E57 Shane Burford’s Playbook: Revamping Innovation in Established Organisations

Episode Transcript
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Chris Hudson (00:07):
Hey there and welcome back to the company road
podcast where we explore what ittakes to change a company and
how intrapreneurs like you, thelisteners can create positive
change in the work that you'redoing.
I'm Chris Hudson, your host, andtoday we're going to be diving
deeper into the world ofintrapreneurship and corporate
innovation.
So I'm really excited tointroduce on.
Our next guest, Shane Burford,an intrapreneurial leader who
has made some serious moves inhis career out of establishing

(00:29):
new growth businesses withinexisting organizations.
And Shane's expertise lies inembedding innovation practices
that enable companies todiscover and incubate higher
risk, longer term opportunitiesin one way or another.
And Shane's got an impressivetrack record, spearheaded
innovation initiatives at someof Australia's largest
companies, including NAB, soNAB, Telstra, and Toyota.

(00:49):
And currently he's putting hisskills to work as the head of
design at Car Group, where he'sbuilding new businesses and
ventures to take to market fromthe ground up.
And Shane's got a background inproduct and design and has
fueled his passion forestablishing new ventures that
not only better solve customerneeds, but also deliver longer
term commercial and strategicvalue to those businesses as
well.
And he's got a uniqueperspective on driving change

(01:10):
within establishedorganizations, uh, that makes
him the perfect guest for thisshow.
So today we're going to jumpinto exploring some of the
challenges and opportunities offostering innovation within
corporate structures, and we'lllearn from Shane's wealth of
experience in turningentrepreneurial ideas into
successful business ventures.
So Shane, I've got to say yourwork sounds incredibly exciting.
Welcome to the company roadpodcast.

Shane Burford (01:32):
Thank you, great to be here.
Great.

Shane, I know when we last spoke, you were about to
board a plane to Europe for amassive trip and welcome back
from that.
Hope you had an amazing time.

Yeah, it was a great trip.
Nice, uh, nice weather to escapethe Melbourne winter.

Can you, can you tell me again how many countries
you were doing and how many, inhow many days?

Six weeks, 12 countries.
It was a lot.
It was a, it was a big trip.
Got, got to see a lot of greatsites, so wouldn't change it.

I've got to say, I really do admire how Aussies
like go over and do Europe, youknow, in that kind of way, it's
as many countries, as few daysas possible, and then you just
get round, it's, it's amazing.
It sounds like an epic trip.
Shane, let's, let's jump intosome of your work.
So you worked on innovation invarious large organizations.
What are some of the hardestthings, the biggest challenges
that you've faced in trying toestablish some of these new

(02:18):
businesses?
You know, what are some of thecommon themes that you see
coming up when it comes toinnovation?

Yeah, I think innovation in a established
organization is always reallyhard because you've got sort of
incumbent products and incumbentteams, and often there's not new
ideas, often, certainly a cargroup, a lot of the ideas that
we're working on and incubatingin the innovation team here,
ideas that have been circulatingaround the organization for a

(02:43):
while.
But the challenge is that A lotof the sort of core team
members, the people who don'twork in the innovation team,
haven't really had the space orthe bandwidth to be able to
explore those newer opportunityareas.
And so that sort of meant thatthey've been shelved, which is a
little bit sad.
For us, it's about sort ofalmost resurrecting some of
those projects and trying toapproach them in a different

(03:04):
way.
That car group, we're reallyinterested in our innovation
space in taking a Build,measure, learn approach, sort of
like the lean startup approachwhere we try and launch
something as quickly aspossible, you know, potentially
to one customer which enables usto learn as fast as possible,
which is very different to therest of the company because the
rest of the company has existingsort of products that they're

(03:27):
working on.
So being able to, you know,launch in a day is really not
something that's possible forthem.
And so, so I guess some of thechallenges are around just sort
of that internal sort of.
Working with the core teams, alot of the ideas are existing
and being able to get permissionand the space to be able to work
on ideas that maybe might havebeen someone else's baby at some

(03:47):
point, but being able to sort oftake them on and nurture them.
Yeah,

yeah, yeah.
I mean, it's interesting becausewhat you point out, I think is
seems obvious, but there's a lotof insight and a lot of rich
data around in mostorganizations.
And the fact that some of theideas are being dusted off and
almost repurposed or revisited.
You know, it's good to know thatthat data is there for people
and that inspiration can bethere for people to draw upon,
but it's unexpected becauseoften innovation is associated

(04:13):
with the thing that has to benew and shiny.
And, you know, people areexpecting it to be this kind of
big tada.
It's good to know that peoplecan just work with what they've
got in a sense.

Yeah, but sometimes ideas are just not
quite their time yet.
So, an example at Car Group iswe, like, three, five years ago
or so, we did a payments productwhere we enabled buyers and
sellers to pay one anotherthrough our platform.
Amazing because it enabled, youknow, each party to be verified
so they trust each other moreand, you know, you don't have to
pay large sums of money inincrements to a seller that you

(04:44):
don't really know.
But it was before it's timebecause the Just the technology
wasn't there.
And so payments would take twodays, they'd get lost in
transit.
And so we're sort ofresurrecting that project, our
innovation team at the momentwith a slightly different spin,
because we've got new technologythere.
You know, we've got the newpayments platform in Australia
that enables us to dotransactions instantly.
Being able to sort of resurrectthat project, think about it

(05:06):
slightly differently and beingable to communicate that
internally is quite challengingwhen there's like, yeah, that
rich history behind sort ofinitiatives that Perhaps haven't
been executed right in the past.

Yeah.
Interesting one.
I mean, that one is definitely,you know, if you think about the
days where people had to turn upto buy a new car or a used car,
you know, with envelope of cash,basically,

that would have been

a, that would have been a massive, massive
improvement to that wholeprocess.

That's ridiculously, like people still
do that, or they do somethingworse.
They reach their transactionlimits.
So they pay 10, 000 today, 10,000 the next day to like a
complete stranger.

