June 2, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of the Tech Trajectory Podcast, host Chris Davies sits down with John Sullivan (Sully) to explore what it takes to lead large-scale transformation, without losing sight of people, purpose, and impact.
Sully shares his journey from engineer to CEO, and how listening to customers and translating business needs into tech outcomes became a career-defining shift. From OKRs to flywheels, ride-alongs to data dashboards, this episode is packed with practical stories and clear-headed thinking on how to get alignment, and why buzzwords are no substitute for intent.
Whether you’re scaling a startup, transforming a product team, or simply trying to get business and tech to speak the same language, this one’s for you.
1. Tech strategy is business strategy
[02:00] Sully shares how his early experience riding along with sales teams helped him shift from building for tech’s sake to solving business problems with tech.
2. Why OKRs changed everything at Chargefox
[08:30] In a post-acquisition pivot, Sully introduced five company-wide OKRs to align teams and give structure to a newly evolving software business.
3. Driving transformation with data and purpose
[15:00] From dashboards to Python scripts, Sully doubled down on making data accessible and meaningful—building alignment from the numbers up.
4. Leading with intent (and ditching buzzwords)
[21:00] You won’t hear Sully say “data-led” or “people-first,” but you’ll see it in his actions. He shares why clarity of intent matters more than corporate speak.
5. Navigating the personal side of transformation
[23:30] Whether it’s changing operating models or growing teams, Sully breaks down why true transformation is always personal—and why setting the ‘stall’ is essential.
6. What doesn’t work (and what surprised him)
[28:00] Not every team needs Agile. Sully challenges blanket transformation methods and shares what really made a difference across business functions.
7. From chaos to clarity: lessons in leadership
[32:00] As a CEO, Sully reflects on loneliness, switching leadership styles, walking the walk, and how a “why” mindset can be both a superpower and a headache.
8. Defining success and building flywheels
[38:00] Sully explains how Chargefox moved from a vague directive (“become a software business”) to a platform strategy, accelerants, and a flywheel that made it all work.
Where to find John Sullivan:
- LinkedIn: John Sullivan
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Davies (00:00):
Welcome to the tech trajectory Podcast. I'm
(00:02):
Chris Davies, and today we'retalking about what it really
means to Align Technology andBusiness on the road to digital
transformation. My guest is JohnSullivan, an experienced tech
and product executive who's heldleadership roles at AWS and MYOB
and most recently served as CEOof charge Fox, where he led the
business through a criticalgrowth phase. Sully, welcome to
(00:23):
the podcast. Thanks very muchfor having me. So I'm going to
throw in a would you ratherquestion to begin with? So would
you rather lead a transformationproject where every meeting
starts with a motivational quoteon a PowerPoint slide, or one
where everyone communicates onlyin GIFs on Slack.
John Sullivan (00:47):
Am I allowed to say neither?
Like, they both soundhorrendous?
Chris Davies (00:52):
Yeah, we can. We can say neither,
John Sullivan (00:55):
then, neither like. I like the motivation
thing. I like people beinginvolved, being wanting to being
meetings. I've always tried tomake meetings fun. I always felt
that, you know, if you make ameeting dry, no one's gonna you
know, you're gonna get peopleturning up. Yeah, so I like the
motivational part of the thing,but just not the powerful way.
Chris Davies (01:15):
Fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's a that's
a good, good response to that.
So, yeah, many topics that we'regoing to talk about today, but I
think one of the main ones isyour journey, in particular,
starting off as an engineer andthen moving away up various
different leadership roles andthen transitioning over to the
(01:36):
business side of things. Soyeah, your career has shifted
and pushed tech teams closer tothe business. What triggers that
for you? What, what makes youtry and force that shift in in
the businesses you've worked in?
Yeah,
John Sullivan (01:54):
I don't think it was. There's like a moment in
time where I went, Oh, you know,we've got to, we've got to shift
we've got to shift directionhere. But I do think there's
been a few things that I'vealways felt are true. One of
them is that tech teamsthemselves predominantly don't,
(02:14):
haven't in the ones I've workedin, they can't survive on their
own. So if there's no business.
There's no tech team, so it'simportant to understand the
business and do the right thingsfor the overall business that
you sit within. So that was onething, so became kind of
important. And the second thingwas tech itself, I didn't find
is exciting. I don't find asexciting in its own right. I
(02:37):
think what it does, how it'sused, the love for the thing
that's created with software,you know, that's the thing
that's exciting. And so thosethings really changed the
direction of how I thought aboutsoftware. It wasn't about
writing something that, youknow, was the best for loop, you
(02:57):
know, or the most memoryefficient mechanism of doing
something, it was more about wargets generated with it. So there
was those two things that I wentwell, for me to do that, I've
really got to understand thebusiness, and that's, I think,
where the exciting conversationswere happening and the exciting
bits were and then, how could Itake technology and then really
(03:18):
empower the business, or, youknow, give it bigger
opportunities.
Chris Davies (03:25):
Yeah, amazing. And I think there's this thing where
people get obsessed over thetech, what it can do. And, yeah,
like you say, built in abeautiful way, and that kind of
thing. But we're essentially,you know, solving a problem or
producing an outcome, and thetech, don't worry, the tech will
(03:48):
be able to do that. We'll figurethat out later down the track.
Yeah. Let's kind of start withthat
John Sullivan (03:53):
higher level thing. Yeah. I think we see a
lot of this today on in sort ofthe AI space, like AI could do
anything, and I think it'soverstated what it can and will
do, and under utilized for whatit actually can do and then. But
you see it today, like AI, is itlike everyone's talking about,
AI will do this, and it will dothat, and you go, actually, it
(04:14):
in itself is not really theexciting bit. It's what you can
do with it. How can you use itto, you know, read images and
make people's health better. Howcan you do those things and
maybe use a bit of AI to do thatfor you?
Chris Davies (04:28):
Yeah, so in those early days when, yeah, maybe
your role was more tech focused,what did you What were some of
the key things you learned whenyou started to come more
involved in the business focusconversations. What really stuck
out to you that thought, oh,maybe this is more me.
John Sullivan (04:49):
I'm better. I like talking and putting myself
in a position where I can usethe thing that I'm building or
the thing I'm. Trying to design,and I think there's more
gratification. And so I learnedthat in talking to customers,
(05:09):
this is the one thing I had todo to start off with. It's like
you couldn't the reallyinteresting conversations came
with the users of the product,or the thing that we were
building, and then the or thething we were looking to see if
we could build, and it waslearning that I've actually got
to get out of a room and I'vegot to go on ride ons with
(05:31):
sales. At the time, when I firststarted, it was sales people.
There's no such thing as reallyis like UX designers, sure. And
real the product role didn't itsort of existed, that the bits
of it existed, or the functionsand the role and the, you know,
sort of the capabilitiesexisted, but they were kind of
different, shaped differently.
But it was more about that. Itwas just like, I've got to get
(05:54):
out and I can't listen to thesalesperson, and I can't listen
to the MD, and I can't listen tothe team I'm in because we're
blinkered, like it's the personthat's going to use it is the
person that's, you know, theythey're the ones to talk to,
yeah. And so that was, so I didride ons before they were called
Ride ons, you know, yeah. Andthen yeah. So that was one thing
(06:18):
for sure. It's like, get out andactually understand why it's
used. And then you make, I seemto make better decisions in what
I built. Yeah, great. And whyask people to build because,
yeah, that has purpose. Yeah,
Chris Davies (06:31):
awesome, yeah. And during some of those moments in
time when you're trying to gettech into the hands of users, or
even before then, just listeningto their wants and their needs
that they want from a product orsolution. Do you think that
helped to embed businessstrategy into tech strategy, or
(06:54):
was something else thattriggered that and to try and
develop those more kind of Yeah,the UX roles and the product
roles just
John Sullivan (07:03):
they just seem to join, okay? It just like there
wasn't a divide, like I washaving a conversation with
someone that was using it withthe salesperson, or with the MD,
or with the chief, you know, theCFO, when I was building
accounting systems forcompanies, I was just listening
to the person that was using it,and so there was no divide.
(07:26):
There was no valley between usthat wouldn't you know, no
document was being passedbetween one or the other that I
realized that you had todescribe, to understand, like to
sort of like take notes on theconversations we were having,
they had to be written in thelanguage of the person that I
was talking to. I couldn't writethem saying, you know, I'm going
(07:46):
to build a modular program thatdoes XYZ. You know, it's got to
be, no, no, we're going tobasically create a trial
balance, and it's going toreport on these figures, and
it's going to have on the lefthand column, this on the right
hand column, these debits,credits, that type of thing. So
you had to describe it all in,you know, in business, in their
users or the businesses terms,and therefore they're separate.
(08:08):
They're how we were doing it,like didn't enter those
documents. I kind of almost hadthe strategy all done. Yeah,
that way. Yeah, for sure. And
Chris Davies (08:21):
I think, you know, talked a little bit about some
of the, maybe the metrics andthat kind of thing. And we shift
to one of your most recent rolesat charge Fox, you introduced a
single set of OKRs for the wholebusiness. What was the catalyst
for doing so well?
John Sullivan (08:42):
And mainly because it was we needed. So
I've always believed thatvisions and purpose and
strategies evolve. You can't setone and stick by it for a long
period of time because the needsof the business and needs the
operating model that thebusiness works in and operates
(09:03):
in. They all change, and you'vegot to realign to meet though,
to meet those changes. And whenI joined charge Fox, it just
been bought by the mobilityclubs, NRMA, RACV, Raa and the
other the other clubs, and theybought it at the point when it
was a startup, yep. And it wasvery small, underfunded, and
(09:29):
really it had operated as astartup. All it was trying to do
was survive, yeah, get businessnot run out of their financial
runway, or run off the financialrunway, and with the sort of,
with it being bought by theclubs, there was more money to
be invested in it. And thestrategy was not to build
(09:49):
charges and put them in theground. It was more to the
strategy from the investors wasmove to a bit, move to a
software business, not to ahardware business. Yeah, and
that was the only thing theyhad. What does that mean? Yeah,
well, we think there's money inthe software, but we don't think
there's money in theinstallation of the hardware.
