October 21, 2024 • 42 mins
No one likes bad news, but as a leader, it’s your responsibility to get ahead of it. When Brett Wiskar said during our interview, "Good news is bad news delivered early," it really resonated. Surprises are rarely welcome, and as leaders, it's our job not only to manage them but to stay ahead of them.
In this candid episode, I chat with Brett, a seasoned tech executive, about his rollercoaster leadership journey. Tune in to hear three impactful leadership lessons that have reshaped his approach—and could very well change yours too.
I’m saving the lightbulb moments for the episode, but here’s a glimpse of what Brett unpacks:
- The crucial leadership skill most avoid (yes, it involves those uncomfortable conversations).
- Why adaptability is more valuable than being right.
- How to align your team for success.
Beyond the lessons, this episode offers a rare inside look at the life of an executive—his day-to-day challenges, the tough decisions, and what it truly takes to lead at the top. Add the podcast to your listen list to deep dive into the real-world experiences of a leader navigating change and innovation.
Contact Brett:
- www.brettwiskar.com
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettwiskar/
- https://www.instagram.com/brett.wiskar.speaker/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kate Peardon (00:34):
Brett Wisker, our guest today has spent the last
25 years in digital technologyand innovation in Australia and
the UK.
He has worked with some of thelargest brands in the country on
their digital roadmap andinnovation programs, is a
recipient of numerous awards anda frequent speaker on the topics
of innovation, adaptability.
He's currently the head ofdigital innovation at Australian
(00:56):
Catholic University by day andan innovation consultant and
keynote speaker for the rest ofthe time.
His role at Australian CatholicUniversity is to plot the
digital innovation pathways forthe university, which impacts 2,
500 staff and more than 30, 000students.
Brett and I met about eightyears ago, and I have been
witness to his leadershipjourney over these years.
(01:18):
As someone that has workedclosely with him, I can share
that he's never afraid to havethe conversation, no matter how
awkward or uncomfortable it is.
And this is quite refreshing ina leader.
Today, we're going to be jumpinginto three of his key leadership
lessons.
Communication, always have theconversation, which is exactly
what I've experienced with him.
How adaptability is the key andwe're almost never right.
(01:41):
So we need to be great atconstant change and someone who
focuses on innovation.
This really makes sense thatthis is a key leadership lesson
for him.
And the third leadership lessonis about alignment.
let's welcome our guest BrettWiskar and jump into these
leadership lessons and what hissuggestions are for these one
percenters, uh, whether books,phrases, or podcasts that really
(02:04):
have helped him as a leader.
Welcome Brett.
Brett Wiskar (02:06):
Thanks, Kate.
Thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here.
Kate Peardon (02:09):
So Brett and I met, I think it's probably about
eight years ago.
And I think through this eightyears, you and I have witnessed
a lot of each other's leadershipjourneys, the ups and the downs
and the around the outside.
and it has enabled me to seethese leadership lessons that
we're going to talk about today,I can see each of these
leadership lessons and some ofthe experiences that we've had
(02:30):
together, but I look forward tochatting through them today and
see if how I've witnessed yourleadership is actually how you
see it from the inside as well.
Brett Wiskar (02:37):
That will be interesting.
Um, obviously very differentfrom what everybody else sees.
But yeah, it's a, I guess as weage and as we gain experience
and as we interact with more andmore people, we're all on a
leadership journey.
some of us more deliberatelythan others.
And probably, you know, backwhen you and I first met, I
think I'd been a leader in a lotof different situations for a
long time, but at no point wasit anything like conscious
(02:59):
leadership.
I was just doing what was infront of me and, found myself
running a team of 60 people andnever had considered what
leadership looked like or what amethodology might look like, or
how people saw me as a leader orhow they wanted to be led.
None of that stuff sort ofentered into my conscious
thought.
I was just trying to get anoutcome.
over time from a group ofpeople.
And, it wasn't really planned.
(03:20):
And, and, you know, probably inthe last decade, as I've
matured, and as I've worked withpeople like you, I probably have
seen people who, take a moreconsidered approach to
leadership and try todeliberately, improve their
skills as a leader and onboarddifferent philosophies and
methodologies and stuff to tryto be, you know, better leaders
for the people that they'releading.
So somewhere on the line, Iprobably flipped that switch and
became a little bit moreconscious about it.
Kate Peardon (03:42):
I think your story is a perfect example of what so
many people go through becauseoften we get really good at what
we're good at technically, andthen because you're so good at
what you do technically,whatever that job is that you've
trained for, uh, you end up thengetting a team of people doing
what you do.
Which is totally a differentskillset and it's like starting
your career at the start again,but no one tells you this.
(04:03):
No one says, Hey, leadership isa completely different skillset
and it's going to feel awkward.
And it's something we need topractice and learn a bit about,
and put in these new skills andtactics.
But yeah, most people get throwninto it exactly like you were,
which I think is a wonderfulplace to start.
Cause thinking of yourleadership journey, you say now
leadership is a.
conscious thought, and it'ssomething that you focus on, but
(04:26):
there wasn't always the case.
Can you give us the cliffs notesor the highlights of how you've
got
Brett Wiskar (04:31):
Yeah, look,
Kate Peardon (04:31):
are at the moment?
Brett Wiskar (04:33):
I probably, um, you know, always was somebody
who threw myself into whatevercame along and I've had an odd
career in that, what I studiedat university.
I never ended up working at andI worked in sort of different
fields in different countriesand doing different things.
Bye.
you know, I, I worked in the UKabout 20 plus years ago, and I
turned up into, into a veryspecific technical role, in an
(04:54):
IT department, but it became aclear that the part of the
reason they were recruitingthere was that they'd had a
failure in how that departmentfunctioned in that organization.
And after I'd been there forabout five minutes, what became
abundantly clear was there wasjust a leadership void in that
organ, in that part of thatorganization.
And they were really lookingfor.
something to change about that.
and so, you know, in a veryshort window of time, I kind of
(05:16):
went from being the new hire tothe guy that I asked him to run,
run that section, you know, ofwhat was a global company that
had sort of a few hundred staffand a few dozen or so offices
around the globe.
And they kind of went, can yoube in charge of this?
And I was like, yeah, I can bein charge of this.
again, probably still hadn'tgiven any thought to what
leadership looked like, it wasprobably the first time, that I
had to manage more than one ortwo people.
(05:38):
and the output was much moreconsiderate and strategic about
where was the organization goingand what were they trying to get
from it and why did thisfunction exist and what was
their medium term, long termview.
When I started to see, the P& Land the balance sheet and the HR
challenges of other leaders.
And, there was discussion abouthow the organization was
structured and what theiroperating model was and all
(05:58):
those sorts of things that I'dworked in those environments.
Where that stuff was, part ofthe landscape, but I didn't have
visibility on it.
and so I did that and then, fastforward four or five years, and
I ended up owning a half sharein a company that we grew from
seven staff to 70 staff over thecourse of about three or four
years.
And.
was very technical roles thatpeople were filling, but I was,
(06:19):
I found myself in a leadershipposition and I think I've
probably shared with you in thepast and I'm actually reasonably
comfortable as a leader.
What I'm not comfortable as is amanager.
the activity of, you know, afriend of mine says that
managing is a verb.
and it's something you have todo.
leadership, I think is a littleless like that.
It can be more about who you areor who you turn up as.
(06:41):
you know, what I have found thatof the challenge with being a
manager, and I'm not necessarilytalking about, you know,
micromanagement, but part of thechallenge of being a manager is
if you take on that day to dayactivity management process,
people management process,People step back and insist that
you do that for them againtomorrow and the next day and
the next day and the next day.
Whereas, you know, leadership, Ido think, you know, when I look
(07:02):
back at periods of time whereI've worked with groups of
people or companies that havebeen remarkably successful, it
tends to be well led.
whether that's by me or somebodyelse, but You're encouraging
people and coaching them andsetting them forth on a journey.
We've agreed on what the journeyis and if they need any help
getting there, let me know.
But if not, I'll catch you in alittle while.
And whether that little while isFriday or a month from Friday or
(07:23):
next quarter, leadership sort ofaffords them the opportunity to
step up and make some of theirdecisions.
Whereas management tends to bedo these things and then those
things and the scope of you tomake decisions is only limited
to this and anything outside ofthat, you'll have to come back
to me.
it's, been an interestingjourney, you know, my day to day
activities at the moment is, issort of 14 people to lead, but
(07:43):
they're very diverse and theywork, you know, they have
stakeholders in different areasand, leadership's always a
challenge and you always have tohave a think about it.
But the other thing is, It's sopersonality driven in that, you
know, if I've got an accountantor a software developer or
somebody who's working for me,who's going to execute a task,
inspiring them to execute taskis one thing, or managing them
to execute the task is onething.
But From a leadershipperspective, you really kind of
(08:05):
have to consider who's thisperson, you know, what motivates
them?
Why are they wired like that?
And for some people inleadership roles, that can be
really, really challenging.
They're just,"I don't reallywant to have to care about that.
I just want outcomes." Andyou're like, well, you'll get
astonishingly easier outcomes ifyou do understand that stuff.
Kate Peardon (08:22):
Absolutely.
Your leadership style is verymuch like the visionary leader.
And I'm not sure if we havetalked about this particular,
like the Goleman's leadershipstyles.
There is a leadership surveyquiz on my website, where you
can spend five minutes and findout a little bit about your
particular leadership style.
There's so many differentleadership.
surveys and profiles, and all ofthem are good as long as it
(08:44):
tells you something that'suseful.
so this is just one of the manyones, but this particular
visionary style Brett's facialresponse is not sure I've heard
of that one, which I'll explaina little bit about because Brett
and I've done a lot ofleadership profiling over the
years, but we haven't done thisone.
The visionary style ofleadership is the one that it
says, Hey, we're going here.
(09:05):
It points to the future.
It says, come with me.
let's go.
And they often take really bigsteps because they can see the
big picture and they're off.
and sometimes the challenge islike helping people come along
with them.
Talking about the differencebetween management and
leadership.
I totally understand that.
because for you, leadership issetting the vision and setting
the, big picture of where we'regoing and Hey, if you need some
(09:26):
help getting the steps there,I'll help you do that.
But if you can figure that out,that's great.
Brett Wiskar (09:29):
Yeah.
And I look back at kind of, youknow, what you said then about
that style resonates with me.
I look back on probably what Ithink is the most productive,
successful individual windowthat I've worked in.
and the way that worked was Ifunctioned as a leader, but I
had managers.
And so I was leading a largegroup of people, but within that
group of people, there weremanagers.
And so long as I was able tocommunicate the vision about
(09:51):
where we were going as a group,there were managers who were
leading discrete teams, but theywere saying, right, well, you've
heard from Brett, and this iswhere we're going.
And this is why we're goingthere.
And, and the why we're goingthere is really, really
important.
And often.
Not necessarily something thatall leaders grasp, but, if
you've got some people who arereally wired up around
(10:11):
management, them giving them avision to, that you're leading
towards and giving them, thatvision, allowing them to manage
the process towards it.
