We are excited to welcome, Prof. Adam Boddison OBE, CEO of the Association for Project Management to The Communicative Leader.
In this episode, we discuss the definition of large-scale growth and the criteria that differentiate it from traditional organizational growth. Adam emphasizes the importance of scalability, replicability, and sustainability in achieving large-scale growth. They also discuss the allocation of resources, prioritizing efficiency in business as usual, over-resourcing growth areas, and managing workload. Message clarity and effective communication are highlighted, with repetition and storytelling as key techniques. Finally, they touch on leadership styles and the need for leaders to be adaptable and switch between different styles.
Until next time, communicate with intention and lead with purpose.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Leah OH (00:00):
Today, on the Communicative Leader, we welcome
Adam Boddison, ceo of theAssociation for Project
Management.
Adam discusses large-scaleorganizational growth and the
strategies and tactics that canbe used to achieve it.
So we talk about this.
We talk about scalability, howto replicate, how to sustain,
(00:21):
but also, adam just gives ussome really, really great
concrete leadership andcommunication takeaways.
So let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader hosted by
me, dr Leah O Hodges.
My friends call me Dr Oak.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
(00:42):
communication expert.
I'm the communicative leader.
We're working to make your worklife what you want it to be
Well.
thank you so much for joining ustoday.
I'm so excited to learn moreabout large-scale organizational
growth.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Of course, thank you for having me on the podcast.
So my name is Adam Boddison.
I'm the chief executive officerof the Association for Project
Management, so that is aprofessional body.
We've got 45,000 individualmembers.
We work with 500 corporates andwe're a registered charity.
We exist for the public benefit.
(01:20):
It's always about improvingsociety by delivering projects
better.
I've been there for about threeyears.
I kind of got into this job byaccident, really, because my
last chief exec role was for a,a national inclusion charity,
which was interested in childrenwith special needs and
disabilities.
Um, and that also wasn't mybackground.
(01:40):
My background is actually as amaths teacher, a school maths
teacher, in fact.
But in my last role, because Ibecame, if you like, put in the
specialist box of you're anexpert about children with
disabilities, I thought that'sgreat, but I want to do much
more than that.
So I deliberately looked forsomething broad, hence found
(02:01):
this project management role.
And boy is it broad.
I mean, this is every sectoryou can imagine yes, education,
but it's also defense andnuclear and energy, and
healthcare.
And wow, it's just absolutelybrilliant.
Really really love it.
Dr. Leah OH (02:16):
Excellent, and I love that when you can take
these skills and then move intoa different industry and then
parlay those new experiences.
I just think it really itspeaks to someone who loves
learning and is good with peopleand good at navigating
organizations, so I imagine thatyou really do well and enjoy
(02:38):
this role that is so expansive,yeah, so kudos to you no, no,
thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Interestingly, I remember going for my interview
for my first CEO role, which wasin this special needs charity,
and one of the opening questionswas Adam, you don't know a lot
about special educational needs.
What makes you think you'regoing to have any credibility at
all in this role?
And my answer to that was well,my first kind of vote of
(03:05):
confidence is the fact thatyou've shortlisted me for this
post.
Why did you shortlist me forthe post?
and then we had this you know,you have to imagine the scene.
This was like a big, long table.
We had, like most of the boardof trustees on one side and me
on the other side.
It was like facing the lastsupper.
You know something like thisyes, yes ultimately, what was
really interesting.
What they decided was look,we've got an organization that's
(03:28):
rammed with people with specialneeds expertise.
What we need is a leader.
We need someone who can helpscale our organization, help us
to grow, help us to really sortout the commercial side, and
that's what I was able to bring,and, of course, you learn the
rest on the way.
Dr. Leah OH (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, that is phenomenal.
I love that.
As a leadership scholar, thatis really neat taking that
perspective.
So we know we're going to belooking at large scale growth
and one question for you is canyou help define that for us, and
what are the criteria that gofrom, just you know, a general
organizational change or shift,or even traditional
(04:05):
organizational growth, tolarge-scale growth?
Speaker 3 (04:08):
yeah, it's a really good question and and I actually
think I thought a lot aboutthis I I don't think you can put
a particular metric on this andsay well, if it's below that
threshold, it's not major andit's not large scale.
And if it's above it, then it isI think it's really contextual,
um, and it's dependent on scale, and if it's above it, then it
is.
I think it's really contextualand it's dependent on both the
organisation and the operatingenvironment.
(04:29):
You know, if I give you anexample, the inclusion charity I
talked about before that was aprofessional membership
association.
They'd been around for about 40years.
At the time They'd never reallyhad more than about 3,000 or
4,000 members, but actually thepool, if you like, the market of
possible members was hundredsof thousands.
So they'd grown.
(04:50):
If you look that they'd grownfrom zero to 4,000 over 40 years
you could say, okay, does thatcount?
But when I was there, in sixyears we went from 4,000 to
40,000.
Adam Boddison (05:00):
And then, in the three years that followed, my
successor took it from 40 000 to100 000, so something changed
and and it's to me, it's aboutorders of magnitude.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So when you say, how do you define?
It um, I don't think it's aparticular metric.
It's how does it?
It's relative, it's how does itcompare to the past?
But how does it compare toother organizations like us?
Um, and and, and, by the way,it could be on a whole range of
things.
So I talk about number ofmembers there, because that was
their main metric.
It could be revenue service.
I even think engagement is areally important one as well,
(05:32):
you know when you take anorganization that's kind of you
know, let's say, known forquality but not known enough,
and then all of a sudden theyhit the mainstream.
That in itself for me wouldconstitute large scale growth.
Dr. Leah OH (05:44):
the mainstream that in itself, for me, would
constitute large-scale growth.
Yeah, yeah, excellent, that'sreally helpful.
So it's kind of this processand, like you said, contextual,
it's not this destination, likewe've arrived, we've done that.
You know, all set box ischecked.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Exactly, exactly that .
Dr. Leah OH (06:00):
Mm-hmm.
So I'm wondering now about somekey strategies.
So what you know, maybe in yourprevious work or in the work
that you're doing now, what doyou see, these strategies or
tactics that tend to be mosteffective or that, if we're
going to, you know, adviseorganizations who are looking to
make this shift?
(06:22):
You know, what do we encouragethem to do?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, again a great question.
I think obviously some of thisis about painting the picture,
the vision and so on, but Ithink that alone is not enough.
But if I give you an example ofin my current organization at
the moment I talked before about, you know, corporate
partnerships that we have- andmemberships and so on.
So we really need to scale ourorganization.
(06:46):
And the reason we need to scaleis not just for growth sake.
It's because we are arelatively immature professional
body.
You know, we've been around forjust over 50 years, 52 years.
But there are otherorganizations the accountants,
the engineers, you know, they'vebeen around for hundreds of
years, you know, and what'sinteresting about them, even
though they've been around forhundreds of years?
You know, yeah, and what'sinteresting about them?
Even though they've been aroundfor hundreds of years, they all
tend to have a scale which isaround about the same size.
(07:09):
So that's obviously the scaleyou need to have to kind of have
a tangible impact.
So what I did in terms of yourquestion about what specific
strategies or tactics can youuse, what I did was, rather than
just say, right, well, we needto be that big guys, I said yes,
(07:30):
yeah, what, what?
Adam Boddison (07:31):
would it take what?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
would it take for us to get there?
So in that, in my particularcontext, we have what I call the
110 100 uh strategy.
So I said what would it takefor us to become an organization
that has 1 000 corporatepartners, 10 000 chartered
project professionals and 100000000 members?
And what that does when you askthe question, rather than
saying this is the destination,when you ask the question, it
focuses on the how, not on thewhat.
(07:52):
So people start saying, oh,adam, if you really want to do
that, we're going to need todouble our workforce.
Or do you know what, adam, ifwe're going to do that, we need
to have some kind of technologyrevolution, because we don't
have scalable processes.
Here Everything's done by handand there's 150 touch points for
every single person we bring onboard or something.
So it shifts the focus toreally look at the scalability,
(08:14):
and I have three tests that Ialways ask for in my
organization.
If we're going to do something,it has to be replicable,
scalable and sustainable, and ifit doesn't meet those three
tests, we shouldn't be doing it.
Dr. Leah OH (08:26):
Yeah, I love that.
It's so, so helpful, because Ithink you're right, when you're
asking the right questions, thehow we're changing the way we
think All of a sudden it becomesconcrete.
It's something that we canactually solve and make a
process to achieving.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I agree and interesting.