What could possibly go wrong, eh?
I mean, they always talk aboutthe car being the second most
important or the second mostmajor purchase that you make in
your life after your home andjust.
Weird to think that people aregoing around with these
envelopes of cash, but in thatcase, I mean, for that story,
how did you, obviously you knewthat that was a problem to be
solved, but how did you go aboutbringing that problem to the

(06:07):
focus of the business andgetting it through as an
initiative that you felt theteam would need to solve for and
fix in some way?

Yeah, well, fortunately for us, it was an
existing known pain point thatthe business had.
Decided was important to solve.
Just not sure how, when I saythe business, I mean, our
leadership team specifically,they saw that as sort of like a
strategic unlock to being ableto be more present in the
customer journey.
So that was good, but I guesswith the broader team, we needed

(06:35):
to sort of Work with them fromthe start to firstly learn from
their experience so that wedidn't repeat mistakes at the
past.
Money laundering was one riskthat certainly existed back in
the previous incarnation, butalso delays in the technology
and the technology of spraking,having our sort of sub call
center sort of being inundatedwith calls was another.

(06:58):
And so really trying to learnfrom that wisdom, I think that
gave us credibility to be ableto solve the problem.
Working with the same.
Just to design the solution toco design so that it's not us
telling them what the solutionis, but rather it's us coming to
a combined for a consensustogether and then using data,
you know, trying to launch asquickly as possible to get data

(07:21):
to support for our hypotheses.
With payments, we, we launched alanding page.
As the first thing, there's afake door test to measure how
many people were actuallyinterested in a solution like
this and, and measurewillingness to pay as well.
It's a free solution.
We want to understandwillingness to pay.
That data that we were able toget, you know, sheer volume of
people going through thatlanding page and being able to

(07:43):
pay.
And being interested enough to,to leave their email address was
really a compelling story for usto, to get the broader business
on board.

Yeah, that's really good.
I mean, I think, you know,looking at what you've got on
business casing from the pointof view of understanding the
problem and, and putting thosefacts in front of your
leadership or your board can getthe wheels moving sort of fast
forwarding on, on that train ofthought.
Do you think there's also theexpectation of the leadership
level that you're having toprove what it could achieve if
it was solved?
So from an ROI point of view,you're getting a lot of those

(08:13):
kinds of conversations coming upas well.

Absolutely.
We have an investments teaminternally, which makes small
early stage investments inorganizations and, and also.
And so we've taken a lot oflearnings from them in terms of
how we communicate internallypotential value.
And so we use sort of like astartup type approach for
communicating value.
So starting with the, you know,the total addressable market,

(08:36):
and then trying to figure outwhat we might be able to take
and using those experiments assort of like, Waste collect data
on what the potentialserviceable obtainable market is
for us.
So yeah, we, we absolutely had alot of conversations really
early on around the value and itwas kind of quite fun actually
to be able to sort of ideate allthe different value streams that

(09:00):
could come from an idea.
Not just the direct one, whichis, you know, charging a 10 fee,
being able to sort of explore,Oh, well, if we had this piece
of data, how does that benefit,you know, this business or this
external company?
Or if, you know, the banks allof a sudden don't get 400, 000
calls about the transactionlimits, how does that impact
them?

(09:20):
How can we, How can we createvalue for them?
So it was a really excitingprocess.
And I think by the time we gotto pitching the solution, we had
a really robust, multi facetedapproach to creating value that
enabled us to, you know, causethere's inherent risk in
launching a new solution.
So we don't want to sort of likecommit to a hundred thousand

(09:42):
transactions in the first place.
You know, a year and then it's10 and we don't actually
generate any value.
So by having that sort ofmultifaceted approach to
thinking about the benefits andbeing able to proactively
communicate that, I hope thatenables us to, to being held in
good stead as, you know, Welearn through the launch of the

(10:02):
product, but yeah, it's, it'ssuper fascinating.
Like the leadership team arereally engaged in exploring
those opportunities here at cargroup and the benefits.
So yeah, it's a really funconversation to have.

So I think there's, there's different
steps, isn't it?
Obviously you've, you've got thekind of initial stage of.
You know, forming up a bit of anopportunity.
And then, you know, from thepoint of justifying that it's
going to be worth investingpeople's time and effort, then,
then you're pulling togetherthese dimensions of value in
terms of what it might offer tothe business, as well as to your
customers and your packagingthat.
And then beyond that, I said,beyond launch into the product

(10:33):
life cycle a little bit.
What are you finding people arelooking back at as being like
the most important dimensions ofvalue based on what you were
just describing?
Like, what are they looking tothen see in terms of whether
it's a success or not?

Fetch the idea.
I mean, at PowerGroove, it'squite easy, really, to think
about value because we're amarketplace.
We have a very well knownflywheel.
Get all the customers using ourservice by creating a great
experience that then encouragesall the dealers and private
sellers to use the service toreach those customers and create
a great seller experience.
So it's pretty logical.

(11:07):
And so what the key successmetric for us is around volume.
So getting to mass market now,most of our products we think
about is as mass marketproducts, and I think there's a
place for us to think about sortof more niche products in the
future.
But at this point, all we'rereally looking at is volume, and
that sort of serves the sort oflean startup approach quite

(11:28):
well.
Because it enables us to collectas much data as possible to make
the most informed decisions aswe sort of go through the
process of.

Yeah.
Okay.
So if it breaks the threshold ofmass market, what are you
defining that as?
Is it 1, 000, 10, 000

secret?
In a normal year, we would haveabout 400, 000 private sellers
that would list their car on carsales at about half a million
over the last year.
It's been a bigger year thannormal for us.
And so we want to get as many ofthose customers as possible
using the service.
Obviously it's a funnel.
So, so, you know, we've got toonboard the seller and onboard
the buyer.
So naturally there'll be,there'll be drop off within

(12:06):
that, but we think that there'sa huge opportunity that you're
trying to get them all.