And it's not just, HR stylemanagement, project management
and resource management.
you know, financial managementand those sorts of things are
part of that program.
So, you know, we talk about,organizations that are
bureaucratic quite frequentlyhave a lot of management, not a
lot of leadership.
(10:32):
the public services is, vilifiedaround the world probably
because of that.
Whereas, you know, if we talkabout sort of, The sometimes
lionized capitalist methodologytends to be more about
leadership and less about, wetend to hero some of these
successful ventures that are allabout striving for incredible
outcomes.
(10:52):
And, a lot of thoseorganizations are burning the
people in their ranks on the waybecause, you know, they're not
instigating that managementaspect that helps people get on
that journey.
I don't, you know, I have beenaccused in the past and probably
rightly so about taking twolarger steps.
And that's probably a lesson tosort of, you know, I do see the
bigger picture.
I do see where we're trying toget to in five years and what
the technology is going to doand those kinds of things.
(11:13):
And not everybody's wired up youknow.
to respond that way.
And so, you know, being able tobreak that, down and give people
an area that they feelcomfortable in functioning, but
also stretching them.
You know, you probably knowbetter than I do, but I think
there's some sort of sciencearound.
If you give someone a task,that's about 4% outside of their
current range of comfort, that'sthe optimum window for improving
(11:35):
their performance and stretchingthem.
If you give somebody somethingthat's 200% above what they
currently do, it breaks them.
If I've got a vision that's fiveyears from now and it's
1,000,000% on where we are, howdo we back that off and go,
"What's the next 30 days looklike?" Because this person might
only be able to handle 30 daysof vision, whereas that person
over there might be able tohandle the next quarter or the
next two years.
Kate Peardon (11:54):
And I think this style of knowing your people and
knowing what people can do andwhere that edge is for them is a
key part of your particularleadership style.
And you mentioned also about youhave a preference of leadership
and how you like to lead.
And I think for people that arelistening, when something is
your preference, it doesn't meanyou can't do the other.
It doesn't mean that you're notable.
It's just that this comes moreeasily to you.
(12:15):
So for Brett, it comes moreeasily to set the bigger
picture.
He thinks quickly, he worksquickly, he takes big steps.
And I know for you working on,well, how can I make sure people
are along with the journey?
How can I I know I work bestwhen I have managers enacting
the strategy and I give thebigger picture.
And I think this has reallythreaded in with one of your
leadership lessons that you'retalking about today, which is
(12:37):
about communication and havingthe conversation and something
that I've noticed with workingwith you, no matter how awkward
or uncomfortable theconversation is, you've always
been one that has stepped intoit.
Brett Wiskar (12:47):
Yeah, I mean, I think conversations delayed tend
to be worse conversations.
You know, there's that otheranalogy that good news is bad
news delivered early.
probably 15 years ago, I went toan Australian Institute of
Management function in Brisbaneand there was a speaker and
leadership management lesson wasabout having a conversation and
she pulled it apart quiteextensively.
(13:07):
But what it really came down towas unpleasant conversations are
unpleasant, but if you don'thave a conversation with
somebody about something that'sgoing wrong, every conversation
from that moment onwards untilit's resolved is going to be
unpleasant.
So, it's not about being hardarse or coming down on people
like a ton of bricks, wheneverthey colour outside the lines,
(13:27):
but.
You know, how do you expectpeople to know which lines need
to be adhered to and which onesdon't if you just let them
scribble all over the page?
performance managed people, I'vegone to HR and I've sat down,
you know, in largerorganisations and said, what's
our methodology and how are wegoing to do this?
And we've used it to activelycorrect people's, Performance
around what the organisation'sexpectations was and those kinds
(13:49):
of things.
And that stuff's reallychallenging.
But, you know, when I look backat that, I kind of look at the
conversations preceding thatthat we didn't have is probably
a failing on me.
If I'd been saying, hey, That'sunacceptable and we're missing
these deadlines and we needbetter performance from you
here, here, here.
If I'd had a dozen littleconversations with somebody in
the three months prior to that,we probably wouldn't have had to
have the big conversation.
(14:10):
And so, you know, there aretimes because of interpersonal
relationships where I haven'tnecessarily lent into that or,
that person's new or that personI find intimidating or, or, you
know, that person's gotpolitical clout in the
organization never when I'vedelayed those conversations have
I sat down at some point in thefuture and gone, thank God I
waited, So yeah, I think, Ithink having that conversation
(14:32):
and that transparency aroundthat when people understand that
you will have thoseconversations, but you're also
not, personally attacking themor, you know, coming after them
or, or have an axe to grind.
And I'm really, really consciousabout when I have got to have
tough conversations with people.
I am then not sickly sweet, butI am then very conscious about
making sure that, that, we'vecovered it.
(14:52):
We've discussed it.
It's done.
My expectations of you aren'tany less than they were.
it's not a vendetta.
It's about it's about makingsure that we're all going in the
right direction.
And a lot of that is aroundalignment in that, you know, if
I've got, I don't know, five orsix people in my team and 80
percent of them are rowing theboat in a particular direction
and someone else is not pullingon their all or, not,
(15:13):
participating actively.
you know, part of the leadershipis not just how do you lead that
person, but how do you lead theother people?
How do they see what you'redoing about this element that
isn't necessarily getting youthe outcomes that you need?
because if you can createalignment in that group of
people, you can then step backand go and do something else.
You can say, well, I'm going togo and start this new initiative
that we're going to be lookingat in three to six months time,
(15:34):
when you guys have finisheddoing what we're doing here.
But now that we've got alignmenthappening in this group, you
guys are going to self correctand self support and self manage
your way to achieve thatoutcome.
Kate Peardon (15:44):
And I know that is one that's your second
leadership lesson is aboutalignment and how do you get
alignment within your team?
You mentioned about, so yourfirst leadership lesson about
communication and having theconversation.
so your first leadership lessonabout having the conversation
and communication, the addedbonus to that is that your team
has.
(16:05):
psychological safety, that theyknow, even if it's
uncomfortable, that you'llactually talk to them about it
and you won't avoid it.
So that's one bonus of havingthe awkward conversations.
and then the other bonus foryour second leadership lesson
about alignment is exactly, asyou said, if you are not
prepared, Keeping people inalignment and sharing, okay,
we're going in differentdirections.
We need to be going here.
(16:26):
And if you're not having theconversation that everyone on
your team knows you have tohave, and if you're listening to
this and you think about yourteam and you think there is
someone I need to have aconversation with, everybody
else in the team absolutelyknows that.
They're waiting for you.
Brett Wiskar (16:39):
I don't know whether it'll make the final
cut, but I have a story aboutthat.
So I, owned this softwarecompany.
There was, we were growing, youknow, at one point we were
hiring a person a week for sortof six months.
And the organization, probablysaw headcount wise, a hundred
percent growth year on year forsort of two or three years.
and you know, we had a projectmanager and he came to us and
said, we're looking for anotherproject manager.
(16:59):
I know a guy.
So we hired the guy.
The guy came in and he'd donevarious different things in his
career.
We hired him and put him in thebusiness and he was, charged
with running these clients andthese projects and working with
graphic designers and softwaredevelopers and agencies that he
worked with.
it was a large organization.
I was often in charge of sales.
My business partner had a lotof, responsibilities in terms of
our technical infrastructure anda couple of key accounts that he
(17:21):
was managing.
And we had, for want of a betterdescription, we had day jobs.
So we plonked this guy in andgave him clients and let the
other project managers coach himto an outcome.
our admin manager came to us atsome point and said, that guy,
his probation is coming to anend next Wednesday.
And we went, oh, that, you know,that three months whizzed by
really quickly.
yeah, well, what do we thinkabout him?
And, you know, we had aconversation.
(17:41):
Well, I don't know.
I haven't been wowed and Ihaven't been super impressed
that he didn't, didn't do thatthing and he didn't do this
thing.
And we, when we sort of comparednotes, we realized that both of
us had kind of had some notgreat experiences with him.
And so we called him one or twoother people from the business
and they went, Oh yeah, I'm notconvinced about him.
Anyway, after sort of somediscussion, we decided that we
wouldn't extend his probation.
We would just end it, that hewasn't a good fit for the
(18:03):
organization.
So we had that conversation.
He departed.
That was unfortunate.
The guy went on and got anotherjob and it was all well.
What was really interesting isin the seven or eight days after
that, I probably had 12 or 14people from the organization
come to me and go, Thank God yougot rid of him.
He was awful.
He was useless at this and thisand this and this.
And he did this other thing andhe upset this person and he
(18:24):
pissed off his client.
And I was like, where was thatinformation?
And And so sometimes you can'tsee that sort of stuff.
what I realized out of that is,is that you can't see
everything.
And what you actually needed inthat group was a culture where
there was not only alignmentfrom him about what we were
trying to achieve, but we neededthe values in that group of
people to kind of go, if he'snot aligned.
(18:45):
that has a negative impact onyou and the work you're doing
and you need to be vocal aboutthat and that you need to, you
know, you can't kind of go,well, well, he's my project
manager and I'm a lowly softwaredeveloper, so I'm just going to
live with it being disastrous.
You have to go, no, it's, It'smy job to make things better.
It's my job to get outcomes forthe organization.
It's my job to get outcomes fromthe clients.
And so, this guy wasn't aligned,but what became clear was that
(19:06):
my team didn't feel empowered todo anything about that.
And that was a failing on ourbehalf.
and you know, I probably learnedfrom that a lot about sort of,
you know, how do you onboard newpeople and how do you create
alignment about them, but alsohow do you give everybody in the
group authority to, to be anactive participant in what
leadership looks like and whatthe outcomes were looking like
(19:27):
are getting.
and, and I found it interestingthat they felt comfortable
enough to tell me about the poorthings that were happening after
I'd done something about it, butnot before.
there's some lessons in that.
Kate Peardon (19:38):
And interesting.
That becomes part of yourculture because then they
remember that and they rememberhow it was dealt with, and that
becomes part of the stories thatcome from there.
Brett Wiskar (19:46):
another anecdote doesn't have to make the cut,
but in that same organization,we had a guy who had obviously
worked in some pretty unsavoryenvironments is very good at his
job.
and his default way of showingup was almost combative with.
particularly with authority andmanagement.
And at some point he didsomething which was pretty,
pretty ordinary.
And, you know, my businesspartner at the time wanted to
(20:06):
strangle him.
And I went, well, why don't wehave a conversation with him?
So I planned how I'd have theconversation.
I brought him in and we had, theway I would describe it is it
was a compassionateconversation, but it was also,
We gave him an opportunity to bewho he was and share why he was
that way, but also highlightthat how he had dealt with some
things wasn't acceptable for abunch of different reasons.
(20:28):
really challenging and my heartrates through the roof and I'm
not a big guy on confrontationand you know, I sweated bullets
about it for sort of 16 hoursovernight while we wait until we
had the conversation with himthe next morning and, and stuff.
Anyway, we had the conversation.
and I think because of how weplanned to have that very tough
conversation, he respondedreally well.
And I, and again, because he wasquite a competitive kind of guy,
(20:48):
I was really, I was quiteconcerned about how that was
going to unfold.
