because I might get in the way of my career progression. But then it goes back to, as you said, if the leader makes it very clear that it is okay, reinforces that it is okay, and calls out to people that have done it and say, "Fair play to you. I told you not to come back, but you did, and thanks for that. That makes me— it's working," and reassures people that it is okay, then that's when things work. And go back to culture change. In addition to role modeling, all our processes and all our systems need to be aligned to reinforce the behaviors that you want to see. So for example, going to your thing, if you say, I want people to work collectively as one team, and you reward individual performance, then you're going to get individual behavior. If you say, people, I want you to think cross-functionally, I want you to think about one enterprise, but all you do is to measure them on their own individual, but that's what you do. You just focus on your own and that creates silos. And there's a great Harvard Business article, very old, that is called "Rewarding A While Hoping for B," and it really hits that point. Make sure that you reward, recognize, and align all of your processes to things that you want to see in terms of values, in terms of the culture you want to create, and so on.

And it's interesting you touch off culture, and I wonder, because a few people have asked me this, that if you, if you have an organization, an organizational culture, um, you know, I've been asked a few times, how do you, how do you continue to, to build and maintain and nurture a culture when people aren't there, when they're not seeing each other, when they're not having water cooler chats, when they're not having those little moments of contact? That we have through the day. How do you do that?

Well, there are many, many ways of skinning a cat, right, as they say. I mean, I think this is a great time to talk about purpose and values because it gives you a north star, it gives you a sense of meaning. So I think this is a great opportunity to go talk to your team and have a session with them about, in the context of COVID and what we have learned and what we have experienced, what does that mean in terms of our current purpose, in terms of our current values? What have you seen? And what you will see is that a lot of us have been actually more aligned to our values than we ever been. We're more collaborative, we're more one team, we're more accountable. So actually crisis gives us a great opportunity to really talk about the values and purpose in a good way, in a positive way, in a reinforcing way. So I think it's a great opportunity. I think, you know, there are many things, you know, you can do so many things. If you look at culture, as I said before, it's not about one thing. It's about repeating things and it's about ongoing things. So you have your purpose, you have your values, you have even your pillars. You have, you know, everything that you do has to be aligned to your North Star. If it is your customers, everything needs to be aligned to your customers. And people get the point. Once every time that you meet them, the number one thing you talk about is customer. And then they get it and they know what to expect. But what I see sometimes is that we don't keep at it for long enough because culture takes a long time. And what I feel is that organizations are great at opening theaters because that's the sexy bit, that's the bit that tends to get recognized. But where really the real benefits is, is actually running it. Embedding it and reaping the benefits. So culture takes 5, 6 years, and if you persist with your purpose, your values, your behaviors, if you continuously tell people when they're behaving in a way that is not aligned to your values, you call them out and you give them feedback. I tell you what, after a number of years, you will see culture change. But it is about the ongoing continuous reinforcing of everything you do.

Yeah, and that calling people out thing was something that I touched on in the Ask Me Anything video that I did earlier in the week when somebody said, you know, I do fundamentally believe that authentic leadership is the way forward, but what do you do if your leader is authentically horrible?

I'll give you a laugh, right? If you know that somebody is authentically horrible, that's actually better than to have somebody who is nice at your face, but you know they're stabbing you in your back. That's the worst kind of leader, passive-aggressive leader. At least if you know somebody, how, you know, they are, you can minimize the negative impact. But, you know, again, I think in general, generally speaking, most people go to work in a way that they want to do their best, they want to do what's right for the organization. It's just sometimes because of our mindset, our— just there are always things that get in the way of us being the best version of ourselves. And going back to your point about reflecting, unless we reflect, we will We will never know. Unless we ask for feedback, we will never know. You know, one thing that drives me mad is when you ask Irish people, how did I do? They'll tell you, grand, it was grand. I'm like, what does grand mean?

Nothing, nothing. It means just not offending you.

So I said, give me one thing I did well, but give me one thing I can do better. I know, no, everything was great. No, no, hang on now. Give me one thing that I can do better. To your point, there's always something you can do better. Nobody's that perfect.

Yeah, yeah, except you, Pedro. I can give you 10 things. We'll talk after. We'll talk after. So I think when you look at what we've been through from a people perspective, from a leadership perspective, from a business perspective over the past few months, I think we've learned a huge amount. And I wonder, what is the opportunity, do you think, for businesses now? How can they look forward, looking at what's happened over the past 4 months, what are some of the things that we can take and use to create opportunity for our organizations?

That's a very interesting question. I think, look, we're all going through this, we're all trying to analyze, dissect, look into what are the learnings, what have been the challenges, and we are not the only ones. And then we're looking at the future, a future that is very unpredictable. We used to call it the VUCA world. I call it the VUCA++ world.

It is now, yeah.