I mean, the other flip side of that question is
good ideas.
You, you take things to marketand for whatever reason, things
don't work out.
So have you got a story aroundthat or, you know, something
around where, you know, with thebest intent, things were.
We're kind of all laid out andthen just didn't work.

Oh, it's a good one.
I mean, I think there's a lot ofstories of failure, but I think
the hardest ones are ones thatyou really love and that maybe
you've flogged the dead horse alittle bit too long.
When I was at Telstra, one ofthe projects that I worked on
was trackers.
So essentially an AirTag, butthis is like 10 years ago, so it

(12:47):
was before it's time.
It was a Bluetooth based, butalso wifi.
And there was a possibility touse a network technology as
well, which enabled us to sortof use the cell phone towers to
triangulate devices.
We did a great job of doing thedesign.
Testing and desirability wasthere for sure, but when it got
to market, it just wasn'tsuccessful.

(13:08):
Not many people bought it, youknow, I don't think it would, it
was an idea that was perhaps alittle bit premature.
I think there could have beensort of opportunities to see
potential risks to that projectmuch earlier, um, in the piece,
uh, specifically, you know, likea blue chip.
Tracker relies on a stronglistening network.
So yeah, Apple can go becauseI've got hundreds of millions or

(13:30):
if not a billion devices thatcan listen.
Telstra had the 24 7 app, but atthe time privacy settings around
the phone were changing.
So that sort of capability to beable to listen was changing as
well.
If we'd looked perhaps a littlebit forward at the, at the time
when we were investigating that,we might've figured out that
construct for that product beingsuccessful might be undermined

(13:52):
in the future.
And, You know, may not have goneto market.
I don't know, but it was kind ofcool to see your own product in
the

store.
Oh, yeah, those things areobviously getting quite popular
now, right?
Yeah, people are

tracking people, kids.
Yeah,

I was talking to a parent the other day.
They made an incision into theirkid's blazer for school and they
basically put a tracker in andthen sewn it back up.
So because it's a valuable pieceof clothing.
They didn't want that gettinglost.
So they're putting trackers intothat.
So

So this is hilarious, because when we did
the research 10 years ago, weasked people in a survey, what
do you lose most frequently?
But then also, what are you mostafraid to lose?
You know, because there's adifferent, you know, you might
lose your keys, but they're notparticularly valuable.
Keys are probably valuable, butyou might lose something that is
immaterial to you.
And like, the responses werechildren, bikes was another one.

(14:46):
Wallet and phone, I think.
It's interesting that people,you know, because phones can
track themselves these days, butpeople still wanted to be able
to track them.
We used that.
We created some CVPs to take tocustomers.
And when we said the sort oftracking your children on, it
didn't land very well because itseemed a bit stalkerish, maybe

(15:07):
had some privacy concerns.
So we iterated the product as aresult.
But yeah, it's interesting that,that, you know, people are still
quite afraid of losing theirchildren while at the same time
afraid of the privacy and safetyrisks that come along with that
as well.

Yeah.
I mean, 10 years ago, maybe notevery eight year old had a
mobile phone, you know?

Ah, yeah, that's true.
It might've

been different, but yeah, everyone's got that.
Obviously you can do find myphone and other things now, but
it's, yeah, it's a differentworld out there.
Safety aware.
I want to ask you, becauseyou're talking a little bit
about, you know, that experimentand obviously it went to market,
it didn't work.
You know, what characterizesyour attitude towards failure
and towards, you know, learningfrom that in some way, you know?
Either at a personal level orwithin the teams that you work

(15:48):
at, usually, how does, how doesthat get approached?

My approach, I've got a little saying for this.
Anything worth doing is worthdoing wrong because you're never
right at the start.
So often we throw a throw aroundthe word failure and it's sort
of a bit defeatist, but justlearning, committing to doing
something that you might not getright.
That's what I'm really.
Sort of trying to encourage theteams and it's hard because when

(16:14):
you work in a corporateenvironment, it's far easier to
take the safe bet, but a safebets, you know, like a
optimizing platform performance,you know, that's something that
is a very safe path that ourpayments team could work on
right now and get the platformworking twice as fast.
is far harder for them to thinkabout, you know, how they
connect, you know, the paymentsproduct to an ownership journey

(16:36):
and unlock, you know, 10 newbusinesses out of, in the sort
of car ownership space.
But if they do think about that,the reward would be far higher
for the organization.
So anything worth doing.

And maybe tying to the previous chat we were having
around ROI and business case,how do you frame up sort of
higher risk version of, of thatproposition where you think it's
higher risk, but it could behigher rewards and dressing that
in some way when, when you'reputting the data to them?

Absolutely.
We were really fortunate atCargrew.
To have a really closerelationship with our sort of
investment committee, whichincludes several members of the
C suite.
And right at the start, we said,if we're not failing 50 percent
of the ideas that we arepitching to you, then we're not
going far enough.
So we've sort of got this, Iguess, failure target, which is

(17:23):
kind of nice.
You know, when we're presentingnumbers, the numbers look a
little too.
Certainly saying it's 4, 127,000 worth of revenue.
You know, obviously it's notgoing to.
So we try to now give ranges.
Which helps us to could be 1 to10 million or somewhere in the
middle.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Trying to sort of talk about ROIin less certain terms, but sort

(17:48):
of communicate the parametersfor what good looks like those
Northstar metrics and, you know,our approach to pivot, persevere
and perish through that.
So when we talk about sort ofthe future phases of the work,
we're talking about This is ournext three biggest hypotheses,
and depending on how we go withthose will depend on the

(18:12):
potential business upside thatgoes along with a product like
this.
And at some point, you're goingto be asked to make the
decision, do we kill this ornot, based on, you know, what we
learned through the process.
So we're really trying to makelike learning the currency.

Yeah,

yeah.

So you're up front with that.
You say there are still someunknowns and obviously you're
saying, you know, it's, it's inyour remit and within your
control and power, obviously toshut it down once we present you
with the information and makethe decision.
So it's like a deferred decisionrather than an upfront one in a
way, which is cool.

