Transforming TA? Step 1: Make lots of mistakes | Johnny Campbell & Paul Bowles

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It is Wednesday 25th November. It is 1 month, 30 days until Christmas. Welcome to the Shortlist. It's your host, Johnny Campbell. I am co founder of Social Talent and I'm here every week on your podcast or on your live YouTube and LinkedIn. On with another great guest this week on the Shortlist. As we head into the run in towards Christmas, what have we got, maybe three or four shows left before Christmas. I'd love to know. By the way, those of you listening live, if you have put your Christmas decorations up, are you there yet? Are you not? If you're in the U.S. tomorrow's Thanksgiving for you. So maybe you're going to listen to us as a podcast on your day off. That might be your cup of tea. Maybe it's not. Let's see. Don't forget the podcast. The shortest is a weekly show. It's a podcast available on itunes or Spotify or wherever you find your podcast. It's also a live show on YouTube, on our social talent channel and on my LinkedIn profile on LinkedIn. And you can find all of our past episodes and our upcoming episodes schedule@socialtown.com the shortlist. So quick tip for you, by the way, with 30 days to go to Christmas, go home. Especially you have young children. Ask Alexa. I'm assuming you have an Alexa in your house if Google assist, I have no idea if Google works. Ask Alexa how many days until Christmas. She'll answer you and you'll get a little surprise at the end. Trust me, your kids are going to love it. Right, on with the show today. I'm thrilled to welcome this guest. He's a bundle of energy, but also just somebody who has a wealth of experience and knowledge and a great way of describing the world we work in. If you're in talent acquisition or recruiting or hiring, I'm excited to get into our topic because, you know, it's one that's dear to my heart and that is the topic of making lots and lots of mistakes. And we're going to be talking about transforming talent acquisition. And as part of that step one being, the advice from our guest today is make lots of mistakes and not in the Mark Zuckerberg break things and fail fast and move on or whatever the heck it's like just a reality of actually it's a good process to make mistakes. Trust me in getting to where we are today. We've made lots of mistakes. I'm making more right now. As you listen and watch, I guarantee you. I'd like to introduce, therefore, our Guest today and the guest is Paul Bowles. And Paul Bowles, my apology, Paul, I'll get your surname wrong before we even get into it. Paul is the global talent acquisition leader at Nokia. You may know Nokia from the phone that used to be in your pocket 20 years or if you're currently celebrating your 110th anniversary, maybe you know about their wood products from back in the day when you were a child. But Nokia is a very different business now. And Paul will no doubt tell us a little bit about what Nokia is today. And we're going to be talking about talent transformation, something that Paul, Paul is no stranger to in his career. And maybe we'll get an opportunity to hear Paul's stories of transformation in the very interesting roles he's held in Nokia but also before that and why you sometimes have to do things your own way to be successful. Paul, welcome to the show. Tell the audience a little bit about yourself, remind our maybe older audience members about Nokia and who they are today and update our brand new audience members who maybe don't know who Nokia is a business and give them a bit of insight in terms of your world.

Brilliant. Thanks, Johnny. And again, really pleased to see you. Set me up nicely by making your first mistake and just share a quick story. You know it's funny, my name is Paul Bowles but frequently people say Paul Bowles and I found it's actually even worse for some reason with the medical profession they always seem to call out my name as Paul Bowles in doctor surgeries and what have you. So I've learned to live with that over the years. Okay, so I'm in charge of talent acquisition with Nokia. I think it's kind of the best job in the company because it allows me to get involved in so many things. And I think anyone that works in talent acquisition, you kind of feel that your job is quite important and you're doing it because it allows you to get into lots of things. I'll tell you a little bit about Nokia so I won't bore you too much because we've got a really good website so you can find out a lot about that. But historically Nokia was known I think in the late 90s, in the early part of the millennium for phones and you know, the ubiquitous 3310, which I think a lot of people about my generation and maybe even slightly younger look at that as their go to phone and their first phone. Johnny's mentioned Nokia had a proud history, you know, 150 years old or so. We started off in timber Then we went through from there into rubber boots and then from rubber boots we went into making TV surroundings and then we moved into electronics, consumer electronics, from TV surroundings and mobile phones. And around 2010 we sold mobile phone division to Microsoft at the time and really focused on networks, which is where we are now. So now we think we're a world leader in 5G and the next generation of connectivity. And if you think 4G was a big deal, just wait for 5G. And again, if you've heard something about 5G and that's a big deal, lower latency, faster bandwidth, just wait for 6G. It's going to be crazy. You know, maybe when you think of a more original name than 6G, when you think that's something different, I think. But that's where it is at the moment. So We've got about 90,000 people in Nokia. I'm in charge of recruitment. We recruit around 15,000 people a year, of which around four and a half thousand are professional hire, around 3,000 are campus, and around 7,000 are internal hire. So that's what we did prior to that. Really lucky. I spent 22 years. I know I don't look old enough, so you don't need to tell me that, but I spent 22 years working for a company called Talas, again, a nice easy one to mispronounce, spelt Thales T H A L E S. And there I was, really lucky. I had a load of cool jobs. I set up the corporate university in Australia in Sydney, so I was lucky. I lived near a beach there. I then set up a corporate university on the west coast of the US and lived in California, on the beach there as well. So that was a great thing. And then I had the opportunity. I got a phone call one day from a new head of HR Italis, and he said, look, you know, I'd like you to lead a project looking at a new employer brand for the company. I did that. And then after I'd done that, he said, hey, how would you like to head up Talent Acquisition? And I said to him, I think you might have made a bit of a mistake, David, because if you look at my cv, I have recruited a lot of people as a manager, but I've never worked as a recruiter or I've never worked in Talent Acquisition. And he said to me, okay, he said, I know we've got some good people in Talent Acquisition and the role is really about transformation and about going from where you are today into something new. So he took a chance on me. I guess back in 2013. And I think then I found I've really been passionate about learning and development and I've been lucky. I've lived all around the world. I came back to the uk, so after living in the beach in Sydney and living in the beach in Southern California, I then ended up in the Wirral in the uk. So clearly I moved here for the weather. But, you know, again, I kind of found my home in talent Acquisition because I'd loved the idea of talent management that I was able to do with the corporate university. I'd also love the idea of selling things and about brand and I love the idea about, you know, developing people and bringing in something of value to the company. So I kind of found my natural home. It took me until I was 40 to figure out that that was my home. But, you know, this is the place I think I was always meant to be. Working Talent Acquisition. Johnny, does that kind of give you a bit of intro to me and who I am?