Yeah no, it's interesting whenwe start to have those
conversations, what tends tocome out are the pain points and
the gain points.
Right, because people in everyorganization you've got people
who say, oh, this bit of theorganization doesn't work
because and you need to try andshift that narrative.
So, instead of hearing, youknow we can't do this because we
(09:07):
can do this if and that's whatthe what does it take?
Question does is it shifts fromone mindset to the other
mindset?
Dr. Leah OH (09:15):
Yes, yeah, yeah and I like as an organizational
scholar, I'm so happy hearingabout employee empowerment, that
idea of giving them in a roomto be innovative and to think
about it.
That's really incredible.
I imagine you have really goodretention because people feel
engaged and heard.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Interestingly so, we have an external organization
that we use to kind of get staffviews and so on, and you know
if we've been doing that.
It started before I arrived, uh, but but over time, over the
past kind of five, six years,the feedback that we get from
that goes up and up and up.
Exactly for the reason you said, around staff engagements, I
think the challenge we have isnot so much with engagement,
(10:00):
it's trying to match, uh,appetite with capacity.
Adam Boddison (10:03):
Um, so you, you empower all of these staff and
they go great, we can do allthis stuff, you know, and the
leadership team.
I'm the worst offender right,I'm like, yeah, we can do this,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And then you look around and you say you can't
really do all of this stuff, andso then you've got to be
careful that you don't go toofar and create these kind of
workload challenges.
So you know, we've kind of gonefrom one problem we've solved
it's a bit like a mole, you knowand another problem pops up
somewhere else?
Dr. Leah OH (10:29):
Yes, yeah, pops up.
Oh, that's excellent.
So this is a really nice segue.
So I was wondering aboutresources, so thinking about
prioritizing them, allocatingthem.
So if we know that we are kindof growth focused, you know and
it's probably hard to find anorganization that says they are
not growth focused in some waybut you know, what does that
(10:55):
advice look like when they'resaying, Adam, I don't know what
to do with these resources, howdo I best allocate these?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, again, I don't think there's any silver bullet
for this.
There's no one way of doing it.
Adam Boddison (11:06):
Otherwise every organization would be doing it
already, right so?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I think I start with that caveat, but if I try and
think, you know what hasgenerally worked for me in
organizations.
There's a couple of things.
So I think the first one iswhere are the efficiencies in
business as usual?
Business as usual, so mappingout all of those business as
usual processes that we can'tlive as an organization without
and saying is there a way wecould do this better and
(11:30):
therefore free up resource thatwe can allocate elsewhere.
That does two things.
One it makes people's liveseasier, so they're happier and
therefore more productive.
But two it just gives you moreresource for free, so why
wouldn't you do that?
So so secure efficiencies inbusiness as usual, then what I
always tend to do is overresource, deliberately those
(11:50):
areas uh, which bring growthinto the organization.
So what do I mean by that?
I mean things like marketing,business development, external
engagement.
You know um, you know sospeaking events and all that
profile stuff round tables allof those things.
Yes, because although sometimessome of those things have very
tangible returns on investment,some of them are slow burns, but
(12:11):
actually they always pay off inthe end, in my opinion, if
you're doing them well, so getthe efficiencies overinvest in,
or over-resource in, growth.
And then the third thing for meis around workload.
I mentioned it before um whenyou really get people fired up,
they, they want to do abrilliant job, and I, you know,
uh, we have an interestingsituation in my organization at
(12:33):
the moment where we have reallydiligent colleagues who produce
such excellent work that it'salmost too good, um, and you
have this situation wherethey've got a lot of things to
do but the standard is so highthat you say, look, this is not
scalable because it's too good.
So we have uh we've beentalking about are we letting
perfect be the enemy of good?
Dr. Leah OH (12:53):
uh, here yeah, is good enough.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Okay, you know, sometimes you need perfect right
, but sometimes, sometimes, youknow.
So there's this kind ofself-imposed workload that
sometimes comes in, so we'rehaving open conversations about
that and we also put in a stopand slow initiative which says
to people what are the thingsthat you do in your job which,
if you stop doing them or spentless time on them, actually it
(13:19):
wouldn't really impact on ourability to meet our strategic
goals, really impact on ourability to meet our strategic
goals.
And actually when people startlooking at that, it turns out
there's quite a bit in thatbucket that they can release
workload and resource from.
Dr. Leah OH (13:32):
That's incredible.
I really love what you're doingand I think you know, anytime a
communication scholar hearsopen dialogue, right, it's heart
to eyes, because there's somany times, especially employees
and I'm finding this a lotpost-COVID, especially where
resources still aren'tnecessarily where they were you
(13:53):
know, flexibility, lifestyleisn't exactly where it was and
some people are so afraid tospeak up, but when organizations
create these opportunities andI like that stop and slow
initiative, where you have tostop, you have to reflect.
This is just part of our workthat really, really pays off in
so many different areas yeah, Imean lots of organizations have.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I think they call it stop, start, continue, which is
a more traditional version ofthis.
I quite like stop and slowbecause, yeah, we don't want to
introduce anything new here.
Dr. Leah OH (14:26):
Exactly.
You know, just focus on thosethings that are going to help
you stop or slow.
Yep, exactly, yep, nice andsimple and clear.
So that brings us to messageclarity and I'm what are things
either you've done or you kindof see some of your corporate
(14:46):
partners do?
Because you know thatorganizations can be really
large, they can be broken up, alot of hierarchy.
So how do you ensure thismessage is consistently
communicated across anorganization, especially when
we're having those rapid periodsof growth?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So first of all, we know from you know it's in the
academic literature, it's inlike every leadership book you
ever read, every communicationsbook you ever read.
You're going to tell people alot of times before the message
sinks in.
Whatever the message is.
Probably in a lot of differentways as well, because people
hear the messages in differentways.
So I think repetition isimportant because you know,
(15:27):
we've just had the generalelection over here, right in the
UK.
And one of the interestingthings is the prime minister,
keir Starmer.
When he was elected there werelots of kind of satire, kind of
jokes about the fact thateverywhere he went, he kept
saying to everybody oh, did youknow that my father's a
toolmaker?
And it kind of became the joke,right.
And when they talked to thestrategist about this.
Adam Boddison (15:46):
They said why does?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
he keep going on about this and they said because
actually he needs to repeat itthat many times so that people
so there is real logic in this.
So I think repetition'simportant.
The other thing I learned andthis is maybe personal to me
because of my background as amaths teacher I like to be
logical and have logic modelsfor how things are going to work
(16:08):
.
but that's not enough.
Just because something looksgood on a piece of paper and
there's a real logic to it, it'snot going to work for everybody
.
I really believe instorytelling as a leadership
technique, so this is kind ofalmost drawing on the literature
skills.
How do you tell a reallyeffective story?
(16:28):
that you know who all thecharacters are, what their roles
are going to be, where thetension and the drama is going
to be.
You know where things are goingto go disastrously wrong, but
actually it all works out wellin the end and we have this
happy ending that actually isreally applicable to a business
context and captures the heartas well as the head of people.
So I think that's absolutelyessential if you're going to get
(16:51):
this kind of organizationalclarity.
And, by the way, all of this ismuch harder in this new world
of hybrid Like when people arethere every day and you can have
all that conversation, allthose, the water cooler
conversations how do?
you replicate that in hybrid.
Well, we're still working onthat, um, but it's definitely
harder now than it was before itmakes me think of um.
Dr. Leah OH (17:12):
We had karen eber on, so she is all about
storytelling and she was talkingabout, uh, the neuroscience
behind it, and actually morereal estate in our brain lights
up when we're listening tostories, and that also leads to
not only retention but alsofeelings of psychological safety
, so it actually puts youremployees in a calmer, more
(17:36):
comfortable place.
So I can see why you reallylike that.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Interestingly, I'm sure lots of your listeners of
this podcast have beenexperimenting with ai and things
like that, one of the things Ido when I have an idea that I
want to communicate or I want toget some organizational clarity
.
I have a, I have a chat with ai.
It's quite interesting, soprobably, uh, probably, a couple
of times a week.
Um, I just have a bit of backand forth and I said you know,
(18:02):
do you know what chat gpt orgemini or whatever your
preferred?
Dr. Leah OH (18:05):
uh, you know ai provider is.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
So I'm thinking about this.
What do you think?
Is this the best way to say it?
It comes back and this is whathave you thought about it?
And sometimes my way is better,right I mean yeah, I mean it's
sound egotistical about it yeahmore often than not, more often
than not the ai is better, um,and actually that kind of back
and forth can really help you topolish how you communicate that
idea across without, if youlike, burning through real
(18:29):
people.
