December 4, 2024 • 53 mins
Steve Vamos' career in tech has spanned decades, starting with IBM straight out of university in the 1980’s, followed by stints at Apple, NineMSN, Microsoft, and Xero.
He says that connecting with people and being open to criticism are key skills for leaders navigating through times of major change.
Vamos also shares more specific advice on navigating change, having hard conversations, and the importance of character.
Plus, Ben and Peter discuss why the Australian social media ban may not be a great idea.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Business of Tech, powered by two
Degrees Business, we talked to one of Australasia's most experienced
tech executives on navigating rapid change, fostering innovation, and having
those really hard workplace conversations.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Steve Vamos forged his career at IBM RAN zero for
nearly five years, as well as Microsoft Australia, New Zealand
and Apple's Asia Pacific division. For his sins, he even
the distint in charge of Ossie Media Empire nine MSN,
so he's seen a lot of change and a lot
of technological disruption. Now he's written a book distilling what
(00:37):
he's learned over forty years.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
In management, organizations are generally pretty good at saying this
is what we need to do. They're also pretty good
at giving their people jobs to do. But what they
don't do is align those jobs with the things that
are most important to get to change. And so the
alignment process is really where the rubber hits the road.
It's where the people at the top take a serious
(01:01):
interest in the how of getting this stuff done.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And you talked to him, Peter in an interview that
will get people thinking about their own attitudes to change
how they relate to their bosses and colleagues and crucially,
how to find alignment with them to get stuff done.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, Steve has incredible experience in some fascinating anecdotes to share,
so stick around for my chat with him. Before we
delve into that, though, Ben, we've got to talk about
the big change Australia rammed through last week on the
last day of the parliamentary setting for the year, the
ban on social media for under sixteen's OEMG, what do you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Make of this?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, hang on a second, I just need to climb
up onto a soapbox quickly. But I think what's really
telling about this story is a lot of it was
influenced on the work of a man named Jonathan Height,
who published a book called The Anxious Generation, all about
the impact of social media on teens and the increase
in mental health issues and drawing some pretty straight lines
(02:05):
to it. That work has been criticized by a lot
of scholars who have said it's a little bit broad,
drawing conclusions that maybe other academics can't quite see. But
what's interesting is that from that book, Height made a
few recommendations get kids off social media. One was banned
smartphones in school, and the other ones were get kids
(02:27):
more engaged in having responsibility and in interacting as members
of a community. And what I think is mind blowing
to me is that we have absolutely run away with
the first two with the social media and the smartphone issues.
And sure, maybe we need better parental education, better ways
(02:47):
of managing kids on social platforms, but why aren't we
as a community coming together and saying how can we
actually get kids together more? And really interestingly, I was
talking to somebody yesterday about some failing malls and we've
got one here in East Aukland where I live, Packer Animal,
and it is having a really tough time of it,
(03:09):
lots of roadworks and all these things that are driving
it down. And in the spaces where shops used to be,
they've put table tennis tables, you know, And it's an
example of when there's no company that can make a
quick dollar, then we can have places where people can
just come and be and exist and socialize. And I
(03:30):
think that if we spent more time thinking about how
we can get people to connect, creating more spaces for
teens and young adults to actually be together and hang
out and spend time in a safe place that has
adults there as well. Maybe possibly we wouldn't have so
many mental health issues. But focusing so heavily on just
(03:54):
hammer banning social media, making sweeping legislations about smartphones and
schools in this kind of thing is a kind of
an escapegoats easy way to say that you're doing something
and now I can get back off my soapbox.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, I'm pretty much standing on the same one. I
just think it's I really hate the way they've gone
about this, the fact that they ram this through in
literally the last day they passed this bill. It does
have bipartisan support from the Labor government and the Liberal
Democrat coalition, so they all see this as something popular
(04:34):
with the electorate and when they do polls, your parents
are broadly in the support of this. So they're sort
of looking to the election going we want to use
this as a soapbox issue. But they haven't outlined how
they're going to achieve this. The how of it is
completely missing. They've got an age verification sort of trial
(04:56):
it's going to be run, but they haven't officially in
the in the legislation named what platforms this is going
to apply to. They've floated a fifty million dollar fine
if social media companies are in breach of this or
not doing enough to comply with it. So they'll have
a year during which time this trial will run. But
(05:19):
the how of it is incredibly complex. The French have
found they have a similar sort of Under fifteen social
media ban, which they've delayed partly because it's so technically
difficult to do this, but fundamentally it's going to come
down to you need to verify someone's age and how
do you do that? And essentially you have to do
it for every Australian citizen. You can't just do it
(05:40):
for the kids. You've got it. Suddenly you have an
age verification scheme forced in on the premise of protecting
kids from the homes of social media. So everyone will
have to verify their age and that is a complete
nightmare from a privacy security point of view. You need
to have some secure system and it hasn't been done
(06:01):
on a scale like that, So this is really a
massive social experiment but also a technological experiment and whether
you can actually safely and securely do age verification at scale.
Australia and New Zealand have digital identity plans into works,
but there's still years away from happening. They're talking about
(06:21):
using things like age estimation, analyzing a person's biological or
behavioral features to try and sort of estimate their age,
age inference from a person's life circumstances, all the stuff
that they've put on social media. These are not perfect
and they haven't been done at scale either for the
purposes of age verification. So we're sort of in uncharted
(06:45):
territory running this big experiment which essentially amounts to pushing
an age verification scheme on twenty six million Australians.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, and you know, the question of whether you can
get a non idea identifying option working, which is the
estimation or inference tools that you talked about. Those are
the ideal because there is some measure of privacy preferred.
If we can't get those working, then we will have
to go to verification. And in that case it's you know,
(07:16):
actually connecting an identity with a account. And if you're
on Facebook, for example, that may not be such a
huge issue because you tend to present yourself you know,
it's a non anonymous platform, but the likes of Reddit
for example, you know, people tend to post there anonymously.
For whether you like that or not, there is a
(07:38):
measure of privacy and the ability to have those conversations
in private can be used for negative as we talked
about before, but can also be used for good things,
for allowing connection with people who are outside of your
social circle who may have a better understanding of your
unique perspective. Of course, I'm thinking about people like LGBTQ.
I don't know. It just becomes really murky and really
(08:01):
difficult to assas and I think you wrapped it up
really nicely in your opinion piece last week.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
We're going to see the rise of this ageous assurance
tech market where third parties are going to be relied
on and paid large amounts of money by potentially by
the tech platforms to do this. So there's that, but
the technical difficulty to side. I think what you tapped into,
Ben is the fundamental opposition to this is there is
(08:29):
a lot of good done on these platforms. We have
for twenty years now we have told young people go online,
express yourself, use these tools, become content creators, because this
is a potential future for you in the digital world.
Get comfortable with these tools, and now we're saying no,
we don't want you to use them. And you can
(08:50):
even go on to express yourself with your friends, you
have to prove your identity, so you can't have any
anonymity as well. But really I think misses the big
problem and gives big tech a sort of an out,
which is we need to demonetize children through the use
(09:10):
of these highly addictive algorithms that are targeting them and
causing We've seen the leaked documents from the likes of
Meta about the mental health issues that sort of activity
has led to. That's the real issue. How do we
tackle that the algorithms the black box, getting more transparency
and getting away from that highly manipulative algorithmic targeting. And
(09:35):
this gives them a free pass. They'll continue doing that
as long as they can tell whether someone is sixteen
or not crazy. So I guess the question Ben is,
I mean, we have band cell phones in schools here recently.
Do you think now our own politicians may be in
the same sort of bipartisan spirit, are going to say, well,
(09:56):
we like what Ozzie's doing, let's try and do it here.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I guess answer so that would be is how populist.
Do you think the current government is.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So we may see moves have been pretty muted on it.
I think like with our government on most tech things,
if it's too complicated and expensive, they'll pretty much do nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And that is true. Yeah, I imagine there will be
some tension between the people in power who want to
appeal to the masses who are feeling like they want
to blame someone versus the inertia against big tech of
just low touch regulation.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So yeah, yeah, hopefully that winds over.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
In this case.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So yes. A bunch of Australian politicians last week took
a particularly blunt approach to bringing about change. And they
may have been thinking about why Ozzie, teens and kids
may be better off without TikTok and Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
But it's really not clear they've thought through that deeply.
The how on earth to make a blanket ban work well.
Steve Vamos argues that when it comes to leading through change,
it's not enough to know the why. You also need
to know how you're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
His debut book, called Through Shifts and Shocks Lessons from
the front Line of Technology and Change really gets into
the nuts and bolts of how to lead through disruption
and change, which, let's face it, every organization is facing
in spades at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Steve lives just down the road from me here in
central Wellington. He's still here after stepping down as CEO
of Zero in January twenty twenty three. He's got so
much wisdom and experience, particularly in the tech sector. I
really enjoyed this chat with him last week at my
place here in Wellington.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
This interview is partly war stories from the tech sector,
but there are some practical self help tips thrown into
So without further ado, let's listen to your interview with
tech sector veteran Steve Vamos.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Steve, thanks so much for being on the business off Tech.