That's a great intro. That gives me all the information that I think we need to start with. But I'm going to come back and dig into loads of those things. We got a LinkedIn user saying triple loop learning is the key. I don't know what triple loop learning is. I just wiki'd it and it's interesting you should explore that. I think it does fit in with our theme today. Jane King is saying. Yes, she had one of those. I assume she's talking about the 6110 or the 6210 or 6310. I think we all had them. I used to have a pile of Nokia bricks as they were back in the day, back in the late 90s, our first phones. Yeah, it brings me, brings me right back. Paul, I want to get topical with you. I want to just jump into some, some. Some news articles that I think we've shared these in the last couple of days. I'm keen to get your thoughts. Which means it's that time of the show where I asked Nala to rol news credit. See, there's a whole meta thing that Nile is doing there where he's making mistakes, because this show today is about making mistakes. So maybe I called you bowels on purpose and nodded. The double jingle purpose. Who knows what other mistake might go wrong today? Paul. So let's get into our first article. This comes from Forbes. This is topical. It's about strategic thinking. And the authors here are talking about, well, they're kind of, I guess their thesis Is that I didn't actually know this was a thing right until I read this article that apparently strategic thinking is becoming unfavorable, that people are so focused on short term thinking since the pandemic kind of kicked off that strategic thinking is taking a backseat. And the authors here are arguing that we need to restore this allegedly lost habit of strategic thinking. What's your experience with on this?

Good point, Johnny, good point. I think there is some truth in this. I had a look at the article and I think there is some truth that at the moment, with everything that's happening in the world around the pandemic, and I think particularly with the second wave as well, I think a lot of people are getting quite stuck in this idea about saying, okay, you know, fires are burning. There's so much going on. I need to focus on the here and now. And actually there's so much uncertainty that actually can we plan anything for the future? But I draw a little bit on some earlier experience during financial crisis. There was in 2008, 2009, and I remember some similar feelings there. So really difficult to figure out what's going to happen in the world. And I think to a certain extent we can always say there's always that temptation to focus on the here and now and not look further forward. And what's quite interesting in that article is about this idea about habits. So Whether it takes 33 times to form a new habit, whether it takes 100 times to form a new habit. And I can sympathize a little bit because I used to smoke and I was really, really good at smoking. So I smoked for many, many years and it was bloody hard to give up. And because it was a habit and all about ritual and routine. And I used to also get really, really good at giving up smoking as well. Really good. In fact, I gave it up about nine times. I was so good at it. But then I think eventually I did get into a new habit with that. And I think bring that in some context here. I think it's about actually when there is great uncertainty, still clinging on some things that are certain. And this idea about strategic thinking, there is still going to be a future. And in some ways I might argue a little bit that the ability to think strategically now is even more important because, you know, the temptation is to keep yourself in the here and now, keep the horizon out three months. And I think sometimes even I think we almost make a bit of a mystery what strategy and strategic thinking is. And actually it's just a little bit about imagining what the future is going to be. So I think it's probably even more important now. I think from my point of view that we really begin to really imagine what the future could be. But I think to go with that is that idea that it's okay to unpick things, it's okay to pivot somewhat, you know, and again, any good strategy does give you that ability to pivot because, you know, macro events that happen in the world force you to do that and adapt your strategy. And if you don't adapt your strategy, then, you know, you're not going to end up in a good place.