Yeah, right. Okay. So we needed,we needed a new vision, and with
(10:15):
that, we wanted to scale thebusiness up. So we wanted to
move from a startup to a scaleup business. All of that
required a complete shake up ofthe strategy, or any of the
strategic initiatives orvisions, or, you know, the way
that people operated. Everythinghad to shift. There was a I was
(10:37):
one of a number of people thatjoined at a leadership level
that were new to the market, andso we needed to learn the market
quickly. And I'm sitting theregoing, we could do anything,
because it says, like thedescription of what we want to
achieve is become a softwarebusiness. It's pretty broad,
(11:00):
yeah, I think great thingshappen when you constrain them,
when you put constraints in, andyou go, you know, you focus.
Your focus becomes more sort ofpinpoint laser, laser focused
when you constrain Yep. And so Iworked with a lady, Alexander
Stokes from reboot co to come upwith a program to, like, a
(11:25):
couple of days with otherleaders to reset the vision. I
wanted it to have a way of, likean inspirational vision. And I
picked using NTPs, like massivetransformational purposes. And
then I wanted to do OKRs,because I've used OKRs before.
Her suggestion was three. Iwent, I just don't think we can
(11:49):
constrain it to three. It's gotto be, I think it's got to be
five, because one's got to bepeople. One of them's got to be
about operating and scaling theoperations up. But only leaves
one for business. And it's toobroad a business to just have
one, so we need three others.
And so we just worked on aprogram with her, and that's the
that's the direction we took itfor that reason. And we, the
OKRs, helped us hone in on whatit is we wanted to try and
(12:15):
achieve. And I think gave theteam the comfort that we
actually knew we could describewhat we were going to try and
achieve for the first year. Andit was like, we are just going
to move to a to a softwarebusiness. This is the measure of
success, and they're allaspirational. I don't want to, I
want it to be like the MTP was abig it was, you know, it was
(12:37):
purposeful. It was electrifyevery vehicle. I didn't want to
constrain people's thoughts tosay, we're just going to
electrify, you know, passengervehicles again, there's a bus
market moving in there, there'strucks coming into it, last
miles coming in there. Why wouldwe? Why would I constrain you
with what we could do? But thisis how we'll measure success,
(12:58):
and that was just on fiveobjectives. Each of the
objectives had about two orthree initially. So the first
year had two apps, right? Three,at least three. KRS, yeah,
Chris Davies (13:13):
yeah, fascinating and really interesting. A lot of
kind of shifts, by the sounds ofthings. So wanting to go from
startup to scale up, movingacross from a Yeah, hardware
kind of business to a softwaredevelopment business. How did
that kind of change the way thatthe teams work together? What
challenges did you come across?
Was it, you know, ways ofworking, or, yeah, lots, a lot.
(13:36):
Well,
John Sullivan (13:42):
if you go from the the investors up the
investors, like I ran themthrough, like we were part of a
group, a holding group calledAustralian motor services, AMS,
I took them through the OKRs,they were not yet because it
didn't describe verbally. Theywere used to verbal visions and
(14:02):
PowerPoint presentations and thesame for the investors. So I had
to create, like, rebuild thatinto a into a strategy document,
and I built it on three themes.
What were they? Sustain, grow.
Sustain and defend his threethemes that we're going to go
(14:23):
on, and here's how we're goingto measure them. So I put the
OKRs into those three themes andbuilt like a 12 page document
that I written through that thisis, this is the book of charge
Fox. This is where the book thisis what we're going to be. If
you want to read a book aboutwhat we've become, read this at
the start of the year and thengo back and have a look at it,
(14:45):
because that's what we'll do. Sothat was one thing. I had to re
back track that into theinvestors and to the wider
holding company for the teamsthemselves. It's the first time
they've really had measures. Mm.
Hmm, most organizations saymost, it's my experience. When I
say most, most of my experience,because there'll always be
(15:08):
someone on the podcast that willgo, not at our company, because
my words different. But most ofthe companies I've worked for
don't really measure that. Theystate targets or goals, and then
don't go back and measure them,or don't measure them whilst
they're going in that, you know,whilst they're trying to deliver
(15:29):
towards them, they're sort of onto the next one. And so the
first thing was, get the team tounderstand the beauty of data,
yeah, right, democratizing, insome respects, data, and then
getting everyone pumped to whatwe were trying to achieve and
(15:52):
why it was, why it meantsomething, yeah, and so we had,
you know, everything tied back,in some respects, to how much CO
two was going to be abated, likeour goal was to clean the planet
up. And it's so people came inwith their own personal values,
and the personal valuesconnected with the
(16:15):
organizational values andobjectives. And it was like one
of the very few companies I'veworked at where we've got people
who skip to work because theyknow they're doing their own you
know, it's them like that. Theirvalues and the business values
are just so aligned, yeah, thatthere's no divide from it. So So
one of them was get people to domeasures. We had to change the
(16:37):
way that we designed productroadmaps, how we did showcases,
how we did product roadmap sortof kickoffs. And so we themed
everything onto the onto theOKRs. So we said, this is what
the we're going to do for thenext quarter. You know, it's
working against these OKRs, andwe believe that these OKRs,
(16:59):
we're trying to hit this, thisgoal, this KR here, and we
believe we are going to changethis measure here, which will
increase if it will reach thiskr. And these are the actions
that we're going to take. Soit's changing their mindset
from, you know, I think that ifwe do this, we will get this
(17:20):
result. It's moving them towe're seeking to achieve this,
measured by this. These are theexperiments, and these are the
ways that we're going to worktowards doing it. And we'll go
month by month, and then, if itdoesn't, then we'll pivot,
perish. So we got that sort ofexperimental mode into people.
So that was another thing thatthat changed. So pretty much the
(17:43):
whole, like, the whole way ofworking in the team changed, and
they pretty much started to getannoyed with me. Like, they'd
say, we're going to do this. AndI go, why? Tell me why? Like,
what are you going to do withit? Like, so you're going to do
something, and at the end of it,what do I get? What more can I
eat? Or what can I feel ortouch, or what will I see as a
(18:06):
result of your effort and like?
So people can't even talk tosully now without him asking
why? This guy's just the mostannoying.
Chris Davies (18:20):
It's a good question to ask. It's just, why?
John Sullivan (18:23):
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Why? So in any like when Ileft two and a half years later,
I was really quite taken abackthat the product guys, they
built visual roadmaps so visualdashboards that showed the
progress towards the metrics,the chaos that they were trying
to reach with all the effortthat they were, you know, the
(18:45):
initiatives they're doing in theproduct, yeah. So they've moved
from, I don't understand OKRsand measurements and everything
else, to now. Here's thestarting measurement. Here's
where we currently are. Here'sour trajectory towards it like
it was, yeah, awesome, yeah,
Chris Davies (19:02):
yeah, amazing, yeah. And I think it's, yeah,
you can't put enough value onbeing data driven, because then
that gives you such tangiblereasons why you're doing
something. Yeah.
John Sullivan (19:16):
And every company's got data, the thing
they don't have is access to it.
So quite regularly, you have togo through groups to get data,
and then there's a time lagbetween the data that you want
and need and how you can get it.
So we built, with DiUS,actually, we built, like a very
(19:37):
rudimentary data warehouse, andthen I just became the custodian
of that whole thing and startedbuilding dashboards and
transforming data. And, youknow, went from sitting at
night, finishing work at sort ofseven o'clock at night, going
home, and, you know, somethingwould be on TV, and I'd be
sitting in there in data,writing Python scripts, changing
(19:59):
code. Changing data everywhere,yeah. So I don't think I worked,
you know, most weeks, about8080, hour weeks, and most of it
was, half of it would have beenjust writing data to get it in
front of people, yeah, and say,here's some lead indicators,
yeah. So you know what's goingon. I just kept on pushing data
in front of people, and theywere going, well, that's really
(20:19):
interesting. And then it just,it sort of took off.
Chris Davies (20:23):
Yeah, great, yeah, trying to democratize that task
John Sullivan (20:27):
like you just want data accessible in the form
that people want to consume it,yeah, and that it was on it. So
guy at was working at AWS at oneof the Buy Now pay later
companies. There's a
Chris Davies (20:45):
few of them, yeah,
John Sullivan (20:48):
one of them said one of the data guys there to
sit and he said, Well, trying tobasically make data available to
anyone in any tool that theywant. Not be not say, this is
how you we will serve you data.
It's like, what do you want it?
And you want to use it in youwant to consume in Excel. Okay,
CSV file for it. You want it insnowflake. Here is in snowflake
(21:09):
for it, you tell us, we'll putit in and I pretty much took
that mantra. It's like, how doyou want it? Yeah, if you don't
give me anything, I'm going togive it to you in this form. But
if you want it in CSV form to gointo Excel, bang. Here you go.
Tomorrow morning, I'm going togive you all the data the
finance team ran offspreadsheets that basically I'd
run for them. They did the wholefinance for charge Fox off of
(21:32):
the data that I created. Wow,
Chris Davies (21:36):
yeah, such a fascinating insight, and I think
I probably know the answer tothis, would you rather question?
But let's see. So would yourather align your entire
organization with one perfectset of OKRs, but the doc is in
Comic Sans forever, or usebeautifully designed slides, but
no one ever reads them.
John Sullivan (21:58):
Yeah? The former.
Yeah. I just Yeah, someone couldask me for data in PowerPoint. I
probably wouldn't have producedit. That was the one caveat.