So we had that conversation, heleft.
Now that was.
12 years ago.
I got a message from him twoweeks ago.
Uh, he lives in Canada.
He's moving back to Australia.
He can't wait to catch up withme.
Kate Peardon (21:02):
Why do you think that is?
Brett Wiskar (21:04):
I think if you handle people well and you
listen to how they are and whothey are and value them for who
they are, you know, it is a bitof that.
People won't remember what yousaid, but they'll remember how
they made you feel.
everybody wants to be treatedlike a person.
Everybody wants to be treatedcompassionately.
you know, someone I know sayseverybody wants to come to work
with a sense of purpose and gohome with a sense of
achievement.
I think that's probablyuniversal.
(21:24):
but you can do that in a bunchof different ways.
And there are probably good waysto do it and good levels of
engagement that make people feelvalued and seen.
you know, there are managers whocome in and go, this is where we
go.
I'm going to do this and thisand this.
I need you to do these things.
Thanks very much.
I'm out of here.
do you know these people?
And, you know, you don't have toknow their dog's name.
Ideally you would, but, youknow, there's a finite amount
(21:46):
when you're managing a group ofpeople to how much you can
actually know.
But you can also know just whatsomeone's like.
how fearful are they?
Do they operate in psychologicalsafety?
What are their triggers?
learning that kind of stuffabout people can, make them feel
valued and make them feelcomfortable and they'll do
better work in thosecircumstances as well.
Kate Peardon (22:06):
And there's some really great stats around how
people don't have to agree withwhat you are doing or saying as
a leader, but as long as theyfeel that it's fair, like you're
treating them fairly, or you'vegone through a fair process, it
doesn't actually matter thatthey don't agree.
If they feel there's a fairness,then they're generally on board
or supportive.
And I wonder if in thisinstance, that was the case.
(22:27):
They might not have agreed withwhat happened or they might not
have liked it.
Might've found it veryuncomfortable.
But If they found that youtreated them fairly, that's
actually the feeling that stays.
Brett Wiskar (22:36):
And I think that kind of aligns, you know, it was
communication.
We had the conversation, wecreated some real alignment.
and, and I think you're probablyright.
I think he probably walked outof that room going.
I was a bit of a dillyyesterday.
They've addressed it, but theydid it fairly.
They didn't rant and rave.
They didn't kick me out.
They didn't fire me.
it was a process that how hebehaved justified some sort of
intervention.
(22:56):
So we had the intervention, butwe were considered about how we
went about it.
we didn't vilify him.
And following that, it wasreally important for us, you
know, When we went to the pub ona Friday afternoon and bought
beers for everybody that he wasincluded in that and he was
welcome and, and that therewasn't, a legacy, to be
prosecuted against him from anongoing perspective.
Kate Peardon (23:15):
Now Brett, well as a leader and as well as a day
job, you are often seen speakingand doing keynotes on all things
about future and innovation.
Now your third leadership lessonis all about adaptability and
about constant change, which Ithink aligns perfectly with
these topics that you speak withall about innovation and change
(23:35):
and change is the only constant.
Why is it that adaptability hasbeen such an important
leadership lesson for you?
Brett Wiskar (23:42):
the way I think about that, Kate, is, you know,
humans on this planet are at thetop of the food chain simply
because of our capacity to beadaptable.
we have, you know, differentbrains and different structures
and different capacity to copein all sorts of different
environments.
And that's how we got where weyou know, I spent a lot of time
looking at technology and it'svery obvious that technology
(24:03):
changes things all the time, butIf we look back, 20 or 30 years
to when, you know, some of yourlisteners will have started
their career, things were wildlydifferent.
iPhones didn't exist pre 2007.
and for some of us, 2007 seemslike yesterday, but, you know,
15 year old who was born in 2009and, you know, he's six foot
one.
(24:24):
is out there.
That's not going away.
There's a lot of narrative abouttechnology, driven change and
disruption and all that kind ofstuff.
But the key to all of that isour capacity to adapt.
and so we've seen organizationswho don't adapt and the
organizations cease to exist.
But within our organizations,all of us I think have worked
with people who really struggleto adapt.
(24:46):
and you know, I tell the storyin some of my keynotes, you
know, periodically, and Iremember this from sort of,
decades gone by where theautomotive industry was
disappearing in Australia.
And, you know, Channel 7 Newswould turn up to the front of
the gates and there'd be some,some 40, 50 year old guy
standing there with a placardcomplaining about the fact that
his job was being taken becausethe factory was shutting down.
(25:07):
And they'd interview him andsort of say, what do you think?
And he says, you know, I'veworked here since I was 16 and
my son's got an apprenticeshiphere and he also works here.
And the unwritten aspect to thatwas this person said to the
organization, if I commit toworking for you 40 hours a week
forever, will you commit to mehaving a job forever?
(25:27):
And the organization was silentand the guy went, I'll take that
silence as a yes.
there's a lot of people whoenter into their place of
employment or the economy thatthey take their company into,
where they sort of do thissilent deal where they say, if I
do these things, the world willlook after me.
history is littered with peoplethat weren't looked after on
that sort of basis.
And so the key to being,relevant in the future as an
(25:50):
organization or a team or aleader or a product is about
Being flexible and adaptable towhatever the new environment is.
So, you know, I'm doing a lot ofstuff in AI at the moment.
You know, three years ago, thatwasn't a thing.
But what we're learning is thatthat's a tool.
It's a tool that will make someaspects of the things that some
people do go away, but also freeup time for them to do other
(26:11):
things.
And it's just a tool.
You know, once upon a time,Telex was a thing and then fax
machines were a thing.
And, fax machine repair man isno longer a thing.
but at some point it probablywas.
And, you know, You know,ultimately, something that we're
relying on right here today isnot going to exist at some point
in the future.
So people are able to adapt tothat, and I think that that's
really important.
(26:31):
So if we look inside anorganization, you know, if
you've got a 200 personorganization, a 20 person
organization, or a 2, 500 personorganization, something that we
do today is going to change.
And as people, we can look atthat change and it might be,
pushed on us by an industry oran economy or a piece of
technology or a competitor.
(26:53):
But if we look at that piece ofchange and go, I hate it, I'm
not gonna, then, you know, thatway ruin lies.
and so, you know, sitting downwith people and going, this
thing's changing, we're going tohave a new finance system or a
new HR system, or we've got anew competitor, or this new
piece of technology is comingin, we're going to have to
figure out how to incorporate itinto what we're doing.
That has to be what we're doing.
(27:13):
And there's a, in sort of theinnovation circles, we talk
about exploit or explore.
and exploit is what are theassets of the business?
What's the labour of thebusiness?
What's the market?
What's the number of clientsthat they've got?
What's their revenue?
What's their balance sheet looklike?
Those are the things you putthem all together and you
exploit them and that's how youmake profit.
Explorers, what are the thingsthat are coming down the
pipeline?
Or what are the things that weare not currently exploiting?
(27:34):
And how are we going tointroduce that?
And businesses that onlyexploit, die.
Because at some point, theeconomy they play in, or, you
know, the MySpace is the worldgetting disrupted by the
Facebooks.
And Facebook didn't see Snapchatcoming, but they bought
Instagram.
And, you know, all those sortsof things.
You know, there was a period oftime where Apple was dead in the
water.
and now they're not, becausethey explored, and they
(27:56):
explored, and they explored, andthey explored, and they
explored.
And, and then, you know, I dosome, open market innovation
consulting, and there's a numberof organizations out there that
when you talk to the board, orthe CEO, or the GM about what
their strategy is aboutexploring things, it's non
existent.
what's your budget around that?
It's, it's non existent.
so when I say adaptability is akey from a leadership
perspective, you've got to knowwhat you're adapting to.
(28:18):
you need to build adaptive,muscles that make you more
adaptable as a, as anorganization and as a team, but
you also have to be out therelooking to find out what that
thing is.
Sometimes it's going to turn upout of the blue and you're going
to have to work really hard toadapt, but if you can.
Get a bit of a head start onwhat's coming and say, well,
we're going to adopt this andwe're going to change that and
we're going to, you know, not dothis anymore.
(28:38):
that sort of adaptability, youknow, what are we going to keep
doing?
What are we going to invest moreheavily in?
What are we going to stop?
as organizations, I think thatstuff's really important.
Kate Peardon (28:46):
Have you got practical, tangible one
percenter that people listeningto this podcast are thinking,
okay, I need to be more open toadapting or be more aware of it,
or what's one thing that theycould do to help with
adaptability or being preparedfor this constant change?
Brett Wiskar (29:05):
from a personal perspective, I think, lifelong
learning is a, is a key part ofwhat all of us intend to work
for more than the number threeweeks in our lives really need
to embrace.
and there is an insane, youknow, never before in the
history of humanity has therebeen such an opportunity to
learn yourself.
There's, Khan Academy andLinkedIn Learning and Coursera
(29:25):
and Google has courses and
Kate Peardon (29:26):
a lot.
Brett Wiskar (29:27):
sorts of things.
or you can go to the freeversion of ChatGPT and ask it to
teach you something and it'llteach you, if you're currently
not.
Improving your skills.
That's on you.
so that's from a personalperspective.
I think that is a really centralthing is that we have to be
lifelong learners.
We have to lean into this and itdoesn't have to be, you know,
embarking on a four year parttime degree in something that
(29:48):
you, you know, you feel theindustry's move forward on.
Very rarely these days arepeople hired based on the
qualifications that they've got.
people get hired based on whattheir potential is to achieve
something for the organization.
They need you to know stuff, nothave a certificate that says you
learned something.
so I think the critical thingfor individuals is about that
learning.
Kate Peardon (30:07):
That openness or ability to learn interest.
I mean, the fact that they'relistening to this podcast is a
sign that you're open andinterested in learning.
Brett Wiskar (30:14):
Yeah, and, one of the big things around that is
curiosity, something that I reada while ago is that, some people
in the States did some studyaround conspiracy theorists and
people who believe all sorts of,often sort of right wing kind of
things.
One thing they identified isthat they're just fundamentally
not curious in that if somebodystands in front of you and says,
Black is white or, water doesn'tmake things wet.
(30:35):
If you're not curious, you mightjust accept that at face value.
So being curious is probably, acore part of how I've, I've
lived my life.
You know, it's what's comingnext.
What can we do?
you know, how, how am I curiousabout.
what skills I can acquire?
What does that person know thatI don't know?
And how can I learn that?
And you know, what does Katethink about leadership?
and, you know, I think you'reright, your podcast audience, by
(30:56):
the fact that they're listeningto this, are curious people.
They're interested to know howthey can improve.
They're interested to takelessons from other people's
experience instead of having tomake those same mistakes
themselves.
From an organizationalperspective, if I was to offer
sort of that, that one thing is,all organizations should be
looking at ways they can adoptthings that are coming, but
something that a lot oforganizations don't do or don't
(31:18):
do well is, find some sort ofmethodology for turning things
off.
It's often in organizations,someone's job to add something
to what we do.
I'm going to add this piece ofsoftware.
I'm going to add this serviceoffering.