Yeah, I 100% agree, like from my own personal experience and our business experience, as soon as we kind of locked into the hard things we had to do back in March, at the beginning of the pandemic, we immediately moved into, well, what's the plan? You know, because I think in our, in our personal lives and our, no matter where you are in the world, I think, you know, there's so much uncertainty around you about the government, the levels of lockdown, all these different things. You know, it's all short term and you need a long term. Like you will go nuts if you don't have a long term to cling to. It's like with a business saying to you, here's our five year plan, here's our three year plan, let's get involved in our seven year planning process. That's a brilliant way of focusing you on long term because it's really hard to focus on anything but short term in every other part of your life. It's a necessity, probably more than it's ever been.

Paul, I'd say you've got it, Johnny. And I mean honestly as well, I think, you know, if I just go to a personal life, you always need something to look forward to, otherwise you get miserable. And I think a professional viewpoint, you always need to set out an idea of what the future could be. And again, you know, I think then for the teams that, you know, work for me and for, you know, the people in our organization, Nokia, even during the whole, you know, the whole pandemic, we really focused on just talking about the future and things. Like we had a new CEO in this time and he set out a new strategy. The temptation would be, hey, I just want to see what's going on, just keep things going. Because to a certain extent the business we're in is probably a little bit protected from the pandemic because everyone's wanting activity more than ever before. But It'd be very easy just to stay with that and say, okay, look, let's try and make rain while the sun shines. But our new CEOs really talking about the future, talking about the strategy. And again, within TA really have begun that process about imagining what the future can be with the teams and bringing them on, on that journey. So I would say don't lose the habit of strategic thinking. There's so many things now, but that's going to be ongoing. There's so many external things, so many things that can stop you thinking about tomorrow and you get caught up in the urgent. And, you know, and the urgent is quite exciting, you know, And I've got to be honest, partly I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, I was in my last. I was in my notice period at my last company, and I remember thinking, actually at the time, bloody hell, this is quite exciting what's happening. Although there's so much going on, it's, you know, lots of terrible things we're preparing for. There was some real adrenaline and excitement to kind of, you know, put out those fires. But the danger is that that can be quite addictive, you know, because you can feel like a hero every day if you're doing something, but actually don't, you know, get addicted to that habit of the here and now. Always keep yourself looking forward to the future. I would say sometimes that can be difficult, but I think you just got to keep imagining things and just be ready to pivot.

Yeah. A few comments from our live audience. We've got Simon Maher saying design thinking is becoming a more common too. Is becoming more common, too. I think you're right, Simon. A lot more people talking about that. I think they already had been. But back to the pandemic is an acceleration of everything, it seems. Jane King agreeing. She truly believes that this pandemic has taught businesses to be adaptable and think about how they can alter this to make them more future proof. And you're dead right. A great question from Josh Taylor. I want to ask in a few minutes of your Paul, once we get to it. So hold tight on that, Josh. One of the parts of the article was saying how people are finding it so hard to do strategic thinking, brainstorming, planning. I've heard this. I hear this a lot. Right. I'm sure you do as well, but it's a funny one. You kind of just have to, you know, it's like you can sit there and go, it's harder. It is, right? It's harder to do it virtually than it is to do in a room the way we would have done it in a brainstorming session or an off site. I get that. Doesn't mean we can't, we shouldn't do it. Doesn't mean it doesn't have to be done. It still has to be done. So I'm not a person I'm happy to, to talk about, oh, this is hard if it gets us to a new place and you know, we come out with a new solution but we just want to sit there and moan that it's harder. Like shut up. You know, strategy is necessary. In fact, it's going to be healthy for you to rethink the strategy to go back to your. I guarantee your strategy, even though it was written in January, it's out of date, right? It's, it's this massive thing happened in the world. So maybe for Nokia, for example, it's meant for probably an acceleration of things. It still means this strategy is out of date. Netflix, right? I was reading today Netflix, they had like a boom of users and then the latest quarter is the slowest quarterly growth in many years. But it's a different plan. They're still doing better than they plan to do. But like it's just going to look different. The growth is going to be at a different pace. Faster than maybe slower than faster. Regardless of your business, I think strategy needs to be reviewed and there we're not going to go back to a desk anytime soon.

Right.

Don't be waiting on, on drug trials and vaccines and that kind of nonsense.

Right?

Just get on with it. Start working your strategy. Figure out a way there's some good tips in that article. We'll share it out. I'm going to move on to our next news item. Paul, for us to have a look at. This is again from Entrepreneur Europe. And I know did you see this show? It's talking about Michael Jordan and the Last Dance, which was on Netflix. If you remember early pandemic days, feels like years ago. Don't know if you watched this. Well, first of all, ask you, did you watch the Last Dance? And then what are your thoughts about this? This author's proposition that you know, Michael Jordan is proving that passion must precede leadership. He's got some really good tips. I think they're good tips anyway.

Right.

That's my opinion. Maybe, maybe you don't. First of all. So Last Dance, did you watch it? What do you think of it? And what do you think of this article?

Johnny, do you know what? I didn't watch it.

But again, cancel the broadcast. Get them off. We're done. He didn't watch the Last Dance. Shame on you.