Yeah, no good. I'm
Chris Davies (22:11):
glad, I'm glad that was your response. So,
yeah, moving on to more thepersonal side of things, and we
talked about, yeah, what some ofthe members of your team really
drove them to be part of anorganization, organization like
charge box, but yourself andcertainly on the topic of
transformation, you've said thatmost transformations are either
(22:32):
personal or group based, yeah,what do you mean by that?
John Sullivan (22:39):
Well, the personal point is that
organizations are people.
They're not, you know, they'vegot a light at the front.
They've normally got a name atthe front door. Some don't.
Again, I'm going to get pickedon here, doesn't. But most, most
companies have a light at thefront, you know, right at the
front. But there is justgenerally the way that people
(23:00):
work together. So when youtransform, you're transforming
the things that people weregoing to do during the day, the
conversations they're going tohave, the things they're
striving to achieve, who they'regoing to become, how they're
going to operate. So that's thepersonal level of it. Is that
whenever you transform, theexciting bit about it is, I
think, is that people willevolve and grow in it, because
(23:25):
they're going to do somethingdifferent or and when you start
transformations, I alwaysbelieve, set your stall out with
people say, this is what we'regoing to try and achieve, and
this is the opportunity for youin this transformation. It's not
all about, we're trying to makea squillion dollars. It's about
you are going to grow. And if,at the end of that
(23:46):
transformation, you've got allthis extra skills, you should be
able to go somewhere else withit. Yeah, and if it's but if
it's not for you, we set out ourstall, then let's help you get a
job somewhere else. Yeah, do youknow what I mean, where you can
work the way that you want towork, but this is what we're
going to do. So that's the onething. And then, like I've seen,
large organizations try totransform to agile in the end,
(24:10):
there's always some level whereit the transformation stops and
the old way of working, youknow, even if it's, you know,
how do we distribute earnings toshareholders? At some point it
flips, and the transform doesn'thappen. So, like when you say
(24:31):
group, there's some level itdoesn't transform. Sure, there
are basic ways organizationsneed to work for tax reporting
and for other reporting. And soit's never the whole
organization. There's alwayssome, what I always used to call
the back flip. So we work thisway, I'm going to back flip what
(24:53):
we're doing and represent it toyou the way you want it
represented. Yeah. And. I'mgoing to work the way that you
want so you want, you know, ifyou do, if you're product led in
the tech teams, then that'sfine. But maybe they don't
business case that way. Maybethey don't set up the finances
for the operations of the techteams and the product teams. You
(25:17):
know, on an ongoing basis. Theydo it in a they do it annually.
Yeah, sure. So you've got tosay, what are you going to do
for the year? Well, that's notproduct, yeah. You know, that's
like going and in a massively, Ithink it transfer. Most
companies transform, because themarket they're in is
transforming and changing. Then,you know, they, they have to,
(25:38):
they change what they do to suitthat bit, but at some point you
have to operate with inside theboundaries of how the normal
organization operates, so theybecome group, yeah, sure. Group
can be quite big, yeah,
Chris Davies (25:53):
yeah. No, I can't say I've ever looked at it like
that way, because I think, yeah,it's always seems to be some
sweeping program of work thateveryone gets along, brought
along on the journey, and youhave to have buy in from
everyone, but it's interestingpoint where you say, well, not
necessarily.
John Sullivan (26:14):
I don't think you do. There are so many I've had
quite a few conversations withteams that said, like, we've
tried to work using Agile. But,like, we don't see the point,
yeah. Like, how does the legalteam? How does the legal team
work in a kanban model? Yeah,sure. Should they do that? How
(26:35):
does the risk, risk managementteam of a large corporate? How
do they work in Agile? How dothe accounting teams work in
Agile? There's bits they can usein it. Yeah. So should they
really get swept up in the wholein the whole thing? Yeah?
Chris Davies (26:49):
Not, not, if, yeah, not, not really, no. And
especially because a lot ofthese things take a lot of time,
effort, investment, yeah, to goand make these things happen,
you don't get instant speed.
John Sullivan (27:01):
So productivity dips, yeah, and then, I don't
think people look at it thatway. They quite say, we're going
to do Agile. Productivity willgo through the roof, no, no.
Probably insights will gothrough the roof. So you're
probably getting an idea of howfast you are actually working,
but you're going to make itslower because you don't know
what to do next. You're learningwhat to do next. It's going to
(27:23):
and agile never, for me, thosesort of transformations and were
never they were always touted asit's going to be, you know, make
us better and faster. I've neverseen cheaper. I've never seen an
Agile transformation make thingscheaper. Yeah, you know, how do
the scrum master? Masters andthe Agile coaches change the
(27:47):
wage bill dramatically? Wastefulgoes through the roof. You've
got four coaches, yeah,
Chris Davies (27:54):
yeah, no, fascinating. And I think, yeah,
that's something I wanted toalso ask about, is whether that
was something that you saw earlyin your kind of journey from,
you know, going from, you know,engineering to leadership, and
whether there was anything elsethat you kind of maybe thought
(28:15):
in the early days which thenchanged, so maybe something that
you thought was good in softwareengineering and it should be
applied in the realm of businesswhere kind of took a step back
and actually, no, that doesn'twork in this,
John Sullivan (28:32):
I can tell you, the data was the one thing that
I think I felt should, should beused everywhere. Yeah, like,
yeah. Yeah, that was one thingthat you can see sweepingly
makes, you know, goeseverywhere, because it at least
gives you an idea to prioritize.
Everyone's overworked, yeah,everyone's got 101 things to do,
and a means to be able to simplyprioritize. And data gives you
(28:53):
that option. That's one thing,yep, but yeah, I don't think the
Agile like the fulltransformation to agile, or
product led and stuff should goright across a whole
organization. That was onething. I just noticed that that
reasonably quickly, because itwas just, you could transform,
you could change the way you didbusiness casing, and you could
(29:16):
change it. But really, was thereany real benefit? Yeah, I just
didn't see at times. Just didn'tsee the benefit some of those
things. I went just, it's ourconcepts, our ideas. Yeah, the
other thing, the other thing,basic levels of coding
capability in a lot more partsof the business was
Chris Davies (29:36):
useful. Yeah, right, okay,
John Sullivan (29:39):
yeah. So even, like in the accounting side
generally, so you could actuallytake data and run formulas and
stuff like that, just basiccoding stuff was actually
useful. Yeah, not 100%
Chris Davies (29:50):
and Yeah, sort of looking more transformation as a
tech executive. Yeah, in thoseroles, say MYOB. CEO and then at
charge Fox as CEO, what shiftswhen you're accountable for both
the vision and the execution?
John Sullivan (30:13):
I'll tell you one thing that shifts the color of
your hair, because now you'remaking every decision, yeah,
it's a pretty the moreresponsibility you take on, the
more lonely it becomes. Soexcuse me, that that's one
thing. Yes. Like, I don't thinkI was this gray before I took on
(30:37):
the role at CEO of charge Fox.
But the the, well, I don't knowif it shifts or not, but I got a
better understanding of the needto change the style of
leadership, okay, regularly,yeah, right. As as my role
changed, because there's timesif you think of a leadership
(31:03):
style was on a on a line and twoends on it, like one would be
like the true leadership bitabout empower your teams. Don't
ever tell them what to do, justinspire them to do great things
one end and Order, order,autocracy or order autocratic
leadership stuff? Maybe, I don'tknow, maybe not again, someone
(31:27):
on the podcast, yeah, that'swhat's that word? But yeah,
autocratic leadership on theother side, like, there's times
where you've got to shift andyou've got to be so you've got
to decide when's the right timeto be one over the other. Like
you can give full autonomy to ateam if it is capable and
(31:50):
willing to take on ownership ofmaking decisions. And there are
times when you're trying to movefast and change things. Where
you've got to be verydictatorial, I try desperately
hard not like to be verypersonal. Like to keep a
(32:11):
personal way of doing things.
Think of the person. It's likepeople first all of it, yeah,
but there are times where you'vegot to change. And I've learned
that the different sort of, themore senior the roles I get,
that I've got to, I've got tojust decide on my style for the
(32:32):
problem and the thing in frontof me. That's one thing, and
then the other one would belike, walk the walk. Like, yeah,
sure, it's almost working withteams. Is not like, is in no way
shape or form. Like training adog, however, there's an element
of it that's similar. Like, youcan teach a dog, you know, 100
(32:54):
times, to sit at a road and thenwalk on the command, and it will
do that, but the first time youjust let it walk across the
road, it's never gonna you knowit, you're back to the 100 times
before you get that resultagain. Yeah, sure. And with
teams like you have to walk thewalk. You have to, if it is
(33:17):
going to be data LED. You can'tgo to the team and say, just do
this you have, because they'lljust go, Yeah, you know, that's
just a PowerPoint somewhere,yeah, get around the corner.
There's a, there's a piece ofpaper. They're going be led by
data. Yeah, that's like thecompany vision, yeah. So you
have to, you really have to walkthe walk. Yeah,
Chris Davies (33:39):
sure. And is that one of the big things of just
ensuring buzzwords, let's say,are, you know, actually
meaningful? So you can say, Ohyeah, we're we're data led, or
we're people first,
John Sullivan (33:53):
I try not to use any of those things, yeah, okay.
I just it's actions and it'sconversations and it's things
that you say, Yeah, but you'dprobably never find me going,
it's got to be data led, or it'sall about the people. Yeah,
you'd never hear that from me,but you'd see the decisions I
make. People would go, Yeah, Ican. He's got my back, yeah,
(34:15):
yeah, for sure. And okay, he's,he's making that decision and
he's explaining the result of itthat he's seeking by doing the
things that he's doing. Ah, he'sdata LED. Yeah, so I would never
use buzzwords. I would alwaystry and, you know, action, work
in a way that basically could beinterpreted by whatever term
(34:35):
people wanted to use for is itdata LED? Is it data, you know,
insights, or what is it? Yeah,let someone else choose those
buzzwords. Yeah. And
Chris Davies (34:45):
I think something that you mentioned earlier as
well, and in a previous podcastwith Charis from freely, she
talks about having intent, like
Unknown (34:59):
Set your stall out.