Yeah, yeah.
But investment, how to learn,which is, I guess, is the ask at
that point.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And is it investment is thatalways clean cut as in there's
an innovation budget and that'swhat we're going to spend or are
you often having to go sort ofcap in hand to different budget
holders and ask for, ask fordifferent pots of money to be
released?
The latter.

Yeah, everything is um, everything is new money.
Oh, sorry, not new money.
That's the wrong term.
I don't know what the right termis.

Pre allocated money.

Yeah, it's, it's, well, it's not pre allocated.

As in pre allocated to something else.

Yeah, that's it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah.

Yep.
Yeah, we

don't have a set budget that we can just draw
down on, which is really quitenice.
And we set that up intentionallybecause for our existing teams,
like the payments team that Iwas talking about earlier, they
have to go every year for budgetor every six months to say, this
is what we committed to in termsof our learning outcomes.

(19:41):
This is what we delivered.
And this is what the next phaselooks like.
Do you still support thisinitiative?

Yeah.
And from a roadmapping point ofview, do you find that shorter
term initiatives and quick winskind of get you confidence and
then build out into biggerthings?
Or have you got longer, youknow, a mixture of those and
longer term initiatives?
I mean, how does it, you know,what sort of formula there do
you find is working well?

We spent a lot of energy thinking about what we
wanted the long term to be, andwe set broad themes for our
innovation.
I think that was really valuableat the start because it enabled
us to sort of have some focuswithout being too constrained to
the things that you wouldexpect, you know, for an auto
company.

(20:22):
You know, you would expect thatwe would be looking at
streamlining the purchasingexperience.
You'd probably also expect thatwe'd be considering EVs.
Things like that.
So there's six of them.
And so that enabled us to sortof have, I guess, perspective of
the ballparks that we wanted toplay.
But then the initiatives that welook at within those, we often

(20:42):
think really big around what wewant by ideas from now to look
like.
But then what's the first stepand how can we learn today?
Ideally, Oh, yesterday from, sothat we can sort of prove or
disprove whether that's a goodpath, you know, so with
payments, like, like we wantedto have a completely integrated

(21:04):
purchasing experience, that'sthe goal so that no one has to
leave our platform to purchase acar privately, obviously
dealers.
Do that all themselves now.
So that's, you know, theirdomain, but for us, you know,
our focus is on the privateexperience and the first step
was landing page payment.
Is that acceptable or is that isthat valuable?

(21:25):
So, yeah, we're trying to be,but then.
Sort of taper it back into whatsmall, tiny experiments could
be.
And we do assumption mapping tofigure out what those
experiments should be.
So where are our biggest sort ofunknowns and how can we answer
them?

Yeah, I really like that.
I mean, I think it's, it'sincredibly sensible because this
sort of the wave of innovationand, and the way in which it.
It's perceived in terms of itssuccess is incredibly important,
obviously.
And if you've got quick wins onthe board, then you can
obviously always have some, somesort of story to report.
If you're in the kitchen or ifyou're here or there in a
meeting, you can just talk aboutthe things you're up to and you
know, what you might say for it.

And also as an incumbent business that has lots
of customers, you know, itactually enables us to make
money from day one.
Sometimes in some of theinitiatives that we're working
on, which is kind of nicebecause we have existing
relationships with.
the dealers and with the carbrands, and obviously with all
of our customers that use ourplatform.
So it's actually, it's a reallynice story when we can get to

(22:23):
sort of revenue positive on dayone.

So in terms of enabling that from a cultural
point of view or from anoperational point of view,
you're going to need to havepeople ready to go.
And from the ops or, you know,delivery or production side, you
know, Lined up to be able toturn around some of these
experiments.
How, how have you gone aboutsetting that sort of thing up
to, to make it as responsive asyou need it to be?
To get the short term resultsand to, to track those?

Yeah, it's a really good point.
So we spent a lot of energy atthe start sort of setting up
those tools.
So some of them were alreadyexisting in the organization.
Like we use Optimizely for ABtesting, which enables us to
like turn something on, youknow, overnight.
We invested in our legal team tohave.
dedicated capacity to enable usto figure out the legal
constraint and managingpartners, which is definitely

(23:08):
the least interesting part.
But so, yeah, we invested incapacity there.
And then, you know, other toolslike, you know, our landing page
platform that enables us to justbuild out ideas same day and be
able to launch something.
At Car Group, we're really luckyin that, you know, we have a
culture of experimentation.
So it's not just, you know, myteam that's, Focused on rapid

(23:29):
experimentation, the sort ofcore buyer team experimenting
with different label copy anddifferent placements of, of
content on the page all thetime.
And so we have some of thosetools that we can draw on and,
and be able to go pretty fastthere, which is kind of nice.
And everyone's pretty open.

No, that's good.
That's good.
And supportive, which obviouslyhelps.
So I, I get the feeling as wellthat, you know, I have a few
coffees with people that workwithin innovation.
Within the futures area.
And they always talk to me aboutthese things and they're kind of
thinking, okay, well, innovationfrom what I gather, innovation
sort of falls in and out offavor sometimes, you know, it's
like you're in politicalleadership and you know,
suddenly innovation's in for twoyears and then it's out because

(24:07):
it's been over invested in andthen cuts are made.
And then all of a sudden all thegood work is then gone.
You have to come back to it inanother two years when people.
Come back in and there'sconfidence or cashflow in the
business to pay for it.
I mean, those are the ups anddowns, but is that what you're
seeing as well?
Like it's always that kind ofjustification and it could be
pulled at any point.