I'm going to add this, you know,I'm going to change how we do X,
Y and Z.
What is often not done is noone's running around going that
thing there, we have four ofthose, so we're going to turn
(31:39):
that one off.
we're not going to offer thatservice anymore.
We're not going to carry thatproduct anymore.
you know, we're going torationalize our packaging.
So instead of having five SKUs,we're going to have three.
lots of organizations don't dothat because people who are the
boots on the ground in theorganizations very rarely see it
as their role to questionsomething that's already being
done.
And so I think Giving peoplethat, authority to have the
autonomy to question, what isbeing done.
(32:01):
I, a friend of mine used to workfor telcos in developing nations
all around the world.
And he worked for a telco where,if somebody had filled that
role, regardless of whether theywere the COO down to the work
experience kid, they actuallyhad a process where they had
physical badges.
They would give you a badge andthere was only, I don't know, a
dozen badges in there.
10, 000 people.
There was a dozen badges and ifyou used your badge for good in
(32:21):
the course of the year, you gotto keep it for another 12 months
and the badge was where youcould make a bust.
So if you were a 60, 000 a yearcall center operator, but you
saw the CFO doing somethingstupid that wasted money, you
could pull out your badge andcall a bust.
and that idea of empoweringeverybody in the organization to
look for.
(32:42):
inefficiencies, stupiddecisions, stupid processes, you
know, that kind of thing.
I think that's a really physicalmanifestation as a methodology
for finding ways to stop doingbad things.
But a lot of organizations lookfor ways to do better, but they
don't look for ways to stopdoing worse.
Kate Peardon (33:00):
Yeah, I Iove that because it also gives scope to
take on more things.
And I even think of the reallysimple things to unsubscribing
from things that are no longerneeded in your inbox.
Like some of the emails I thinkthat was useful at a time that
that's not useful anymore.
Unsubscribe.
So I've got space else.
I love that badge idea as wellas that 1%, like as a company,
(33:20):
what's a 1 percent thing thatyou can do that helps in future
with leadership.
And you've picked a couple ofyour own personal 1% ers.
your first one is, it's not thecritic who counts.
What does this mean for you?
Brett Wiskar (33:32):
first discovered that.
I like to think that Idiscovered it before it was
popularized, but I firstdiscovered that in the late 90s,
probably
Kate Peardon (33:38):
when goes into thing.
Brett Wiskar (33:40):
I was like, this is kind of the problem with,
things, probably once upon atime could have said it from
heart, but, but effectively, Youknow, it's very easy for people
to be, particularly those whoare interested in keeping the
status quo, it's very easy forpeople to go, oh, that guy tried
this innovation or that guytried to do something different
and it didn't work.
So we shouldn't, we should stoptrying.
(34:01):
But like, that's what BlackBerryand Kodak did, they stopped
trying at some point.
They went, what we're doing isenough.
and they did this deal withreality that said everything
will be fine so long as we keepdoing what we're doing.
probably 15 years ago, I washaving, having a meeting with
the CEO of a bank and insurancecompany in Australia, CEO of the
division.
(34:22):
And he was talking about theirinnovation program.
And he said, what theydiscovered when they had an idea
around innovation, they had toget two or three people on it
and they took them out of thebusiness and they sent them down
the road to a co working spacebecause if they kept it in the
business, the anti bodies of theorganization will kill the ideas
and And I thought it was areally interesting turn of
phrase because what he wasbasically saying is that there
were critics internally thatsaid, let's leave everything the
(34:44):
same.
Let's not do any change.
And it was a big organizationand 16, 000 staff, billions and
billions and billions inrevenue.
And so there was a lot of peoplewho were very interested,
invested in keeping things thesame.
And that critic within them wasthe thing that was preventing
their good ideas for the futureseeing the light of day.
And so that famous quote aboutnot the critic accounts and the
man in the arena.
(35:05):
And it's about him getting upand trying again.
if we do make mistakes, Welearned heaps.
We learned that was a bad ideaor the way in which we
approached that idea wasn'tgreat.
when you and I first startedworking together.
I did a project for, a federalgovernment body for sort of half
a million dollars in R& D and welooked at a piece of technology
and we, scoured the world forliterature on it.
We bought devices and we trieddifferent things and all sorts
(35:26):
of stuff.
And ultimately what we learnedwas that the hardware of this
disruptive technology wasn'tready yet.
It was probably five to 10 yearsaway before it was going to be
robust enough with long enoughbattery life and enough
resolution in the cameras andall sorts of bits and pieces.
So I had to go to this, I had togo to this person who'd given us
half a million dollars and say,Hey Sean, didn't work.
And he was like, great.
(35:47):
And I was like, sorry, great.
He was like, oh, fantastic.
How long will it be ready?
And I went, oh, you know, fiveor 10 years.
And he was like, what anoutstanding lesson.
I'm so glad we paid half amillion dollars.
What else do you learn?
And he was deadly serious.
he didn't expect that.
I was going to revolutionizetheir 46 billion industry with a
500, 000 investment.
What he wanted to know was howare we going to revolutionize it
(36:09):
in 100 different ways across 20years?
And so he was placing half amillion dollar bets left, right
and center.
And he was delighted that wedidn't achieve an outcome.
You know, he's the opposite ofthat.
You know, he's not the critic.
He's the guy who says you werein the arena and you were trying
to change things.
And that's outstanding.
So what can we learn from that?
he really inspired us to go andtry something else.
the next time we went back for ahundred grand and we tried
(36:31):
something else and we did abunch of different things.
And, what we sort of developedthis capacity to give him
insights.
So further out across thehorizon than anybody else was
looking for him.
A lot of people were looking toget him an outcome in the next
12 to 24 months.
We were saying, you know, what'sfive or 10 years look like?
And the fact that he was notcritical when we failed, or we
felt that we'd failed, was, wasa great endorsement.
Kate Peardon (36:53):
it might be Brene Brown talks about, like the
critic is the one in the standsversus you are the one that is
in, it's not the field.
It's not the stadium.
You used the word before
Brett Wiskar (37:03):
The arena.
Kate Peardon (37:03):
the arena.
Thank you.
It's about being in the arena.
There's a couple of books that Iknow are favorites of yours
because we've talked about themover the years.
James Clear's Atomic Habits,Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast
and Slow.
I know you and I have discussedthat one.
And one of my favorites,Essentialism, which is Greg
McKeown.
Brett Wiskar (37:22):
Yeah.
Daniel Kahneman's thinking fastand slow.
Unfortunately, Daniel Kahnemanpassed away, I think it was
March this year, and genuineloss to humanity in terms of the
departure of his intellect.
You know, for those, for yourlisteners who aren't aware, he
won the Nobel Prize forBehavioral Economics.
He worked really closely with aguy named Amos Tversky you know,
they did really seminal thinkingabout how people think, how we
(37:46):
all think, how we make mistakesand how our brain tricks us and
how we tell ourselves one thing,but we do another thing.
you know, that kind of stuff,thinking fast and slow is a
tough read.
it's a big, thick book andthere's a lot of psychology in
there, but genuinely changed mylife.
I, condiment is the godfather ofthe biases and heuristics and
really sort of your capacity tocritique.
(38:08):
whether you're thinking well andwhether you're making good
decisions is, is outlined inthat book.
So I think it's, you know,genuinely life changing kind of
stuff.
Um, if you, I think it's a 20hour audio book and for a lot of
people, that's probably the bestway to consume that.
And maybe it's not 20consecutive hours over the
course of a couple of weeks,maybe it's a chapter at a time,
but, but genuinely, a seminalpiece of literature on
psychology that, helps us allunderstand why we are.
(38:31):
As flawed as we are, and kind ofwhat shape those flaws take and
how we might guard against them.
So, you know, that's a, that's areally important thing.
James Clear is, is everywhere atthe moment, but.
the value of that book reallyis, you know, I think often
quoted that we don't rise to thelevel of our goals, but we fall
to the level of our systems.
I'm not a, not renowned forbeing phenomenally organized,
(38:51):
but, but a little bit oforganization can make a world of
difference.
So, you know, building yourorganization, uh, your
organizational skills into, intosystems so that you don't have
to deploy, your cognitiveefforts to make good practices
and good decisions every day.
and you know, something that hetalks about in that book is, you
know, what you want to do issort of behave a certain way and
it can become a habit.
(39:12):
But if you work from the otherdirection, if you, have some
sort of inherent identity aboutyourself, if that's stitched
into who you are, the habitbecomes thoughtless.
You just do.
you know, if you're somebody whotakes the stairs instead of the
elevator and you say that aboutyourself, you know, you never
think about getting in theelevator.
If you're somebody who doesn'ttake biscuits out of the tin in
(39:33):
the kitchen all the time becauseyou don't want to, be that guy,
if you can stitch that into youridentity, it becomes effortless
to, sneak a cookie so, you know,that, that sort of stuff I think
is fantastic.
Um, and the essentialism, GregMcKeown's essentialism book is
outstanding.
His, his followup book is, lessimpressive, but essentialism, is
really about picking what you'regoing to do and making sure you
(39:54):
do it well.
And, you know, a big pushtowards sort of outsourcing or
automating bits and pieces.
And it, and it's kind of.
The higher level thinking aroundthat.
but you know, if you're gonna dotwo things simultaneously,
you're gonna do them bothpoorly.
pick and choose what you'regonna do.
Do it.
Well get it done.
Do the next thing.
And, and that might be on yourto-do list for today, but it
might also be on your things youwanna achieve in 2025.
(40:16):
And, and so he has a lot of goodthinking in that book about
pursuing less things.
but pursuing higher value thingsthat really create the
difference for you as a personor for the organization that
you're in.
And I think that as a conceptis, is really strong.
Kate Peardon (40:31):
If what you've heard from Brett today in
regards to leadership orinnovation has been particularly
inspiring and you want to learna little bit more around change,
Brett does do keynote speakingand also comes into
organizations and doesinnovation consulting,
innovation program development,and conference speaking on what
are the futures of work, whatdoes adaptability and change
(40:52):
look like, and how you canactually embed some of this in
part of your company.
So if that is something thatyou're curious about, you can
find him at brettWiskar.
com.
And as he says, searching hisname will do it because there's
not a lot of Wiskars.
Brett Wiskar (41:06):
This is true.
Yeah.
Um, that's, that's exactlyright.
So Yeah.
I'd love to talk about thisstuff.
And, um, if you search for myson and you'll find me or my
brother and based on what we dofor a living, you won't think
it's you won't confuse the twoof us.
So,
Kate Peardon (41:18):
Well, now you've made it people curious to look
you up to see what your brotherdoes.
Brett Wiskar (41:23):
He's a, he works in water management for the
government.
So
Kate Peardon (41:26):
Oh, you've busted the myth now.
Thank you very much, Brett, forjoining today and sharing those
three leadership lessons aboutcommunication.
So having the conversation, um,about alignment and how that can
achieve amazing things andadaptability is always the key.
So please, those listenerstoday, thinking about what
you've taken from Brett and ourconversation, think about what
(41:47):
would be 1 percent that you'dlike to apply, uh, because a
series of 1 percent is make usbetter as a leader.