This is what we're going to do.
And having intent around, yeah,if we were going to live and
breathe, being data focused, orpeople first, this is how we're
going to go about it, yeah, likeit's to a point probably where
people were going, what, Sullydoing, and there was data on my
(35:20):
screen, yeah, there was alwaysdata on my screen, yeah. It's
like, Sully's like, the dataguy, yeah, it's like, just,
yeah. Have intent about it
John Sullivan (35:29):
it be through the actions. Inspire through
actions. Don't inspire throughwords and PowerPoints, yeah,
Chris Davies (35:39):
yeah, and any kind of specific examples where
that's, you know, a big win, oreven a failure, where you've
tried to kind of, yeah,implement something like that.
John Sullivan (35:55):
Most of the failures are being able to being
unable to influence people orchange things. A lot of the
failures I felt in the lastcouple of roles, or last few
roles have really been about thelevel everyone reports to
(36:16):
someone. So you think when youget into a CEO role, that you're
the most important person, butyou're not. You report to
someone, you report to someone,you report to a board, or you
report to a Group CEO, or if youdon't, you report to a bank, you
know, and you report somewhere.
Yeah, some but the biggestfailures I've had is probably
taking inspiring people on theother side of the team I'm
(36:37):
leading, to the same extent thatI have been able to do that with
the teams that I've led? Yeah,sure. That's and, and that's and
how that results normally isthat the direction that was
we're moving in, the peopleoutside of the company asked for
that to change because theycan't see the value, or they
(37:00):
form an opinion withoutbasically seeking out clarity
from with inside the team. Sothere's failures in that from
me, successes that, if I justtook say, Judge Fox, the
greatest thing I think we got isthat the growth that we got in
(37:20):
the first two years, like it wasastronomical. We were in two
years. I know the market wasgrowing, but we were 200 300%
bigger in the first year thanwhen, when we first started. And
organizations that were ourcompetitors in there. They they
(37:40):
failed them. And, like, closeup, yeah, wow. So, yes, it was a
growing market. But like, wemanaged to grow. We managed to
describe our purpose, inspirepeople go through a strategy of
integrating everywhere. And, youknow, wedging ourselves in as a
(38:03):
platform business, yeah, and so,and taking the description of
become a software business,which is what we're asked to do,
to explaining it, no, no, we'rea platform business like Uber.
Think of Uber. Basically, theydon't own the cars. They
basically facilitate thetransportation on stuff they
don't own, of people, and thenthey build other businesses
(38:27):
around the side, like it's not aperson that's being transported
now it's, it's a food, yeah, andso we took, I got the same model
into charge boxes, like we'rethere facilitating a charging
session. And then we have otherancillary, or accelerating
businesses on the outside of it,like we will incentivize the
purchases of electric electricalvehicles by saying you can get x
(38:51):
amount of free charging when youbuy this this vehicle. Yeah. And
then so we had these accelerantson there that grew charging,
grew revenue. But it all workedoff of that one transaction on
the business, which was, youknow, someone wants to charge,
or something wants to charge,and someone has the capability
and wants to advertise theiravailability to charge, yeah?
(39:13):
And that, to me, that was asuccess. To try and take an idea
that was no more than, you know,back of a fag packet, yeah? You
know, become a softwarebusiness, yeah? It's like the
gnome sketch out of South Park.
Phase one, steel underpants.
What's phase two? Don't know,but phase three, profit, yeah,
there's a sketch in. It's likesteel underpants. I don't know
(39:39):
about how we're getting withwhat we're gonna do with them,
but we're gonna make profit,yeah, and the names were clever
we know about businesses, yeah,yeah. So, so that was a success
to me. Yeah, 100%
Chris Davies (39:52):
and I think that perfectly illustrates tech
strategy is business strategy,yes. 100 to find that we are a
software business. How do we goabout that? Okay, well, here's a
model of someone else who tosomeone an outsider. It might
not seem like a tech businessUber, but it is. It's that
(40:14):
platform that facilitateseverything. But then, well,
yeah, we are a business. So howdo we make money, drive revenue
scale, grow. Ah, well, theseaccelerators, and that feeds
into all the hard work we'vedone from the tech side of
things. Yeah, we
John Sullivan (40:29):
also had this. I built a I explained the model,
like on a platform business, andthen I had a flywheel.
Chris Davies (40:36):
Love a flywheel.
John Sullivan (40:38):
My days at AWS like but we, I built a flywheel
to explain our business, andthat got used in the clubs and
in other places to explain us.
And it was like, you know, getmore users, more users. So,
yeah, get more users. They willcharge more then more charging
activity will mean that peoplewith charges will want to be on
(41:03):
the platform where there is morecharging. Yeah, right. And it's
kind of like it just keepsmoving. And then the more
charging that's in there meanspeople looking to charge will go
to the platform that has morecharging, of course, and so it
just keeps going round. And thenwe built these other accelerants
on the outside of it, which was,okay, let's every new vehicle
get it free charging. So getpeople understanding how to
charge in on public charginginfrastructure. Yeah. Let's go
(41:28):
to businesses and electrifyfleet businesses. Another
accelerant, yeah, and so we,like, I drew it up, and then I
gave it to the UX guys, and theymade it absolutely beautiful.
But yeah, we built flywheels aswell to do the same thing. Well,
yeah, I have to
Chris Davies (41:47):
say on a victim is the right word of the flywheel.
But I remember when I needed tohire a car, and I saw that you
get free charging with CHARGEFox. Well, there we go. That's
the one. Then, because I don't,then I don't have to pay for
fuel, or I don't have to worryabout, you know, returning it
full, returning it full, oranything like that. Is there a
(42:10):
charge charger nearby? Yep. Isthere? Not that made the
decision for me. So that's,yeah, a really good example of
acceleration, a
John Sullivan (42:18):
six car rental.
That's it. That's the one. Yeah,it was awesome. The number of
times I returned a sixth vehicleback with like, 1% on it. Have
you got any charge? Sorry, got aplane to catch? Yeah,
Chris Davies (42:34):
awesome. So I think we've got one more. Would
you rather question? And thenwe'll move on to our final piece
of the pod. So would you ratherinherit a tech team that
delivers fast but names all oftheir repositories after 90
sitcoms, maybe after the SouthPark reference? We might know
the answer to that one or onewith flawless documentation, but
(42:57):
they reply to every message withper my last email, former
John Sullivan (43:03):
it's not such a bad one. I just Yeah, codes,
codes documented by itself, yes,yeah. And if it really needs
reams and reams of documentationto understand it, then it needs
to be rewritten. Yeah.
Chris Davies (43:17):
Good point. Yeah.
So yeah, the final couple ofquestions for today is, what's
one? Mind shift, mindset shift.
You'd love to see more leadersadopt tech or otherwise.
John Sullivan (43:36):
So it think of the outcome that you're
seeking before you decide theactions that you want to
undertake. So the number oftimes I've been in organizations
where they go, lots of thisexact case, we're going to
(44:01):
transform the way we work, orwe're going to merge these teams
together, and then we're goingto go and find synergies. Yeah,
right. Really, like, it's likeit so that just closes all the
conversation off. Okay, whereare what synergies are you
after? Like, when you've gotsynergies, what are you going to
do? Like, what you can have moreof, what can you eat more of?
(44:21):
What can you you know, whatweight are you going to lose?
What you going what's going tohappen here? So to mind, it's
always changed the way you thinkand live in. It's quite a
nervous state, I think, to keepasking yourself, Why am I doing
this? Why am I doing this? Whyam I doing this? Why am I doing
(44:42):
this? And then I'm doing itbecause of this. But why am I
doing why is that important? Whyis that important? And just sit
in that really nervous, I think,nervous state for a lot longer
than you would normally sit init. Yeah, because people are
very comfortable in motion.
(45:03):
They're not very comfortablesitting down and considering
what they're about to undertake,yeah. And so I would ask leaders
to sit down and consider theoutcomes and why they're doing
things and then decide what itis they're going to do, maybe
think about the measures, andthen think about the things
(45:25):
you're going to do that willprove that will meet those
measures that will get you thatoutcome. Yeah. So that's what
I'd ask people. Yeah. I'd loveto see more of that. Yeah. And
there aren't many, like I said,most people, again, turn most,
lots of people were just, don't,they think about something, can
they feel comfortable with theconcept of what they're going to
(45:48):
do, and they're happy with that,and so they start working on and
you go, no, no. Think more.
Yeah, think think about it more.
So you can describe it withoutit's kind of, you know, it's the
vibe, it's, it's like Mambo,it's, it's, yes, a vibe, yeah?
And
Chris Davies (46:07):
I think that's a something that has come across
throughout today. I thinklooking back, talking points
have been, yeah, obviously techstrategy, it's business
strategy, okay, ours, but alsoasking questions around
constraint, when it comes toOKRs, when it comes to
transformation, it's just asmuch about personal growth as it
(46:28):
is business growth. Obviously,many lessons in leadership along
the way. But also you've askedthe question, why a lot, and
perhaps more significantly, whyis it important that we're doing
this? And I think that's kind ofresonated throughout.
John Sullivan (46:45):
Yeah, it's get the why gets me in trouble,
upwards quite John, you need todo this. Why people like people,
would see that it's a question,that you're questioning their
leadership and their authority.
And I say, now I'm actually justtrying to discover how best to
do what it is you need me to do,yeah, and because it's not
clear, and you can't actuallysay it's because, like, it's
(47:08):
just not clear and apparent,what the hell you actually want
me to do? You just want me totake this action? Yeah? But tell
me, I'm a smart person, I couldprobably do it really well if I
actually knew what you're tryingto achieve? Yeah, yeah, awesome.