Really great honor to have you in my house and
to be able to talk with you. Forty years at
least off experience in the corporate world, in the tech
world as well, from Apple and IBM to nine MSN zero,
one of our beloved tech companies you ran for nearly
(12:25):
five years. You've distilled a lot of your learnings into
this incredible book Thought Shifts and Shocks, and the back
end of the book in particular is really sort of
a self help book for anyone out there who's in
a team or is in leadership. So I think people
will really find that valuable. But lots of great anecdotes
(12:46):
and stories and near which we'll get into some of them,
but I wanted to start with something that really stayed
with me in the book. Is this idea of the
importance of character and love. You to maybe check off
by telling us the story of your parents who came
from Hungary to Australia. Incredible story there, the character off
(13:10):
your parents, what that instilled in you, and what that
has done to influence your leadership style throughout your career.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, Peter, great to be with you, so thanks for
taking the time to have a chat. Look, really, in
my journey, I've come to increasingly appreciate that change is
a human challenge. It's also a team and a challenge
of collaboration. And when I say it's a human challenge,
it really comes down to a whole range of things
(13:40):
that are about understanding yourself. And so as I've become
more aware of that, I look back on my parents,
my father, the principles and the beliefs that I was
raised with and how they shaped me to be, in
a sense a leader who didn't necessarily get everything right.
(14:02):
I surely didn't, but it was one really sensitive to
other people. And how important that sensitivity to others is
to the change journey, and I think it's grossly underestimated.
But yeah, my parents' story was one of being very brave.
They wanted to change their lives, and I think there's
nothing more significant than uprooting yourself at the age of
(14:24):
nineteen and twenty and try to escape, and they did twice,
his first time unsuccessfully.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
This was behind the Iron Curtain.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Behind the Iron Curtain after the Hungarian Revolution, and then
the reaction that happened at that point, and they finally
found their way out. Actually, my father said to me
that the worst feeling he's ever had in his life
was that feeling of being stateless, being a refugee. And
(14:52):
he also never let me doubt his anger at politicians
and people who were flippant in their description of the
refugee struggle, and also the fact that people would pay
others to get them out of a country and would
take a boat to get to another country when their
life depends on it. So but the real message from
(15:15):
my father was one of deep respect for others and
the rights of others. So whenever I was a bit
of a smartass, or i'd say anything in any way
derogatory about somebody else, he'd be very quick to sort
of slam down on me and say, hey, you know
you can do better than that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
To that anecdote about you and your brother were playing
and you said your sister, no, you can't be in
this game, you're a girl. Yeah, it didn't go down
well with.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Man real bad, And at the age of twelve thirteen,
my brother and I had our father come after us
in response to this whole comment that one of us,
I can't remember which one of us made, that you
can't do this because you're a girl, grabbed us both
by the collar, pulled our faces right into his face
and said, if you ever dared tell her she can't
(15:59):
do it, you can do I'll kill you. Do you
understand me? So that was my first lesson in gender equity.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Your dad did what thirty eight years at IBM in Australia,
you did fourteen, So between the two over fifty years,
what was it that he learned and did in this
technology company from much of his career that really influenced
you and maybe pointed you in the direction of technology
(16:26):
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, I loved hearing him talk about the competitive nature
of the industry. So he was in sales and technical
support of sales for a lot of his careers, so
he would tell me about the big deal they were
working on, and some they'd win and some they'd lose.
Some of the these losses were hit pretty hard. So
I love the competitive nature of it and just in
(16:47):
becoming a manager. Before I got there, I spent a
year just working as an assistant to salespeople. Then I
worked for two years learning how to be an engineer,
to write software where and support customers implementing software. For
six months, they put me into a customer site to
really understand what a customer experience felt like. Then they
(17:10):
let me loose as a salesperson. Then they figured I
had management potential, and a couple of years in to
my sales career, they put me on a pre manager course,
and then when I a little after that, they appointed
me a manager, put me on a new manager course,
and then six months after that I got the most
significant feedback of my management career, where on a mandatory
(17:33):
process my team was asked about me as a manager.
I thought I was doing great. I thought I was
a manager I'd love to work for. The feedback was awful.
The people said working for Steve is like being a
tool to get his job done. He hasn't got much
time for us, and he's just completely focused on his task,
(17:53):
and I was shocked. That rocked me and made me realize,
just at that point, which was very early in my career,
that the way you see yourself isn't the way others
will see you, which means be receptive to how others
are seeing you. From early on, I've learned that being
open to what others experience, is what they're seeing and feeling,
is just super important because it gives you the insight
(18:17):
to change and an insight to make judgments about what's
most important.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Just to finish off on character where we started, I mean,
we've just come through a pretty nasty US election where
we have a president elect who many would say does
not have good character. As a convicted criminal, his attitude
and conduct towards women has been appalling, So I guess
(18:46):
many a sort of questioning how important character actually is.
And you've worked with leaders who were really driven people.
I mean, Steve Jobs was one of those sorts of
people at Apple. You went through a number of sea
who are probably similar, but he really pitomizes that visionary
leader who didn't necessarily treat people very well, but was
(19:08):
able to mobilize them to achieve something brilliant. How important
is character still really and what is the true test
of character?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That's a great question. The thing is character runs through
everything and can have a good and a bad influence
on everything. So the way I look at the change
journey is really three steps, which is getting clear about
your purpose and priorities. So again, your character might influence
(19:43):
your purpose and your priorities, driving alignment, getting people, resources, technology,
getting everything aligned behind the things that are most important.
And then the third step is to review how you're going,
because in change, what you think is clarity may evolve
with your experience and you might think you're aligned, but
then as you review performance, you go, well, we're not
(20:04):
as aligned as we need to be. So you get
in a cycle of clear aligned performance review and you
keep going through that on a change journey because the
destination is never straight A to B. But at the
heart of it, the calls you make are in each
of those areas defined by the conversations you have and
the choices you make, and the human element flows through
(20:27):
all those things. So regardless of character, if you are clear,
aligned and performance reviewed, and you have the tough conversations
that make the hard choices, you can get a lot done.
If character is an issue, the big question is over time,
what's the outcome? Is the outcome one that's good for people,
(20:49):
good for others? And with that, is it sustained? Is
it a sustained change that does good? So I think
that conclusions around character are really hard to make at
the beginning of a journey rather than maybe some time after.
I even believe that a big part of the performance
of a CEO is judged by what happens after Rod
(21:13):
Drury's performance is zero. CEO after he left is something
that was just as outstanding in my opinion as what
he contributed as CEO, because he set the company up
to do great things after he was no longer in
a management role. So that's a test in my view,
that's the ultimate test of great character. Is what happens
(21:34):
after you're gone? What did you leave behind?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, so it's time will tell. I guess for for
Trump for Trump version two. What legacy he leaves and
how long it lasts really two big problems you're outlining
in the book here. Our ability to lead and respond
to change, you right, is not good enough to put
it kindly. And change is best managed through great teamwork
(21:58):
and collaboration. But a lot of us work in mediocre teams.
So the real theme here is changed. I mean, take
us back to some of those companies you worked in
that were facing massive change, big blue IBM company that
was known from mainframe computers. Every bank had an IBM mainframe,
(22:18):
big expense of computers. Then we had the mini computer
revolution come along. IBM was faced with a choice here,
do we embrace this and become a PC maker or
do we sort of stick to our roots, which is
big computers, big ticket items. What was it like sort
through the eighties, We're working in a company that was
(22:38):
confronted with disruption and change and was really struggling to
actually embrace that change.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Yeah. Look, the eighties were in a sense a good
decade for IBM, and then as you entered the nineties
is when it really struggled. There's so many elements to
what is important in change. So if we take an
individual for an individual, I always say, you've got to
(23:05):
be willing to suspend your beliefs and learn, become a
learned or rather than know it all, become a learn
it all. And we've seen in many industries. We'll touch
on a couple, but there was a classic situation that
was quite pivotal in industry where the person in control
of the relationship with Microsoft is a guy called Jim Cannavino.
(23:25):
He was an IBM. He came out of the obviously
the big computer side of IBM, and I heard the
story and it's validated in stuff other people have written,
maybe not exactly as I heard it, but Cannavino was
then in charge of the Bill Gates relationship and Microsoft
and IBM had a mindset that the hardware was most important.
(23:47):
The software was just this thing you had to do
to sell boxes. So he went into the relationship with
Gates and ultimately made a big mistake in allowing Microsoft
to go off and do Windows when really at that
point they had Microsoft under contract. And what led to
that was his belief system the software wasn't that important.
(24:08):
But it even went further than that, because the story
was that in a group of five hundred people. He
said the words that if God believed in distributed computers,
which is computers everywhere, he would have put your brains
in your fingertips. And the point about that is, once
you and we saw in media industry, banners won't work,
digital media will never pay. That's what the experts said
(24:30):
when I was at ninety meters said years ago. And
it's holding too close to your belief system that and
not being open minded that is so dangerous. And that's
why I emphasize a couple of things very much in
the book. One is change is hard for us, and
it's hard for us as people because we meet it
(24:51):
with fear until we understand it. It's hard for us
because we're generally told not to make mistakes, and we
generally are praised for what we know rather than what
we learn. And that way of thinking is great for
things you don't want to change, but hard when you're
confronted with new things, because those you know anything new
(25:14):
is the realm of mistake making.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I think you point out that that conformist conditioning,
as you put it, is actually quite useful in a
way of shielding you from risk. But particularly in the
tech game. Taking those risks is what will get you
the reward and in some cases save the company or
allowed to thrive. And one of the things, one of
(25:39):
the big themes in the book is finding alignment. How
do you bring all of these people together? And it
might be worth reflecting. You came into zero. It was
a relatively mature company dynamic founder Rod Drury, but very
big company by the time you got there. How do
(26:01):
you follow up a founder like that and find alignment
with this group of people that Eve inherited to actually
build on what Rod has created, but take it in
the direction it needs to go. It obviously needed to
go somewhere different. After that first ten year period or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
What was that like, Yeah, it look it was awesome,
awesome experience. We actually went from fifteen hundred to forty
five hundred during my time, so essentially the business tripled,
and the challenge and the way that I approached it
was really that we had to really focus on what
it is we wanted to be. So we actually changed
(26:40):
our purpose statement from being about accounting to being about
being a platform, a trusted and insightfuled platform for small business.