We don't have to go and changeeverything in one day.
It might just be one small thingthat you've taken from today.
so much.
Could be that about yourstructure and setting something
up as a leader or taking theleadership quiz, or having a
look at a little bit of thesebooks that Brett has suggested
or some of his work on futureand innovation.
(42:08):
So thanks very much, Brett.
And
Brett Wiskar (42:11):
Thank you.
Kate Peardon (42:11):
you sharing your lessons today.
Brett Wiskar (42:13):
Great to talk to you as always.
Brett Wisker, our guest today has spent the last
25 years in digital technologyand innovation in Australia and
the UK.
He has worked with some of thelargest brands in the country on
their digital roadmap andinnovation programs, is a
recipient of numerous awards anda frequent speaker on the topics
of innovation, adaptability.
He's currently the head ofdigital innovation at Australian
(00:56):
Catholic University by day andan innovation consultant and
keynote speaker for the rest ofthe time.
His role at Australian CatholicUniversity is to plot the
digital innovation pathways forthe university, which impacts 2,
500 staff and more than 30, 000students.
Brett and I met about eightyears ago, and I have been
witness to his leadershipjourney over these years.
(01:18):
As someone that has workedclosely with him, I can share
that he's never afraid to havethe conversation, no matter how
awkward or uncomfortable it is.
And this is quite refreshing ina leader.
Today, we're going to be jumpinginto three of his key leadership
lessons.
Communication, always have theconversation, which is exactly
what I've experienced with him.
How adaptability is the key andwe're almost never right.
(01:41):
So we need to be great atconstant change and someone who
focuses on innovation.
This really makes sense thatthis is a key leadership lesson
for him.
And the third leadership lessonis about alignment.
let's welcome our guest BrettWiskar and jump into these
leadership lessons and what hissuggestions are for these one
percenters, uh, whether books,phrases, or podcasts that really
(02:04):
have helped him as a leader.
Welcome Brett.
Brett Wiskar (02:06):
Thanks, Kate.
Thanks for having me.
I'm glad to be here.
Kate Peardon (02:09):
So Brett and I met, I think it's probably about
eight years ago.
And I think through this eightyears, you and I have witnessed
a lot of each other's leadershipjourneys, the ups and the downs
and the around the outside.
and it has enabled me to seethese leadership lessons that
we're going to talk about today,I can see each of these
leadership lessons and some ofthe experiences that we've had
(02:30):
together, but I look forward tochatting through them today and
see if how I've witnessed yourleadership is actually how you
see it from the inside as well.
Brett Wiskar (02:37):
That will be interesting.
Um, obviously very differentfrom what everybody else sees.
But yeah, it's a, I guess as weage and as we gain experience
and as we interact with more andmore people, we're all on a
leadership journey.
some of us more deliberatelythan others.
And probably, you know, backwhen you and I first met, I
think I'd been a leader in a lotof different situations for a
long time, but at no point wasit anything like conscious
(02:59):
leadership.
I was just doing what was infront of me and, found myself
running a team of 60 people andnever had considered what
leadership looked like or what amethodology might look like, or
how people saw me as a leader orhow they wanted to be led.
None of that stuff sort ofentered into my conscious
thought.
I was just trying to get anoutcome.
over time from a group ofpeople.
And, it wasn't really planned.
(03:20):
And, and, you know, probably inthe last decade, as I've
matured, and as I've worked withpeople like you, I probably have
seen people who, take a moreconsidered approach to
leadership and try todeliberately, improve their
skills as a leader and onboarddifferent philosophies and
methodologies and stuff to tryto be, you know, better leaders
for the people that they'releading.
So somewhere on the line, Iprobably flipped that switch and
became a little bit moreconscious about it.
Kate Peardon (03:42):
I think your story is a perfect example of what so
many people go through becauseoften we get really good at what
we're good at technically, andthen because you're so good at
what you do technically,whatever that job is that you've
trained for, uh, you end up thengetting a team of people doing
what you do.
Which is totally a differentskillset and it's like starting
your career at the start again,but no one tells you this.
(04:03):
No one says, Hey, leadership isa completely different skillset
and it's going to feel awkward.
And it's something we need topractice and learn a bit about,
and put in these new skills andtactics.
But yeah, most people get throwninto it exactly like you were,
which I think is a wonderfulplace to start.
Cause thinking of yourleadership journey, you say now
leadership is a.
conscious thought, and it'ssomething that you focus on, but
(04:26):
there wasn't always the case.
Can you give us the cliffs notesor the highlights of how you've
got
Brett Wiskar (04:31):
Yeah, look,
Kate Peardon (04:31):
are at the moment?
Brett Wiskar (04:33):
I probably, um, you know, always was somebody
who threw myself into whatevercame along and I've had an odd
career in that, what I studiedat university.
I never ended up working at andI worked in sort of different
fields in different countriesand doing different things.
Bye.
you know, I, I worked in the UKabout 20 plus years ago, and I
turned up into, into a veryspecific technical role, in an
(04:54):
IT department, but it became aclear that the part of the
reason they were recruitingthere was that they'd had a
failure in how that departmentfunctioned in that organization.
And after I'd been there forabout five minutes, what became
abundantly clear was there wasjust a leadership void in that
organ, in that part of thatorganization.
And they were really lookingfor.
something to change about that.
and so, you know, in a veryshort window of time, I kind of
(05:16):
went from being the new hire tothe guy that I asked him to run,
run that section, you know, ofwhat was a global company that
had sort of a few hundred staffand a few dozen or so offices
around the globe.
And they kind of went, can yoube in charge of this?
And I was like, yeah, I can bein charge of this.
again, probably still hadn'tgiven any thought to what
leadership looked like, it wasprobably the first time, that I
had to manage more than one ortwo people.
(05:38):
and the output was much moreconsiderate and strategic about
where was the organization goingand what were they trying to get
from it and why did thisfunction exist and what was
their medium term, long termview.
When I started to see, the P& Land the balance sheet and the HR
challenges of other leaders.
And, there was discussion abouthow the organization was
structured and what theiroperating model was and all
(05:58):
those sorts of things that I'dworked in those environments.
Where that stuff was, part ofthe landscape, but I didn't have
visibility on it.
and so I did that and then, fastforward four or five years, and
I ended up owning a half sharein a company that we grew from
seven staff to 70 staff over thecourse of about three or four
years.
And.
was very technical roles thatpeople were filling, but I was,
(06:19):
I found myself in a leadershipposition and I think I've
probably shared with you in thepast and I'm actually reasonably
comfortable as a leader.
What I'm not comfortable as is amanager.
the activity of, you know, afriend of mine says that
managing is a verb.
and it's something you have todo.
leadership, I think is a littleless like that.
It can be more about who you areor who you turn up as.
(06:41):
you know, what I have found thatof the challenge with being a
manager, and I'm not necessarilytalking about, you know,
micromanagement, but part of thechallenge of being a manager is
if you take on that day to dayactivity management process,
people management process,People step back and insist that
you do that for them againtomorrow and the next day and
the next day and the next day.
Whereas, you know, leadership, Ido think, you know, when I look
(07:02):
back at periods of time whereI've worked with groups of
people or companies that havebeen remarkably successful, it
tends to be well led.
whether that's by me or somebodyelse, but You're encouraging
people and coaching them andsetting them forth on a journey.
We've agreed on what the journeyis and if they need any help
getting there, let me know.
But if not, I'll catch you in alittle while.
And whether that little while isFriday or a month from Friday or
(07:23):
next quarter, leadership sort ofaffords them the opportunity to
step up and make some of theirdecisions.
Whereas management tends to bedo these things and then those
things and the scope of you tomake decisions is only limited
to this and anything outside ofthat, you'll have to come back
to me.
it's, been an interestingjourney, you know, my day to day
activities at the moment is, issort of 14 people to lead, but
(07:43):
they're very diverse and theywork, you know, they have
stakeholders in different areasand, leadership's always a
challenge and you always have tohave a think about it.
But the other thing is, It's sopersonality driven in that, you
know, if I've got an accountantor a software developer or
somebody who's working for me,who's going to execute a task,
inspiring them to execute taskis one thing, or managing them
to execute the task is onething.
But From a leadershipperspective, you really kind of
(08:05):
have to consider who's thisperson, you know, what motivates
them?
Why are they wired like that?
And for some people inleadership roles, that can be
really, really challenging.
They're just,"I don't reallywant to have to care about that.
I just want outcomes." Andyou're like, well, you'll get
astonishingly easier outcomes ifyou do understand that stuff.
Kate Peardon (08:22):
Absolutely.
Your leadership style is verymuch like the visionary leader.
And I'm not sure if we havetalked about this particular,
like the Goleman's leadershipstyles.
There is a leadership surveyquiz on my website, where you
can spend five minutes and findout a little bit about your
particular leadership style.
There's so many differentleadership.
surveys and profiles, and all ofthem are good as long as it
(08:44):
tells you something that'suseful.
so this is just one of the manyones, but this particular
visionary style Brett's facialresponse is not sure I've heard
of that one, which I'll explaina little bit about because Brett
and I've done a lot ofleadership profiling over the
years, but we haven't done thisone.
The visionary style ofleadership is the one that it
says, Hey, we're going here.
(09:05):
It points to the future.
It says, come with me.
let's go.
And they often take really bigsteps because they can see the
big picture and they're off.
and sometimes the challenge islike helping people come along
with them.
Talking about the differencebetween management and
leadership.
I totally understand that.
because for you, leadership issetting the vision and setting
the, big picture of where we'regoing and Hey, if you need some
(09:26):
help getting the steps there,I'll help you do that.
But if you can figure that out,that's great.
Brett Wiskar (09:29):
Yeah.
And I look back at kind of, youknow, what you said then about
that style resonates with me.
I look back on probably what Ithink is the most productive,
successful individual windowthat I've worked in.
and the way that worked was Ifunctioned as a leader, but I
had managers.
And so I was leading a largegroup of people, but within that
group of people, there weremanagers.
And so long as I was able tocommunicate the vision about
(09:51):
where we were going as a group,there were managers who were
leading discrete teams, but theywere saying, right, well, you've
heard from Brett, and this iswhere we're going.
And this is why we're goingthere.
And, and the why we're goingthere is really, really
important.
And often.
Not necessarily something thatall leaders grasp, but, if
you've got some people who arereally wired up around
(10:11):
management, them giving them avision to, that you're leading
towards and giving them, thatvision, allowing them to manage
the process towards it.
And it's not just, HR stylemanagement, project management
and resource management.
you know, financial managementand those sorts of things are
part of that program.
So, you know, we talk about,organizations that are
bureaucratic quite frequentlyhave a lot of management, not a
lot of leadership.
(10:32):
the public services is, vilifiedaround the world probably
because of that.
Whereas, you know, if we talkabout sort of, The sometimes
lionized capitalist methodologytends to be more about
leadership and less about, wetend to hero some of these
successful ventures that are allabout striving for incredible
outcomes.
(10:52):
And, a lot of thoseorganizations are burning the
people in their ranks on the waybecause, you know, they're not
instigating that managementaspect that helps people get on
that journey.