Chris Davies (47:23):
Well, yeah, I think that's pretty much it for
today. If people want to kind offollow your work or learn more
from your experience, where canthey find you or get in touch?
Probably
John Sullivan (47:37):
have a crack on LinkedIn. Yeah, I was on Twitter
for a while, but then when itwent to x, well, that jumped
off. And I never really afterCOVID, sort of found the social
platform to to converse on. So alot of it, what I do is I go
through these space of doingstuff on
Chris Davies (47:57):
on LinkedIn, writing articles and stuff on
LinkedIn. Yeah, I've read acouple recently. Yeah, it's
probably, probably the bestplace. Yeah, cool. Well, yeah,
if this conversation has madeyou rethink about how tech and
business teams work together,please subscribe to the tech
trajectory podcast, because I'msure we'll have more along the
same lines, but we'll be backwith more stories soon from
(48:22):
people shaping what's next, butfor today, Sully, thanks very
much for joining me. Pleasure.
You.
Welcome to the tech trajectory Podcast. I'm
(00:02):
Chris Davies, and today we'retalking about what it really
means to Align Technology andBusiness on the road to digital
transformation. My guest is JohnSullivan, an experienced tech
and product executive who's heldleadership roles at AWS and MYOB
and most recently served as CEOof charge Fox, where he led the
business through a criticalgrowth phase. Sully, welcome to
(00:23):
the podcast. Thanks very muchfor having me. So I'm going to
throw in a would you ratherquestion to begin with? So would
you rather lead a transformationproject where every meeting
starts with a motivational quoteon a PowerPoint slide, or one
where everyone communicates onlyin GIFs on Slack.
John Sullivan (00:47):
Am I allowed to say neither?
Like, they both soundhorrendous?
Chris Davies (00:52):
Yeah, we can. We can say neither,
John Sullivan (00:55):
then, neither like. I like the motivation
thing. I like people beinginvolved, being wanting to being
meetings. I've always tried tomake meetings fun. I always felt
that, you know, if you make ameeting dry, no one's gonna you
know, you're gonna get peopleturning up. Yeah, so I like the
motivational part of the thing,but just not the powerful way.
Chris Davies (01:15):
Fair enough. Fair enough. I think that's a that's
a good, good response to that.
So, yeah, many topics that we'regoing to talk about today, but I
think one of the main ones isyour journey, in particular,
starting off as an engineer andthen moving away up various
different leadership roles andthen transitioning over to the
(01:36):
business side of things. Soyeah, your career has shifted
and pushed tech teams closer tothe business. What triggers that
for you? What, what makes youtry and force that shift in in
the businesses you've worked in?
Yeah,
John Sullivan (01:54):
I don't think it was. There's like a moment in
time where I went, Oh, you know,we've got to, we've got to shift
we've got to shift directionhere. But I do think there's
been a few things that I'vealways felt are true. One of
them is that tech teamsthemselves predominantly don't,
(02:14):
haven't in the ones I've workedin, they can't survive on their
own. So if there's no business.
There's no tech team, so it'simportant to understand the
business and do the right thingsfor the overall business that
you sit within. So that was onething, so became kind of
important. And the second thingwas tech itself, I didn't find
is exciting. I don't find asexciting in its own right. I
(02:37):
think what it does, how it'sused, the love for the thing
that's created with software,you know, that's the thing
that's exciting. And so thosethings really changed the
direction of how I thought aboutsoftware. It wasn't about
writing something that, youknow, was the best for loop, you
(02:57):
know, or the most memoryefficient mechanism of doing
something, it was more about wargets generated with it. So there
was those two things that I wentwell, for me to do that, I've
really got to understand thebusiness, and that's, I think,
where the exciting conversationswere happening and the exciting
bits were and then, how could Itake technology and then really
(03:18):
empower the business, or, youknow, give it bigger
opportunities.
Chris Davies (03:25):
Yeah, amazing. And I think there's this thing where
people get obsessed over thetech, what it can do. And, yeah,
like you say, built in abeautiful way, and that kind of
thing. But we're essentially,you know, solving a problem or
producing an outcome, and thetech, don't worry, the tech will
(03:48):
be able to do that. We'll figurethat out later down the track.
Yeah. Let's kind of start withthat
John Sullivan (03:53):
higher level thing. Yeah. I think we see a
lot of this today on in sort ofthe AI space, like AI could do
anything, and I think it'soverstated what it can and will
do, and under utilized for whatit actually can do and then. But
you see it today, like AI, is itlike everyone's talking about,
AI will do this, and it will dothat, and you go, actually, it
(04:14):
in itself is not really theexciting bit. It's what you can
do with it. How can you use itto, you know, read images and
make people's health better. Howcan you do those things and
maybe use a bit of AI to do thatfor you?
Chris Davies (04:28):
Yeah, so in those early days when, yeah, maybe
your role was more tech focused,what did you What were some of
the key things you learned whenyou started to come more
involved in the business focusconversations. What really stuck
out to you that thought, oh,maybe this is more me.
John Sullivan (04:49):
I'm better. I like talking and putting myself
in a position where I can usethe thing that I'm building or
the thing I'm. Trying to design,and I think there's more
gratification. And so I learnedthat in talking to customers,
(05:09):
this is the one thing I had todo to start off with. It's like
you couldn't the reallyinteresting conversations came
with the users of the product,or the thing that we were
building, and then the or thething we were looking to see if
we could build, and it waslearning that I've actually got
to get out of a room and I'vegot to go on ride ons with
(05:31):
sales. At the time, when I firststarted, it was sales people.
There's no such thing as reallyis like UX designers, sure. And
real the product role didn't itsort of existed, that the bits
of it existed, or the functionsand the role and the, you know,
sort of the capabilitiesexisted, but they were kind of
different, shaped differently.
But it was more about that. Itwas just like, I've got to get
(05:54):
out and I can't listen to thesalesperson, and I can't listen
to the MD, and I can't listen tothe team I'm in because we're
blinkered, like it's the personthat's going to use it is the
person that's, you know, theythey're the ones to talk to,
yeah. And so that was, so I didride ons before they were called
Ride ons, you know, yeah. Andthen yeah. So that was one thing
(06:18):
for sure. It's like, get out andactually understand why it's
used. And then you make, I seemto make better decisions in what
I built. Yeah, great. And whyask people to build because,
yeah, that has purpose. Yeah,
Chris Davies (06:31):
awesome, yeah. And during some of those moments in
time when you're trying to gettech into the hands of users, or
even before then, just listeningto their wants and their needs
that they want from a product orsolution. Do you think that
helped to embed businessstrategy into tech strategy, or
(06:54):
was something else thattriggered that and to try and
develop those more kind of Yeah,the UX roles and the product
roles just
John Sullivan (07:03):
they just seem to join, okay? It just like there
wasn't a divide, like I washaving a conversation with
someone that was using it withthe salesperson, or with the MD,
or with the chief, you know, theCFO, when I was building
accounting systems forcompanies, I was just listening
to the person that was using it,and so there was no divide.
(07:26):
There was no valley between usthat wouldn't you know, no
document was being passedbetween one or the other that I
realized that you had todescribe, to understand, like to
sort of like take notes on theconversations we were having,
they had to be written in thelanguage of the person that I
was talking to. I couldn't writethem saying, you know, I'm going
(07:46):
to build a modular program thatdoes XYZ. You know, it's got to
be, no, no, we're going tobasically create a trial
balance, and it's going toreport on these figures, and
it's going to have on the lefthand column, this on the right
hand column, these debits,credits, that type of thing. So
you had to describe it all in,you know, in business, in their
users or the businesses terms,and therefore they're separate.
(08:08):
They're how we were doing it,like didn't enter those
documents. I kind of almost hadthe strategy all done. Yeah,
that way. Yeah, for sure. And
Chris Davies (08:21):
I think, you know, talked a little bit about some
of the, maybe the metrics andthat kind of thing. And we shift
to one of your most recent rolesat charge Fox, you introduced a
single set of OKRs for the wholebusiness. What was the catalyst
for doing so well?
John Sullivan (08:42):
And mainly because it was we needed. So
I've always believed thatvisions and purpose and
strategies evolve. You can't setone and stick by it for a long
period of time because the needsof the business and needs the
operating model that thebusiness works in and operates
(09:03):
in. They all change, and you'vegot to realign to meet though,
to meet those changes. And whenI joined charge Fox, it just
been bought by the mobilityclubs, NRMA, RACV, Raa and the
other the other clubs, and theybought it at the point when it
was a startup, yep. And it wasvery small, underfunded, and
(09:29):
really it had operated as astartup. All it was trying to do
was survive, yeah, get businessnot run out of their financial
runway, or run off the financialrunway, and with the sort of,
with it being bought by theclubs, there was more money to
be invested in it. And thestrategy was not to build
(09:49):
charges and put them in theground. It was more to the
strategy from the investors wasmove to a bit, move to a
software business, not to ahardware business. Yeah, and
that was the only thing theyhad. What does that mean? Yeah,
well, we think there's money inthe software, but we don't think
there's money in theinstallation of the hardware.
Yeah, right. Okay. So we needed,we needed a new vision, and with
(10:15):
that, we wanted to scale thebusiness up. So we wanted to
move from a startup to a scaleup business. All of that
required a complete shake up ofthe strategy, or any of the
strategic initiatives orvisions, or, you know, the way
that people operated. Everythinghad to shift. There was a I was
(10:37):
one of a number of people thatjoined at a leadership level
that were new to the market, andso we needed to learn the market
quickly. And I'm sitting theregoing, we could do anything,
because it says, like thedescription of what we want to
achieve is become a softwarebusiness. It's pretty broad,
(11:00):
yeah, I think great thingshappen when you constrain them,
when you put constraints in, andyou go, you know, you focus.