Because I'd missed out on Game of Thrones the first time around, so I kind of found that. So that was my, my go to for the beginning of the pandemic. I'd say not Netflix. I forget, I think I forget what it was on. It was that many other good providers available, but not on Netflix. But I found Game of Thrones, which again, I've learned a lot from that as well. But no, but it's on my list now. It's on my Netflix watch list. After having read that article, I have.

To say it's a good one. And you probably, you don't have to probably seen the Last Dance to get the point right, because it's kind of, there's sports analogies here, right? There was kind of four core points to be made in there. First, diving into those, and if I look at them, everyone on the team has to bounce back quickly. Everyone on the team has to improve the fundamentals and change their mindset. Everyone on the team has to get stronger and everyone on the team has to believe those four things. Bounce back quickly, improve the fundamentals, get stronger and believe, you know, is, is that good advice? What do you think?

I think so. And I think the first one about resilience, that's pretty critical because I think, you know, it's just the acceptance, you know, things do go wrong. And I think 2020 has taught us that a lot can go wrong and it's always all in the recovery, you know, so, you know, and I think again about it, you know, will take us to the thing about making mistakes, mistakes are made, but it's all in that recovery. And I think reading the story in there, this idea about how the team, you know, can, you know, make mistakes, get things wrong, but actually, how do you come back ready for your next game? Because it's very, very easy potentially to get on the downward spiral and fall into that whole kind of pit of self recrimination and what have I done? I've done this wrong. Then, you know, that whole imposter syndrome on your shoulder can come and say, hey, of course you're going to do things wrong. You really don't know what you're doing, do you? So, you know, again, it's just, you know, you can get into that spiral. So I think that idea about being able to recover is so, so, so important and so, so important now with the year we've had and possibly with the year we've maybe the few years we've got ahead is this idea about how everything that happens to you, how do you make yourself a bit resilient to that? And I think there's some things around self awareness that are critical to make yourself resilient, but then also how to make teams and organizations resilient. And I think that's actually quite a critical thing. And I think there's a link between team resilience and individual resilience. So I absolutely agree with that. The other thing that came out quite strongly for me was the last point, which I think was around, which takes you to this idea about belief as well and passion. And it's really, really interesting for me in organisations I've worked in and having seen a lot of teams that are high performing and seeing some teams that aren't, and often there's something quite subtle which seems to make that difference. And I think there is something about the team really rowing around a purpose and a belief that they can do something, that they can make a difference, that they can win in inverted commas, that they can achieve something. So I think instilling that idea about belief in, in yourself, a bit of self belief, but then also in individuals is quite critical. So, you know, I like that from the article. They were probably the two biggest ones that, you know, really, really resonated with me.

Can I pull you back though? We started the hour with TA transformation, right? Would you mind explaining the context of what is TA transformation? What does it look like? What are its different, most common forms? You know, just so we can align on when we're talking about TA transformation and change and making mistakes. Just first of all, what the heck do we mean by TA transformation? From what to what? What does it look like? What's your experience? Can you give us some examples?

Go on, John. I mean, do you know, it's a really, really great question and it's a tough one to answer in some ways, isn't it? Okay, so for me, the idea about transformation, it's about taking something, whatever it may be. I'll just start with transformation. Beginning with it's taking something and then making it radically different. So it's not about continual improvement. It's not about, you know, little steps and what have you. It's about transformation. You know, it's almost like metamorphosis. It's starting as something and coming out of something else. So, you know, if I take that into the context of, you know, some of the stuff I've done Around TA transformation, a lot of it has been around operating model. So you know, you've had, I've worked in an organization that had a model where HR generalists kind of did some, you know, did some of the recruitment along with agencies and what have you, and then taking that to being an in house model. And I remember just a quick story when I, you know, I won't tell you the name of the organization but you figure out it's one or two probably here when I remember going around and doing my early bit of discovery and saying, okay, how do you manage, you know, recruitment, talent acquisition, resourcing in this organization? And the person said to me, said, okay, in our team, the people that are involved in recruitment tend to be, you know, newcomers, interns, or it's where HR people go when they get a bit tired.

Or they can have a.