It's really interesting because Car Group a
growth stock.
So we have, I guess, a marketposition that's built around,
you know, delivering value forour core business, but also
always having an eye to thefuture.
So I think it's sort of bakedinto the DNA of the organization
to some extent, but thatinnovation is something that
we're always striving.
But that being said, you know, Iwas at NAB when the NAB labs got

(24:49):
discontinued.
I think what I would say interms of what we're doing at Car
Group is we're actually nottalking.
It's not at all the focus of ourcommunications.
Our team is trying to build avision of the future.
The big opportunities on thehorizon are, but we're proving
it through doing, and that'swhat's really valued internally.
So I've been in plenty ofmeetings where like I present,
you know, a research report andall I get is eye rolls like, Oh,

(25:13):
we already knew that.
Sometimes when you present astrategy, it's like, yeah, that
was great.
We've been talking about like 20years, like, and we haven't been
able to execute what's differenttoday.
We're trying to avoid thoseconversations.
By not talking about innovationand not talking about, you know,
what we intend to do, butactually just.

Yeah, it's impactful because I was going to
ask you about embeddinginnovation practices in
organizations after this lastquestion.
And actually that resistance tochange you can get around.
Obviously, if you're coming at.
At the problem, or, you know,you're talking in terms of
problems and solutions and whatyou've taken to market, what
you've found out.
And it's a more actionorientated conversation than the
one that sort of starts with,Oh, this is what we found out.

(25:52):
And these were the key insights.
And you know, what are we goingto do about it?
And that's taken you six monthsto do it.
You know, I mean, the strategyand the research, it feels like
a big conversation and peoplewill interpret that in different
ways as well.
You know, some people are veryaction orientated.
Some people want to go more deepinto understanding it more and
it just creates this sort of.
Environment of not knowing, youknow, whether it's based on a

(26:13):
solution and an outcome from ameeting where you're presenting
this information or whether it'sjust going to be okay, that
we've still got some questionswe need to answer before we can
go into anything else.
And that I know it's, if it's aconservative, like it just feels
like there's a lot of, yeah, alot of, a lot of pressure on
those teams if they are workingin that way to come up with
answers and to prove value allthe time.
And they think they're doing it,but it may be not framed in

(26:34):
exactly the way that you'redescribing.

Understanding the language of the organization.
And speaking that language andthere are plenty, I mean,
there's plenty of organizationsthat strategic thinking is the
language of the organization.
One of the organizations that Iwas at previously was really
focused on delivering a visionthat they would never actually,
but they were always focused ontalking about what might be as
opposed to what, what is today.

(26:58):
And that was really valuable forthem.
So to be able to get aninnovation initiative up there,
it's about how it feeds intothat sort of, That probably
would never be that is importantto the organization, but a car
group, super action orientated.
And I think the general thingthat I try and.
Do with our internalconversations.

(27:19):
And our team is, you know, justhaving a really strong empathy
for what the needs are of allthe different stakeholders.
So we do at the start of anyinitiative we do, as I guess you
would in a lot of differentinitiatives, but we do
stakeholder interviews to tryand understand, you know, what's
important to them, what do theysee as risk.
So that enables us to have thevocabulary just to like, speak

(27:39):
about how we're solving theirproblems, as opposed to
presenting our.
Spend angled solution that youknow, might not actually beat
the mark in their eyes.

Yeah, I mean, taking their voice into those
conversations, almost having itin mind.
You know, it's like you'resaying you're a researcher.
Having that in mind when youare, when you're trying to
navigate what's, what should begoing ahead and what shouldn't
is incredibly valuable I find.
I think if you are removed fromthat, you are being told what
other people think of theinitiatives, but indirectly, I
think that's always harder.

Yeah.
Just recently, we're about topitch a new solution next week,
and in the last meeting we hadwith our C suite, the question
was, how do we get, you know,the value that you're describing
instead of a year from now, evenlike a month from now?
And so having that top of mindas we go through the process so
that we can answer that.
But they feel heard and alsowe're speaking in their

(28:29):
language, which I mentionedreally action orientated.
It's exactly that.

Yeah.
And I think, you know, just tostretch on from that point in,
particularly in the largerorganizations, if you're
thinking about, you know, a bankor any, any of the big ones.
It's good to have allies withinyour team that can be having
their ears to the ground andhaving these conversations and
then, and you get this sort ofsense of, you know, shared
information, shared insight andshared, shared business context,

(28:55):
really, that you can't be, youknow, as one person, you can't
be everywhere in every meetingall the time, obviously.
So, I mean, do you think it'spossible to navigate that as an
individual?
Or do you think there are otherthings that.
That you need to consider formaking that sort of, it's just
like a ground swell, but sharedunderstanding of what's going
on, a real like directappreciation for the work that
you're doing.

(29:15):
I mean, how, how do you set thatup in a way that works?
Do you think?

Yeah.
So at Car Group, we do everytime we talk to our key
stakeholders, we do update ourlittle Slack groups and we have
a fortnightly meeting where wejust talk about what is the
general sentiment around some ofthe ideas and you know, where
we're being pushed to exploredifferent things that, that
maybe weren't on our radarpreviously.
So we've got sort of some ofthose, I guess, communication

(29:40):
channels in, in play, but Ithink, you know, like.
A lot of organizations, westruggle with documentation and,
you know, creating that sort ofthat shared understanding of the
organizational context, I guess,and strategic context.
We also, we just had our resultsannouncement yesterday.
So, and payments is part ofthat, which is one of our
project.
We got a slide.
So we try and encourage the sortof team in the innovation team

(30:05):
to be dialing into it.
Meetings like that, because thatgives them the context of what's
important.
That gives the questions thatthe CEO gets asked from
investors so that we can startto be on the front foot and help
to answer those questions.

Yeah, that's good.
Yeah, I think obviously if it'sfocused around the numbers and
there's a cadence for that beingreported, then people can
understand that quite easily andget behind it as well.
I think the commercialtransparency in a way is.
As important as strategic ordesign transparency and all the
things that are going on feelslike it's hard to stay across a
lot of time.
Yeah.
Just in terms of sometimesthere's conversation around this

(30:40):
business as usual work, and thenthere's that other stuff, the
new, the new stuff that is sortof a bit further out, but you
know, there's more importantstuff to do in the short term
and we're too busy.
Cause we're doing that.
Have you found that to be.
You know, a conversation thatcomes up quite a lot, and you're
always having to kind of battleagainst what other other people
believe to be another priority.