So we reviewed what it is we're here to do,
and it was more than accounting software because the Zero
platform opened up to thousands of applications and different use
cases the partnerships the company had, so getting clear about
(27:03):
purpose and then prioritization that was always the hardest thing
for me because there were so many things we could
do and wanted to do. The tough aspect of prioritization
is saying no to good ideas and good people. And
there were acquisitions that we looked at that everybody wanted
to do, and I had to be the bad guy.
At the end of the line. He said, you know what,
(27:24):
it's a great idea, but no, because we need to focus.
You know, I wouldn't give myself ten out of ten
on the prioritization stakes either, you know. It's one of
those things you really struggle with, So yeah, let others
score how I went on that. But alignment that you
mentioned is really important because in times of change, organizations
(27:44):
are generally pretty good at saying this is what we
need to do. They're also pretty good at giving their
people jobs to do, but what they don't do is
align those jobs with the things that are most important
to get done to change and so the alignment process
is really where the rubber hits the road. It's where
the people at the top take a serious interest in
(28:05):
what it means and the how of getting this stuff done,
which means you have to partner with your management layer
by layer and really understand the conflicts that doing new
things provides with doing what you've been doing, help them
make the trade offs and make sure they get the
resources and support they need, because if you don't do that,
(28:26):
all that happens in the middle of the company as
it gets bigger and bigger, is you've got managers sitting
there going, I'm struggling every day to do everything I'm doing,
and now you want me to do all this extra stuff.
Where's the person I'm going to talk to about the
trade offs here? And that's where alignment becomes essential. It's
why the intentions of the top don't become the work
of those who do the work because the alignment focus
(28:50):
is inadequate.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of great stuff
in the book about how you put that into practice,
you know, And it's really about hearing from other people.
Listening to other people's views, so crucial in the fast
moving tech sector, in particular, of people down in the
(29:12):
bowels of the company writing the code for the software
as saying to you, I don't think this is going
to work in the midterm, little one the long term,
and you don't listen to them, You've got a real
problem there. And some of the companies you've worked for,
we saw that that became an entrenched problem for them,
in the likes of IBM, that they really struggle to overcome.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, it's really it's true. The thing is, if you
want to change things, and you really believe you have to,
you have to make the change agenda the big agenda,
because otherwise it just gets drowned out by what you've
been doing. So, you know, everywhere I learned that at
Microsoft Australia, when you know, it wasn't early in my
career that I figured out this alignment thing, and I
(29:53):
didn't do it on my own. We had slow growth
at Microsoft Australia and we were challenged by Steve Bormer
leaders to come up with a strategy to accelerate growth,
and the core of that strategy was being better in
the eyes of our customers. Because I don't know if
you remember back the Microsoft's reputation for customer service wasn't great.
(30:14):
But nowadays you don't hear that anymore. You know that
the company has really done much much better. So we
were at the beginning of this need to change that.
And so when we went through what was going to
be the best way to improve customer service, we realized
it wasn't one function of the business. It required every
function of the business to play. So what we had
(30:35):
to do was to get into the detail. So, Okay,
what does it mean to improve customer service? It could
be we're going to improve our CRM. It could be
we're going to run training for our salespeople. Well, then,
if that's your intention, what's the action, Who's going to
own it, who are they delegating it to, and what
actions are they delegating And you have to get specific
around those actions and follow up and have really good
(30:58):
operational people who hold you to account. So this function
of operations in the tech world is one of defining
the actions that come from a strategy and making sure
those accountable deliver on it. And I learned that in
an I call it level or the planning, which is
cascading critical objectives layer by layer and having people sign
(31:20):
up to deliver it having had the conversation about what
they might have to stop doing or what additional support
you need to give them. It's just closing the loop.
And they're the difficult conversations that are sometimes avoided.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, I'm going to talk about that because that, I
think is the thing that people will relate to the most,
the difficult conversations. Just on Microsoft, Sachaadella's been at the
helm of the company for a decade or more. In
our huge change Agent really brought Microsoft into the cloud
computing space with Azure, went big on that what if
you observe from a fire off? How he approaches things
(31:55):
that is really pertinent to this change dealing with change.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah. Look, I've been fortunate to have met with such
a couple of times over the years. First when I
worked for Microsoft in Seattle. He was one of the
product leaders back then and I was running the international
online business, and so I went to have a chat
with him and shared my thoughts on what was holding
us back in the digital media world, and I found
(32:22):
him really open minded and a real learning oriented guy. Then.
But Microsoft's an amazing company. I mean, the ability to
execute strategy, there is undeniable. And I've also in the
book paid a little bit of a tribute to Steve Boormer,
because you know, it's kind of fashionable to look at
Steve and say, well, he's a CEO. Wasn't as successful
(32:44):
as it could and should have been. No one's ever is.
But Steve turned Microsoft from a PC company software company
into the powerhouse enterprise business that it is, and without that,
the next steps couldn't have been taken. So I think
that such a success now such a has said this himself.
(33:04):
You know, some credit goes to Burma for what such
has been ablett accomplished as well.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, difficult conversations and you've had many of them in
your career, some of them you recount in the book.
One really interesting one has actually happened at Zero around diversity.
I mean difficult conversations around laying people off, having to
say to people your time is up in this organization.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I think most people listening, that's what keeps them up
at night. Try having those very difficult conversations. But we
have new things coming at leadership teams and CEOs, things
like diversity. Maybe tell us about that that issue that
came up at Zero that you had to deal with.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, there's that was a really really difficult issue, and
it's a pretty it's even in the context of this conversation,
a hard one that just sort of brush over. But
we had we had an issue where one of our
staff members posted to our internal channels their very strong
(34:08):
beliefs that they could not celebrate Pride months for their
own personal religious beliefs. And whilst we all appreciated that
people believe that's no shock to anybody, it was the
way that that was communicated that which I won't say here,
but it was hurtful. You know. In the case of Zero,
(34:29):
there was no question as a company we stood behind
our LGBTQI people and their rights to express what they
wanted to express. We also actually didn't have an issue
with that person's beliefs or their ability to express them.
Was how they said it, and it's that responsibility just
(34:49):
to speak about others in a way that's respectful. So
what we came to was most important to come with
some principles, and the principle in that case is that
we always believe that we have to support first party
over third party, and what you want to be and
what you see as your identity is, I'm going to
rate that more important than what a third party thing
(35:10):
says about you. And I think that's a principle it
can hold for because you are the authority, not the
other person. So our reaction was not the censor. It
was more to respond more effectively than we did in
that particular instance where we responded too slow and we
didn't respond in a way that was sensitive enough to
(35:31):
those that were hurt. So that was what was behind
the learning. Really tough, tough one.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It is tough, but it's something that every company is
sort of grappling with at the moment. We've seen sort
of social activism, the rise of that. Maybe it's a
generational change. You know, gens ITAs are more inclined to
be socially active and champion causes that are important to
(35:57):
them in the workplace. I mean, is there a place
for that. Probably didn't happen back in the mid eighties
at IBM, but it's a factor now.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
It's a new phenomenon in the context of certainly my journey.
It's the last you know, five ten years that this
has really become such a strong focus. Look, there's a
couple of things to this, you do have to have
some idea of where you want to weigh in as
an organization and where you wan't. So for example, with
Roe versus Wide, we had some of our people say
(36:26):
we should not do business in states at out law abortion.
Clearly were responded and said, no, we aren't going to
do that, so sorry, but no, and so you do
have to But that was fairly straightforward, but there are
others where it's not as straightforward, and you have to
you have to decide what position are going to take.
The other one, which was kind of my final words
(36:48):
on the subject and the zero context, was remember why
we're here. You know, business is about providing a service
and products to customers, and let's not let all the
very many distractions that there are in the world and
the distance between us in a world of hybrid work,
get in the way of us remembering why we're here
(37:08):
and the job we have to do. And so, in
a maybe a bit of an old fashioned way, I
did sort of send the message that all these things
are important, but our position, our let's call it privilege
to be able to weigh into these issues is founded
(37:29):
on customers buying our products and never forget it. It's
not an easy journey, but that's the reality.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, when you were at zero, you had to send
everyone home because of the pandemic. So hybrid working for
thousands of people, and we've sort of seen this tension
since then as we come back to hybrid working in
the office. That connection, obviously, combined with knowledge, is the
(38:01):
key to human potential. Have we lost something inherently with
that sort of Workers obviously want flexibility and to be
able to set their own hours and work from wherever
they want. But in your experience, having worked in lots
of different workplaces, lots of large teams, that connection that
people get in the workplaces at really gold.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah. Look, there's no doubt that physical contact provides an
opportunity for things to happen that are perhaps less planned,
you know, those accidental collisions, those connections that you make. Look,
the hybrid world of work is here to stay. And
what I mean by that is there'll be any range
(38:45):
of workplaces that are fully remote through to fully at
the office. The decision as to which way you go,
I think does depend a lot on what you're trying
to accomplish. And my view is your job is not
to stay with what's the answer, but to start with
what are we trying to accomplish and accomplishing that objective,
(39:06):
whatever it might be. What do we need to do
what needs to be done? And that's a question that
isn't asked often enough. We talk about why we do
what we do and what we're doing, but pause and
think about how are we going? How are we doing it?
So there's a question I always encourage people to ask,
which is of your team and your team members get
(39:26):
together and answer the question about how well with what
we have today, with the money, the resources and everything
else we have today, How well today, with what we
have today, are we performing relative to what's possible as
a team, as a team, not as individuals as a team,
(39:47):
And the beauty of that conversation is you're not pointing
a finger as the manager, You're not pointing the finger
at any individual and score it out of ten and
you'll find that I've experienced. My experience is that only
third twenty to forty percent of people I ask have
ever worked on a team they rated eight or more
out of ten. The rest of them, you know, a
(40:09):
good team is a six or seven. And so then
you say, well, what's the one thing you would do
to improve how you're working together, what the score is.