But you know, with the ideabefore it hits a human.
You've already had that.
Dr. Leah OH (18:34):
Yes, yep, yep.
And if we're thinking abouttheir workloads, it's kind of,
you know, ability to lessentheir load or maintain it.
Well, you can have thatsounding board.
That's so helpful.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Absolutely.
Dr. Leah OH (18:49):
So we've talked about messaging and
communication, and now I'mwondering about leadership
styles.
So I you know I'm a leadershipscholar.
I know there's so manydifferent paths to being
effective, and I'm wondering ifyou have found or observed some
particular traits or styles thattend to be really effective
(19:12):
when we're looking at this kindof large scale change.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, it's a bit like the conversation we had before
around, you know, strategies.
Again, there's no oneleadership style that.
I think works for everyone inevery situation again or
everybody doing it.
So I think there's one abilitythat leaders definitely need to
have, and that's the ability toswitch between different styles,
and that's not just contextual.
(19:38):
I think it's also aboutmanaging one's self, because
sometimes you can get better outof yourself and your own
ability by using a particularstyle with a particular person.
So so I, so I think that's partof it.
I also have discovered that themore senior you get in your
role, um, the more you need tobe less worried about your own
(19:59):
style and more worried about howyou get the best out of other
people, um and so.
So, in a sense, your own styleis I'm not saying it's not
important, but it but it's moreimportant that it generates the
right style in that wholeleadership team around you.
Yes, uh, I wouldn't quite go asfar as this, but it's almost
like if it came to sacrificingyourself so your whole
(20:20):
leadership team could performbetter, because everybody
thought you were an idiot interms of how you were in it, but
all the teams were working,working brilliantly.
That would be worth it, yeah youknow, yeah, it's probably quite
an unusual, unusual perspectiveon on things.
Um, I find, yeah, coachingculture um is a really, really
good.
So this is something we've beenworking on in our organization
(20:43):
um is trying to create this kindof coaching culture, um, uh,
and we started with leadershipteams, so with individual
executive coaches, but groupcoaching as well, and now we're
kind of cascading that throughthe organization.
That creates an emphasis onfeedback, honest conversations,
um, so that's great, um, and Isuppose the last thing I would
(21:04):
say is alignment to values.
For me, I think is reallyimportant, because people can
tell right.
They can tell if you say thevalues of this and then you're
saying you're doing somethingelse, they know it doesn't fit.
We have one in our organizationwhich I've never seen anywhere
before.
So we have four values.
So we talk about beingexcellent, progressive,
(21:26):
thoughtful, and then we havethis other one, which is that we
are a warm organization oh yeah, I haven't heard that one.
Dr. Leah OH (21:33):
Um, and you know I love it.
I've heard the other.
Yeah, when.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I arrived I thought what is this warm thing?
I mean normally warm.
You know we're talking aboutglobal warming.
That's bad right?
So yeah, what you know, doesthis?
mean we're like I don't know.
We're all sitting around onbeanbags.
You know what's it all about?
And it turns out this warmthing is about saying look, you
know, sometimes we've got tomake hard decisions, sometimes
we've got to make them populardecisions.
Sometimes we've got to dothings that not everybody agrees
(21:58):
on, but that doesn't mean wecan't do it in the right way.
Treat people decently, withrespect, bring people along
Really, try hard to communicatewhat we care about and why we
care about it.
And I tell you, boy, do we livethis value?
This is not a value that's inthe drawer, that we never you
know, no one knows about.
Dr. Leah OH (22:16):
We live it and it's so powerful and so this kind of
leadership styles that linkdirectly with those kind of
values I just think areincredible styles that link
directly with those kind ofvalues I just think are
incredible.
Yeah, and I like the reminderbecause I think we're at a point
in society where there's somuch divisiveness and so much
strife and so much uncertaintythat having warm as a consistent
(22:39):
part of your work life andinfused in those relationships
and decisions, that's a place Iwant to work at.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, no, I agree, and some people have criticized
this before externally and saidlook, does warm mean like you're
a bit, you're not as ruthlessas you need to be or you're not
as sharp edged?
And actually it doesn't,because it's not about what we
do, it's about how we do it, andI think that's the difference.
Dr. Leah OH (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, I like that distinction.
So we just talked about theseeffective approaches to leading
in organizations and, morespecifically, in organizations
looking for large-scale change.
So now I'd like to ask youabout instances that you've seen
that are less effective ormaybe downright
(23:31):
counterproductive.
So what are some of those?
You know, what is that bumpiestpath that you've seen people
take or tried to take in thisroute?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, again, an excellent question.
I suppose the obvious place tostart is when you get the
opposite of what I've justtalked about, a misalignment to
the values, where the behaviorsdoesn't match the rhetoric, if
you like and I think that'shighly problematic.
People see through prettyquickly and things unravel
pretty quickly.
So it doesn't really matterwhether you're trying to achieve
large-scale growth or just keepthe show on the road.
(24:02):
It's going to fall apart prettyquickly so I think that's
that's problematic.
I the other thing is, I thinkwhen, when there's a, an
undervaluing of difference, uh,and I'm thinking particularly of
things like, um, you know,neurodiversity and so on um, we
see it sometimes with kind ofintroverts, extroverts,
whichever you know side of theequation, you fall on the idea
(24:23):
that your way is the only way todo it and therefore you don't
value anybody.
It does it a different way orit's not quite as good as your
way.
I think that is reallyproblematic.
Um and I've seen leaders fallfoul of that several times um, I
think organizationally lack ofroom for progression can be
problematic, because then yourgood people kind of have nowhere
to go, and so they either getum, you know, demoralized, or
(24:46):
they leave you know, so, so, andand and.
There are so many options.
You don't always have topromote people or pay them more.
You know you can give themother.
You know, I think succumbentsare great, because then you get
people back at the right time,you know, with all this other
skills to bring.
Uh, I think giving you know,giving people opportunities to
kind of shadow and step intoother roles for periods of time.
(25:06):
So I think there's lots ofthings you can do there, but I
think the two biggest problemsthat I see are leaders where
they either don't own theirmistakes, because then it
creates a kind of blame culture.
You know it's not my mistake.
Adam Boddison (25:20):
It's your mistake or they don't take enough risk.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
So that risk appetite piece in terms of, yeah, and
it's appetite piece in terms of,and it's particularly true of
growing organizations, right, Ifyou're going to change the dial
, do something different.
Sorry, if you want to grow at adifferent pace you've got to do
something different.
Dr. Leah OH (25:42):
So not taking enough risk, I think, is a big
problem.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'm feeling anxious because I'mthinking about all of these
things and I know it happens inorganizations, but that's just.
That is a tough organization tobe, to be part of.
So when I was getting ready forour chat, I was thinking about,
(26:02):
you know, short term and longterm in this vision, because
growth, you know, as you said,vision is one part of it, but we
can't get there alone withvision.
But you know, what do yourecommend in thinking about
talking to employees andstakeholders today and kind of
keeping them in conversation aswe head towards this long-term
(26:26):
goal?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
yeah.
So I mean, some of it is aboutmeasuring and tracking and
reporting so people know wherethey are on the journey.
Are we?
Are we getting any closer, youknow?
Are we the same place as wewere last year?
What's working, what's notworking, and and just and.
Some of that is not just aboutpresenting the positive picture
of look, we're doing great onthis stuff, but don't look over
there, you know there's that'snot.
Yeah, yeah, actually shine alight on the bad stuff as well,
(26:48):
because that's where you get theideas from people that say you
actually could do somethingdifferently here, or maybe we
just abandon that because that'sjust not going to work for us
and put all our you know, putour resources into something
else instead.
So there's that honesty interms of regular communication
about what's working, what's notworking.
Are we are we getting?
Are we getting towards it?
I've seen some offices wherethey have these kind of, you
know, big kind of thermometertype charts on the wall or
(27:10):
something like this.
So it's really visual and stuff.
I really love that.
Um, you know others where theyhave, uh, you know, the home
page when people log in.
It's like a, it's like adashboard from the crm, uh
something which shows them wherewe are so that kind of thing is
great but the other thing isyou've got to have a few aces up
your sleeve for the for thelong term.
Um, do you know that the thefilm uh, school of rock, uh with
(27:34):
jack black, yes, yeah I lovethis film, but if anyone's not
watched this film, right, you'remissing a treat.
You've got to watch this filmbut, he has.
He has a line he uses in thisfilm where he says one great
rock show can change the world.