Your focus becomes more sort ofpinpoint laser, laser focused
when you constrain Yep. And so Iworked with a lady, Alexander
Stokes from reboot co to come upwith a program to, like, a
(11:25):
couple of days with otherleaders to reset the vision. I
wanted it to have a way of, likean inspirational vision. And I
picked using NTPs, like massivetransformational purposes. And
then I wanted to do OKRs,because I've used OKRs before.
Her suggestion was three. Iwent, I just don't think we can
(11:49):
constrain it to three. It's gotto be, I think it's got to be
five, because one's got to bepeople. One of them's got to be
about operating and scaling theoperations up. But only leaves
one for business. And it's toobroad a business to just have
one, so we need three others.
And so we just worked on aprogram with her, and that's the
that's the direction we took itfor that reason. And we, the
OKRs, helped us hone in on whatit is we wanted to try and
(12:15):
achieve. And I think gave theteam the comfort that we
actually knew we could describewhat we were going to try and
achieve for the first year. Andit was like, we are just going
to move to a to a softwarebusiness. This is the measure of
success, and they're allaspirational. I don't want to, I
want it to be like the MTP was abig it was, you know, it was
(12:37):
purposeful. It was electrifyevery vehicle. I didn't want to
constrain people's thoughts tosay, we're just going to
electrify, you know, passengervehicles again, there's a bus
market moving in there, there'strucks coming into it, last
miles coming in there. Why wouldwe? Why would I constrain you
with what we could do? But thisis how we'll measure success,
(12:58):
and that was just on fiveobjectives. Each of the
objectives had about two orthree initially. So the first
year had two apps, right? Three,at least three. KRS, yeah,
Chris Davies (13:13):
yeah, fascinating and really interesting. A lot of
kind of shifts, by the sounds ofthings. So wanting to go from
startup to scale up, movingacross from a Yeah, hardware
kind of business to a softwaredevelopment business. How did
that kind of change the way thatthe teams work together? What
challenges did you come across?
Was it, you know, ways ofworking, or, yeah, lots, a lot.
(13:36):
Well,
John Sullivan (13:42):
if you go from the the investors up the
investors, like I ran themthrough, like we were part of a
group, a holding group calledAustralian motor services, AMS,
I took them through the OKRs,they were not yet because it
didn't describe verbally. Theywere used to verbal visions and
(14:02):
PowerPoint presentations and thesame for the investors. So I had
to create, like, rebuild thatinto a into a strategy document,
and I built it on three themes.
What were they? Sustain, grow.
Sustain and defend his threethemes that we're going to go
(14:23):
on, and here's how we're goingto measure them. So I put the
OKRs into those three themes andbuilt like a 12 page document
that I written through that thisis, this is the book of charge
Fox. This is where the book thisis what we're going to be. If
you want to read a book aboutwhat we've become, read this at
the start of the year and thengo back and have a look at it,
(14:45):
because that's what we'll do. Sothat was one thing. I had to re
back track that into theinvestors and to the wider
holding company for the teamsthemselves. It's the first time
they've really had measures. Mm.
Hmm, most organizations saymost, it's my experience. When I
say most, most of my experience,because there'll always be
(15:08):
someone on the podcast that willgo, not at our company, because
my words different. But most ofthe companies I've worked for
don't really measure that. Theystate targets or goals, and then
don't go back and measure them,or don't measure them whilst
they're going in that, you know,whilst they're trying to deliver
(15:29):
towards them, they're sort of onto the next one. And so the
first thing was, get the team tounderstand the beauty of data,
yeah, right, democratizing, insome respects, data, and then
getting everyone pumped to whatwe were trying to achieve and
(15:52):
why it was, why it meantsomething, yeah, and so we had,
you know, everything tied back,in some respects, to how much CO
two was going to be abated, likeour goal was to clean the planet
up. And it's so people came inwith their own personal values,
and the personal valuesconnected with the
(16:15):
organizational values andobjectives. And it was like one
of the very few companies I'veworked at where we've got people
who skip to work because theyknow they're doing their own you
know, it's them like that. Theirvalues and the business values
are just so aligned, yeah, thatthere's no divide from it. So So
one of them was get people to domeasures. We had to change the
(16:37):
way that we designed productroadmaps, how we did showcases,
how we did product roadmap sortof kickoffs. And so we themed
everything onto the onto theOKRs. So we said, this is what
the we're going to do for thenext quarter. You know, it's
working against these OKRs, andwe believe that these OKRs,
(16:59):
we're trying to hit this, thisgoal, this KR here, and we
believe we are going to changethis measure here, which will
increase if it will reach thiskr. And these are the actions
that we're going to take. Soit's changing their mindset
from, you know, I think that ifwe do this, we will get this
(17:20):
result. It's moving them towe're seeking to achieve this,
measured by this. These are theexperiments, and these are the
ways that we're going to worktowards doing it. And we'll go
month by month, and then, if itdoesn't, then we'll pivot,
perish. So we got that sort ofexperimental mode into people.
So that was another thing thatthat changed. So pretty much the
(17:43):
whole, like, the whole way ofworking in the team changed, and
they pretty much started to getannoyed with me. Like, they'd
say, we're going to do this. AndI go, why? Tell me why? Like,
what are you going to do withit? Like, so you're going to do
something, and at the end of it,what do I get? What more can I
eat? Or what can I feel ortouch, or what will I see as a
(18:06):
result of your effort and like?
So people can't even talk tosully now without him asking
why? This guy's just the mostannoying.
Chris Davies (18:20):
It's a good question to ask. It's just, why?
John Sullivan (18:23):
Why? Why? Why?
Why? Why? So in any like when Ileft two and a half years later,
I was really quite taken abackthat the product guys, they
built visual roadmaps so visualdashboards that showed the
progress towards the metrics,the chaos that they were trying
to reach with all the effortthat they were, you know, the
(18:45):
initiatives they're doing in theproduct, yeah. So they've moved
from, I don't understand OKRsand measurements and everything
else, to now. Here's thestarting measurement. Here's
where we currently are. Here'sour trajectory towards it like
it was, yeah, awesome, yeah,
Chris Davies (19:02):
yeah, amazing, yeah. And I think it's, yeah,
you can't put enough value onbeing data driven, because then
that gives you such tangiblereasons why you're doing
something. Yeah.
John Sullivan (19:16):
And every company's got data, the thing
they don't have is access to it.
So quite regularly, you have togo through groups to get data,
and then there's a time lagbetween the data that you want
and need and how you can get it.
So we built, with DiUS,actually, we built, like a very
(19:37):
rudimentary data warehouse, andthen I just became the custodian
of that whole thing and startedbuilding dashboards and
transforming data. And, youknow, went from sitting at
night, finishing work at sort ofseven o'clock at night, going
home, and, you know, somethingwould be on TV, and I'd be
sitting in there in data,writing Python scripts, changing
(19:59):
code. Changing data everywhere,yeah. So I don't think I worked,
you know, most weeks, about8080, hour weeks, and most of it
was, half of it would have beenjust writing data to get it in
front of people, yeah, and say,here's some lead indicators,
yeah. So you know what's goingon. I just kept on pushing data
in front of people, and theywere going, well, that's really
(20:19):
interesting. And then it just,it sort of took off.
Chris Davies (20:23):
Yeah, great, yeah, trying to democratize that task
John Sullivan (20:27):
like you just want data accessible in the form
that people want to consume it,yeah, and that it was on it. So
guy at was working at AWS at oneof the Buy Now pay later
companies. There's a
Chris Davies (20:45):
few of them, yeah,
John Sullivan (20:48):
one of them said one of the data guys there to
sit and he said, Well, trying tobasically make data available to
anyone in any tool that theywant. Not be not say, this is
how you we will serve you data.
It's like, what do you want it?
And you want to use it in youwant to consume in Excel. Okay,
CSV file for it. You want it insnowflake. Here is in snowflake
(21:09):
for it, you tell us, we'll putit in and I pretty much took
that mantra. It's like, how doyou want it? Yeah, if you don't
give me anything, I'm going togive it to you in this form. But
if you want it in CSV form to gointo Excel, bang. Here you go.
Tomorrow morning, I'm going togive you all the data the
finance team ran offspreadsheets that basically I'd
run for them. They did the wholefinance for charge Fox off of
(21:32):
the data that I created. Wow,
Chris Davies (21:36):
yeah, such a fascinating insight, and I think
I probably know the answer tothis, would you rather question?
But let's see. So would yourather align your entire
organization with one perfectset of OKRs, but the doc is in
Comic Sans forever, or usebeautifully designed slides, but
no one ever reads them.
John Sullivan (21:58):
Yeah? The former.
Yeah. I just Yeah, someone couldask me for data in PowerPoint. I
probably wouldn't have producedit. That was the one caveat.
Yeah, no good. I'm
Chris Davies (22:11):
glad, I'm glad that was your response. So,
yeah, moving on to more thepersonal side of things, and we
talked about, yeah, what some ofthe members of your team really
drove them to be part of anorganization, organization like
charge box, but yourself andcertainly on the topic of
transformation, you've said thatmost transformations are either
(22:32):
personal or group based, yeah,what do you mean by that?
John Sullivan (22:39):
Well, the personal point is that
organizations are people.
They're not, you know, they'vegot a light at the front.
They've normally got a name atthe front door. Some don't.