And ninety percent of those things have nothing to do
with the industry people are working in. It's all to
do with how humans are working together. There could be issues,
They're not clear, there could be they're misaligned, They're not
having honest conversations. There could be those issues. And by
(40:32):
really focusing on that, you can start to see how
the potential your people and teams have can be improved
from where they are today.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Part five of the book is really the self help part.
It's condensing down what you call must do diagnostics, playbooks,
must do toolboxes. Tell us about some of these tools,
where they've come from, and how they might be useful
to people who are dealing with change, with the need
for alignment and having those hard conversations.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, the tools, they're all tools that I've been taught
very little of It is something that I've sort of invented.
It's just the tools that good HR leaders. You know,
my brother's been influence and some of the stuff that
I do with the work he does, and a whole
bunch of reading as well as well. I'm a big reader.
(41:25):
On a lot of this domain. So I've taken those
tools and made it really easy for what you do
is you go to that part of the book and
you say, here's a list of challenges you might be facing.
Here is what I would do in your situation, and
these are the steps you need to take. And it
was really important for me to add that into the
book because the why and the white Yeah, we get that,
(41:47):
it's the how how do I do that? How do
I have a hard conversation with someone who's not performing.
How do I get my team aligned when we're not
on the same page. How do I look at my
product organization and work out how I've got them focused
on delivering the right outcomes for the business. Those are
(42:08):
the things that are the biggest challenges I've faced, and
I've put in there the tools and the steps I've
taken and learned to take that help along the way.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, and they're all laid out there. That's incredibly useful
part of the book, along with those anecdotes that bring
them to life. How you use those tools, Just finally
interested to know what the future holds for you. You're
here in Wellington, You obviously love Wellington. Your sort of
roots are really in the Sydney area, but you're still
here intrigued to know what you take of sort of
(42:38):
what is going on in this city at the moment,
A city grappling like a lot in this country, a
lot of other cities with change, not enough money, huge
infrastructure issues. You've got a lot of people who aren't
necessarily in alignment on our councilor you've got a mayor
trained to wrangle all of these all of these people,
(42:58):
I mean, how do you how do you navigate this?
What are some of the tools that they should be
using to try and get through this intact?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, Look, that example and many others are examples of
how challenging chanin is. Change is, particularly at scale, and
I think again, it's not easy so and it's never perfect.
It's never changed. Big significant change never happens without upsetting people,
you know, and having to do things that you don't
(43:29):
necessarily enjoy. I mean, that's why if your conversations and
hard choices are avoided because we don't want to hurt people,
we don't want to be the bad guy or girl whatever.
But you know, it comes down in my view, to
making sure you don't make the mistake of moving too
fast into what we need to do before you've talked
(43:52):
about why and how. You know, why is change needed?
You've got to get agreement on that first, and then
how is change going to happen. It's almost like laying
out the map for how we're going to get to
the right actions before we actually try and throw ideas around.
(44:14):
I was sitting in a meeting a few years back
with a bunch of high profile business, government and other
leaders talking about tax reform in Australia and the workshop
was come up with your thoughts on this, And as
soon as we started the conversation, people were throwing out suggestions.
You know, raised GSD, cut GSD, raised my medicare levy,
(44:36):
and there was all these ideas and when it came
to me, I said, hang on a minute, before we
get into what we want to do here, why do
we need it? Are we clear and how are we
going to get it? What's the process for getting reformed
to happen? So I would encourage and this is no
simple answer. There isn't one anyone, whether it's here in
Wellington or anywhere in the world, that's working on a
(44:57):
complex change initiative to spend more time on the why
and the how than they're inclined to, because we naturally
want to get to the what are we going to do?
Too fast and without the foundations, it's going to be
one person's opinion and judgment versus the other, not grounded
on something we collectively agree on.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So what's next for you? You've been a non executive
director on a number of boards Medibank, Fletcher Building, Challenging
One as well. David Jones going through a huge change too.
Do you have another big CEO role and are you
moving more into this sort of directorships and mentoring and
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Yeh. Look at this stage, Peter, I'm focused on something
that I love doing, which is teaching and helping others
with their challenges around change and leading their organizations and teams.
So the book's a big focus getting the message out
and hopefully helping people by, you know, in a sense,
(46:02):
providing something that is the most positive feedback I could
get is that the book is useful. The people are
using it, going back to it as a handbook and
referring to sections of the book when they face different challenges,
and then speaking and providing whatever help I can. The
thing I'm most passionate about is seeing the quality of
(46:24):
leaders of people in our workplaces improve, because that will
improve the work life of people every day, which has
downstream effects on happier households, greater well being. And the
people leadership role is so important to so many aspects
of what goes on in our economy and in every
(46:48):
aspect of it that you know, it's just an area
where I want to shine a light on it, and
so we need to get invest more in developing our
people leaders to be the best they can be.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, it's an incredibly useful book. I've already found parts
of it that resonate with me in which I will use,
So thanks for that. We'll put links to exactly where
you can find it. Thanks so much, it's been great
to meet you. Thanks for coming on. Good luck for
what's ahead for you.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Thanks Peter, really appreciate you having me so being.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Steve Vamos. All those companies he's worked for faced massive
disruption Apple in the mid nineties and crisis IBM coming
out of the nineteen eighties, the mainframe Kings and not
really transition into the PC world particularly well nine MSN
you know a media company on the back of the
(47:39):
dot com crash, trying to monetize their content in a
very challenging world with Google and Facebook eating their lunch.
Glad we've thought of that issue out, so he's sort
of seen it all probably, you know. The key thing
that reason with me is what he calls in there,
(48:02):
this mindset shift that you need to go through in
his opinion, from control freak to connector and enabler. And
it's clear from you know, his philosophy to management is
very much not be from the top. This is how
it will be done. Sure, you maybe need to do
(48:23):
that as a CEO, make the hard calls and have
the hard conversations, but very much about how do you
create this alignment? How do you bring four and a
half thousand people, for instance, at zero along with you?
And that autocratic, top down approach isn't going to cut
it anymore, particularly with the modern millennial workforce, that they're
not going to buy into that sort of change. And
(48:44):
it's you know, a lot of the CEOs we talk to,
they sort of spout this sort of mantra, but living it,
when it comes down to it, is really difficult. So
how do you actually live this on a day to
day basis, and it comes down to things like being
willing to listen, to go into a meeting and ask
for feedback about your performance, which is the sort of
(49:06):
things that Steve has been doing through his career, and
having empathy for people in the organization who are going
through that massive change. If you can't demonstrate that you
truly have that empathy for them, they're not going to
buy into the massive change that you want to go through.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
It's crazy, isn't it. Who would have thought two way
communication is the key to good relationships?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I mean it's maybe it's the millennial in me, but
that's just something that I've heard many many times growing up,
you know, particularly around making personal relationships work. But I
think we're starting to realize that. And maybe it's because
we've had that message so often that now the modern
workforce expects it in the workplace too. Workplaces are expecting
(49:51):
more of people as we go on in life, and
so if you want to get more out of them,
then you need to treat them like human beings and
not like cogs in a machine.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, and you look at all of our institutions at
the moment, and they're all grappling with this. Look at
the health sector, you know you've got massive change budget cuts,
scrapping most of their digital and data division at the moment,
so you'll have a lot of people in there and
a lot of critics saying this is the wrong direction
to go in. How are you ever going to get
(50:20):
people on board with this sort of change. So that's
the I think where the rubber hits the row. To
Steve puts it as the difficult conversations and you have
to push through change and you have to be a
change agent. It's an unsustainable position to have, you know,
big budget losses and that sort of thing be blowing
the budget. But how do you bring all the people
(50:42):
along so that the future for the organization is going
to retain all of that talent really difficult, and every
organization around the world, we've got so many of them
in New Zealand at the moment that are really in
the midst of that, and frankly a lot of them
not grappling with it very well. We do have these charismatic,
visionary leaders who are quite brutal about pushing change through.
(51:05):
But I think what Steve is basically saying is when
you have someone who is incredibly visionary and has you
have to have a real strong vision of where the
organization needs to go. But that alone is not enough,
as we're seeing with some of these sort of tech
leaders who push through massive change. How sustainable is that?
(51:27):
And I think we're seeing wheels come off a little
bit in Elon Musk's Empire, is that people are jumping
off that train that he is driving because they've just
had enough. So how sustainable is your approach as a
change agent? Are you just burning people up and casting
them aside in order to achieve your big vision? Eventually
(51:52):
you're going to end up alone. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:55):
All right, Well that's it for this week, and we've
only got two episodes to goh for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Thanks so much to Steve Vamos's book Through Shifts and Shocks,
Lessons from the Frontline of Technology and Changes, out now
from publisher Wiley, in bookstores and on Amazon. We'll put
a link to where you can find it.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
That's it for this week. Only two episodes to go
for twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Four, and next week is a real goodie. We catch
up with some of the country's best journalists who've covered
a year of major change in all things tech to
get their highlights from twenty twenty four and what to
expect next year. It'll be packed with useful insights.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Show notes for the business of tech. In the podcast
section of Business Desk dot co, dot z, where you
can stream this podcast in full every week. It's also
available for iHeartRadio or on your podcast platform off Joyce.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Get in touch with your feedback and we'd love to
hear your suggestions for upcoming guests. To email Ben benat
Business deesk dot co, dot z.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
You can also find us on LinkedIn, port blue Sky.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Another episode coming your way next Thursday, so then have
a great week.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
You don't have a boot
This week on the Business of Tech, powered by two
Degrees Business, we talked to one of Australasia's most experienced
tech executives on navigating rapid change, fostering innovation, and having
those really hard workplace conversations.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Steve Vamos forged his career at IBM RAN zero for
nearly five years, as well as Microsoft Australia, New Zealand
and Apple's Asia Pacific division. For his sins, he even
the distint in charge of Ossie Media Empire nine MSN,
so he's seen a lot of change and a lot
of technological disruption. Now he's written a book distilling what
(00:37):
he's learned over forty years.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
In management, organizations are generally pretty good at saying this
is what we need to do. They're also pretty good
at giving their people jobs to do. But what they
don't do is align those jobs with the things that
are most important to get to change. And so the
alignment process is really where the rubber hits the road.