And I think you know, let'sthink about that in a business
context, right, yeah, what?
What are the rock shows thatyou've got kind of coming up
your sleeve, so not?
not the main strategy stuff andthe business as usual in the
(27:56):
short term and long term goals,but a few kind of game changes,
most of which probably won't goanywhere.
But you only need one to comeoff and it's going to massively
accelerate your progress andchange the world, to use Jack
Black's phrase.
So I think, as a leader, you'vegot to kind of set a few of
those hairs off at some pointand see what happens.
Dr. Leah OH (28:19):
Yeah, yes, I absolutely love that and I love
the inspiration, because Ialways say leadership,
inspiration is everywhere and weconnect with it all differently
.
But when you make thatconnection, then figuring out,
how do I parlay this into whatI'm doing and where I wanna be?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Absolutely 100% yeah.
Dr. Leah OH (28:38):
So, adam, I have two final questions for you and
these are kind of interconnected.
So, on the communicative leader, we like to leave our listeners
with pragmatic leadership orcommunication.
It can be a tip advicechallenge.
So, first part of the questionwhat advice do you have for our
titled leaders out there, right,our managers, directors, ceos,
(29:01):
anyone who has that formalleadership position?
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Sure.
Well, I've got two pieces ofadvice, if I'm allowed to, yeah.
So I think the first one wouldbe to judge people more by their
intentions than by theiractions, Because then you
encourage that risk-taking Italked about before.
You know, they're not going tobe shut down because actually
they had a good idea but it wasbadly implemented or it didn't
quite come off in the way theyexpected.
(29:25):
As long as they've got theright intention, you can help
someone to get there.
If someone hasn't got the rightintentions, I mean it's a
non-starter, it doesn't matterif they accidentally get it
right you know, so I think thatintentions piece is really
important.
So, that's the first one.
The second one for me is aroundpicking your battles as a
leader.
You come across all kinds ofthings that you could get your
(29:47):
sticky fingers all over and tryand sort out.
But in my mind those battleshave to be small enough to win,
but big enough to make adifference, and if they don't
fall into that sweet spot, thenyou should leave them.
well, alone because it's eithergoing to give you a fight that
just creates chaos anddisharmony, or it doesn't kind
of matter anyway.
So yeah, that would be my twopieces of advice.
Dr. Leah OH (30:10):
Yes, yes, I love that.
I'm always reminded how muchleadership is like parenting for
parents out there, and you'retalking about message repetition
, how all the leadership booksI'm am like so do parenting
books in this too, figuring outhow you know, does it make sense
to pick here?
And then I think, too, is theimmediacy like is this going to
cause a huge immediate issue, oris this just something that's a
(30:34):
one-off right, like so, likeyou're saying, like if it's just
not going to make a bigdifference, even if I could win
it, I'm going to let it go.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, absolutely, and letting it go, you know, is
harder than it sounds sometimes.
You know, as a leader, you'rein a room and you can see
something's not quite right andyou feel like almost a
professional obligation to saysomething and being able to kind
of bite your tongue and say youknow what?
I'm just going to leave itbecause it doesn't matter.
(31:04):
It doesn't matter that much.
That's honestly so much harderthan it sounds.
Dr. Leah OH (31:09):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah , yep.
And it makes me think aboutyour point when you're talking
about how, when you get to thesehigher ranks as a leader, part
of your skill in what you'rebringing to the table is to help
others to shine and to raise uptheir leadership.
So part of that might bemodeling the grace and kind of
(31:31):
letting some of these thingslike, okay, this doesn't have an
immediate consequence, I don'tokay, going to let it go, and I
think that's really a beautifulexample of leadership.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I mean, I'll tell you a real example.
It happened earlier this year,so I was meeting a CEO of
another organization.
I won't say who, but it wasoverseas anywhere a little bit
that way.
So over in the Middle East andwe were meeting this person for
the first time, I had threemembers of my team with me, kind
of, you know, middle managementtype stuff, and this person, it
(32:04):
was just one person from theirside, it was this chief exec,
first time meeting in person,and we sat down and this guy's
opening comment was Adam, youremind me a lot of Lewis Lipp
from Seats.
You look so much like him.
I can't believe it.
And now I've seen that program.
Right, this character is notknown for good reasons.
Uh, yes you know, you see, youknow, if anyone's seen if your
(32:24):
listeners have seen this, you'll, they'll, they'll know it's a
bit kind of nerdy, and so on.
Now it would have been so easyfor me to be really offended,
really insulted by this, uh, youknow, to come to comment that
that was not an appropriate wayto start to me, or whatever, and
in fact, what it took all my,all my will to say, oh, I must
watch that program sometime andfind out exactly who you're
(32:47):
talking about yeah, and thenmove on.
And actually a couple of membersof my team said afterwards we
know you've watched that program.
And I said, well, yes, but youknow that's not a great way to
start a relationship off.
If I, if I, fault in the veryfirst thing they've said to me.
So, that's just a real example,you know, of something that's
happened this year.
Dr. Leah OH (33:06):
Yeah, yeah, that is excellent.
Your professional privilege islike what is going on and then
taking the time to think thatthrough.
Yeah, kudos to you.
So that the final part of thequestion.
So we've talked about someadvice for our title leaders.
What about for all employees,Any rank, any industry?
(33:27):
What do we leave them with?
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I suppose I would want to remind people that their
words matter, what they say andwhat they do really matters,
and actually people, at anylevel, have more influence than
they, they they know, on thepeople around them.
Um, there's a story from when Iwas a maths teacher which
always, always kind of comes tomind when I think about
(33:51):
influence.
So I remember my very firstyear as a kind of um, well, I
just finished as a studentteacher, my first year as a
secondary school maths teacher,so high school maths, and I, um,
and I came into this lesson oneday to the classroom and
there's a young man there withhis feet on the table, you know,
hands behind his head, didn'tparticularly want to be there, I
think, and I said to him comeon, get your feet off the table.
(34:12):
I said you wouldn't do this athome, would you?
And he said to me no, but thenI wouldn't do algebra at home
either.
Uh, and I said well, that'sthat's actually a really funny
answer.
So I gave him 10, uh 10 kind ofhouse points, just like this
reward system.
He, the guy, nearly fell offhis chair.
He, he was 15 years old.
He said in his 15 years.
Nobody had ever given him housepoints before he'd never been
(34:34):
given a reward before.
Yeah, he was a bit of a rogue.
This, this chap right youunderstand yeah, anyway, we we
ended up getting off, gettingoff on the right foot, and we
got him quite well.
Um, he went on to do his uh,you know, his gcse exams.
So they're the exams they do itwith age 16 in the uk.
Um, I'd left the school by then, um, but many years later, um I
(34:54):
I saw him on a train.
I was on the train goingsomewhere and he spotted me and
he said oh, do you remember?
And we talked about this timeand falling off the chair, all
of this um, and.
And he spotted me and he saidoh, do you remember?
And we talked about this timeand falling off the chair, all
of this um, and.
And he said and he said to me,he I said well, what do you do
now?
He said uh, he said I'm a mathsteacher.
Uh, and by the way I do algebraat home every day um but, but,
but the point was oh, I gotgoosebumps.
(35:16):
Yeah, what he said to me waslook, no, no other teacher cared
you know about me he said.
He said I went on, I got mygcse I went on to do um maths at
you know a level universitybecame a teacher.
He's now a head of head ofmaths in a high school um, and
he puts it down to this oneconversation.
(35:36):
Not, it wasn't all of the stuffafterwards, the exams, all of
that was enablers, but the thingthat really mattered was that
one conversation and I wasfortunate that I happened to
bump into him and we we had thisconversation.
I would never have known butthe reason.
Sorry, I've been a bit aroundthe houses here, leah, but but
what I'm saying is in theworkplace.
In a workplace, people arehaving these conversations all
the time.
(35:56):
You know over lunch, you knowaround the water cooler on a
team.
But those words matter and theycould be life changing for
people.
So I suppose my advice is thinkcarefully about what you say,
because it could changesomeone's life.
Dr. Leah OH (36:10):
Yeah, yeah, gosh, I absolutely love, love that
story One I will not forget.
So cool that you got to seethat go full circle.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, I was very lucky, Very lucky that you got
to see that go full circle.
Dr. Leah OH (36:23):
Yeah, I was very lucky, very lucky.
Yeah, adam, it has been anabsolute joy chatting with you
and learning from you, and I amso excited to share all your
words of wisdom with ourlisteners.
So thank you for being with ustoday.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Thank you for the invitation.