I don't, you know, I have beenaccused in the past and probably
rightly so about taking twolarger steps.
And that's probably a lesson tosort of, you know, I do see the
bigger picture.
I do see where we're trying toget to in five years and what
the technology is going to doand those kinds of things.
(11:13):
And not everybody's wired up youknow.
to respond that way.
And so, you know, being able tobreak that, down and give people
an area that they feelcomfortable in functioning, but
also stretching them.
You know, you probably knowbetter than I do, but I think
there's some sort of sciencearound.
If you give someone a task,that's about 4% outside of their
current range of comfort, that'sthe optimum window for improving
(11:35):
their performance and stretchingthem.
If you give somebody somethingthat's 200% above what they
currently do, it breaks them.
If I've got a vision that's fiveyears from now and it's
1,000,000% on where we are, howdo we back that off and go,
"What's the next 30 days looklike?" Because this person might
only be able to handle 30 daysof vision, whereas that person
over there might be able tohandle the next quarter or the
next two years.
Kate Peardon (11:54):
And I think this style of knowing your people and
knowing what people can do andwhere that edge is for them is a
key part of your particularleadership style.
And you mentioned also about youhave a preference of leadership
and how you like to lead.
And I think for people that arelistening, when something is
your preference, it doesn't meanyou can't do the other.
It doesn't mean that you're notable.
It's just that this comes moreeasily to you.
(12:15):
So for Brett, it comes moreeasily to set the bigger
picture.
He thinks quickly, he worksquickly, he takes big steps.
And I know for you working on,well, how can I make sure people
are along with the journey?
How can I I know I work bestwhen I have managers enacting
the strategy and I give thebigger picture.
And I think this has reallythreaded in with one of your
leadership lessons that you'retalking about today, which is
(12:37):
about communication and havingthe conversation and something
that I've noticed with workingwith you, no matter how awkward
or uncomfortable theconversation is, you've always
been one that has stepped intoit.
Brett Wiskar (12:47):
Yeah, I mean, I think conversations delayed tend
to be worse conversations.
You know, there's that otheranalogy that good news is bad
news delivered early.
probably 15 years ago, I went toan Australian Institute of
Management function in Brisbaneand there was a speaker and
leadership management lesson wasabout having a conversation and
she pulled it apart quiteextensively.
(13:07):
But what it really came down towas unpleasant conversations are
unpleasant, but if you don'thave a conversation with
somebody about something that'sgoing wrong, every conversation
from that moment onwards untilit's resolved is going to be
unpleasant.
So, it's not about being hardarse or coming down on people
like a ton of bricks, wheneverthey colour outside the lines,
(13:27):
but.
You know, how do you expectpeople to know which lines need
to be adhered to and which onesdon't if you just let them
scribble all over the page?
performance managed people, I'vegone to HR and I've sat down,
you know, in largerorganisations and said, what's
our methodology and how are wegoing to do this?
And we've used it to activelycorrect people's, Performance
around what the organisation'sexpectations was and those kinds
(13:49):
of things.
And that stuff's reallychallenging.
But, you know, when I look backat that, I kind of look at the
conversations preceding thatthat we didn't have is probably
a failing on me.
If I'd been saying, hey, That'sunacceptable and we're missing
these deadlines and we needbetter performance from you
here, here, here.
If I'd had a dozen littleconversations with somebody in
the three months prior to that,we probably wouldn't have had to
have the big conversation.
(14:10):
And so, you know, there aretimes because of interpersonal
relationships where I haven'tnecessarily lent into that or,
that person's new or that personI find intimidating or, or, you
know, that person's gotpolitical clout in the
organization never when I'vedelayed those conversations have
I sat down at some point in thefuture and gone, thank God I
waited, So yeah, I think, Ithink having that conversation
(14:32):
and that transparency aroundthat when people understand that
you will have thoseconversations, but you're also
not, personally attacking themor, you know, coming after them
or, or have an axe to grind.
And I'm really, really consciousabout when I have got to have
tough conversations with people.
I am then not sickly sweet, butI am then very conscious about
making sure that, that, we'vecovered it.
(14:52):
We've discussed it.
It's done.
My expectations of you aren'tany less than they were.
it's not a vendetta.
It's about it's about makingsure that we're all going in the
right direction.
And a lot of that is aroundalignment in that, you know, if
I've got, I don't know, five orsix people in my team and 80
percent of them are rowing theboat in a particular direction
and someone else is not pullingon their all or, not,
(15:13):
participating actively.
you know, part of the leadershipis not just how do you lead that
person, but how do you lead theother people?
How do they see what you'redoing about this element that
isn't necessarily getting youthe outcomes that you need?
because if you can createalignment in that group of
people, you can then step backand go and do something else.
You can say, well, I'm going togo and start this new initiative
that we're going to be lookingat in three to six months time,
(15:34):
when you guys have finisheddoing what we're doing here.
But now that we've got alignmenthappening in this group, you
guys are going to self correctand self support and self manage
your way to achieve thatoutcome.
Kate Peardon (15:44):
And I know that is one that's your second
leadership lesson is aboutalignment and how do you get
alignment within your team?
You mentioned about, so yourfirst leadership lesson about
communication and having theconversation.
so your first leadership lessonabout having the conversation
and communication, the addedbonus to that is that your team
has.
(16:05):
psychological safety, that theyknow, even if it's
uncomfortable, that you'llactually talk to them about it
and you won't avoid it.
So that's one bonus of havingthe awkward conversations.
and then the other bonus foryour second leadership lesson
about alignment is exactly, asyou said, if you are not
prepared, Keeping people inalignment and sharing, okay,
we're going in differentdirections.
We need to be going here.
(16:26):
And if you're not having theconversation that everyone on
your team knows you have tohave, and if you're listening to
this and you think about yourteam and you think there is
someone I need to have aconversation with, everybody
else in the team absolutelyknows that.
They're waiting for you.
Brett Wiskar (16:39):
I don't know whether it'll make the final
cut, but I have a story aboutthat.
So I, owned this softwarecompany.
There was, we were growing, youknow, at one point we were
hiring a person a week for sortof six months.
And the organization, probablysaw headcount wise, a hundred
percent growth year on year forsort of two or three years.
and you know, we had a projectmanager and he came to us and
said, we're looking for anotherproject manager.
(16:59):
I know a guy.
So we hired the guy.
The guy came in and he'd donevarious different things in his
career.
We hired him and put him in thebusiness and he was, charged
with running these clients andthese projects and working with
graphic designers and softwaredevelopers and agencies that he
worked with.
it was a large organization.
I was often in charge of sales.
My business partner had a lotof, responsibilities in terms of
our technical infrastructure anda couple of key accounts that he
(17:21):
was managing.
And we had, for want of a betterdescription, we had day jobs.
So we plonked this guy in andgave him clients and let the
other project managers coach himto an outcome.
our admin manager came to us atsome point and said, that guy,
his probation is coming to anend next Wednesday.
And we went, oh, that, you know,that three months whizzed by
really quickly.
yeah, well, what do we thinkabout him?
And, you know, we had aconversation.
(17:41):
Well, I don't know.
I haven't been wowed and Ihaven't been super impressed
that he didn't, didn't do thatthing and he didn't do this
thing.
And we, when we sort of comparednotes, we realized that both of
us had kind of had some notgreat experiences with him.
And so we called him one or twoother people from the business
and they went, Oh yeah, I'm notconvinced about him.
Anyway, after sort of somediscussion, we decided that we
wouldn't extend his probation.
We would just end it, that hewasn't a good fit for the
(18:03):
organization.
So we had that conversation.
He departed.
That was unfortunate.
The guy went on and got anotherjob and it was all well.
What was really interesting isin the seven or eight days after
that, I probably had 12 or 14people from the organization
come to me and go, Thank God yougot rid of him.
He was awful.
He was useless at this and thisand this and this.
And he did this other thing andhe upset this person and he
(18:24):
pissed off his client.
And I was like, where was thatinformation?
And And so sometimes you can'tsee that sort of stuff.
what I realized out of that is,is that you can't see
everything.
And what you actually needed inthat group was a culture where
there was not only alignmentfrom him about what we were
trying to achieve, but we neededthe values in that group of
people to kind of go, if he'snot aligned.
(18:45):
that has a negative impact onyou and the work you're doing
and you need to be vocal aboutthat and that you need to, you
know, you can't kind of go,well, well, he's my project
manager and I'm a lowly softwaredeveloper, so I'm just going to
live with it being disastrous.
You have to go, no, it's, It'smy job to make things better.
It's my job to get outcomes forthe organization.
It's my job to get outcomes fromthe clients.
And so, this guy wasn't aligned,but what became clear was that
(19:06):
my team didn't feel empowered todo anything about that.
And that was a failing on ourbehalf.
and you know, I probably learnedfrom that a lot about sort of,
you know, how do you onboard newpeople and how do you create
alignment about them, but alsohow do you give everybody in the
group authority to, to be anactive participant in what
leadership looks like and whatthe outcomes were looking like
(19:27):
are getting.
and, and I found it interestingthat they felt comfortable
enough to tell me about the poorthings that were happening after
I'd done something about it, butnot before.
there's some lessons in that.
Kate Peardon (19:38):
And interesting.
That becomes part of yourculture because then they
remember that and they rememberhow it was dealt with, and that
becomes part of the stories thatcome from there.
Brett Wiskar (19:46):
another anecdote doesn't have to make the cut,
but in that same organization,we had a guy who had obviously
worked in some pretty unsavoryenvironments is very good at his
job.
and his default way of showingup was almost combative with.
particularly with authority andmanagement.
And at some point he didsomething which was pretty,
pretty ordinary.
And, you know, my businesspartner at the time wanted to
(20:06):
strangle him.
And I went, well, why don't wehave a conversation with him?
So I planned how I'd have theconversation.
I brought him in and we had, theway I would describe it is it
was a compassionateconversation, but it was also,
We gave him an opportunity to bewho he was and share why he was
that way, but also highlightthat how he had dealt with some
things wasn't acceptable for abunch of different reasons.
(20:28):
really challenging and my heartrates through the roof and I'm
not a big guy on confrontationand you know, I sweated bullets
about it for sort of 16 hoursovernight while we wait until we
had the conversation with himthe next morning and, and stuff.
Anyway, we had the conversation.
and I think because of how weplanned to have that very tough
conversation, he respondedreally well.
And I, and again, because he wasquite a competitive kind of guy,
(20:48):
I was really, I was quiteconcerned about how that was
going to unfold.
So we had that conversation, heleft.
Now that was.
12 years ago.
I got a message from him twoweeks ago.
Uh, he lives in Canada.
He's moving back to Australia.
He can't wait to catch up withme.
Kate Peardon (21:02):
Why do you think that is?
Brett Wiskar (21:04):
I think if you handle people well and you
listen to how they are and whothey are and value them for who
they are, you know, it is a bitof that.
People won't remember what yousaid, but they'll remember how
they made you feel.
everybody wants to be treatedlike a person.