It's where the people at the top take a serious
(01:01):
interest in the how of getting this stuff done.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And you talked to him, Peter in an interview that
will get people thinking about their own attitudes to change
how they relate to their bosses and colleagues and crucially,
how to find alignment with them to get stuff done.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Yeah, Steve has incredible experience in some fascinating anecdotes to share,
so stick around for my chat with him. Before we
delve into that, though, Ben, we've got to talk about
the big change Australia rammed through last week on the
last day of the parliamentary setting for the year, the
ban on social media for under sixteen's OEMG, what do you.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Make of this?
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, hang on a second, I just need to climb
up onto a soapbox quickly. But I think what's really
telling about this story is a lot of it was
influenced on the work of a man named Jonathan Height,
who published a book called The Anxious Generation, all about
the impact of social media on teens and the increase
in mental health issues and drawing some pretty straight lines
(02:05):
to it. That work has been criticized by a lot
of scholars who have said it's a little bit broad,
drawing conclusions that maybe other academics can't quite see. But
what's interesting is that from that book, Height made a
few recommendations get kids off social media. One was banned
smartphones in school, and the other ones were get kids
(02:27):
more engaged in having responsibility and in interacting as members
of a community. And what I think is mind blowing
to me is that we have absolutely run away with
the first two with the social media and the smartphone issues.
And sure, maybe we need better parental education, better ways
(02:47):
of managing kids on social platforms, but why aren't we
as a community coming together and saying how can we
actually get kids together more? And really interestingly, I was
talking to somebody yesterday about some failing malls and we've
got one here in East Aukland where I live, Packer Animal,
and it is having a really tough time of it,
(03:09):
lots of roadworks and all these things that are driving
it down. And in the spaces where shops used to be,
they've put table tennis tables, you know, And it's an
example of when there's no company that can make a
quick dollar, then we can have places where people can
just come and be and exist and socialize. And I
(03:30):
think that if we spent more time thinking about how
we can get people to connect, creating more spaces for
teens and young adults to actually be together and hang
out and spend time in a safe place that has
adults there as well. Maybe possibly we wouldn't have so
many mental health issues. But focusing so heavily on just
(03:54):
hammer banning social media, making sweeping legislations about smartphones and
schools in this kind of thing is a kind of
an escapegoats easy way to say that you're doing something
and now I can get back off my soapbox.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Well, I'm pretty much standing on the same one. I
just think it's I really hate the way they've gone
about this, the fact that they ram this through in
literally the last day they passed this bill. It does
have bipartisan support from the Labor government and the Liberal
Democrat coalition, so they all see this as something popular
(04:34):
with the electorate and when they do polls, your parents
are broadly in the support of this. So they're sort
of looking to the election going we want to use
this as a soapbox issue. But they haven't outlined how
they're going to achieve this. The how of it is
completely missing. They've got an age verification sort of trial
(04:56):
it's going to be run, but they haven't officially in
the in the legislation named what platforms this is going
to apply to. They've floated a fifty million dollar fine
if social media companies are in breach of this or
not doing enough to comply with it. So they'll have
a year during which time this trial will run. But
(05:19):
the how of it is incredibly complex. The French have
found they have a similar sort of Under fifteen social
media ban, which they've delayed partly because it's so technically
difficult to do this, but fundamentally it's going to come
down to you need to verify someone's age and how
do you do that? And essentially you have to do
it for every Australian citizen. You can't just do it
(05:40):
for the kids. You've got it. Suddenly you have an
age verification scheme forced in on the premise of protecting
kids from the homes of social media. So everyone will
have to verify their age and that is a complete
nightmare from a privacy security point of view. You need
to have some secure system and it hasn't been done
(06:01):
on a scale like that, So this is really a
massive social experiment but also a technological experiment and whether
you can actually safely and securely do age verification at scale.
Australia and New Zealand have digital identity plans into works,
but there's still years away from happening. They're talking about
(06:21):
using things like age estimation, analyzing a person's biological or
behavioral features to try and sort of estimate their age,
age inference from a person's life circumstances, all the stuff
that they've put on social media. These are not perfect
and they haven't been done at scale either for the
purposes of age verification. So we're sort of in uncharted
(06:45):
territory running this big experiment which essentially amounts to pushing
an age verification scheme on twenty six million Australians.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, and you know, the question of whether you can
get a non idea identifying option working, which is the
estimation or inference tools that you talked about. Those are
the ideal because there is some measure of privacy preferred.
If we can't get those working, then we will have
to go to verification. And in that case it's you know,
(07:16):
actually connecting an identity with a account. And if you're
on Facebook, for example, that may not be such a
huge issue because you tend to present yourself you know,
it's a non anonymous platform, but the likes of Reddit
for example, you know, people tend to post there anonymously.
For whether you like that or not, there is a
(07:38):
measure of privacy and the ability to have those conversations
in private can be used for negative as we talked
about before, but can also be used for good things,
for allowing connection with people who are outside of your
social circle who may have a better understanding of your
unique perspective. Of course, I'm thinking about people like LGBTQ.
I don't know. It just becomes really murky and really
(08:01):
difficult to assas and I think you wrapped it up
really nicely in your opinion piece last week.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
We're going to see the rise of this ageous assurance
tech market where third parties are going to be relied
on and paid large amounts of money by potentially by
the tech platforms to do this. So there's that, but
the technical difficulty to side. I think what you tapped into,
Ben is the fundamental opposition to this is there is
(08:29):
a lot of good done on these platforms. We have
for twenty years now we have told young people go online,
express yourself, use these tools, become content creators, because this
is a potential future for you in the digital world.
Get comfortable with these tools, and now we're saying no,
we don't want you to use them. And you can
(08:50):
even go on to express yourself with your friends, you
have to prove your identity, so you can't have any
anonymity as well. But really I think misses the big
problem and gives big tech a sort of an out,
which is we need to demonetize children through the use
(09:10):
of these highly addictive algorithms that are targeting them and
causing We've seen the leaked documents from the likes of
Meta about the mental health issues that sort of activity
has led to. That's the real issue. How do we
tackle that the algorithms the black box, getting more transparency
and getting away from that highly manipulative algorithmic targeting. And
(09:35):
this gives them a free pass. They'll continue doing that
as long as they can tell whether someone is sixteen
or not crazy. So I guess the question Ben is,
I mean, we have band cell phones in schools here recently.
Do you think now our own politicians may be in
the same sort of bipartisan spirit, are going to say, well,
(09:56):
we like what Ozzie's doing, let's try and do it here.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
I guess answer so that would be is how populist.
Do you think the current government is.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
So we may see moves have been pretty muted on it.
I think like with our government on most tech things,
if it's too complicated and expensive, they'll pretty much do nothing.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
And that is true. Yeah, I imagine there will be
some tension between the people in power who want to
appeal to the masses who are feeling like they want
to blame someone versus the inertia against big tech of
just low touch regulation.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
So yeah, yeah, hopefully that winds over.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
In this case.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
So yes. A bunch of Australian politicians last week took
a particularly blunt approach to bringing about change. And they
may have been thinking about why Ozzie, teens and kids
may be better off without TikTok and Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
But it's really not clear they've thought through that deeply.
The how on earth to make a blanket ban work well.
Steve Vamos argues that when it comes to leading through change,
it's not enough to know the why. You also need
to know how you're going to do it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
His debut book, called Through Shifts and Shocks Lessons from
the front Line of Technology and Change really gets into
the nuts and bolts of how to lead through disruption
and change, which, let's face it, every organization is facing
in spades at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:26):
Steve lives just down the road from me here in
central Wellington. He's still here after stepping down as CEO
of Zero in January twenty twenty three. He's got so
much wisdom and experience, particularly in the tech sector. I
really enjoyed this chat with him last week at my
place here in Wellington.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
This interview is partly war stories from the tech sector,
but there are some practical self help tips thrown into
So without further ado, let's listen to your interview with
tech sector veteran Steve Vamos.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Steve, thanks so much for being on the business off Tech.
Really great honor to have you in my house and
to be able to talk with you. Forty years at
least off experience in the corporate world, in the tech
world as well, from Apple and IBM to nine MSN zero,
one of our beloved tech companies you ran for nearly
(12:25):
five years. You've distilled a lot of your learnings into
this incredible book Thought Shifts and Shocks, and the back
end of the book in particular is really sort of
a self help book for anyone out there who's in
a team or is in leadership. So I think people
will really find that valuable. But lots of great anecdotes
(12:46):
and stories and near which we'll get into some of them,
but I wanted to start with something that really stayed
with me in the book. Is this idea of the
importance of character and love. You to maybe check off
by telling us the story of your parents who came
from Hungary to Australia. Incredible story there, the character off
(13:10):
your parents, what that instilled in you, and what that
has done to influence your leadership style throughout your career.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Yeah, Peter, great to be with you, so thanks for
taking the time to have a chat. Look, really, in
my journey, I've come to increasingly appreciate that change is
a human challenge. It's also a team and a challenge
of collaboration. And when I say it's a human challenge,
it really comes down to a whole range of things
(13:40):
that are about understanding yourself. And so as I've become
more aware of that, I look back on my parents,
my father, the principles and the beliefs that I was
raised with and how they shaped me to be, in
a sense a leader who didn't necessarily get everything right.