Adam Boddison (36:37):
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
Today, on the Communicative Leader, we welcome
Adam Boddison, ceo of theAssociation for Project
Management.
Adam discusses large-scaleorganizational growth and the
strategies and tactics that canbe used to achieve it.
So we talk about this.
We talk about scalability, howto replicate, how to sustain,
(00:21):
but also, adam just gives ussome really, really great
concrete leadership andcommunication takeaways.
So let's dive in.
Hello and welcome to theCommunicative Leader hosted by
me, dr Leah O Hodges.
My friends call me Dr Oak.
I'm a professor ofcommunication and a leadership
(00:42):
communication expert.
I'm the communicative leader.
We're working to make your worklife what you want it to be
Well.
thank you so much for joining ustoday.
I'm so excited to learn moreabout large-scale organizational
growth.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Of course, thank you for having me on the podcast.
So my name is Adam Boddison.
I'm the chief executive officerof the Association for Project
Management, so that is aprofessional body.
We've got 45,000 individualmembers.
We work with 500 corporates andwe're a registered charity.
We exist for the public benefit.
(01:20):
It's always about improvingsociety by delivering projects
better.
I've been there for about threeyears.
I kind of got into this job byaccident, really, because my
last chief exec role was for a,a national inclusion charity,
which was interested in childrenwith special needs and
disabilities.
Um, and that also wasn't mybackground.
(01:40):
My background is actually as amaths teacher, a school maths
teacher, in fact.
But in my last role, because Ibecame, if you like, put in the
specialist box of you're anexpert about children with
disabilities, I thought that'sgreat, but I want to do much
more than that.
So I deliberately looked forsomething broad, hence found
(02:01):
this project management role.
And boy is it broad.
I mean, this is every sectoryou can imagine yes, education,
but it's also defense andnuclear and energy, and
healthcare.
And wow, it's just absolutelybrilliant.
Really really love it.
Dr. Leah OH (02:16):
Excellent, and I love that when you can take
these skills and then move intoa different industry and then
parlay those new experiences.
I just think it really itspeaks to someone who loves
learning and is good with peopleand good at navigating
organizations, so I imagine thatyou really do well and enjoy
(02:38):
this role that is so expansive,yeah, so kudos to you no, no,
thank you.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Interestingly, I remember going for my interview
for my first CEO role, which wasin this special needs charity,
and one of the opening questionswas Adam, you don't know a lot
about special educational needs.
What makes you think you'regoing to have any credibility at
all in this role?
And my answer to that was well,my first kind of vote of
(03:05):
confidence is the fact thatyou've shortlisted me for this
post.
Why did you shortlist me forthe post?
and then we had this you know,you have to imagine the scene.
This was like a big, long table.
We had, like most of the boardof trustees on one side and me
on the other side.
It was like facing the lastsupper.
You know something like thisyes, yes ultimately, what was
really interesting.
What they decided was look,we've got an organization that's
(03:28):
rammed with people with specialneeds expertise.
What we need is a leader.
We need someone who can helpscale our organization, help us
to grow, help us to really sortout the commercial side, and
that's what I was able to bring,and, of course, you learn the
rest on the way.
Dr. Leah OH (03:43):
Yeah, yeah, that is phenomenal.
I love that.
As a leadership scholar, thatis really neat taking that
perspective.
So we know we're going to belooking at large scale growth
and one question for you is canyou help define that for us, and
what are the criteria that gofrom, just you know, a general
organizational change or shift,or even traditional
(04:05):
organizational growth, tolarge-scale growth?
Speaker 3 (04:08):
yeah, it's a really good question and and I actually
think I thought a lot aboutthis I I don't think you can put
a particular metric on this andsay well, if it's below that
threshold, it's not major andit's not large scale.
And if it's above it, then it isI think it's really contextual,
um, and it's dependent on scale, and if it's above it, then it
is.
I think it's really contextualand it's dependent on both the
organisation and the operatingenvironment.
(04:29):
You know, if I give you anexample, the inclusion charity I
talked about before that was aprofessional membership
association.
They'd been around for about 40years.
At the time They'd never reallyhad more than about 3,000 or
4,000 members, but actually thepool, if you like, the market of
possible members was hundredsof thousands.
So they'd grown.
(04:50):
If you look that they'd grownfrom zero to 4,000 over 40 years
you could say, okay, does thatcount?
But when I was there, in sixyears we went from 4,000 to
40,000.
Adam Boddison (05:00):
And then, in the three years that followed, my
successor took it from 40 000 to100 000, so something changed
and and it's to me, it's aboutorders of magnitude.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So when you say, how do you define?
It um, I don't think it's aparticular metric.
It's how does it?
It's relative, it's how does itcompare to the past?
But how does it compare toother organizations like us?
Um, and and, and, by the way,it could be on a whole range of
things.
So I talk about number ofmembers there, because that was
their main metric.
It could be revenue service.
I even think engagement is areally important one as well,
(05:32):
you know when you take anorganization that's kind of you
know, let's say, known forquality but not known enough,
and then all of a sudden theyhit the mainstream.
That in itself for me wouldconstitute large scale growth.
Dr. Leah OH (05:44):
the mainstream that in itself, for me, would
constitute large-scale growth.
Yeah, yeah, excellent, that'sreally helpful.
So it's kind of this processand, like you said, contextual,
it's not this destination, likewe've arrived, we've done that.
You know, all set box ischecked.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Exactly, exactly that .
Dr. Leah OH (06:00):
Mm-hmm.
So I'm wondering now about somekey strategies.
So what you know, maybe in yourprevious work or in the work
that you're doing now, what doyou see, these strategies or
tactics that tend to be mosteffective or that, if we're
going to, you know, adviseorganizations who are looking to
make this shift?
(06:22):
You know, what do we encouragethem to do?
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Yeah, again a great question.
I think obviously some of thisis about painting the picture,
the vision and so on, but Ithink that alone is not enough.
But if I give you an example ofin my current organization at
the moment I talked before about, you know, corporate
partnerships that we have- andmemberships and so on.
So we really need to scale ourorganization.
(06:46):
And the reason we need to scaleis not just for growth sake.
It's because we are arelatively immature professional
body.
You know, we've been around forjust over 50 years, 52 years.
But there are otherorganizations the accountants,
the engineers, you know, they'vebeen around for hundreds of
years, you know, and what'sinteresting about them, even
though they've been around forhundreds of years?
You know, yeah, and what'sinteresting about them?
Even though they've been aroundfor hundreds of years, they all
tend to have a scale which isaround about the same size.
(07:09):
So that's obviously the scaleyou need to have to kind of have
a tangible impact.
So what I did in terms of yourquestion about what specific
strategies or tactics can youuse, what I did was, rather than
just say, right, well, we needto be that big guys, I said yes,
(07:30):
yeah, what, what?
Adam Boddison (07:31):
would it take what?
Speaker 3 (07:31):
would it take for us to get there?
So in that, in my particularcontext, we have what I call the
110 100 uh strategy.
So I said what would it takefor us to become an organization
that has 1 000 corporatepartners, 10 000 chartered
project professionals and 100000000 members?
And what that does when you askthe question, rather than
saying this is the destination,when you ask the question, it
focuses on the how, not on thewhat.
(07:52):
So people start saying, oh,adam, if you really want to do
that, we're going to need todouble our workforce.
Or do you know what, adam, ifwe're going to do that, we need
to have some kind of technologyrevolution, because we don't
have scalable processes.
Here Everything's done by handand there's 150 touch points for
every single person we bring onboard or something.
So it shifts the focus toreally look at the scalability,
(08:14):
and I have three tests that Ialways ask for in my
organization.
If we're going to do something,it has to be replicable,
scalable and sustainable, and ifit doesn't meet those three
tests, we shouldn't be doing it.
Dr. Leah OH (08:26):
Yeah, I love that.
It's so, so helpful, because Ithink you're right, when you're
asking the right questions, thehow we're changing the way we
think All of a sudden it becomesconcrete.
It's something that we canactually solve and make a
process to achieving.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
I agree and interesting.
Yeah no, it's interesting whenwe start to have those
conversations, what tends tocome out are the pain points and
the gain points.
Right, because people in everyorganization you've got people
who say, oh, this bit of theorganization doesn't work
because and you need to try andshift that narrative.
So, instead of hearing, youknow we can't do this because we
(09:07):
can do this if and that's whatthe what does it take?
Question does is it shifts fromone mindset to the other
mindset?