Again, I'm going to get pickedon here, doesn't. But most, most
companies have a light at thefront, you know, right at the
front. But there is justgenerally the way that people
(23:00):
work together. So when youtransform, you're transforming
the things that people weregoing to do during the day, the
conversations they're going tohave, the things they're
striving to achieve, who they'regoing to become, how they're
going to operate. So that's thepersonal level of it. Is that
whenever you transform, theexciting bit about it is, I
think, is that people willevolve and grow in it, because
(23:25):
they're going to do somethingdifferent or and when you start
transformations, I alwaysbelieve, set your stall out with
people say, this is what we'regoing to try and achieve, and
this is the opportunity for youin this transformation. It's not
all about, we're trying to makea squillion dollars. It's about
you are going to grow. And if,at the end of that
(23:46):
transformation, you've got allthis extra skills, you should be
able to go somewhere else withit. Yeah, and if it's but if
it's not for you, we set out ourstall, then let's help you get a
job somewhere else. Yeah, do youknow what I mean, where you can
work the way that you want towork, but this is what we're
going to do. So that's the onething. And then, like I've seen,
large organizations try totransform to agile in the end,
(24:10):
there's always some level whereit the transformation stops and
the old way of working, youknow, even if it's, you know,
how do we distribute earnings toshareholders? At some point it
flips, and the transform doesn'thappen. So, like when you say
(24:31):
group, there's some level itdoesn't transform. Sure, there
are basic ways organizationsneed to work for tax reporting
and for other reporting. And soit's never the whole
organization. There's alwayssome, what I always used to call
the back flip. So we work thisway, I'm going to back flip what
(24:53):
we're doing and represent it toyou the way you want it
represented. Yeah. And. I'mgoing to work the way that you
want so you want, you know, ifyou do, if you're product led in
the tech teams, then that'sfine. But maybe they don't
business case that way. Maybethey don't set up the finances
for the operations of the techteams and the product teams. You
(25:17):
know, on an ongoing basis. Theydo it in a they do it annually.
Yeah, sure. So you've got tosay, what are you going to do
for the year? Well, that's notproduct, yeah. You know, that's
like going and in a massively, Ithink it transfer. Most
companies transform, because themarket they're in is
transforming and changing. Then,you know, they, they have to,
(25:38):
they change what they do to suitthat bit, but at some point you
have to operate with inside theboundaries of how the normal
organization operates, so theybecome group, yeah, sure. Group
can be quite big, yeah,
Chris Davies (25:53):
yeah. No, I can't say I've ever looked at it like
that way, because I think, yeah,it's always seems to be some
sweeping program of work thateveryone gets along, brought
along on the journey, and youhave to have buy in from
everyone, but it's interestingpoint where you say, well, not
necessarily.
John Sullivan (26:14):
I don't think you do. There are so many I've had
quite a few conversations withteams that said, like, we've
tried to work using Agile. But,like, we don't see the point,
yeah. Like, how does the legalteam? How does the legal team
work in a kanban model? Yeah,sure. Should they do that? How
(26:35):
does the risk, risk managementteam of a large corporate? How
do they work in Agile? How dothe accounting teams work in
Agile? There's bits they can usein it. Yeah. So should they
really get swept up in the wholein the whole thing? Yeah?
Chris Davies (26:49):
Not, not, if, yeah, not, not really, no. And
especially because a lot ofthese things take a lot of time,
effort, investment, yeah, to goand make these things happen,
you don't get instant speed.
John Sullivan (27:01):
So productivity dips, yeah, and then, I don't
think people look at it thatway. They quite say, we're going
to do Agile. Productivity willgo through the roof, no, no.
Probably insights will gothrough the roof. So you're
probably getting an idea of howfast you are actually working,
but you're going to make itslower because you don't know
what to do next. You're learningwhat to do next. It's going to
(27:23):
and agile never, for me, thosesort of transformations and were
never they were always touted asit's going to be, you know, make
us better and faster. I've neverseen cheaper. I've never seen an
Agile transformation make thingscheaper. Yeah, you know, how do
the scrum master? Masters andthe Agile coaches change the
(27:47):
wage bill dramatically? Wastefulgoes through the roof. You've
got four coaches, yeah,
Chris Davies (27:54):
yeah, no, fascinating. And I think, yeah,
that's something I wanted toalso ask about, is whether that
was something that you saw earlyin your kind of journey from,
you know, going from, you know,engineering to leadership, and
whether there was anything elsethat you kind of maybe thought
(28:15):
in the early days which thenchanged, so maybe something that
you thought was good in softwareengineering and it should be
applied in the realm of businesswhere kind of took a step back
and actually, no, that doesn'twork in this,
John Sullivan (28:32):
I can tell you, the data was the one thing that
I think I felt should, should beused everywhere. Yeah, like,
yeah. Yeah, that was one thingthat you can see sweepingly
makes, you know, goeseverywhere, because it at least
gives you an idea to prioritize.
Everyone's overworked, yeah,everyone's got 101 things to do,
and a means to be able to simplyprioritize. And data gives you
(28:53):
that option. That's one thing,yep, but yeah, I don't think the
Agile like the fulltransformation to agile, or
product led and stuff should goright across a whole
organization. That was onething. I just noticed that that
reasonably quickly, because itwas just, you could transform,
you could change the way you didbusiness casing, and you could
(29:16):
change it. But really, was thereany real benefit? Yeah, I just
didn't see at times. Just didn'tsee the benefit some of those
things. I went just, it's ourconcepts, our ideas. Yeah, the
other thing, the other thing,basic levels of coding
capability in a lot more partsof the business was
Chris Davies (29:36):
useful. Yeah, right, okay,
John Sullivan (29:39):
yeah. So even, like in the accounting side
generally, so you could actuallytake data and run formulas and
stuff like that, just basiccoding stuff was actually
useful. Yeah, not 100%
Chris Davies (29:50):
and Yeah, sort of looking more transformation as a
tech executive. Yeah, in thoseroles, say MYOB. CEO and then at
charge Fox as CEO, what shiftswhen you're accountable for both
the vision and the execution?
John Sullivan (30:13):
I'll tell you one thing that shifts the color of
your hair, because now you'remaking every decision, yeah,
it's a pretty the moreresponsibility you take on, the
more lonely it becomes. Soexcuse me, that that's one
thing. Yes. Like, I don't thinkI was this gray before I took on
(30:37):
the role at CEO of charge Fox.
But the the, well, I don't knowif it shifts or not, but I got a
better understanding of the needto change the style of
leadership, okay, regularly,yeah, right. As as my role
changed, because there's timesif you think of a leadership
(31:03):
style was on a on a line and twoends on it, like one would be
like the true leadership bitabout empower your teams. Don't
ever tell them what to do, justinspire them to do great things
one end and Order, order,autocracy or order autocratic
leadership stuff? Maybe, I don'tknow, maybe not again, someone
(31:27):
on the podcast, yeah, that'swhat's that word? But yeah,
autocratic leadership on theother side, like, there's times
where you've got to shift andyou've got to be so you've got
to decide when's the right timeto be one over the other. Like
you can give full autonomy to ateam if it is capable and
(31:50):
willing to take on ownership ofmaking decisions. And there are
times when you're trying to movefast and change things. Where
you've got to be verydictatorial, I try desperately
hard not like to be verypersonal. Like to keep a
(32:11):
personal way of doing things.
Think of the person. It's likepeople first all of it, yeah,
but there are times where you'vegot to change. And I've learned
that the different sort of, themore senior the roles I get,
that I've got to, I've got tojust decide on my style for the
(32:32):
problem and the thing in frontof me. That's one thing, and
then the other one would belike, walk the walk. Like, yeah,
sure, it's almost working withteams. Is not like, is in no way
shape or form. Like training adog, however, there's an element
of it that's similar. Like, youcan teach a dog, you know, 100
(32:54):
times, to sit at a road and thenwalk on the command, and it will
do that, but the first time youjust let it walk across the
road, it's never gonna you knowit, you're back to the 100 times
before you get that resultagain. Yeah, sure. And with
teams like you have to walk thewalk. You have to, if it is
(33:17):
going to be data LED. You can'tgo to the team and say, just do
this you have, because they'lljust go, Yeah, you know, that's
just a PowerPoint somewhere,yeah, get around the corner.
There's a, there's a piece ofpaper. They're going be led by
data. Yeah, that's like thecompany vision, yeah. So you
have to, you really have to walkthe walk. Yeah,
Chris Davies (33:39):
sure. And is that one of the big things of just
ensuring buzzwords, let's say,are, you know, actually
meaningful? So you can say, Ohyeah, we're we're data led, or
we're people first,
John Sullivan (33:53):
I try not to use any of those things, yeah, okay.
I just it's actions and it'sconversations and it's things
that you say, Yeah, but you'dprobably never find me going,
it's got to be data led, or it'sall about the people. Yeah,
you'd never hear that from me,but you'd see the decisions I
make. People would go, Yeah, Ican. He's got my back, yeah,
(34:15):
yeah, for sure. And okay, he's,he's making that decision and
he's explaining the result of itthat he's seeking by doing the
things that he's doing. Ah, he'sdata LED. Yeah, so I would never
use buzzwords. I would alwaystry and, you know, action, work
in a way that basically could beinterpreted by whatever term
(34:35):
people wanted to use for is itdata LED? Is it data, you know,
insights, or what is it? Yeah,let someone else choose those
buzzwords. Yeah. And
Chris Davies (34:45):
I think something that you mentioned earlier as
well, and in a previous podcastwith Charis from freely, she
talks about having intent, like
Unknown (34:59):
Set your stall out.
This is what we're going to do.
And having intent around, yeah,if we were going to live and
breathe, being data focused, orpeople first, this is how we're
going to go about it, yeah, likeit's to a point probably where
people were going, what, Sullydoing, and there was data on my
(35:20):
screen, yeah, there was alwaysdata on my screen, yeah. It's
like, Sully's like, the dataguy, yeah, it's like, just,
yeah. Have intent about it
John Sullivan (35:29):
it be through the actions. Inspire through
actions. Don't inspire throughwords and PowerPoints, yeah,
Chris Davies (35:39):
yeah, and any kind of specific examples where
that's, you know, a big win, oreven a failure, where you've
tried to kind of, yeah,implement something like that.