(14:02):
I surely didn't, but it was one really sensitive to
other people. And how important that sensitivity to others is
to the change journey, and I think it's grossly underestimated.
But yeah, my parents' story was one of being very brave.
They wanted to change their lives, and I think there's
nothing more significant than uprooting yourself at the age of
(14:24):
nineteen and twenty and try to escape, and they did twice,
his first time unsuccessfully.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
This was behind the Iron Curtain.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Behind the Iron Curtain after the Hungarian Revolution, and then
the reaction that happened at that point, and they finally
found their way out. Actually, my father said to me
that the worst feeling he's ever had in his life
was that feeling of being stateless, being a refugee. And
(14:52):
he also never let me doubt his anger at politicians
and people who were flippant in their description of the
refugee struggle, and also the fact that people would pay
others to get them out of a country and would
take a boat to get to another country when their
life depends on it. So but the real message from
(15:15):
my father was one of deep respect for others and
the rights of others. So whenever I was a bit
of a smartass, or i'd say anything in any way
derogatory about somebody else, he'd be very quick to sort
of slam down on me and say, hey, you know
you can do better than that.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
To that anecdote about you and your brother were playing
and you said your sister, no, you can't be in
this game, you're a girl. Yeah, it didn't go down
well with.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Man real bad, And at the age of twelve thirteen,
my brother and I had our father come after us
in response to this whole comment that one of us,
I can't remember which one of us made, that you
can't do this because you're a girl, grabbed us both
by the collar, pulled our faces right into his face
and said, if you ever dared tell her she can't
(15:59):
do it, you can do I'll kill you. Do you
understand me? So that was my first lesson in gender equity.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Your dad did what thirty eight years at IBM in Australia,
you did fourteen, So between the two over fifty years,
what was it that he learned and did in this
technology company from much of his career that really influenced
you and maybe pointed you in the direction of technology
(16:26):
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, I loved hearing him talk about the competitive nature
of the industry. So he was in sales and technical
support of sales for a lot of his careers, so
he would tell me about the big deal they were
working on, and some they'd win and some they'd lose.
Some of the these losses were hit pretty hard. So
I love the competitive nature of it and just in
(16:47):
becoming a manager. Before I got there, I spent a
year just working as an assistant to salespeople. Then I
worked for two years learning how to be an engineer,
to write software where and support customers implementing software. For
six months, they put me into a customer site to
really understand what a customer experience felt like. Then they
(17:10):
let me loose as a salesperson. Then they figured I
had management potential, and a couple of years in to
my sales career, they put me on a pre manager course,
and then when I a little after that, they appointed
me a manager, put me on a new manager course,
and then six months after that I got the most
significant feedback of my management career, where on a mandatory
(17:33):
process my team was asked about me as a manager.
I thought I was doing great. I thought I was
a manager I'd love to work for. The feedback was awful.
The people said working for Steve is like being a
tool to get his job done. He hasn't got much
time for us, and he's just completely focused on his task,
(17:53):
and I was shocked. That rocked me and made me realize,
just at that point, which was very early in my career,
that the way you see yourself isn't the way others
will see you, which means be receptive to how others
are seeing you. From early on, I've learned that being
open to what others experience, is what they're seeing and feeling,
is just super important because it gives you the insight
(18:17):
to change and an insight to make judgments about what's
most important.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Just to finish off on character where we started, I mean,
we've just come through a pretty nasty US election where
we have a president elect who many would say does
not have good character. As a convicted criminal, his attitude
and conduct towards women has been appalling, So I guess
(18:46):
many a sort of questioning how important character actually is.
And you've worked with leaders who were really driven people.
I mean, Steve Jobs was one of those sorts of
people at Apple. You went through a number of sea
who are probably similar, but he really pitomizes that visionary
leader who didn't necessarily treat people very well, but was
(19:08):
able to mobilize them to achieve something brilliant. How important
is character still really and what is the true test
of character?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
That's a great question. The thing is character runs through
everything and can have a good and a bad influence
on everything. So the way I look at the change
journey is really three steps, which is getting clear about
your purpose and priorities. So again, your character might influence
(19:43):
your purpose and your priorities, driving alignment, getting people, resources, technology,
getting everything aligned behind the things that are most important.
And then the third step is to review how you're going,
because in change, what you think is clarity may evolve
with your experience and you might think you're aligned, but
then as you review performance, you go, well, we're not
(20:04):
as aligned as we need to be. So you get
in a cycle of clear aligned performance review and you
keep going through that on a change journey because the
destination is never straight A to B. But at the
heart of it, the calls you make are in each
of those areas defined by the conversations you have and
the choices you make, and the human element flows through
(20:27):
all those things. So regardless of character, if you are clear,
aligned and performance reviewed, and you have the tough conversations
that make the hard choices, you can get a lot done.
If character is an issue, the big question is over time,
what's the outcome? Is the outcome one that's good for people,
(20:49):
good for others? And with that, is it sustained? Is
it a sustained change that does good? So I think
that conclusions around character are really hard to make at
the beginning of a journey rather than maybe some time after.
I even believe that a big part of the performance
of a CEO is judged by what happens after Rod
(21:13):
Drury's performance is zero. CEO after he left is something
that was just as outstanding in my opinion as what
he contributed as CEO, because he set the company up
to do great things after he was no longer in
a management role. So that's a test in my view,
that's the ultimate test of great character. Is what happens
(21:34):
after you're gone? What did you leave behind?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, so it's time will tell. I guess for for
Trump for Trump version two. What legacy he leaves and
how long it lasts really two big problems you're outlining
in the book here. Our ability to lead and respond
to change, you right, is not good enough to put
it kindly. And change is best managed through great teamwork
(21:58):
and collaboration. But a lot of us work in mediocre teams.
So the real theme here is changed. I mean, take
us back to some of those companies you worked in
that were facing massive change, big blue IBM company that
was known from mainframe computers. Every bank had an IBM mainframe,
(22:18):
big expense of computers. Then we had the mini computer
revolution come along. IBM was faced with a choice here,
do we embrace this and become a PC maker or
do we sort of stick to our roots, which is
big computers, big ticket items. What was it like sort
through the eighties, We're working in a company that was
(22:38):
confronted with disruption and change and was really struggling to
actually embrace that change.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Yeah. Look, the eighties were in a sense a good
decade for IBM, and then as you entered the nineties
is when it really struggled. There's so many elements to
what is important in change. So if we take an
individual for an individual, I always say, you've got to
(23:05):
be willing to suspend your beliefs and learn, become a
learned or rather than know it all, become a learn
it all. And we've seen in many industries. We'll touch
on a couple, but there was a classic situation that
was quite pivotal in industry where the person in control
of the relationship with Microsoft is a guy called Jim Cannavino.
(23:25):
He was an IBM. He came out of the obviously
the big computer side of IBM, and I heard the
story and it's validated in stuff other people have written,
maybe not exactly as I heard it, but Cannavino was
then in charge of the Bill Gates relationship and Microsoft
and IBM had a mindset that the hardware was most important.
(23:47):
The software was just this thing you had to do
to sell boxes. So he went into the relationship with
Gates and ultimately made a big mistake in allowing Microsoft
to go off and do Windows when really at that
point they had Microsoft under contract. And what led to
that was his belief system the software wasn't that important.
(24:08):
But it even went further than that, because the story
was that in a group of five hundred people. He
said the words that if God believed in distributed computers,
which is computers everywhere, he would have put your brains
in your fingertips. And the point about that is, once
you and we saw in media industry, banners won't work,
digital media will never pay. That's what the experts said
(24:30):
when I was at ninety meters said years ago. And
it's holding too close to your belief system that and
not being open minded that is so dangerous. And that's
why I emphasize a couple of things very much in
the book. One is change is hard for us, and
it's hard for us as people because we meet it
(24:51):
with fear until we understand it. It's hard for us
because we're generally told not to make mistakes, and we
generally are praised for what we know rather than what
we learn. And that way of thinking is great for
things you don't want to change, but hard when you're
confronted with new things, because those you know anything new
(25:14):
is the realm of mistake making.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Yeah, I think you point out that that conformist conditioning,
as you put it, is actually quite useful in a
way of shielding you from risk. But particularly in the
tech game. Taking those risks is what will get you
the reward and in some cases save the company or
allowed to thrive. And one of the things, one of
(25:39):
the big themes in the book is finding alignment. How
do you bring all of these people together? And it
might be worth reflecting. You came into zero. It was
a relatively mature company dynamic founder Rod Drury, but very
big company by the time you got there. How do
(26:01):
you follow up a founder like that and find alignment
with this group of people that Eve inherited to actually
build on what Rod has created, but take it in
the direction it needs to go. It obviously needed to
go somewhere different. After that first ten year period or
something like that.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
What was that like, Yeah, it look it was awesome,
awesome experience. We actually went from fifteen hundred to forty
five hundred during my time, so essentially the business tripled,
and the challenge and the way that I approached it
was really that we had to really focus on what
it is we wanted to be. So we actually changed
(26:40):
our purpose statement from being about accounting to being about
being a platform, a trusted and insightfuled platform for small business.
So we reviewed what it is we're here to do,
and it was more than accounting software because the Zero
platform opened up to thousands of applications and different use
cases the partnerships the company had, so getting clear about
(27:03):
purpose and then prioritization that was always the hardest thing
for me because there were so many things we could
do and wanted to do. The tough aspect of prioritization
is saying no to good ideas and good people. And
there were acquisitions that we looked at that everybody wanted
to do, and I had to be the bad guy.