Everybody wants to be treatedcompassionately.
you know, someone I know sayseverybody wants to come to work
with a sense of purpose and gohome with a sense of
achievement.
I think that's probablyuniversal.
(21:24):
but you can do that in a bunchof different ways.
And there are probably good waysto do it and good levels of
engagement that make people feelvalued and seen.
you know, there are managers whocome in and go, this is where we
go.
I'm going to do this and thisand this.
I need you to do these things.
Thanks very much.
I'm out of here.
do you know these people?
And, you know, you don't have toknow their dog's name.
Ideally you would, but, youknow, there's a finite amount
(21:46):
when you're managing a group ofpeople to how much you can
actually know.
But you can also know just whatsomeone's like.
how fearful are they?
Do they operate in psychologicalsafety?
What are their triggers?
learning that kind of stuffabout people can, make them feel
valued and make them feelcomfortable and they'll do
better work in thosecircumstances as well.
Kate Peardon (22:06):
And there's some really great stats around how
people don't have to agree withwhat you are doing or saying as
a leader, but as long as theyfeel that it's fair, like you're
treating them fairly, or you'vegone through a fair process, it
doesn't actually matter thatthey don't agree.
If they feel there's a fairness,then they're generally on board
or supportive.
And I wonder if in thisinstance, that was the case.
(22:27):
They might not have agreed withwhat happened or they might not
have liked it.
Might've found it veryuncomfortable.
But If they found that youtreated them fairly, that's
actually the feeling that stays.
Brett Wiskar (22:36):
And I think that kind of aligns, you know, it was
communication.
We had the conversation, wecreated some real alignment.
and, and I think you're probablyright.
I think he probably walked outof that room going.
I was a bit of a dillyyesterday.
They've addressed it, but theydid it fairly.
They didn't rant and rave.
They didn't kick me out.
They didn't fire me.
it was a process that how hebehaved justified some sort of
intervention.
(22:56):
So we had the intervention, butwe were considered about how we
went about it.
we didn't vilify him.
And following that, it wasreally important for us, you
know, When we went to the pub ona Friday afternoon and bought
beers for everybody that he wasincluded in that and he was
welcome and, and that therewasn't, a legacy, to be
prosecuted against him from anongoing perspective.
Kate Peardon (23:15):
Now Brett, well as a leader and as well as a day
job, you are often seen speakingand doing keynotes on all things
about future and innovation.
Now your third leadership lessonis all about adaptability and
about constant change, which Ithink aligns perfectly with
these topics that you speak withall about innovation and change
(23:35):
and change is the only constant.
Why is it that adaptability hasbeen such an important
leadership lesson for you?
Brett Wiskar (23:42):
the way I think about that, Kate, is, you know,
humans on this planet are at thetop of the food chain simply
because of our capacity to beadaptable.
we have, you know, differentbrains and different structures
and different capacity to copein all sorts of different
environments.
And that's how we got where weyou know, I spent a lot of time
looking at technology and it'svery obvious that technology
(24:03):
changes things all the time, butIf we look back, 20 or 30 years
to when, you know, some of yourlisteners will have started
their career, things were wildlydifferent.
iPhones didn't exist pre 2007.
and for some of us, 2007 seemslike yesterday, but, you know,
15 year old who was born in 2009and, you know, he's six foot
one.
(24:24):
is out there.
That's not going away.
There's a lot of narrative abouttechnology, driven change and
disruption and all that kind ofstuff.
But the key to all of that isour capacity to adapt.
and so we've seen organizationswho don't adapt and the
organizations cease to exist.
But within our organizations,all of us I think have worked
with people who really struggleto adapt.
(24:46):
and you know, I tell the storyin some of my keynotes, you
know, periodically, and Iremember this from sort of,
decades gone by where theautomotive industry was
disappearing in Australia.
And, you know, Channel 7 Newswould turn up to the front of
the gates and there'd be some,some 40, 50 year old guy
standing there with a placardcomplaining about the fact that
his job was being taken becausethe factory was shutting down.
(25:07):
And they'd interview him andsort of say, what do you think?
And he says, you know, I'veworked here since I was 16 and
my son's got an apprenticeshiphere and he also works here.
And the unwritten aspect to thatwas this person said to the
organization, if I commit toworking for you 40 hours a week
forever, will you commit to mehaving a job forever?
(25:27):
And the organization was silentand the guy went, I'll take that
silence as a yes.
there's a lot of people whoenter into their place of
employment or the economy thatthey take their company into,
where they sort of do thissilent deal where they say, if I
do these things, the world willlook after me.
history is littered with peoplethat weren't looked after on
that sort of basis.
And so the key to being,relevant in the future as an
(25:50):
organization or a team or aleader or a product is about
Being flexible and adaptable towhatever the new environment is.
So, you know, I'm doing a lot ofstuff in AI at the moment.
You know, three years ago, thatwasn't a thing.
But what we're learning is thatthat's a tool.
It's a tool that will make someaspects of the things that some
people do go away, but also freeup time for them to do other
(26:11):
things.
And it's just a tool.
You know, once upon a time,Telex was a thing and then fax
machines were a thing.
And, fax machine repair man isno longer a thing.
but at some point it probablywas.
And, you know, You know,ultimately, something that we're
relying on right here today isnot going to exist at some point
in the future.
So people are able to adapt tothat, and I think that that's
really important.
(26:31):
So if we look inside anorganization, you know, if
you've got a 200 personorganization, a 20 person
organization, or a 2, 500 personorganization, something that we
do today is going to change.
And as people, we can look atthat change and it might be,
pushed on us by an industry oran economy or a piece of
technology or a competitor.
(26:53):
But if we look at that piece ofchange and go, I hate it, I'm
not gonna, then, you know, thatway ruin lies.
and so, you know, sitting downwith people and going, this
thing's changing, we're going tohave a new finance system or a
new HR system, or we've got anew competitor, or this new
piece of technology is comingin, we're going to have to
figure out how to incorporate itinto what we're doing.
That has to be what we're doing.
(27:13):
And there's a, in sort of theinnovation circles, we talk
about exploit or explore.
and exploit is what are theassets of the business?
What's the labour of thebusiness?
What's the market?
What's the number of clientsthat they've got?
What's their revenue?
What's their balance sheet looklike?
Those are the things you putthem all together and you
exploit them and that's how youmake profit.
Explorers, what are the thingsthat are coming down the
pipeline?
Or what are the things that weare not currently exploiting?
(27:34):
And how are we going tointroduce that?
And businesses that onlyexploit, die.
Because at some point, theeconomy they play in, or, you
know, the MySpace is the worldgetting disrupted by the
Facebooks.
And Facebook didn't see Snapchatcoming, but they bought
Instagram.
And, you know, all those sortsof things.
You know, there was a period oftime where Apple was dead in the
water.
and now they're not, becausethey explored, and they
(27:56):
explored, and they explored, andthey explored, and they
explored.
And, and then, you know, I dosome, open market innovation
consulting, and there's a numberof organizations out there that
when you talk to the board, orthe CEO, or the GM about what
their strategy is aboutexploring things, it's non
existent.
what's your budget around that?
It's, it's non existent.
so when I say adaptability is akey from a leadership
perspective, you've got to knowwhat you're adapting to.
(28:18):
you need to build adaptive,muscles that make you more
adaptable as a, as anorganization and as a team, but
you also have to be out therelooking to find out what that
thing is.
Sometimes it's going to turn upout of the blue and you're going
to have to work really hard toadapt, but if you can.
Get a bit of a head start onwhat's coming and say, well,
we're going to adopt this andwe're going to change that and
we're going to, you know, not dothis anymore.
(28:38):
that sort of adaptability, youknow, what are we going to keep
doing?
What are we going to invest moreheavily in?
What are we going to stop?
as organizations, I think thatstuff's really important.
Kate Peardon (28:46):
Have you got practical, tangible one
percenter that people listeningto this podcast are thinking,
okay, I need to be more open toadapting or be more aware of it,
or what's one thing that theycould do to help with
adaptability or being preparedfor this constant change?
Brett Wiskar (29:05):
from a personal perspective, I think, lifelong
learning is a, is a key part ofwhat all of us intend to work
for more than the number threeweeks in our lives really need
to embrace.
and there is an insane, youknow, never before in the
history of humanity has therebeen such an opportunity to
learn yourself.
There's, Khan Academy andLinkedIn Learning and Coursera
(29:25):
and Google has courses and
Kate Peardon (29:26):
a lot.
Brett Wiskar (29:27):
sorts of things.
or you can go to the freeversion of ChatGPT and ask it to
teach you something and it'llteach you, if you're currently
not.
Improving your skills.
That's on you.
so that's from a personalperspective.
I think that is a really centralthing is that we have to be
lifelong learners.
We have to lean into this and itdoesn't have to be, you know,
embarking on a four year parttime degree in something that
(29:48):
you, you know, you feel theindustry's move forward on.
Very rarely these days arepeople hired based on the
qualifications that they've got.
people get hired based on whattheir potential is to achieve
something for the organization.
They need you to know stuff, nothave a certificate that says you
learned something.
so I think the critical thingfor individuals is about that
learning.
Kate Peardon (30:07):
That openness or ability to learn interest.
I mean, the fact that they'relistening to this podcast is a
sign that you're open andinterested in learning.
Brett Wiskar (30:14):
Yeah, and, one of the big things around that is
curiosity, something that I reada while ago is that, some people
in the States did some studyaround conspiracy theorists and
people who believe all sorts of,often sort of right wing kind of
things.
One thing they identified isthat they're just fundamentally
not curious in that if somebodystands in front of you and says,
Black is white or, water doesn'tmake things wet.
(30:35):
If you're not curious, you mightjust accept that at face value.
So being curious is probably, acore part of how I've, I've
lived my life.
You know, it's what's comingnext.
What can we do?
you know, how, how am I curiousabout.
what skills I can acquire?
What does that person know thatI don't know?
And how can I learn that?
And you know, what does Katethink about leadership?
and, you know, I think you'reright, your podcast audience, by
(30:56):
the fact that they're listeningto this, are curious people.
They're interested to know howthey can improve.
They're interested to takelessons from other people's
experience instead of having tomake those same mistakes
themselves.
From an organizationalperspective, if I was to offer
sort of that, that one thing is,all organizations should be
looking at ways they can adoptthings that are coming, but
something that a lot oforganizations don't do or don't
(31:18):
do well is, find some sort ofmethodology for turning things
off.
It's often in organizations,someone's job to add something
to what we do.
I'm going to add this piece ofsoftware.
I'm going to add this serviceoffering.
I'm going to add this, you know,I'm going to change how we do X,
Y and Z.
What is often not done is noone's running around going that
thing there, we have four ofthose, so we're going to turn
(31:39):
that one off.
we're not going to offer thatservice anymore.
We're not going to carry thatproduct anymore.
you know, we're going torationalize our packaging.
So instead of having five SKUs,we're going to have three.
lots of organizations don't dothat because people who are the
boots on the ground in theorganizations very rarely see it
as their role to questionsomething that's already being
done.
And so I think Giving peoplethat, authority to have the
autonomy to question, what isbeing done.