Dr. Leah OH (09:15):
Yes, yeah, yeah and I like as an organizational
scholar, I'm so happy hearingabout employee empowerment, that
idea of giving them in a roomto be innovative and to think
about it.
That's really incredible.
I imagine you have really goodretention because people feel
engaged and heard.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Interestingly so, we have an external organization
that we use to kind of get staffviews and so on, and you know
if we've been doing that.
It started before I arrived, uh, but but over time, over the
past kind of five, six years,the feedback that we get from
that goes up and up and up.
Exactly for the reason you said, around staff engagements, I
think the challenge we have isnot so much with engagement,
(10:00):
it's trying to match, uh,appetite with capacity.
Adam Boddison (10:03):
Um, so you, you empower all of these staff and
they go great, we can do allthis stuff, you know, and the
leadership team.
I'm the worst offender right,I'm like, yeah, we can do this,
let's go.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
And then you look around and you say you can't
really do all of this stuff, andso then you've got to be
careful that you don't go toofar and create these kind of
workload challenges.
So you know, we've kind of gonefrom one problem we've solved
it's a bit like a mole, you knowand another problem pops up
somewhere else?
Dr. Leah OH (10:29):
Yes, yeah, pops up.
Oh, that's excellent.
So this is a really nice segue.
So I was wondering aboutresources, so thinking about
prioritizing them, allocatingthem.
So if we know that we are kindof growth focused, you know and
it's probably hard to find anorganization that says they are
not growth focused in some waybut you know, what does that
(10:55):
advice look like when they'resaying, Adam, I don't know what
to do with these resources, howdo I best allocate these?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, again, I don't think there's any silver bullet
for this.
There's no one way of doing it.
Adam Boddison (11:06):
Otherwise every organization would be doing it
already, right so?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
I think I start with that caveat, but if I try and
think, you know what hasgenerally worked for me in
organizations.
There's a couple of things.
So I think the first one iswhere are the efficiencies in
business as usual?
Business as usual, so mappingout all of those business as
usual processes that we can'tlive as an organization without
and saying is there a way wecould do this better and
(11:30):
therefore free up resource thatwe can allocate elsewhere.
That does two things.
One it makes people's liveseasier, so they're happier and
therefore more productive.
But two it just gives you moreresource for free, so why
wouldn't you do that?
So so secure efficiencies inbusiness as usual, then what I
always tend to do is overresource, deliberately those
(11:50):
areas uh, which bring growthinto the organization.
So what do I mean by that?
I mean things like marketing,business development, external
engagement.
You know um, you know sospeaking events and all that
profile stuff round tables allof those things.
Yes, because although sometimessome of those things have very
tangible returns on investment,some of them are slow burns, but
(12:11):
actually they always pay off inthe end, in my opinion, if
you're doing them well, so getthe efficiencies overinvest in,
or over-resource in, growth.
And then the third thing for meis around workload.
I mentioned it before um whenyou really get people fired up,
they, they want to do abrilliant job, and I, you know,
uh, we have an interestingsituation in my organization at
(12:33):
the moment where we have reallydiligent colleagues who produce
such excellent work that it'salmost too good, um, and you
have this situation wherethey've got a lot of things to
do but the standard is so highthat you say, look, this is not
scalable because it's too good.
So we have uh we've beentalking about are we letting
perfect be the enemy of good?
Dr. Leah OH (12:53):
uh, here yeah, is good enough.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Okay, you know, sometimes you need perfect right
, but sometimes, sometimes, youknow.
So there's this kind ofself-imposed workload that
sometimes comes in, so we'rehaving open conversations about
that and we also put in a stopand slow initiative which says
to people what are the thingsthat you do in your job which,
if you stop doing them or spentless time on them, actually it
(13:19):
wouldn't really impact on ourability to meet our strategic
goals, really impact on ourability to meet our strategic
goals.
And actually when people startlooking at that, it turns out
there's quite a bit in thatbucket that they can release
workload and resource from.
Dr. Leah OH (13:32):
That's incredible.
I really love what you're doingand I think you know, anytime a
communication scholar hearsopen dialogue, right, it's heart
to eyes, because there's somany times, especially employees
and I'm finding this a lotpost-COVID, especially where
resources still aren'tnecessarily where they were you
(13:53):
know, flexibility, lifestyleisn't exactly where it was and
some people are so afraid tospeak up, but when organizations
create these opportunities andI like that stop and slow
initiative, where you have tostop, you have to reflect.
This is just part of our workthat really, really pays off in
so many different areas yeah, Imean lots of organizations have.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I think they call it stop, start, continue, which is
a more traditional version ofthis.
I quite like stop and slowbecause, yeah, we don't want to
introduce anything new here.
Dr. Leah OH (14:26):
Exactly.
You know, just focus on thosethings that are going to help
you stop or slow.
Yep, exactly, yep, nice andsimple and clear.
So that brings us to messageclarity and I'm what are things
either you've done or you kindof see some of your corporate
(14:46):
partners do?
Because you know thatorganizations can be really
large, they can be broken up, alot of hierarchy.
So how do you ensure thismessage is consistently
communicated across anorganization, especially when
we're having those rapid periodsof growth?
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So first of all, we know from you know it's in the
academic literature, it's inlike every leadership book you
ever read, every communicationsbook you ever read.
You're going to tell people alot of times before the message
sinks in.
Whatever the message is.
Probably in a lot of differentways as well, because people
hear the messages in differentways.
So I think repetition isimportant because you know,
(15:27):
we've just had the generalelection over here, right in the
UK.
And one of the interestingthings is the prime minister,
keir Starmer.
When he was elected there werelots of kind of satire, kind of
jokes about the fact thateverywhere he went, he kept
saying to everybody oh, did youknow that my father's a
toolmaker?
And it kind of became the joke,right.
And when they talked to thestrategist about this.
Adam Boddison (15:46):
They said why does?
Speaker 3 (15:47):
he keep going on about this and they said because
actually he needs to repeat itthat many times so that people
so there is real logic in this.
So I think repetition'simportant.
The other thing I learned andthis is maybe personal to me
because of my background as amaths teacher I like to be
logical and have logic modelsfor how things are going to work
(16:08):
.
but that's not enough.
Just because something looksgood on a piece of paper and
there's a real logic to it, it'snot going to work for everybody
.
I really believe instorytelling as a leadership
technique, so this is kind ofalmost drawing on the literature
skills.
How do you tell a reallyeffective story?
(16:28):
that you know who all thecharacters are, what their roles
are going to be, where thetension and the drama is going
to be.
You know where things are goingto go disastrously wrong, but
actually it all works out wellin the end and we have this
happy ending that actually isreally applicable to a business
context and captures the heartas well as the head of people.
So I think that's absolutelyessential if you're going to get
(16:51):
this kind of organizationalclarity.
And, by the way, all of this ismuch harder in this new world
of hybrid Like when people arethere every day and you can have
all that conversation, allthose, the water cooler
conversations how do?
you replicate that in hybrid.
Well, we're still working onthat, um, but it's definitely
harder now than it was before itmakes me think of um.
Dr. Leah OH (17:12):
We had karen eber on, so she is all about
storytelling and she was talkingabout, uh, the neuroscience
behind it, and actually morereal estate in our brain lights
up when we're listening tostories, and that also leads to
not only retention but alsofeelings of psychological safety
, so it actually puts youremployees in a calmer, more
(17:36):
comfortable place.
So I can see why you reallylike that.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Interestingly, I'm sure lots of your listeners of
this podcast have beenexperimenting with ai and things
like that, one of the things Ido when I have an idea that I
want to communicate or I want toget some organizational clarity
.
I have a, I have a chat with ai.
It's quite interesting, soprobably, uh, probably, a couple
of times a week.
Um, I just have a bit of backand forth and I said you know,
(18:02):
do you know what chat gpt orgemini or whatever your
preferred?
Dr. Leah OH (18:05):
uh, you know ai provider is.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
So I'm thinking about this.
What do you think?
Is this the best way to say it?
It comes back and this is whathave you thought about it?
And sometimes my way is better,right I mean yeah, I mean it's
sound egotistical about it yeahmore often than not, more often
than not the ai is better, um,and actually that kind of back
and forth can really help you topolish how you communicate that
idea across without, if youlike, burning through real
(18:29):
people.
But you know, with the ideabefore it hits a human.
You've already had that.
Dr. Leah OH (18:34):
Yes, yep, yep.
And if we're thinking abouttheir workloads, it's kind of,
you know, ability to lessentheir load or maintain it.
Well, you can have thatsounding board.
That's so helpful.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Absolutely.