At the end of the line. He said, you know what,
(27:24):
it's a great idea, but no, because we need to focus.
You know, I wouldn't give myself ten out of ten
on the prioritization stakes either, you know. It's one of
those things you really struggle with, So yeah, let others
score how I went on that. But alignment that you
mentioned is really important because in times of change, organizations
(27:44):
are generally pretty good at saying this is what we
need to do. They're also pretty good at giving their
people jobs to do, but what they don't do is
align those jobs with the things that are most important
to get done to change and so the alignment process
is really where the rubber hits the road. It's where
the people at the top take a serious interest in
(28:05):
what it means and the how of getting this stuff done,
which means you have to partner with your management layer
by layer and really understand the conflicts that doing new
things provides with doing what you've been doing, help them
make the trade offs and make sure they get the
resources and support they need, because if you don't do that,
(28:26):
all that happens in the middle of the company as
it gets bigger and bigger, is you've got managers sitting
there going, I'm struggling every day to do everything I'm doing,
and now you want me to do all this extra stuff.
Where's the person I'm going to talk to about the
trade offs here? And that's where alignment becomes essential. It's
why the intentions of the top don't become the work
of those who do the work because the alignment focus
(28:50):
is inadequate.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of great stuff
in the book about how you put that into practice,
you know, And it's really about hearing from other people.
Listening to other people's views, so crucial in the fast
moving tech sector, in particular, of people down in the
(29:12):
bowels of the company writing the code for the software
as saying to you, I don't think this is going
to work in the midterm, little one the long term,
and you don't listen to them, You've got a real
problem there. And some of the companies you've worked for,
we saw that that became an entrenched problem for them,
in the likes of IBM, that they really struggle to overcome.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Yeah, it's really it's true. The thing is, if you
want to change things, and you really believe you have to,
you have to make the change agenda the big agenda,
because otherwise it just gets drowned out by what you've
been doing. So, you know, everywhere I learned that at
Microsoft Australia, when you know, it wasn't early in my
career that I figured out this alignment thing, and I
(29:53):
didn't do it on my own. We had slow growth
at Microsoft Australia and we were challenged by Steve Bormer
leaders to come up with a strategy to accelerate growth,
and the core of that strategy was being better in
the eyes of our customers. Because I don't know if
you remember back the Microsoft's reputation for customer service wasn't great.
(30:14):
But nowadays you don't hear that anymore. You know that
the company has really done much much better. So we
were at the beginning of this need to change that.
And so when we went through what was going to
be the best way to improve customer service, we realized
it wasn't one function of the business. It required every
function of the business to play. So what we had
(30:35):
to do was to get into the detail. So, Okay,
what does it mean to improve customer service? It could
be we're going to improve our CRM. It could be
we're going to run training for our salespeople. Well, then,
if that's your intention, what's the action, Who's going to
own it, who are they delegating it to, and what
actions are they delegating And you have to get specific
around those actions and follow up and have really good
(30:58):
operational people who hold you to account. So this function
of operations in the tech world is one of defining
the actions that come from a strategy and making sure
those accountable deliver on it. And I learned that in
an I call it level or the planning, which is
cascading critical objectives layer by layer and having people sign
(31:20):
up to deliver it having had the conversation about what
they might have to stop doing or what additional support
you need to give them. It's just closing the loop.
And they're the difficult conversations that are sometimes avoided.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, I'm going to talk about that because that, I
think is the thing that people will relate to the most,
the difficult conversations. Just on Microsoft, Sachaadella's been at the
helm of the company for a decade or more. In
our huge change Agent really brought Microsoft into the cloud
computing space with Azure, went big on that what if
you observe from a fire off? How he approaches things
(31:55):
that is really pertinent to this change dealing with change.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
Yeah. Look, I've been fortunate to have met with such
a couple of times over the years. First when I
worked for Microsoft in Seattle. He was one of the
product leaders back then and I was running the international
online business, and so I went to have a chat
with him and shared my thoughts on what was holding
us back in the digital media world, and I found
(32:22):
him really open minded and a real learning oriented guy. Then.
But Microsoft's an amazing company. I mean, the ability to
execute strategy, there is undeniable. And I've also in the
book paid a little bit of a tribute to Steve Boormer,
because you know, it's kind of fashionable to look at
Steve and say, well, he's a CEO. Wasn't as successful
(32:44):
as it could and should have been. No one's ever is.
But Steve turned Microsoft from a PC company software company
into the powerhouse enterprise business that it is, and without that,
the next steps couldn't have been taken. So I think
that such a success now such a has said this himself.
(33:04):
You know, some credit goes to Burma for what such
has been ablett accomplished as well.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah, difficult conversations and you've had many of them in
your career, some of them you recount in the book.
One really interesting one has actually happened at Zero around diversity.
I mean difficult conversations around laying people off, having to
say to people your time is up in this organization.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
You know that.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
I think most people listening, that's what keeps them up
at night. Try having those very difficult conversations. But we
have new things coming at leadership teams and CEOs, things
like diversity. Maybe tell us about that that issue that
came up at Zero that you had to deal with.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, there's that was a really really difficult issue, and
it's a pretty it's even in the context of this conversation,
a hard one that just sort of brush over. But
we had we had an issue where one of our
staff members posted to our internal channels their very strong
(34:08):
beliefs that they could not celebrate Pride months for their
own personal religious beliefs. And whilst we all appreciated that
people believe that's no shock to anybody, it was the
way that that was communicated that which I won't say here,
but it was hurtful. You know. In the case of Zero,
(34:29):
there was no question as a company we stood behind
our LGBTQI people and their rights to express what they
wanted to express. We also actually didn't have an issue
with that person's beliefs or their ability to express them.
Was how they said it, and it's that responsibility just
(34:49):
to speak about others in a way that's respectful. So
what we came to was most important to come with
some principles, and the principle in that case is that
we always believe that we have to support first party
over third party, and what you want to be and
what you see as your identity is, I'm going to
rate that more important than what a third party thing
(35:10):
says about you. And I think that's a principle it
can hold for because you are the authority, not the
other person. So our reaction was not the censor. It
was more to respond more effectively than we did in
that particular instance where we responded too slow and we
didn't respond in a way that was sensitive enough to
(35:31):
those that were hurt. So that was what was behind
the learning. Really tough, tough one.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
It is tough, but it's something that every company is
sort of grappling with at the moment. We've seen sort
of social activism, the rise of that. Maybe it's a
generational change. You know, gens ITAs are more inclined to
be socially active and champion causes that are important to
(35:57):
them in the workplace. I mean, is there a place
for that. Probably didn't happen back in the mid eighties
at IBM, but it's a factor now.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
It's a new phenomenon in the context of certainly my journey.
It's the last you know, five ten years that this
has really become such a strong focus. Look, there's a
couple of things to this, you do have to have
some idea of where you want to weigh in as
an organization and where you wan't. So for example, with
Roe versus Wide, we had some of our people say
(36:26):
we should not do business in states at out law abortion.
Clearly were responded and said, no, we aren't going to
do that, so sorry, but no, and so you do
have to But that was fairly straightforward, but there are
others where it's not as straightforward, and you have to
you have to decide what position are going to take.
The other one, which was kind of my final words
(36:48):
on the subject and the zero context, was remember why
we're here. You know, business is about providing a service
and products to customers, and let's not let all the
very many distractions that there are in the world and
the distance between us in a world of hybrid work,
get in the way of us remembering why we're here
(37:08):
and the job we have to do. And so, in
a maybe a bit of an old fashioned way, I
did sort of send the message that all these things
are important, but our position, our let's call it privilege
to be able to weigh into these issues is founded
(37:29):
on customers buying our products and never forget it. It's
not an easy journey, but that's the reality.
Speaker 2 (37:37):
Yeah, when you were at zero, you had to send
everyone home because of the pandemic. So hybrid working for
thousands of people, and we've sort of seen this tension
since then as we come back to hybrid working in
the office. That connection, obviously, combined with knowledge, is the
(38:01):
key to human potential. Have we lost something inherently with
that sort of Workers obviously want flexibility and to be
able to set their own hours and work from wherever
they want. But in your experience, having worked in lots
of different workplaces, lots of large teams, that connection that
people get in the workplaces at really gold.
Speaker 3 (38:25):
Yeah. Look, there's no doubt that physical contact provides an
opportunity for things to happen that are perhaps less planned,
you know, those accidental collisions, those connections that you make. Look,
the hybrid world of work is here to stay. And
what I mean by that is there'll be any range
(38:45):
of workplaces that are fully remote through to fully at
the office. The decision as to which way you go,
I think does depend a lot on what you're trying
to accomplish. And my view is your job is not
to stay with what's the answer, but to start with
what are we trying to accomplish and accomplishing that objective,
(39:06):
whatever it might be. What do we need to do
what needs to be done? And that's a question that
isn't asked often enough. We talk about why we do
what we do and what we're doing, but pause and
think about how are we going? How are we doing it?
So there's a question I always encourage people to ask,
which is of your team and your team members get
(39:26):
together and answer the question about how well with what
we have today, with the money, the resources and everything
else we have today, How well today, with what we
have today, are we performing relative to what's possible as
a team, as a team, not as individuals as a team,
(39:47):
And the beauty of that conversation is you're not pointing
a finger as the manager, You're not pointing the finger
at any individual and score it out of ten and
you'll find that I've experienced. My experience is that only
third twenty to forty percent of people I ask have
ever worked on a team they rated eight or more
out of ten. The rest of them, you know, a
(40:09):
good team is a six or seven. And so then
you say, well, what's the one thing you would do
to improve how you're working together, what the score is.