Definitely.
I mean, I think that that is thetoughest problem with an
intrapreneurship sort of team inso much as, at least for our
team, half dependent on the restof the business to make your new
innovation concept successful.
Because, you know, you're sortof using the existing platform
and brand.
If nothing else, brand positionof, of the incumbent company to

(31:22):
just sort of catapult your ideaforward, but there's always new
initiatives and sort of team areworking on.
And that's certainly no truerthan right now in carsells.
com.
au where we're sort of goingthrough a process of re
platforming and you know,there's a lot of pressure to get
that out to the core teams,which.
You know, it makes it moredifficult for us to get
involved, you get prioritizedfor delivery.

(31:44):
I think what has helped us a lotis bringing the core teams along
from the very first conversationof a new idea, right through to
the implementation, because thathelped us or has helped us to
understand the constraints ofbusiness and what easy looks
like versus hard so that we canstart to figure out like, Okay,

(32:07):
well, this core concept, youknow, let's say payments, well,
cause it's one that we'velaunched.
We want to have the ability forpeople to be able to find it on
site.
If we, do it this way, it'lltake, you know, three months of
effort.
If we do it this way, it'll taketwo days worth of effort.
And so by having thatunderstanding and being able to
prioritize things that are, youknow, relatively easy for the

(32:30):
core team enables us to get tomarket without, you know, unduly
impacting their roadmap.
I think the other thing is, youknow, we've been really
fortunate, uh, in that we haveCultivated the support about C
suite and that's enabled us to,you know, work on initiatives
that have that sort of top downsupport.
That won't always be the case.

(32:50):
If that is always the case, thenwe're not pushing our
initiatives hard enough.
Our C suite should hate.
A whole bunch of the ideas,especially ones that, you know,
disrupt ourselves.

You've got a KPI around that, right?
You must hate at least 50%.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.
By cultivating that sort ofleadership port has helped us to
get a little bit of top downsupport as well for, for
bringing ideas to market.

Yeah.
Yeah.
No.
Interesting.
I mean, interesting that you'rekind of putting the scenarios
forward for, you know, a twomonth, two year or two day
version.
And I think involving people inthose conversations is always
incredibly valuable from thepoint that if they can see the
merit in doing it quickly andgetting it out of the way, then
that might help your cause.
If you're trying to free up, youknow, some developer time or
whatever it is.
But yeah, that, that can workreally well.

(33:37):
Yeah.
I wanted to ask about.
Maybe design thinking a littlebit because, you know, human
centered design, designthinking, you know, the voice,
the customer, you know, the, therole that that's playing within
some of your conversations andhow powerful you find that to
be.
Obviously there are designthinking practitioners that kind
of follow the process of that tothe book will only kind of, you
know, output something andrecommendations, you know,

(33:59):
sounds like you're kind of morein the lean camp, but I just
wanted to, yeah, see, see howthat was going, you know, Some,
some stakeholders really respondwell to the fact that we're
designing, you know, in a humansense of design way around the
customers.
And, and that's always part ofthe conversation.
Some businesses are obviouslymore, more interested in, you
know, the, the commercial orthe, you know, the, the growth

(34:20):
or the sales or whatever it is.
There's a different kind of setof hats and it did a set
different set of interests, butyeah, how are you, how are you
finding the kind of customer ledconversation at the minute and
what are some of the things thatare coming up?

Yeah, really.
Great.
Really interesting point.
I hadn't really reflected onthis, but we use design thinking
and we also use lean startup,but at different stages in the,
in the process, you know, solike I said before, we got sort
of like these, these core themesthat we, that we work toward as
an organization and we'reconstantly sort of, I guess,

(34:52):
scanning the market for newtrends and new data that helps
us to, um, uncover.
New opportunities.
Well, once we've got anopportunity, we actually go
through the design thinkingprocess doing, you know,
research on that sort of broadopportunity space that, you
know, in payments is, um, is,you know, how might we
streamline the, the, the privateselling.

(35:14):
Um, purchasing experience and wedo research to understand what
the customer pain points are andthe opportunities are.
We design solutions.
We test them with users, sort ofgenerally a lo fi way.
We also use quant to back thatup.
So a lot of our ideas are soearly that if we relied on a
small sample of qualitativeinterviews, we might
accidentally do something thatis actually not valuable.

(35:36):
At the mass market level, Iguess.
And then we iterate thesolutions and that's what turns
into the pitch that we take toour stakeholders.
But the outcome of that is thenonce we've got something that we
know is desirable, how do webreak it up into chunks that we
can deliver?
And how do we deliver in a waythat we're constantly learning?

(35:58):
So I guess, like, lean startup,yeah.
It's sort of like the end of thedesign picking process for us.

How do you engage the other teams?
I mean, this is also thisquestion around, you know, is it
a closed process with only a fewpeople doing it?
Do we involve everyone becauseeveryone loves it and they want
to get involved?
You know, do you have a sort ofsizing conversation all the
time?

Oh, extremely painful.
And we haven't got this rightyet.
One of our first initiatives ispayments.
We, we involved everyone fromday one.
In fact, we even involved theboard.
They were really interested init.
And that was really good to, Iguess, rally support behind
something that's quite difficultas an organization, you know,
certainly from the perspectiveof our organizational risk and

(36:39):
the partnerships that we need toengage with, you know, it makes
it quite complicated.
With other initiatives, we'vedecided to be a little bit more
closed and sort of work in asort of skunk works type
operation because we know Butthere might be some political
sensitivities around thoseideas.
And if we, um, if we exposed therosebud, this is my analogy, a

(37:05):
terrible analogy, we exposed therosebud, you know, on day one.
It would get killed.
So there's a need to sort oflike, you know, go through the
design process, design thinkingprocess in sort of a little bit
of a vacuum so that we cannurture the idea enough, be able
to present something that's morepalatable.