Rest, if you will. I quickly found out, you know, that that's not actually the best place to be. Talent acquisition is not somewhere for rest. And I don't think it's, it can be a good place to start your career, but I don't think it's somewhere where actually you just want a bunch of, you know, interns and what have you. It's a really important function. So I think TA transformation is about the operating model. I think it's also about the positioning of TA within an organization. So again, if I take that example there where TA was viewed as something that was a wee bit junior, a wee bit kind of buried, if you will, and then it's about raising it up in an organization. And actually I think partly it's about demonstrating to the organization the art of possible, you know, because I think there's a lot of expectations sometimes in organizations over the years about what the recruitment team, what the TA team does. Oh, they're here, you know, to. I think they post jobs and I think they then follow a process, you know, they execute a process basically. I think that's what they do. I think there's a lot of education to be done for organization about what TA teams can do, you know, what's the art of the possible. And actually I think the other bit of transformation is about taking the TA teams from being order takers and doing as you're told and hiring manager at the most basic level, a hiring manager coming to you with a list of requirements and you just go, okay, I'll see what I can find. You post it and no one applies, all the wrong people apply. And then you go, okay, I've done that through to this idea about really influencing and partnering. Now clearly this is probably nothing new to the audience, but I think what I've learned as well, coming in as a seven, eight years ago, as a novice to ta, I think what I've learned is actually TA often see the world from the TA geek way, if you will. So they know exactly what they can do. And in ta, sometimes we can't believe how stupid the rest of the organization is. But I think partly what I've learned is the idea about don't underestimate, just it's not obvious to the organization just the things that TA can do and just the wealth of data and information we have on the market, how useful that can be to the organization. And by the way, far over and above, just for the purpose of recruitment, it can be so, so interesting to the organization for things like MA too. So I think that's something else I've learned and I think it's around this idea about what is transformation. It's really taking TA from being something that's viewed as a transactional thing. And it almost sat next to payroll and God forgive me, I do love payroll. They make things right for me every month. So I do love them. But I think it's often in organizations historically it's been viewed as something we have to do. It's a low level activity and it kind of sits in that box and really actually just bringing that up in terms of transformation to being something dare I say strategic. So I think that's part of it for transformation for me as well.

We've used the sports analogy already with the Michael Jordan quote. We've a user, I love this quote who's coming on LinkedIn saying every elite sports professional is the product of their past failures. I can sport. I think that's. That's exactly it. In fact, you know, when you look at the concept of deliberate practice, deliberate practice is actually not practicing what you're good at. It's deliberately practicing what you're bad at and trying to, with intention and direction, fix the things that are actually broken. And you got to really uncover those mistakes and things you're doing wrong in your game. If you've got a really. What I know I'm not a sports person, right. But the thing you're good at is really good. That's who you're. Your right foot's great. I remember hearing about, you hear about Beckham, you hear about Tiger woods and you hear about Serena Williams and you hear about all these kind of lead athletes and when the story always Goes when they were younger, their parents or whoever worked with them worked on the stuff that they weren't good at. And that's what made them the elite star that they are. They put deliberate practice and effort into that. Into call it. The mistakes are their weaknesses and that's what made them whole. I think that's a really good quote from, from. From that user who's come in there. And that makes me think about mistakes, right. And brings me back to, you know, the culture of. Of making mistakes. I have a good friend of mine, I haven't talked to him in too long. John Stanners. A shout out to you to say hello. We must catch up. John. John was a TA leader who went to work for the innovation arm of Telefonica, based out of Barcelona, I think, a few years ago. And he was telling me that that was kind of moon, their moonshot business coming up with brilliant ideas. And he ran TA for the. And he said the leaders in there were bonus not by their successes, but the amount of attempts they made. Failure or success. It was like if he tries. If Paul tries four things and they all work out. Johnny Ty tries 20 and only two of them work out. My bonus is bigger than you because I tried harder. And I always thought it was fascinating, this kind of culture of we encourage you to try things we'll never ever find the next big thing are really solve great problems unless we're okay to experiment in line with that. What do you think? What are some of the mistakes you have? The best mistakes you've made and my best, I mean, big mistakes that actually give me the most insight and learning that have really helped you along your way.

Oh, where do I begin, Johnny? Where do I begin? I honestly, I've made so many over the years. What's the biggest one that I made of. I'll reel a couple off. Okay. I think in the early days in ta, when I first moved into ta, one of the biggest mistakes I made was, I think, not listening to, you know, the right people around me. I would say I think, you know, I looked, you know, I looked to people I thought were experts and, you know, they gave me a view of what TA should be. And it wasn't bad at all. But I think, you know, the mistake that I made was I was maybe a bit myopic because I'd come from a different function, a different world. All of these people who I first met in TA and they're all really, really good people, really smart people, but I think, you know, their view was a Little bit myopic. And I forgot what I knew. I forgot actually that one of things I thought I had as a strength was the ability to be broad. And I'd stopped doing that. And I went straight into panic mode and went, okay, I need to know more about subject matter expert. I need to know, you know, subject matter expertise. I need to know more and more and more about that stuff. And I was forgetting some of the skills that I had. So I think, you know, the mistake may be about going too deep in things if you're new to them to begin with. I think that's a mistake I've made. I also remember a mistake quite recently around communications. And I think it was in, you know, in an organization where I waited for someone else to, you know, do a communication. And I waited because I think I was kind of following what I thought was the etiquette of the organization. I thought, okay, I should wait, I should not communicate, I should let someone else do that. And, you know, it was about a change in policy, you know, to recruitment. And I waited for someone else to do this. And in the end the message didn't come out in the right way. So I think one of the other things mistake I've made is sometimes letting others communicate a difficult message when I should have done that myself. So I think I'll probably go for that. In particular, organizationally wide, I'd say letting others communicate the difficult messages because you're thinking, oh, I'm not sure how it's going to land. I think that's probably a mistake. And I think about having a bit more courage to kind of do that. I think another one Johnny I've made is also, sometimes is actually, you know, I said listen to the wrong people. It's also stopping listening to people as well. So again, you know, particularly, you know, I remember a number of years ago, one part of the business was screaming about something they felt was wrong. And again, you know, I thought, okay, you know, what do they know? I'm not going to listen to those guys. And then, you know, I think it became a really, really big problem. Had I listened to something earlier, you know, I probably prevented something. I think maybe just fourth one I'll share is also with the idea about sometimes knowing when not to let go of something as well. When something becomes like a passion project, if you will, and it becomes very, very personal. So I think, you know, I got really, really quite, you know, quite, you know, personally attached to an idea about what should be in our employer brand number of years ago. Really, really quite close to that. And I ended up almost alienating, you know, a lot of the organization, including the VP of comms over this, you know, something really small. I think it's about a font or something. But so in the moment and you know, so I think, you know, I, I almost let go this beautiful alignment that we created for something small, you know, so I think it's also about, you know, sometimes making those mistakes about, you know, almost being a bit bloody minded about perfection. And actually it's probably, you know, I think it's probably a lot better to have alignment and have things, you know, make compromise on some things and get that broad alignment rather than look for perfection. Because you might find yourself with something perfect but with only you that's there with it.