(32:01):
I, a friend of mine used to workfor telcos in developing nations
all around the world.
And he worked for a telco where,if somebody had filled that
role, regardless of whether theywere the COO down to the work
experience kid, they actuallyhad a process where they had
physical badges.
They would give you a badge andthere was only, I don't know, a
dozen badges in there.
10, 000 people.
There was a dozen badges and ifyou used your badge for good in
(32:21):
the course of the year, you gotto keep it for another 12 months
and the badge was where youcould make a bust.
So if you were a 60, 000 a yearcall center operator, but you
saw the CFO doing somethingstupid that wasted money, you
could pull out your badge andcall a bust.
and that idea of empoweringeverybody in the organization to
look for.
(32:42):
inefficiencies, stupiddecisions, stupid processes, you
know, that kind of thing.
I think that's a really physicalmanifestation as a methodology
for finding ways to stop doingbad things.
But a lot of organizations lookfor ways to do better, but they
don't look for ways to stopdoing worse.
Kate Peardon (33:00):
Yeah, I Iove that because it also gives scope to
take on more things.
And I even think of the reallysimple things to unsubscribing
from things that are no longerneeded in your inbox.
Like some of the emails I thinkthat was useful at a time that
that's not useful anymore.
Unsubscribe.
So I've got space else.
I love that badge idea as wellas that 1%, like as a company,
(33:20):
what's a 1 percent thing thatyou can do that helps in future
with leadership.
And you've picked a couple ofyour own personal 1% ers.
your first one is, it's not thecritic who counts.
What does this mean for you?
Brett Wiskar (33:32):
first discovered that.
I like to think that Idiscovered it before it was
popularized, but I firstdiscovered that in the late 90s,
probably
Kate Peardon (33:38):
when goes into thing.
Brett Wiskar (33:40):
I was like, this is kind of the problem with,
things, probably once upon atime could have said it from
heart, but, but effectively, Youknow, it's very easy for people
to be, particularly those whoare interested in keeping the
status quo, it's very easy forpeople to go, oh, that guy tried
this innovation or that guytried to do something different
and it didn't work.
So we shouldn't, we should stoptrying.
(34:01):
But like, that's what BlackBerryand Kodak did, they stopped
trying at some point.
They went, what we're doing isenough.
and they did this deal withreality that said everything
will be fine so long as we keepdoing what we're doing.
probably 15 years ago, I washaving, having a meeting with
the CEO of a bank and insurancecompany in Australia, CEO of the
division.
(34:22):
And he was talking about theirinnovation program.
And he said, what theydiscovered when they had an idea
around innovation, they had toget two or three people on it
and they took them out of thebusiness and they sent them down
the road to a co working spacebecause if they kept it in the
business, the anti bodies of theorganization will kill the ideas
and And I thought it was areally interesting turn of
phrase because what he wasbasically saying is that there
were critics internally thatsaid, let's leave everything the
(34:44):
same.
Let's not do any change.
And it was a big organizationand 16, 000 staff, billions and
billions and billions inrevenue.
And so there was a lot of peoplewho were very interested,
invested in keeping things thesame.
And that critic within them wasthe thing that was preventing
their good ideas for the futureseeing the light of day.
And so that famous quote aboutnot the critic accounts and the
man in the arena.
(35:05):
And it's about him getting upand trying again.
if we do make mistakes, Welearned heaps.
We learned that was a bad ideaor the way in which we
approached that idea wasn'tgreat.
when you and I first startedworking together.
I did a project for, a federalgovernment body for sort of half
a million dollars in R& D and welooked at a piece of technology
and we, scoured the world forliterature on it.
We bought devices and we trieddifferent things and all sorts
(35:26):
of stuff.
And ultimately what we learnedwas that the hardware of this
disruptive technology wasn'tready yet.
It was probably five to 10 yearsaway before it was going to be
robust enough with long enoughbattery life and enough
resolution in the cameras andall sorts of bits and pieces.
So I had to go to this, I had togo to this person who'd given us
half a million dollars and say,Hey Sean, didn't work.
And he was like, great.
(35:47):
And I was like, sorry, great.
He was like, oh, fantastic.
How long will it be ready?
And I went, oh, you know, fiveor 10 years.
And he was like, what anoutstanding lesson.
I'm so glad we paid half amillion dollars.
What else do you learn?
And he was deadly serious.
he didn't expect that.
I was going to revolutionizetheir 46 billion industry with a
500, 000 investment.
What he wanted to know was howare we going to revolutionize it
(36:09):
in 100 different ways across 20years?
And so he was placing half amillion dollar bets left, right
and center.
And he was delighted that wedidn't achieve an outcome.
You know, he's the opposite ofthat.
You know, he's not the critic.
He's the guy who says you werein the arena and you were trying
to change things.
And that's outstanding.
So what can we learn from that?
he really inspired us to go andtry something else.
the next time we went back for ahundred grand and we tried
(36:31):
something else and we did abunch of different things.
And, what we sort of developedthis capacity to give him
insights.
So further out across thehorizon than anybody else was
looking for him.
A lot of people were looking toget him an outcome in the next
12 to 24 months.
We were saying, you know, what'sfive or 10 years look like?
And the fact that he was notcritical when we failed, or we
felt that we'd failed, was, wasa great endorsement.
Kate Peardon (36:53):
it might be Brene Brown talks about, like the
critic is the one in the standsversus you are the one that is
in, it's not the field.
It's not the stadium.
You used the word before
Brett Wiskar (37:03):
The arena.
Kate Peardon (37:03):
the arena.
Thank you.
It's about being in the arena.
There's a couple of books that Iknow are favorites of yours
because we've talked about themover the years.
James Clear's Atomic Habits,Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast
and Slow.
I know you and I have discussedthat one.
And one of my favorites,Essentialism, which is Greg
McKeown.
Brett Wiskar (37:22):
Yeah.
Daniel Kahneman's thinking fastand slow.
Unfortunately, Daniel Kahnemanpassed away, I think it was
March this year, and genuineloss to humanity in terms of the
departure of his intellect.
You know, for those, for yourlisteners who aren't aware, he
won the Nobel Prize forBehavioral Economics.
He worked really closely with aguy named Amos Tversky you know,
they did really seminal thinkingabout how people think, how we
(37:46):
all think, how we make mistakesand how our brain tricks us and
how we tell ourselves one thing,but we do another thing.
you know, that kind of stuff,thinking fast and slow is a
tough read.
it's a big, thick book andthere's a lot of psychology in
there, but genuinely changed mylife.
I, condiment is the godfather ofthe biases and heuristics and
really sort of your capacity tocritique.
(38:08):
whether you're thinking well andwhether you're making good
decisions is, is outlined inthat book.
So I think it's, you know,genuinely life changing kind of
stuff.
Um, if you, I think it's a 20hour audio book and for a lot of
people, that's probably the bestway to consume that.
And maybe it's not 20consecutive hours over the
course of a couple of weeks,maybe it's a chapter at a time,
but, but genuinely, a seminalpiece of literature on
psychology that, helps us allunderstand why we are.
(38:31):
As flawed as we are, and kind ofwhat shape those flaws take and
how we might guard against them.
So, you know, that's a, that's areally important thing.
James Clear is, is everywhere atthe moment, but.
the value of that book reallyis, you know, I think often
quoted that we don't rise to thelevel of our goals, but we fall
to the level of our systems.
I'm not a, not renowned forbeing phenomenally organized,
(38:51):
but, but a little bit oforganization can make a world of
difference.
So, you know, building yourorganization, uh, your
organizational skills into, intosystems so that you don't have
to deploy, your cognitiveefforts to make good practices
and good decisions every day.
and you know, something that hetalks about in that book is, you
know, what you want to do issort of behave a certain way and
it can become a habit.
(39:12):
But if you work from the otherdirection, if you, have some
sort of inherent identity aboutyourself, if that's stitched
into who you are, the habitbecomes thoughtless.
You just do.
you know, if you're somebody whotakes the stairs instead of the
elevator and you say that aboutyourself, you know, you never
think about getting in theelevator.
If you're somebody who doesn'ttake biscuits out of the tin in
(39:33):
the kitchen all the time becauseyou don't want to, be that guy,
if you can stitch that into youridentity, it becomes effortless
to, sneak a cookie so, you know,that, that sort of stuff I think
is fantastic.
Um, and the essentialism, GregMcKeown's essentialism book is
outstanding.
His, his followup book is, lessimpressive, but essentialism, is
really about picking what you'regoing to do and making sure you
(39:54):
do it well.
And, you know, a big pushtowards sort of outsourcing or
automating bits and pieces.
And it, and it's kind of.
The higher level thinking aroundthat.
but you know, if you're gonna dotwo things simultaneously,
you're gonna do them bothpoorly.
pick and choose what you'regonna do.
Do it.
Well get it done.
Do the next thing.
And, and that might be on yourto-do list for today, but it
might also be on your things youwanna achieve in 2025.
(40:16):
And, and so he has a lot of goodthinking in that book about
pursuing less things.
but pursuing higher value thingsthat really create the
difference for you as a personor for the organization that
you're in.
And I think that as a conceptis, is really strong.
Kate Peardon (40:31):
If what you've heard from Brett today in
regards to leadership orinnovation has been particularly
inspiring and you want to learna little bit more around change,
Brett does do keynote speakingand also comes into
organizations and doesinnovation consulting,
innovation program development,and conference speaking on what
are the futures of work, whatdoes adaptability and change
(40:52):
look like, and how you canactually embed some of this in
part of your company.
So if that is something thatyou're curious about, you can
find him at brettWiskar.
com.
And as he says, searching hisname will do it because there's
not a lot of Wiskars.
Brett Wiskar (41:06):
This is true.
Yeah.
Um, that's, that's exactlyright.
So Yeah.
I'd love to talk about thisstuff.
And, um, if you search for myson and you'll find me or my
brother and based on what we dofor a living, you won't think
it's you won't confuse the twoof us.
So,
Kate Peardon (41:18):
Well, now you've made it people curious to look
you up to see what your brotherdoes.
Brett Wiskar (41:23):
He's a, he works in water management for the
government.
So
Kate Peardon (41:26):
Oh, you've busted the myth now.
Thank you very much, Brett, forjoining today and sharing those
three leadership lessons aboutcommunication.
So having the conversation, um,about alignment and how that can
achieve amazing things andadaptability is always the key.
So please, those listenerstoday, thinking about what
you've taken from Brett and ourconversation, think about what
(41:47):
would be 1 percent that you'dlike to apply, uh, because a
series of 1 percent is make usbetter as a leader.
We don't have to go and changeeverything in one day.
It might just be one small thingthat you've taken from today.
so much.
Could be that about yourstructure and setting something
up as a leader or taking theleadership quiz, or having a
look at a little bit of thesebooks that Brett has suggested
or some of his work on futureand innovation.
(42:08):
So thanks very much, Brett.
And
Brett Wiskar (42:11):
Thank you.
Kate Peardon (42:11):
you sharing your lessons today.
Brett Wiskar (42:13):
Great to talk to you as always.
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