It is just total lack of predictability, uncertainty. I mean, what we know is that, you know, a lot of that stuff is going to continue. So I think organizations that are going to be successful going forward out of this are organizations that actually, funnily enough, that get their culture right. I truly believe that a long-term sustainable competitive advantage can only be achieved through your culture. That's the one thing that nobody, not even the Chinese or any country or whatever you call it, or Brazilians can copy. Because it's about behaviors, about how we do things. And I think organizations that crack that and have cultures that are inclusive, that value diversity, that allow people to be the best, that allow them to be the way they are and show up the way they are, I think that's where the secret recipe is. So I think culture is hugely important. What you will see as well is that we have proved that organizations of any size, we can be very creative and very agile. So for me, it's about how do you sustain some of those good practices into the future. Particularly what I see is leadership has to really focus now on creativity and innovation. I think that's going to be a big differentiator. And I think any other— I think funnily enough, as somebody says, and this is an old sentence, you know, never waste a a crisis because a crisis forces us to be creative, innovative, flexible, adaptable, all of those good things. And let's be honest, there are organizations that are making a lot of money and they're flourishing through these digital organizations. And on the other hand, there are organizations that are really struggling, unfortunately, and they're going out of business or they're looking for financial support. And it is impacting different organizations, different people in different ways. But what is clear to me is that successful organizations and people are those that are very resilient. And it's funny, even the way people talk. I've been talking to entrepreneurs that have gone through very different, very difficult phases, and all you hear is positivity. Look, you know, it's been difficult, but this is what I'm doing, this is how I'm changing my business, and I'm learning this, I'm loving this, it's making me better. I mean, it's mind-blowing how resilient some people are, and they're the ones that will survive. So again, organizations and people that are resilient, I think they are the ones that are going to succeed in addition to the cultural elements and also in terms of the innovation, innovative practices. For me, in terms of innovation, just very quickly, I think I tend to believe now that you have to create a space for part of the organization to run the business focus on efficiency, and you also have to create pockets in the organization that can focus on creativity and long-term thinking, and then find ways of integrating those practices. Because very difficult to be innovative when you are firefighting, or vice versa.

Yeah, it needs to be two completely separate things, doesn't it?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. When you talk there about sustaining good practices, and you're right, because there are, I think we have thrown up a lot of There has been some bad practice, I think, has come up, but we have seen a lot of good practice. We've— we have seen a lot of innovation. We have seen a lot of people really doing the— going the extra mile for themselves, for their teams, for their organizations. And I just wonder, of those things, of those positive things, how do we ensure we keep the good stuff? How do we sustain those good practices that have— that have come out and flourished during this period?

Well, that's the $1 million question, isn't it? You just need to identify them and then you have to be ruthless and make sure that the person at the top says, "I want this to become the new normal." And then you align your whole organization to make sure that that becomes the new normal. And don't let go. And make sure that you tell people, "We're not going to go back to the old ways. We need to disconnect with the old ways because there's no going back. This is the new way." And it's about messaging. Role modeling, and all the other good stuff that we talked about before. Just to give you an example, Decathlon. Decathlon in Italy, they partnered with a medics— I can't remember the name of the company— a medical devices company, a small one, and some other company. Companies that would never collaborate. And the way they collaborated is that Decathlon is a sports company, and they have this snorkeling apparatus if you're gonna go diving on the sea. So they created— were those snorkeling things? They created breathing machines for people that were struggling with COVID I mean, imagine what a great example of collaboration, a cross-industry work, and synergizing, breakthrough thinking, meaning. I mean, I love to talk to my own company and say, how can we create magic like that? How do you— I mean, that's just— it can be done. So how do you create the conditions that maybe we create something as magical as that, that has an impact on our communities, on our people, uh, on everything that we do? And by the way, it's also good business because, you know, I always said that, you know, being good is good for business. Businesses that are good to people and also to their communities, they reap the benefits. So, you know, I think, you know, it's good for everyone.

I think that's a great place to finish up. I think that whole idea of, you know, organizations perhaps who are listening to this going away and asking themselves, how can we create that bit of magic that Decathlon created? How can we create that bit of magic that really builds pride in our people that shows how we live our purpose, that shows how we live our values, that shows that we are an organisation at the heart of communities and that we're doing the right thing, is a really big question to ask. And if even a small percentage of companies in Ireland, in Europe, around the world can ask themselves that question and can do something about it, can make something happen, that's a really, really powerful thing.

And just to say, Scott, I think, you know, if you look at our Irish people are so generous, Like in our company, like every company, like we are raising so much money for charity. Companies are doubling the money. Like we're doing a lot of great things. The difference between that and the Decathlon example for me is that a lot of the stuff that we do here is very tactical rather than strategic and disruptive in nature. So I think if you can come with a way that really aligns your social good, your sustainability stuff with your business and make sustainability, as we are all probably trying to do, to become a true pillar, a true core element of your direction going forwards. I think that's where the magic will happen. Because let's be honest, my final thought is that companies and individuals wanna work for companies that are purpose-led. And that they're more than just about making money.

And I think we will leave it there. I have nothing further to add than that. What a great place to finish. Pedro, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast. I really appreciate it. It's nice to see the inside of your house.

Likewise.

As you're looking inside everybody else's. That sounds a bit weird that we're peeping through curtains, which of course we're not. It's just all Zoom-based. Pedro, thanks a million. Really enjoyed having you on. I think some brilliant insights there again. I hope to get you on again in the future, but for now we'll say goodbye and we'll leave it there.

Thank you very much, Scott McInnes, and thanks everybody for listening. Thank you very much.

Thanks for listening. To hear the views of other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blog, or to find out more about Inspiring Change, please visit our website at inspiringchange.ie.