Your employer brand comment there. I'm going to let that be a segue. Back to Josh Taylor's question from a few minutes ago. So Josh asked, when it comes to defining and implementing an employing employer brands branding strategy, what have been the best mistakes you've made and what advice would you provide to recruiters trying to improve their organization's employer brand on social whilst doing their day to day recruiting tasks?

Can you read me that one again, Johnny? Or in that one? Read that one again.

All right, so employer branding strategy, basically, what's your advice, right? What mistakes you made, what you're learning and you're trying to. Maybe this is, you know, down to the structure of how this person's approaching it as they're trying to do their day to day and they're trying to improve their employer brand on social. Is that maybe the fundamental problem or what's your advice around this?

Got you. That's Josh. Thank you Josh. That's a good question as well. All right, so my advice, and again sometimes I think it is, it's a little bit to say, you know, if someone asks you to cut down a tree, spend, you know, you got an hour to do it, spend 40 minutes sharpening the axe before you unswing it. I would say so. I would say I would spend a lot of time with employer brand going for alignment and the experience I had when I first got some broad alignment on employer brand and I found actually everyone in your organization is an expert on employer brand by the way, everyone can tell you exactly what it should be. So I think part of the challenge is trying to get that alignment. So going around asking people what their views are, what they think is important, what's authentic. So I think spending that time doing that then I think it's then about the idea about testing lots of concepts with people. So I saw Simon talked about design thinking earlier. Big fan of design thinking. I'm a big fan of prototyping. It's part of the whole test and learn thing as well. So with employer brand as well, I think once you've gone around and done all your stakeholder bit and spoke to a lot of the right people and clearly the stakeholders in comms, clearly you've got your HR stakeholders, all your business stakeholders, there's a bunch of people to talk to. Don't forget the candidates, by the way. I think that's quite important. And then I think, you know, then I think as part of the next steps, you've got a prototype. You've got to share some ideas and get some reactions to it because sometimes as well, it seems very, very conceptual until you show something how it articulates. So that I think for me is another good tip is, you know, begin to get some prototypes out there early. And sometimes I remember what I did. So with a version of the brand that we did, there was a lot, a lot of noise around colors in the brand, a lot of noise around colors. What's the right color to go for? What's the palette? And what we did, actually we did a whole, you know, we listened to that feedback because actually at the end of the day, you know, okay, I wasn't too, too precious about, you know, the colors. So I thought, okay, fair enough. But, you know, I had a preference. But I think as you're going through that loop of actually saying to people, okay, lots of different visuals, what does this mean? Lots of different. Also, you know, we did lots of mock ups. We did also lots of articulation in terms of how it might follow through to job descriptions, etc. How it might follow through to job ads, all that stuff. And you know that then, you know, that constant kind of iterative process of going through the organization and showing all these examples that seemed to work quite well. I think there, one of the mistakes.

That I've seen, maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm mad. Paul, right? Is that one of the mistakes people kind of make around TA transformation is they underestimate how long it takes. What's been your experience on, you know, to get again, the way you articulate transformation thing is bang on, right? It's not incremental, it's not small changes. Like it's a big shift in the way we're going to do things. How long does that transformation like that take? What does it look like.