Dr. Leah OH (18:49):
So we've talked about messaging and
communication, and now I'mwondering about leadership
styles.
So I you know I'm a leadershipscholar.
I know there's so manydifferent paths to being
effective, and I'm wondering ifyou have found or observed some
particular traits or styles thattend to be really effective
(19:12):
when we're looking at this kindof large scale change.
Speaker 3 (19:16):
Well, it's a bit like the conversation we had before
around, you know, strategies.
Again, there's no oneleadership style that.
I think works for everyone inevery situation again or
everybody doing it.
So I think there's one abilitythat leaders definitely need to
have, and that's the ability toswitch between different styles,
and that's not just contextual.
(19:38):
I think it's also aboutmanaging one's self, because
sometimes you can get better outof yourself and your own
ability by using a particularstyle with a particular person.
So so I, so I think that's partof it.
I also have discovered that themore senior you get in your
role, um, the more you need tobe less worried about your own
(19:59):
style and more worried about howyou get the best out of other
people, um and so.
So, in a sense, your own styleis I'm not saying it's not
important, but it but it's moreimportant that it generates the
right style in that wholeleadership team around you.
Yes, uh, I wouldn't quite go asfar as this, but it's almost
like if it came to sacrificingyourself so your whole
(20:20):
leadership team could performbetter, because everybody
thought you were an idiot interms of how you were in it, but
all the teams were working,working brilliantly.
That would be worth it, yeah youknow, yeah, it's probably quite
an unusual, unusual perspectiveon on things.
Um, I find, yeah, coachingculture um is a really, really
good.
So this is something we've beenworking on in our organization
(20:43):
um is trying to create this kindof coaching culture, um, uh,
and we started with leadershipteams, so with individual
executive coaches, but groupcoaching as well, and now we're
kind of cascading that throughthe organization.
That creates an emphasis onfeedback, honest conversations,
um, so that's great, um, and Isuppose the last thing I would
(21:04):
say is alignment to values.
For me, I think is reallyimportant, because people can
tell right.
They can tell if you say thevalues of this and then you're
saying you're doing somethingelse, they know it doesn't fit.
We have one in our organizationwhich I've never seen anywhere
before.
So we have four values.
So we talk about beingexcellent, progressive,
(21:26):
thoughtful, and then we havethis other one, which is that we
are a warm organization oh yeah, I haven't heard that one.
Dr. Leah OH (21:33):
Um, and you know I love it.
I've heard the other.
Yeah, when.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I arrived I thought what is this warm thing?
I mean normally warm.
You know we're talking aboutglobal warming.
That's bad right?
So yeah, what you know, doesthis?
mean we're like I don't know.
We're all sitting around onbeanbags.
You know what's it all about?
And it turns out this warmthing is about saying look, you
know, sometimes we've got tomake hard decisions, sometimes
we've got to make them populardecisions.
Sometimes we've got to dothings that not everybody agrees
(21:58):
on, but that doesn't mean wecan't do it in the right way.
Treat people decently, withrespect, bring people along
Really, try hard to communicatewhat we care about and why we
care about it.
And I tell you, boy, do we livethis value?
This is not a value that's inthe drawer, that we never you
know, no one knows about.
Dr. Leah OH (22:16):
We live it and it's so powerful and so this kind of
leadership styles that linkdirectly with those kind of
values I just think areincredible styles that link
directly with those kind ofvalues I just think are
incredible.
Yeah, and I like the reminderbecause I think we're at a point
in society where there's somuch divisiveness and so much
strife and so much uncertaintythat having warm as a consistent
(22:39):
part of your work life andinfused in those relationships
and decisions, that's a place Iwant to work at.
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yeah, no, I agree, and some people have criticized
this before externally and saidlook, does warm mean like you're
a bit, you're not as ruthlessas you need to be or you're not
as sharp edged?
And actually it doesn't,because it's not about what we
do, it's about how we do it, andI think that's the difference.
Dr. Leah OH (23:10):
Yeah, yeah, I like that distinction.
So we just talked about theseeffective approaches to leading
in organizations and, morespecifically, in organizations
looking for large-scale change.
So now I'd like to ask youabout instances that you've seen
that are less effective ormaybe downright
(23:31):
counterproductive.
So what are some of those?
You know, what is that bumpiestpath that you've seen people
take or tried to take in thisroute?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
Yeah, again, an excellent question.
I suppose the obvious place tostart is when you get the
opposite of what I've justtalked about, a misalignment to
the values, where the behaviorsdoesn't match the rhetoric, if
you like and I think that'shighly problematic.
People see through prettyquickly and things unravel
pretty quickly.
So it doesn't really matterwhether you're trying to achieve
large-scale growth or just keepthe show on the road.
(24:02):
It's going to fall apart prettyquickly so I think that's
that's problematic.
I the other thing is, I thinkwhen, when there's a, an
undervaluing of difference, uh,and I'm thinking particularly of
things like, um, you know,neurodiversity and so on um, we
see it sometimes with kind ofintroverts, extroverts,
whichever you know side of theequation, you fall on the idea
(24:23):
that your way is the only way todo it and therefore you don't
value anybody.
It does it a different way orit's not quite as good as your
way.
I think that is reallyproblematic.
Um and I've seen leaders fallfoul of that several times um, I
think organizationally lack ofroom for progression can be
problematic, because then yourgood people kind of have nowhere
to go, and so they either getum, you know, demoralized, or
(24:46):
they leave you know, so, so, andand and.
There are so many options.
You don't always have topromote people or pay them more.
You know you can give themother.
You know, I think succumbentsare great, because then you get
people back at the right time,you know, with all this other
skills to bring.
Uh, I think giving you know,giving people opportunities to
kind of shadow and step intoother roles for periods of time.
(25:06):
So I think there's lots ofthings you can do there, but I
think the two biggest problemsthat I see are leaders where
they either don't own theirmistakes, because then it
creates a kind of blame culture.
You know it's not my mistake.
Adam Boddison (25:20):
It's your mistake or they don't take enough risk.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
So that risk appetite piece in terms of, yeah, and
it's appetite piece in terms of,and it's particularly true of
growing organizations, right, Ifyou're going to change the dial
, do something different.
Sorry, if you want to grow at adifferent pace you've got to do
something different.
Dr. Leah OH (25:42):
So not taking enough risk, I think, is a big
problem.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'm feeling anxious because I'mthinking about all of these
things and I know it happens inorganizations, but that's just.
That is a tough organization tobe, to be part of.
So when I was getting ready forour chat, I was thinking about,
(26:02):
you know, short term and longterm in this vision, because
growth, you know, as you said,vision is one part of it, but we
can't get there alone withvision.
But you know, what do yourecommend in thinking about
talking to employees andstakeholders today and kind of
keeping them in conversation aswe head towards this long-term
(26:26):
goal?
Speaker 3 (26:27):
yeah.
So I mean, some of it is aboutmeasuring and tracking and
reporting so people know wherethey are on the journey.
Are we?
Are we getting any closer, youknow?
Are we the same place as wewere last year?
What's working, what's notworking, and and just and.
Some of that is not just aboutpresenting the positive picture
of look, we're doing great onthis stuff, but don't look over
there, you know there's that'snot.
Yeah, yeah, actually shine alight on the bad stuff as well,
(26:48):
because that's where you get theideas from people that say you
actually could do somethingdifferently here, or maybe we
just abandon that because that'sjust not going to work for us
and put all our you know, putour resources into something
else instead.
So there's that honesty interms of regular communication
about what's working, what's notworking.
Are we are we getting?
Are we getting towards it?
I've seen some offices wherethey have these kind of, you
know, big kind of thermometertype charts on the wall or
(27:10):
something like this.
So it's really visual and stuff.
I really love that.
Um, you know others where theyhave, uh, you know, the home
page when people log in.
It's like a, it's like adashboard from the crm, uh
something which shows them wherewe are so that kind of thing is
great but the other thing isyou've got to have a few aces up
your sleeve for the for thelong term.
Um, do you know that the thefilm uh, school of rock, uh with
(27:34):
jack black, yes, yeah I lovethis film, but if anyone's not
watched this film, right, you'remissing a treat.
You've got to watch this filmbut, he has.
He has a line he uses in thisfilm where he says one great
rock show can change the world.
And I think you know, let'sthink about that in a business
context, right, yeah, what?
What are the rock shows thatyou've got kind of coming up
your sleeve, so not?
not the main strategy stuff andthe business as usual in the
(27:56):
short term and long term goals,but a few kind of game changes,
most of which probably won't goanywhere.