And ninety percent of those things have nothing to do
with the industry people are working in. It's all to
do with how humans are working together. There could be issues,
They're not clear, there could be they're misaligned, They're not
having honest conversations. There could be those issues. And by
(40:32):
really focusing on that, you can start to see how
the potential your people and teams have can be improved
from where they are today.
Speaker 2 (40:41):
Part five of the book is really the self help part.
It's condensing down what you call must do diagnostics, playbooks,
must do toolboxes. Tell us about some of these tools,
where they've come from, and how they might be useful
to people who are dealing with change, with the need
for alignment and having those hard conversations.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Yeah, the tools, they're all tools that I've been taught
very little of It is something that I've sort of invented.
It's just the tools that good HR leaders. You know,
my brother's been influence and some of the stuff that
I do with the work he does, and a whole
bunch of reading as well as well. I'm a big reader.
(41:25):
On a lot of this domain. So I've taken those
tools and made it really easy for what you do
is you go to that part of the book and
you say, here's a list of challenges you might be facing.
Here is what I would do in your situation, and
these are the steps you need to take. And it
was really important for me to add that into the
book because the why and the white Yeah, we get that,
(41:47):
it's the how how do I do that? How do
I have a hard conversation with someone who's not performing.
How do I get my team aligned when we're not
on the same page. How do I look at my
product organization and work out how I've got them focused
on delivering the right outcomes for the business. Those are
(42:08):
the things that are the biggest challenges I've faced, and
I've put in there the tools and the steps I've
taken and learned to take that help along the way.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
Yeah, and they're all laid out there. That's incredibly useful
part of the book, along with those anecdotes that bring
them to life. How you use those tools, Just finally
interested to know what the future holds for you. You're
here in Wellington, You obviously love Wellington. Your sort of
roots are really in the Sydney area, but you're still
here intrigued to know what you take of sort of
(42:38):
what is going on in this city at the moment,
A city grappling like a lot in this country, a
lot of other cities with change, not enough money, huge
infrastructure issues. You've got a lot of people who aren't
necessarily in alignment on our councilor you've got a mayor
trained to wrangle all of these all of these people,
(42:58):
I mean, how do you how do you navigate this?
What are some of the tools that they should be
using to try and get through this intact?
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, Look, that example and many others are examples of
how challenging chanin is. Change is, particularly at scale, and
I think again, it's not easy so and it's never perfect.
It's never changed. Big significant change never happens without upsetting people,
you know, and having to do things that you don't
(43:29):
necessarily enjoy. I mean, that's why if your conversations and
hard choices are avoided because we don't want to hurt people,
we don't want to be the bad guy or girl whatever.
But you know, it comes down in my view, to
making sure you don't make the mistake of moving too
fast into what we need to do before you've talked
(43:52):
about why and how. You know, why is change needed?
You've got to get agreement on that first, and then
how is change going to happen. It's almost like laying
out the map for how we're going to get to
the right actions before we actually try and throw ideas around.
(44:14):
I was sitting in a meeting a few years back
with a bunch of high profile business, government and other
leaders talking about tax reform in Australia and the workshop
was come up with your thoughts on this, And as
soon as we started the conversation, people were throwing out suggestions.
You know, raised GSD, cut GSD, raised my medicare levy,
(44:36):
and there was all these ideas and when it came
to me, I said, hang on a minute, before we
get into what we want to do here, why do
we need it? Are we clear and how are we
going to get it? What's the process for getting reformed
to happen? So I would encourage and this is no
simple answer. There isn't one anyone, whether it's here in
Wellington or anywhere in the world, that's working on a
(44:57):
complex change initiative to spend more time on the why
and the how than they're inclined to, because we naturally
want to get to the what are we going to do?
Too fast and without the foundations, it's going to be
one person's opinion and judgment versus the other, not grounded
on something we collectively agree on.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So what's next for you? You've been a non executive
director on a number of boards Medibank, Fletcher Building, Challenging
One as well. David Jones going through a huge change too.
Do you have another big CEO role and are you
moving more into this sort of directorships and mentoring and
that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Yeh. Look at this stage, Peter, I'm focused on something
that I love doing, which is teaching and helping others
with their challenges around change and leading their organizations and teams.
So the book's a big focus getting the message out
and hopefully helping people by, you know, in a sense,
(46:02):
providing something that is the most positive feedback I could
get is that the book is useful. The people are
using it, going back to it as a handbook and
referring to sections of the book when they face different challenges,
and then speaking and providing whatever help I can. The
thing I'm most passionate about is seeing the quality of
(46:24):
leaders of people in our workplaces improve, because that will
improve the work life of people every day, which has
downstream effects on happier households, greater well being. And the
people leadership role is so important to so many aspects
of what goes on in our economy and in every
(46:48):
aspect of it that you know, it's just an area
where I want to shine a light on it, and
so we need to get invest more in developing our
people leaders to be the best they can be.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Well, it's an incredibly useful book. I've already found parts
of it that resonate with me in which I will use,
So thanks for that. We'll put links to exactly where
you can find it. Thanks so much, it's been great
to meet you. Thanks for coming on. Good luck for
what's ahead for you.
Speaker 3 (47:13):
Thanks Peter, really appreciate you having me so being.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Steve Vamos. All those companies he's worked for faced massive
disruption Apple in the mid nineties and crisis IBM coming
out of the nineteen eighties, the mainframe Kings and not
really transition into the PC world particularly well nine MSN
you know a media company on the back of the
(47:39):
dot com crash, trying to monetize their content in a
very challenging world with Google and Facebook eating their lunch.
Glad we've thought of that issue out, so he's sort
of seen it all probably, you know. The key thing
that reason with me is what he calls in there,
(48:02):
this mindset shift that you need to go through in
his opinion, from control freak to connector and enabler. And
it's clear from you know, his philosophy to management is
very much not be from the top. This is how
it will be done. Sure, you maybe need to do
(48:23):
that as a CEO, make the hard calls and have
the hard conversations, but very much about how do you
create this alignment? How do you bring four and a
half thousand people, for instance, at zero along with you?
And that autocratic, top down approach isn't going to cut
it anymore, particularly with the modern millennial workforce, that they're
not going to buy into that sort of change. And
(48:44):
it's you know, a lot of the CEOs we talk to,
they sort of spout this sort of mantra, but living it,
when it comes down to it, is really difficult. So
how do you actually live this on a day to
day basis, and it comes down to things like being
willing to listen, to go into a meeting and ask
for feedback about your performance, which is the sort of
(49:06):
things that Steve has been doing through his career, and
having empathy for people in the organization who are going
through that massive change. If you can't demonstrate that you
truly have that empathy for them, they're not going to
buy into the massive change that you want to go through.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
It's crazy, isn't it. Who would have thought two way
communication is the key to good relationships?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
You know.
Speaker 1 (49:31):
I mean it's maybe it's the millennial in me, but
that's just something that I've heard many many times growing up,
you know, particularly around making personal relationships work. But I
think we're starting to realize that. And maybe it's because
we've had that message so often that now the modern
workforce expects it in the workplace too. Workplaces are expecting
(49:51):
more of people as we go on in life, and
so if you want to get more out of them,
then you need to treat them like human beings and
not like cogs in a machine.
Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, and you look at all of our institutions at
the moment, and they're all grappling with this. Look at
the health sector, you know you've got massive change budget cuts,
scrapping most of their digital and data division at the moment,
so you'll have a lot of people in there and
a lot of critics saying this is the wrong direction
to go in. How are you ever going to get
(50:20):
people on board with this sort of change. So that's
the I think where the rubber hits the row. To
Steve puts it as the difficult conversations and you have
to push through change and you have to be a
change agent. It's an unsustainable position to have, you know,
big budget losses and that sort of thing be blowing
the budget. But how do you bring all the people
(50:42):
along so that the future for the organization is going
to retain all of that talent really difficult, and every
organization around the world, we've got so many of them
in New Zealand at the moment that are really in
the midst of that, and frankly a lot of them
not grappling with it very well. We do have these charismatic,
visionary leaders who are quite brutal about pushing change through.
(51:05):
But I think what Steve is basically saying is when
you have someone who is incredibly visionary and has you
have to have a real strong vision of where the
organization needs to go. But that alone is not enough,
as we're seeing with some of these sort of tech
leaders who push through massive change. How sustainable is that?
(51:27):
And I think we're seeing wheels come off a little
bit in Elon Musk's Empire, is that people are jumping
off that train that he is driving because they've just
had enough. So how sustainable is your approach as a
change agent? Are you just burning people up and casting
them aside in order to achieve your big vision? Eventually
(51:52):
you're going to end up alone. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:55):
All right, Well that's it for this week, and we've
only got two episodes to goh for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (52:02):
Thanks so much to Steve Vamos's book Through Shifts and Shocks,
Lessons from the Frontline of Technology and Changes, out now
from publisher Wiley, in bookstores and on Amazon. We'll put
a link to where you can find it.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
That's it for this week. Only two episodes to go
for twenty twenty.
Speaker 2 (52:16):
Four, and next week is a real goodie. We catch
up with some of the country's best journalists who've covered
a year of major change in all things tech to
get their highlights from twenty twenty four and what to
expect next year. It'll be packed with useful insights.
Speaker 1 (52:31):
Show notes for the business of tech. In the podcast
section of Business Desk dot co, dot z, where you
can stream this podcast in full every week. It's also
available for iHeartRadio or on your podcast platform off Joyce.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Get in touch with your feedback and we'd love to
hear your suggestions for upcoming guests. To email Ben benat
Business deesk dot co, dot z.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
You can also find us on LinkedIn, port blue Sky.
Speaker 2 (52:55):
Another episode coming your way next Thursday, so then have
a great week.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
You don't have a boot
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