(37:26):
I think, you know, that's justgeneral, generally the case with
all Meet intrapreneurshipbecause there's often a history
behind an idea.
If you're working on an ideathat someone like one of our
ideas that we're working on now,I won't say what it is, but it's
something that we've donepreviously and spent a couple of

(37:47):
years doing and failed verybadly at.
And.
We're redoing it because webelieve the, I believe, uh,
execution was the failure behindthat project.
If we had gone to, uh, on dayone to the sort of broader

(38:08):
organization, Hey, we're goingto do this, then it's highly
improbable that we wouldactually be working on that
today.

Yeah.
Yeah.
Because it's associated with theexecution that ran last time.

But also.
People who worked on the lastversion, you know, are still
here and you know, they stillwear those scars.

Yeah.
Well, I mean that, that's atricky one.
And then you're having torepresent or reframe its value
in some way and, and look pastthat without, yep.
I don't know.
I, I mean, you can, obviouslythere's gonna be a link made
between this and the last thing.
Unless you can disguise it insuch a way that it doesn't sound
like the same thing at all, butobviously that's a

consideration.
We talk about the learnings fromthe last time and we talk about
what's different in the, youknow, market or our organization
today that enables us to thinkdifferently.
And then we, we present thatwhatever the solution is that
we're working on.
So I, I would hope that anyonewho sees our new solution would
be able to, just see how.

(39:09):
And maybe their pain has beenaddressed in some meaningful
way.

Well, I don't think you've got to be
optimistic or you have to be anoptimist in this role anyway, I
think.
You got this scaffolding, Ialways think of it as
scaffolding.
Like you, you can basically, youcan, you can talk about it at
that executional level, which issort of right at the top.
Or you can just strip it rightback to what it is people will
agree on in some capacity.
So, you know, was the strategyright?
Was the insight, you know, kindof the right area of focus?

(39:36):
Was the data coming in, likeright at the bottom?
Was the data coming in kind ofthe.
The part that we can all, youcan, you can usually find some
alignment through that at somelayer and strip it back to that
and then agree on that.
And they'll say, Oh, we're goingto build up again from here and
then go from there.
So hopefully you can find that.

And also, you know, I think there's power in
saying we're also happy to killit if, you know, we don't get it
right again.
And these are our leadindicators to help us figure out
whether we've got it right, youknow, we're just going along for
the ride.

Yeah.
Have you always been okay withthat?
Like from a, from a killing theidea point of view, have you
always been okay with that?
Or is it, is it something thatyou've kind of grown, grown to
accept?

Um, uh, well, I don't know.
Maybe it's more rhetoric at themoment.
I still don't know if I'm okaywith that.
Yeah, fair enough.
You know, what's really powerfulis Like user testing is so
powerful, right?
Cause you think you got the mostamazing idea and then like the
customer, like, that's, youknow, a waste of time is that
sort of, at least for me, it's,it's clarifying in enabling you

(40:44):
to really rally behind your ownidea or sort of like, let it,
let it die.
It's sad death.

It's a hard one to get over the line sometimes.
And then you end up with what,four people or six people or
something that you talk to and,and people are kind of.
You know, resting a lot on that,um, in terms of being able to
make a decision.
So I think, yeah, being able tojustify that the testing needs
to be done in at least one roundor preferably more is kind of

(41:11):
hard sometimes.
Do you find that?

Yeah, it's really interesting.
We, we do have a culture ofdoing user testing on everything
sometimes too much.
It's relatively straightforwardat car group.
Also at NAB, luckily as well,and at Telstra as well, it's the
research stage that's perhaps alittle harder to get across the
line, like just to explore aproblem space, so you just mix

(41:32):
the two.
We do research at the start oflike an interview and then, then
we'll go into some concepts sothat we get some user testing
out.

So in terms of who you align to, to, to make sure
that, you know, you're workingon interesting things and you're
able to, you know, build your,now, maybe, maybe in a previous
part of your career, I'm notsure, but, but it's just in
terms of navigating that, thatorganizational space and
building your reputation.
What have you found works well?

Certainly for the car group, and I guess the
Telstra and NAB as well in theirinnovation spaces, being really
clear about the customerproblems that are important to
solve is useful, and also havinga solid understanding of the
company's strategy that enablesyou to solve it.
Just logically attach yourselfto initiatives that are going to

(42:24):
be winning initiatives.
Um, at Car Group, our vision isto make buying and selling a
great experience.
And one of the strategic pillarsis creating a streamlined
purchasing experience.
So any sort of Paymentsobviously just tax on nicely to
that, but so would a whole bunchof other opportunity spaces.
What wouldn't tack on verynicely to that is creating a new

(42:47):
ad placements.
So using the strategy and sortof the customer needs in our
organization, really quitepowerful to try and figure out
where the sort of the winningforces are in terms of finding
the right people.
It's really hard.
It's hard to, To find people,uh, are working on the right

(43:08):
issues, but also have the rightlevel of political will to help,
I guess, you and your career.
I would just advocate, you know,early on in my career, focused
on trying to be friends andlearn from as many people in the
organization as possible, youknow, from people.
Marketing, legal, product,design, research.

(43:30):
I worked in the retail storesinitially, so the retail stores
team as well, sales team.
Um, trying to understand, youknow, what's important to them
and, and get a really broadunderstanding of the
organization.
You know, a lot of the peoplethat, you know, I worked with
weren't necessarily going tohelp me to, to get to the more
interesting initiatives byhaving good relationships with

(43:52):
lots of them.
It enabled me to sort ofnavigate, I guess, my way to
what I eventually ended up in,which is the design practice at
Telstra, which, Enabled me tosort of have the career that I
have today.
And also like, I find a lot ofpeople sometimes just stay this
length on the market.
It's on mid standard marketing.
I started as a product manager,then I took a look as a comment,

(44:13):
as a business analyst, and thenI did research for a while.
And then I ended up in designthinking like having, I guess,
that curiosity be around otherpractices just enables you to
have more effectiveconversations.
Cause you know, when you talk toa product manager about changing
something, can that Platform,you can have some empathy for,
you know, what their sort ofpriorities are and what they

(44:34):
look for in their role versussomeone in design thinking,
maybe more customer focusdevelop or curating, you know,
strong relationships that arecross disciplinary to help you
to, you know, eventually findthe right people to, to get it.
Involved in interesting work isimportant.