Okay, all right, good point. There is always a lot of pressure to get things done real quick. And you know, I remember getting. I'm sure my current boss won't forgive me, will forgive me, maybe he won't again. That was a mistake. I think he will forgive me. As I remember when began to talk about transformation at my interview and the question I remember he asked me said, how long will this take? Will it take six months or will it take a year? And I said, it's probably a five year journey that we're on here. And particularly I think if you're looking as part of transformation, if you're looking at some of the things around, we really want to improve our dni, which a lot of organizations do, and certainly we're on that journey. Things like that don't happen overnight. So that big shift isn't going to happen overnight. But it's important, I think, you know, mistakes I've made sometimes around this is sometimes agreeing to quick time scales, you know, and I did, I agreed to a target for DNI recruiting that was way too ambitious before. And then again, you know, like. And I think it's almost if you accept these targets in haste, you can repent about them at leisure. And you know, so I think the mistakes I've made there is sometimes accepting, you know, a target that's, you know, way too ambitious because I wanted to please a bit, you know, and then I had to live with the consequences of that. But, you know, I think, you know, what I've learned is actually it's okay to be bold, it's okay to push that timeline out a bit and say, look, for all the things we want to do, we need to do it well. And it's partly about cultural change here as well. So that is going to take time. And I think what you have to do though is begin to just articulate what some of the milestones might be. Because where people can get a bit lost is if you say, yeah, it's going to be a five year journey and just imagine Valhalla over there when we get there, what it's going to be like and everything's great. We've got the, the TA teams really embedded in with the business and no decisions are made without talking to us about things, but you've got to be able to show some progress because sometimes lots going on in the background and if you can't show some things, then I think you can get yourself in a bit of difficulty. So again, other mistakes I've made is Actually sometimes it's that, it's that strange mix about you don't want to be, you know, it's about when to toot your horn, if you will, you know, when to blow your trumpet. So you want to make sure that you're taking people along with the journey and you're giving that information and some stuff I think you just can't say enough to people. So I think this idea also about managing timescales at the macro level as to what transformation will take. But even that also goes right down to your team member level. When someone comes along looking for the purple unicorn again, it's okay for our team members to say that's going to take a little bit of time here and you know, okay, or if you shift this a bit and shift that a bit, that's how I can do it quicker. But I think managing those expectations is so, so critical and you know, it's something that I think I messed up. I was too keen to please and I sometimes underestimated the AS is in the organization. So committed things too quickly. My current job, you know, I've really, from the early days, I've set up this idea of five years. In my last job, we set out a five year plan. But that was kind of after I've been doing it for two or three years. And we said, all right, actually here's where we really want to go in five years time. And actually that becomes something quite nice. Then it becomes almost the thing you can anchor things to and becomes a little bit sometimes the reason to say, well, you're not going to do something because hey, this is what we said the plan is and this is where we want to get to. So these three things you're asking us to do now, really, it doesn't fit in there. So we might need to go back and have a look. And yeah, I'm all for agility and flexibility but you know, for us to reach Valhalla in the times we said we need to stick with this.

Yeah, I think, I think your point around, you know, we started the conversation with strategy and which is long term thinking.

Right.

And the long term plan. A good friend recently kind of gave me great analogy I'm going to use here. I think it's good knowledge anyway, which is she told me the big plan is we're going to climb Everest. Right. But you got to explain how we're going to get to base camp on each subsequent step. And that has to be clearly mapped out with deadlines, expectations. Just saying we're Going to devorate is like, that's a huge, big thing. Five years, a lot could change. Well, you got to. You got to kind of signal those milestones along the way. You know, what are we going to do? Look like in 6 months and 12 months and 24 months, it's going to be this. And that's. That's part of the journey of getting to where we will get in five years. It's really, really, really important. And you mentioned as your second, learning the power of communication and making sure that you're communicating it correctly. I think that's a big part of transformation, is the communication piece. And whilst you want to empower other people, I think your point is when it's really important, you got to own it and do it right yourself. You can have a great plan, great team, great strategy, but then it's poorly communicated.

I think that almost goes to this idea. I mean, you know, got. You know, I used to love that show mythbusters. I was on channel four, wherever it was. I used to love that show. And I think, you know, one big myth that we have, you know, is that people are really resistant to change. And I don't believe that that's not it. And, you know, the best example of that always shows I've got something on my finger there that was, you know, it's a wedding ring. That was a big change for me, and I didn't resist that. I have to say, I went along quite willingly with that change. So it's not change, per se, that people resist. I think it's the idea of, you know, loss. I think that's the thing that people tend to resist. And, you know, I think we need to really think about that when it comes to positioning change, it's about, you know, you know, real, frank, open, honest communication. And if there is loss, I think we've got to say and get it out there, but it's not change that people resist, and we've got to get that out of our minds.

I argue on that thing in your finger, you had trust, you had compassion, you had belief, and you had a really strong leader to get you there. I'm not talking about you, Paul.

Absolutely, you're right. And a very important stakeholder to manage, which. Oh, yeah, that's where I made a lot.

Let's not talk about your partner. From the perspective of stakeholder management, things should kill you. So I'm kind of keen to. We're getting towards the end, and, you know, what comes next. I'm gonna have to lean on you for your tip for the shortlist. But before we do that, maybe what are the kind of common themes just around this TA transformation piece? From the mistakes. What will be, you said, what would you say are the key learnings coming from those, that kind of big bible of mistakes. If somebody listening in here is heading into a transformation project, they've been tasked with that or they're involved with that. What are your top learnings for those individuals? What are you going to say? Hey, I've made the mistakes. Here's what I'd say to you to do or don't do.