But you only need one to comeoff and it's going to massively
accelerate your progress andchange the world, to use Jack
Black's phrase.
So I think, as a leader, you'vegot to kind of set a few of
those hairs off at some pointand see what happens.
Dr. Leah OH (28:19):
Yeah, yes, I absolutely love that and I love
the inspiration, because Ialways say leadership,
inspiration is everywhere and weconnect with it all differently
.
But when you make thatconnection, then figuring out,
how do I parlay this into whatI'm doing and where I wanna be?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Absolutely 100% yeah.
Dr. Leah OH (28:38):
So, adam, I have two final questions for you and
these are kind of interconnected.
So, on the communicative leader, we like to leave our listeners
with pragmatic leadership orcommunication.
It can be a tip advicechallenge.
So, first part of the questionwhat advice do you have for our
titled leaders out there, right,our managers, directors, ceos,
(29:01):
anyone who has that formalleadership position?
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Sure.
Well, I've got two pieces ofadvice, if I'm allowed to, yeah.
So I think the first one wouldbe to judge people more by their
intentions than by theiractions, Because then you
encourage that risk-taking Italked about before.
You know, they're not going tobe shut down because actually
they had a good idea but it wasbadly implemented or it didn't
quite come off in the way theyexpected.
(29:25):
As long as they've got theright intention, you can help
someone to get there.
If someone hasn't got the rightintentions, I mean it's a
non-starter, it doesn't matterif they accidentally get it
right you know, so I think thatintentions piece is really
important.
So, that's the first one.
The second one for me is aroundpicking your battles as a
leader.
You come across all kinds ofthings that you could get your
(29:47):
sticky fingers all over and tryand sort out.
But in my mind those battleshave to be small enough to win,
but big enough to make adifference, and if they don't
fall into that sweet spot, thenyou should leave them.
well, alone because it's eithergoing to give you a fight that
just creates chaos anddisharmony, or it doesn't kind
of matter anyway.
So yeah, that would be my twopieces of advice.
Dr. Leah OH (30:10):
Yes, yes, I love that.
I'm always reminded how muchleadership is like parenting for
parents out there, and you'retalking about message repetition
, how all the leadership booksI'm am like so do parenting
books in this too, figuring outhow you know, does it make sense
to pick here?
And then I think, too, is theimmediacy like is this going to
cause a huge immediate issue, oris this just something that's a
(30:34):
one-off right, like so, likeyou're saying, like if it's just
not going to make a bigdifference, even if I could win
it, I'm going to let it go.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
Yeah, absolutely, and letting it go, you know, is
harder than it sounds sometimes.
You know, as a leader, you'rein a room and you can see
something's not quite right andyou feel like almost a
professional obligation to saysomething and being able to kind
of bite your tongue and say youknow what?
I'm just going to leave itbecause it doesn't matter.
(31:04):
It doesn't matter that much.
That's honestly so much harderthan it sounds.
Dr. Leah OH (31:09):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah , yep.
And it makes me think aboutyour point when you're talking
about how, when you get to thesehigher ranks as a leader, part
of your skill in what you'rebringing to the table is to help
others to shine and to raise uptheir leadership.
So part of that might bemodeling the grace and kind of
(31:31):
letting some of these thingslike, okay, this doesn't have an
immediate consequence, I don'tokay, going to let it go, and I
think that's really a beautifulexample of leadership.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I mean, I'll tell you a real example.
It happened earlier this year,so I was meeting a CEO of
another organization.
I won't say who, but it wasoverseas anywhere a little bit
that way.
So over in the Middle East andwe were meeting this person for
the first time, I had threemembers of my team with me, kind
of, you know, middle managementtype stuff, and this person, it
(32:04):
was just one person from theirside, it was this chief exec,
first time meeting in person,and we sat down and this guy's
opening comment was Adam, youremind me a lot of Lewis Lipp
from Seats.
You look so much like him.
I can't believe it.
And now I've seen that program.
Right, this character is notknown for good reasons.
Uh, yes you know, you see, youknow, if anyone's seen if your
(32:24):
listeners have seen this, you'll, they'll, they'll know it's a
bit kind of nerdy, and so on.
Now it would have been so easyfor me to be really offended,
really insulted by this, uh, youknow, to come to comment that
that was not an appropriate wayto start to me, or whatever, and
in fact, what it took all my,all my will to say, oh, I must
watch that program sometime andfind out exactly who you're
(32:47):
talking about yeah, and thenmove on.
And actually a couple of membersof my team said afterwards we
know you've watched that program.
And I said, well, yes, but youknow that's not a great way to
start a relationship off.
If I, if I, fault in the veryfirst thing they've said to me.
So, that's just a real example,you know, of something that's
happened this year.
Dr. Leah OH (33:06):
Yeah, yeah, that is excellent.
Your professional privilege islike what is going on and then
taking the time to think thatthrough.
Yeah, kudos to you.
So that the final part of thequestion.
So we've talked about someadvice for our title leaders.
What about for all employees,Any rank, any industry?
(33:27):
What do we leave them with?
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I suppose I would want to remind people that their
words matter, what they say andwhat they do really matters,
and actually people, at anylevel, have more influence than
they, they they know, on thepeople around them.
Um, there's a story from when Iwas a maths teacher which
always, always kind of comes tomind when I think about
(33:51):
influence.
So I remember my very firstyear as a kind of um, well, I
just finished as a studentteacher, my first year as a
secondary school maths teacher,so high school maths, and I, um,
and I came into this lesson oneday to the classroom and
there's a young man there withhis feet on the table, you know,
hands behind his head, didn'tparticularly want to be there, I
think, and I said to him comeon, get your feet off the table.
(34:12):
I said you wouldn't do this athome, would you?
And he said to me no, but thenI wouldn't do algebra at home
either.
Uh, and I said well, that'sthat's actually a really funny
answer.
So I gave him 10, uh 10 kind ofhouse points, just like this
reward system.
He, the guy, nearly fell offhis chair.
He, he was 15 years old.
He said in his 15 years.
Nobody had ever given him housepoints before he'd never been
(34:34):
given a reward before.
Yeah, he was a bit of a rogue.
This, this chap right youunderstand yeah, anyway, we we
ended up getting off, gettingoff on the right foot, and we
got him quite well.
Um, he went on to do his uh,you know, his gcse exams.
So they're the exams they do itwith age 16 in the uk.
Um, I'd left the school by then, um, but many years later, um I
(34:54):
I saw him on a train.
I was on the train goingsomewhere and he spotted me and
he said oh, do you remember?
And we talked about this timeand falling off the chair, all
of this um, and.
And he spotted me and he saidoh, do you remember?
And we talked about this timeand falling off the chair, all
of this um, and.
And he said and he said to me,he I said well, what do you do
now?
He said uh, he said I'm a mathsteacher.
Uh, and by the way I do algebraat home every day um but, but,
but the point was oh, I gotgoosebumps.
(35:16):
Yeah, what he said to me waslook, no, no other teacher cared
you know about me he said.
He said I went on, I got mygcse I went on to do um maths at
you know a level universitybecame a teacher.
He's now a head of head ofmaths in a high school um, and
he puts it down to this oneconversation.
(35:36):
Not, it wasn't all of the stuffafterwards, the exams, all of
that was enablers, but the thingthat really mattered was that
one conversation and I wasfortunate that I happened to
bump into him and we we had thisconversation.
I would never have known butthe reason.
Sorry, I've been a bit aroundthe houses here, leah, but but
what I'm saying is in theworkplace.
In a workplace, people arehaving these conversations all
the time.
(35:56):
You know over lunch, you knowaround the water cooler on a
team.
But those words matter and theycould be life changing for
people.
So I suppose my advice is thinkcarefully about what you say,
because it could changesomeone's life.
Dr. Leah OH (36:10):
Yeah, yeah, gosh, I absolutely love, love that
story One I will not forget.
So cool that you got to seethat go full circle.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
Yeah, I was very lucky, Very lucky that you got
to see that go full circle.
Dr. Leah OH (36:23):
Yeah, I was very lucky, very lucky.
Yeah, adam, it has been anabsolute joy chatting with you
and learning from you, and I amso excited to share all your
words of wisdom with ourlisteners.
So thank you for being with ustoday.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
Thank you for the invitation.
Adam Boddison (36:37):
All right, my friends.
That wraps up our conversationtoday.
Until next time, communicatewith intention and lead with
purpose.
I'm looking forward to chattingwith you again soon on the
Communicative Leader.
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