John Sullivan (35:55):
Most of the failures are being able to being
unable to influence people orchange things. A lot of the
failures I felt in the lastcouple of roles, or last few
roles have really been about thelevel everyone reports to
(36:16):
someone. So you think when youget into a CEO role, that you're
the most important person, butyou're not. You report to
someone, you report to someone,you report to a board, or you
report to a Group CEO, or if youdon't, you report to a bank, you
know, and you report somewhere.
Yeah, some but the biggestfailures I've had is probably
taking inspiring people on theother side of the team I'm
(36:37):
leading, to the same extent thatI have been able to do that with
the teams that I've led? Yeah,sure. That's and, and that's and
how that results normally isthat the direction that was
we're moving in, the peopleoutside of the company asked for
that to change because theycan't see the value, or they
(37:00):
form an opinion withoutbasically seeking out clarity
from with inside the team. Sothere's failures in that from
me, successes that, if I justtook say, Judge Fox, the
greatest thing I think we got isthat the growth that we got in
(37:20):
the first two years, like it wasastronomical. We were in two
years. I know the market wasgrowing, but we were 200 300%
bigger in the first year thanwhen, when we first started. And
organizations that were ourcompetitors in there. They they
(37:40):
failed them. And, like, closeup, yeah, wow. So, yes, it was a
growing market. But like, wemanaged to grow. We managed to
describe our purpose, inspirepeople go through a strategy of
integrating everywhere. And, youknow, wedging ourselves in as a
(38:03):
platform business, yeah, and so,and taking the description of
become a software business,which is what we're asked to do,
to explaining it, no, no, we'rea platform business like Uber.
Think of Uber. Basically, theydon't own the cars. They
basically facilitate thetransportation on stuff they
don't own, of people, and thenthey build other businesses
(38:27):
around the side, like it's not aperson that's being transported
now it's, it's a food, yeah, andso we took, I got the same model
into charge boxes, like we'rethere facilitating a charging
session. And then we have otherancillary, or accelerating
businesses on the outside of it,like we will incentivize the
purchases of electric electricalvehicles by saying you can get x
(38:51):
amount of free charging when youbuy this this vehicle. Yeah. And
then so we had these accelerantson there that grew charging,
grew revenue. But it all workedoff of that one transaction on
the business, which was, youknow, someone wants to charge,
or something wants to charge,and someone has the capability
and wants to advertise theiravailability to charge, yeah?
(39:13):
And that, to me, that was asuccess. To try and take an idea
that was no more than, you know,back of a fag packet, yeah? You
know, become a softwarebusiness, yeah? It's like the
gnome sketch out of South Park.
Phase one, steel underpants.
What's phase two? Don't know,but phase three, profit, yeah,
there's a sketch in. It's likesteel underpants. I don't know
(39:39):
about how we're getting withwhat we're gonna do with them,
but we're gonna make profit,yeah, and the names were clever
we know about businesses, yeah,yeah. So, so that was a success
to me. Yeah, 100%
Chris Davies (39:52):
and I think that perfectly illustrates tech
strategy is business strategy,yes. 100 to find that we are a
software business. How do we goabout that? Okay, well, here's a
model of someone else who tosomeone an outsider. It might
not seem like a tech businessUber, but it is. It's that
(40:14):
platform that facilitateseverything. But then, well,
yeah, we are a business. So howdo we make money, drive revenue
scale, grow. Ah, well, theseaccelerators, and that feeds
into all the hard work we'vedone from the tech side of
things. Yeah, we
John Sullivan (40:29):
also had this. I built a I explained the model,
like on a platform business, andthen I had a flywheel.
Chris Davies (40:36):
Love a flywheel.
John Sullivan (40:38):
My days at AWS like but we, I built a flywheel
to explain our business, andthat got used in the clubs and
in other places to explain us.
And it was like, you know, getmore users, more users. So,
yeah, get more users. They willcharge more then more charging
activity will mean that peoplewith charges will want to be on
(41:03):
the platform where there is morecharging. Yeah, right. And it's
kind of like it just keepsmoving. And then the more
charging that's in there meanspeople looking to charge will go
to the platform that has morecharging, of course, and so it
just keeps going round. And thenwe built these other accelerants
on the outside of it, which was,okay, let's every new vehicle
get it free charging. So getpeople understanding how to
charge in on public charginginfrastructure. Yeah. Let's go
(41:28):
to businesses and electrifyfleet businesses. Another
accelerant, yeah, and so we,like, I drew it up, and then I
gave it to the UX guys, and theymade it absolutely beautiful.
But yeah, we built flywheels aswell to do the same thing. Well,
yeah, I have to
Chris Davies (41:47):
say on a victim is the right word of the flywheel.
But I remember when I needed tohire a car, and I saw that you
get free charging with CHARGEFox. Well, there we go. That's
the one. Then, because I don't,then I don't have to pay for
fuel, or I don't have to worryabout, you know, returning it
full, returning it full, oranything like that. Is there a
(42:10):
charge charger nearby? Yep. Isthere? Not that made the
decision for me. So that's,yeah, a really good example of
acceleration, a
John Sullivan (42:18):
six car rental.
That's it. That's the one. Yeah,it was awesome. The number of
times I returned a sixth vehicleback with like, 1% on it. Have
you got any charge? Sorry, got aplane to catch? Yeah,
Chris Davies (42:34):
awesome. So I think we've got one more. Would
you rather question? And thenwe'll move on to our final piece
of the pod. So would you ratherinherit a tech team that
delivers fast but names all oftheir repositories after 90
sitcoms, maybe after the SouthPark reference? We might know
the answer to that one or onewith flawless documentation, but
(42:57):
they reply to every message withper my last email, former
John Sullivan (43:03):
it's not such a bad one. I just Yeah, codes,
codes documented by itself, yes,yeah. And if it really needs
reams and reams of documentationto understand it, then it needs
to be rewritten. Yeah.
Chris Davies (43:17):
Good point. Yeah.
So yeah, the final couple ofquestions for today is, what's
one? Mind shift, mindset shift.
You'd love to see more leadersadopt tech or otherwise.
John Sullivan (43:36):
So it think of the outcome that you're
seeking before you decide theactions that you want to
undertake. So the number oftimes I've been in organizations
where they go, lots of thisexact case, we're going to
(44:01):
transform the way we work, orwe're going to merge these teams
together, and then we're goingto go and find synergies. Yeah,
right. Really, like, it's likeit so that just closes all the
conversation off. Okay, whereare what synergies are you
after? Like, when you've gotsynergies, what are you going to
do? Like, what you can have moreof, what can you eat more of?
(44:21):
What can you you know, whatweight are you going to lose?
What you going what's going tohappen here? So to mind, it's
always changed the way you thinkand live in. It's quite a
nervous state, I think, to keepasking yourself, Why am I doing
this? Why am I doing this? Whyam I doing this? Why am I doing
(44:42):
this? And then I'm doing itbecause of this. But why am I
doing why is that important? Whyis that important? And just sit
in that really nervous, I think,nervous state for a lot longer
than you would normally sit init. Yeah, because people are
very comfortable in motion.
(45:03):
They're not very comfortablesitting down and considering
what they're about to undertake,yeah. And so I would ask leaders
to sit down and consider theoutcomes and why they're doing
things and then decide what itis they're going to do, maybe
think about the measures, andthen think about the things
(45:25):
you're going to do that willprove that will meet those
measures that will get you thatoutcome. Yeah. So that's what
I'd ask people. Yeah. I'd loveto see more of that. Yeah. And
there aren't many, like I said,most people, again, turn most,
lots of people were just, don't,they think about something, can
they feel comfortable with theconcept of what they're going to
(45:48):
do, and they're happy with that,and so they start working on and
you go, no, no. Think more.
Yeah, think think about it more.
So you can describe it withoutit's kind of, you know, it's the
vibe, it's, it's like Mambo,it's, it's, yes, a vibe, yeah?
And
Chris Davies (46:07):
I think that's a something that has come across
throughout today. I thinklooking back, talking points
have been, yeah, obviously techstrategy, it's business
strategy, okay, ours, but alsoasking questions around
constraint, when it comes toOKRs, when it comes to
transformation, it's just asmuch about personal growth as it
(46:28):
is business growth. Obviously,many lessons in leadership along
the way. But also you've askedthe question, why a lot, and
perhaps more significantly, whyis it important that we're doing
this? And I think that's kind ofresonated throughout.
John Sullivan (46:45):
Yeah, it's get the why gets me in trouble,
upwards quite John, you need todo this. Why people like people,
would see that it's a question,that you're questioning their
leadership and their authority.
And I say, now I'm actually justtrying to discover how best to
do what it is you need me to do,yeah, and because it's not
clear, and you can't actuallysay it's because, like, it's
(47:08):
just not clear and apparent,what the hell you actually want
me to do? You just want me totake this action? Yeah? But tell
me, I'm a smart person, I couldprobably do it really well if I
actually knew what you're tryingto achieve? Yeah, yeah, awesome.
Chris Davies (47:23):
Well, yeah, I think that's pretty much it for
today. If people want to kind offollow your work or learn more
from your experience, where canthey find you or get in touch?
Probably
John Sullivan (47:37):
have a crack on LinkedIn. Yeah, I was on Twitter
for a while, but then when itwent to x, well, that jumped
off. And I never really afterCOVID, sort of found the social
platform to to converse on. So alot of it, what I do is I go
through these space of doingstuff on
Chris Davies (47:57):
on LinkedIn, writing articles and stuff on
LinkedIn. Yeah, I've read acouple recently. Yeah, it's
probably, probably the bestplace. Yeah, cool. Well, yeah,
if this conversation has madeyou rethink about how tech and
business teams work together,please subscribe to the tech
trajectory podcast, because I'msure we'll have more along the
same lines, but we'll be backwith more stories soon from
(48:22):
people shaping what's next, butfor today, Sully, thanks very
much for joining me. Pleasure.
You.
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