Okay, right. So here's the first thing again, I think manage expectations. I mentioned that earlier, manage expectations around time and deliverables. I say is the first thing. I think alignment, alignment is more important than perfection, I would say is the other thing because that's how you get things moving and then sometimes you can adjust a little bit to get near your perfection on the way. I think also, you know, do something as well. So, you know, around that transformation you need to, you need to lay out the plan, manage the expectations and then you need to show I think something within the first 90 days and something that people can really feel. I think a good one that I've learned along. There is a little bit around how you align the team, I think so, making sure that there are some nice interfaces where people know where to face off to. Real simple thing. But actually someone just feels appreciated being listened to. I think the other thing to think around in transformation is this idea about experience and just how important experience is at all levels there. So around this idea, really make sure that you're focusing on experience and you're delivering to the candidates, to the hiring managers, to the organization and to the TA teams themselves. And in our transformation now we're starting with what is it in terms of experience we want for the TA teams? I mean maybe a no brainer, but how do you expect them to deliver a great experience to the other people? If they're having a shitty experience with shitty tools and, you know, and no empowerment, how do you expect them to then really deliver a world class experience elsewhere?

So I love that trifecta. People talk about hiring manager experience, they talk about candid experience, they don't talk enough about recruiter experience. Ideally you have that trifecta that gives you a really good hiring process. Jane Kings just chimed in. I think it's a good quote. Communication plan needs to be aligned to remind people about the end goal but also achievement against agreed milestones and to Maintain engagement at all levels through the transformation back to that communication piece. It's. It's really bang on, Jane. Bang on, Paul, Would you believe we're at time? We could keep talking, but I need to hit you with your tips. So as we always do on the show, at the end of every week, Paul, I hope you're prepped. We ask our guests to give us a piece of advice that either has been given to them in their career that they want to reshare or that they would like to share from their own experiences with our audience. So, Paul, over to you for your tip to add to our shortlist.

All right, Jonny. Okay, this was one again. I wish I could claim the credit for all of it, but I can't. But maybe that's another tip. Don't be afraid to reuse other people's great ideas often cite them if you can, but don't be afraid to do that. But I think really, I'd say, look, reflection is really, really important, and you've got to be really good at reflecting. But I think as well, never let that move on to recrimination and also to regrets. And the bit of advice I was given that I want to pass on is that, you know, forgive yourself. Don't spend too many, too much time on regrets. Don't keep going over regrets because you probably made the best decision that you could at that time and with the information that you had. So, you know, reflect. Learn to reflect. Reflect well, but don't let that turn into recrimination on regrets, because you're probably good enough and you made the best decision that you probably could have done at that time with the information you had and, you know, have that and let that build your confidence. And again, just that idea. I think that word enough is really important. You're probably good enough to do what you need to do. And, you know, you can also. I think the other thing is most things that you try, you can always unwind most things as well. You know, you can pick things, unwind and change things a bit. So don't be afraid to start things because you can change most things.

I think it's brilliant to reflect without recrimination and regret. I think it's really important. I think that's what people do too often. I think reflection is about trying to find blame. For example, it's trying to beat yourself up and therefore they avoid it because it's not nice, as opposed to going, it's a learning experience. I'm going to reflect on this, think about what went wrong and move on. Have that take the Michael Jordan approach of move on to the next thing. Have that energy, have that purpose as well. Paul, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure. Really appreciate your wisdom, your stories. We'd love to have you on again. And thanks for joining us on the show this week. That's Paul Bowles, not battles, as we've learned today. That's my mistake for this show. But we're going to be back next week, our first show of December. I'm looking forward to next week. Our guest joining us is our good friend at Social Talent, Jose Kadlek. Jose is the founder of Good Call and Recruiter Academy, based out of the Czech Republic. And earlier this year, Jose published a free book. I highly recommend you check it out on Covid Proof tech and tools to make you more successful, particularly talking about how do you broadcast, how do you do meetings online, how do you do events, how do you podcast a fantastic guide? I'm going to pick his brain on the learning and the research and the story behind how that free book came about. So Jose's going to join us next week and give us all those tips. So if you're keen to know more about how do I do broadcasts, webinars, organize better team meetings, strategy meetings, zoom teams meeting, which tech to you Should I buy new microphones? Should I not? All those different tools and tech questions you might have, trust me, Jose's found the answer, published it and he's going to be here next week to take your questions and to give you that advice. That's going to be our first show in December. Wednesday, 2nd, December, 4pm UK Ireland time. That's, I believe, 11am on the east coast of the United States and 8am on the west Coast. And of course, you can find this broadcast and all of our broadcasts available as a podcast on Apple and also Spotify. And you can find us recordings on my LinkedIn profile and our YouTube channel at Social Talent on YouTube. But for all of our broadcasts and a link to the shows, go find us@socialtalent.com the shortlist. So we'll close out and I wish our American audience a happy Thanksgiving tomorrow or today. You're listening to this on your Thanksgiving. We hope you thank our audience members so far who've been asking great questions and our guests who've had great tips to share. We'll be back next week with a great special on Covid, proofing your tech and also more news on our great guests to close out December. Until then, take care and happy Thanksgiving.