It does involve so many teams now in the work that
you do.
If you are in one of those teamsand, and you're thinking, you
know, could I get more involvedand it's something that I'm
really interested in, then theopportunity in a way is much
greater now that, you know,design thinking and some of the
practices that exist around itallow for that cross functional
team environment to be broughttogether.
And that just means that, youknow, if you do love it, then

(45:11):
you, you could be the futuredesign leader, the future
innovation leader, right?
Absolutely.

Absolutely.
Yeah, it's certainly a car groupwhere we're very committed to
nurturing people who are earlyin their career, but also career
switches.
We support the digital jobsprogram in Victoria, which
enables us to bring on peoplewho are looking to change
careers from something to, youknow, digital.
And so there's heaps ofopportunity out there.

(45:36):
And, and yeah, car group is oneof those places that loves to
support that.
Love it.

Nice plug.
So.
So final question, lookingahead, I mean, if you're
thinking about trends andtechnologies and, you know,
things that would have thebiggest impact on, I guess,
intrapreneurs careers out therein the coming years, yeah,
anything spring to mind there?

Well, you know, the other day I was
brainstorming with ChatGPT and Iwas surprised at how effective
it was.
Yeah, because, like, previouslyyou'd just ask a question,
right?
And it gives you an answer, butnow you can sort of, like, have
a, you know, a conversation,like, Oh, no, I don't think
that's right.
What else can we do?
And, you know, it starts to sortof become quite a useful tool

(46:22):
for expanding your thinking.
So, ultimately, that replaces meright at some point.
So, I guess that's the trend.
Yeah.
So, maybe less so AI.
Less as a tool to replace ourworkforce and just more as a
tool for creating morepersonalized and valuable
products.
I think that's going to be thenext big frontier for Car Group

(46:44):
and I guess most organizations,specifically the training of
probably proprietary models.
That we can use our vast datathat we already have access to
to create really valuableresults rather than sort of the
general results that often youget from, you know, large
language models.

(47:06):
So, yeah, we've got heaps ofinitiatives right now.
In train that are exploring howto to use AI for our business
purposes.
But yeah, that's the big one.
Getting across the basics ofthat for me has been really
valuable just to sort ofunderstand how it works and then
be able to sort of spotopportunities.
Maybe other people haven'tthought of yet just because,

(47:27):
yeah, it's still such anemergent, emergent space.
Yeah, at HBR has a great bookactually, which is just AI for
managers or something like that.
And it's really great just toenable, was great for me to
enable me to get speed on howthat could really shape the
future of our business.

Yeah.
Awesome.
That's really cool.
And yeah, I mean, any otherplaces that you get inspiration
from more generally than that,not, not necessarily AI, but any
other kind of go to resources oranything that you think would be
useful for the, for thelisteners?

At Car Group, we do a lot of.
Longitudinal research studies,how the buyer journey is
changing over time and stufflike that.
That's really fascinating in ourindustry context.
So yeah, I guess similar typesof tools or resources like that
can be really valuable toexplore new opportunities.
I know we're looking atpayments, you know, just looking
at what McKinsey and, you know,Deloitte and Deloitte.

(48:20):
All the big consulting firms aretalking about when they think of
those topics and and the trendscoming up has been really
valuable to help us shape andfuture proof our ideas moving
forward.
And also, you know, uncover newones which is kind of cool.
So yeah, that's probably my goto.
That's cool.
Probably quite industry focused.

Yeah.
Cool.
All right.
And yeah, just finally, I mean,how, how are you feeling about
the future?
Are you feeling positive?
What are you, what are youthinking about it?

Yeah.
Extremely positive.
You know, we're in a reallydifficult economic time, right
at the moment.
And I signed at least, you know,in economic downturn.
R in R& D of the research sideis the first thing to get cut.
So I think a lot oforganizations are pessimistic,
but, you know, taking ahistorical lens on that, the
organizations that investthrough economic downturn are

(49:06):
the ones that come out strong.
A lot of organizations, youknow, looking at that and trying
to, you know, reduce their,their overall expense on, on R&
D.
Car group is, is one that's sortof investing in the future
through the economic downturn.
I guess at a, at a companylevel, that's quite
heartwarming, but also I thinkpeople who invest in their

(49:27):
career now.
Uh, going to hold themselves ingood stead for the future
because two or three years fromnow with you know, all the you
know Shedding that's that'shappening.
There'll be just a deficit ofyou know, strategic meetings So
those that do it now will beholding good.
So very optimistic and supersuper optimistic about uh,

Good, good.
That's great.
Great for us all to hear.
I think there's definitely somedoubts out there and, uh, yeah,
I mean, you, you've obviously, Ireally appreciate the chat
today.
I want to say thank you to youfor coming along and, um, and
for being so open and candidabout, you know, the things that
you've experienced and car salesand, you know, car group,
obviously.
Yeah, I just feel like fromsomebody who's obviously worked

(50:07):
through that change to create,you know, valuable outputs, you
know, within each of theorganizations that you've worked
in, it's, it's okay to have someof that change without it
feeling kind of uncertain and alittle bit worrying.
So I think, you know, you've,you've brought a positivity and
an optimism to the conversationaround innovation and what's,
you know, what can be done andwhat people can, can get

(50:29):
involved in as well.
So really appreciate your timetoday.
Thanks so much, Shane.

Thanks for having me.
It's been great.
Thank you.

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