July 15, 2025 • 48 mins
"I think there are three things that are really valued in organizations from consultants. The first is consultants come without a legacy bias. So the challenges, the roadblocks, the cultural norms within an organization, consultants are able to sidestep those. So are able to kind of come in and observe those with a bit of a neutral gaze." - Steph Foxworthy
Steph Foxworthy brings over 25 years of experience spanning customer experience, digital strategy, product innovation, sales, and marketing. He was recently managing director at Accenture Song in Melbourne and has driven results for major organisations including Coles and Telstra.
If you've ever wondered how consultants drive change or how to apply that mindset from within this episode is for you.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- The differences between employee, agency, and consultant mindsets
- How consultants build trust and get repeat business through expertise
- The role of pattern recognition in consultant success
- Why consultants can ask "dumb questions" that employees cannot
- How AI is changing the consulting landscape and democratising expertise
- The importance of asking the right questions in an AI-powered world
- Three key things consultants bring: no legacy bias, pattern recognition, storytelling
- The relationship between consultants and organisational politics
- How to know when to be directive versus exploratory as an intrapreneur
- The therapeutic role consultants often play in organisations
- Why design education teaches valuable enquiry skills
- The changing pathways for learning consulting skills
- How AI agents might change business negotiations in the future
Key links
About our guest
Steph is a customer experience, digital strategy and marketing professional with over 25 years' experience.
He’s an advocate for the power of technology to augment human creativity and to help drive growth and impact for customers, businesses and society.
After many years working in digital agencies and consulting, Steph is now Director of Managed Services at Our Community, a social enterprise dedicated to building stronger communities through software, education and services for the not-for-profit and grant-making sector.
Steph is also a non-executive director at Minus18 Foundation, a queer youth charity with a mission to improve the lives of LGBTQIA+ youth.
Steph is married with three high-school aged kids and lives bayside on Boonwurrung country in Naarm, Melbourne.
About our host
Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneuship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.
Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.
Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors man
For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Hudson (00:07):
Okay.
Hey everyone.
Buckle up curiously mindedintrapreneurs.
Welcome back to the Company RoadPodcast.
And yeah, today intrapreneurswe're gonna be unlocking the
secret source behind one of themost powerful forces for change,
I think within organizations,which is the consultant's
mindset.
So often businesses spendinghuge amounts of money on
bringing consultants in orlesser amounts maybe these days.
(00:28):
But yeah, it'd be interesting tounpack it today.
Incredibly excited to introduceSteph Foxworthy, who is a true
powerhouse with over 25 years ofexperience spanning, customer
experience digital strategy,product innovation, sales,
marketing, and the wholeshebang.
So Steph was managing directorat Accenture Song here in
Melbourne till just recently.
And yeah, from massiveenterprise overhauls for giants
(00:50):
like Coles and Telstra todelivering high impact, digital
experiences for non-profits.
Steph has driven results for anumber of organizations here.
So it's gonna be superinteresting to get his
perspective on this topic.
And yeah, if you ever wonderedwhat makes consultants so
successful at bringing aboutchange within incredibly complex
and difficult organizations,then this is the episode for
(01:12):
you.
So, yeah, we're gonna talk a bitabout the consultants' mindset
for us.
We'll talk about how it kind ofdiffers from a traditional
employee's perspective a littlebit, and some of the key skills
and traits that intrapreneurscan immediately benefit from.
And we'll get into some specificlessons for intrapreneurs on how
to apply consulting techniquesto drive innovation and impact
within your own company, really.
(01:32):
So let's jump in.
So Steph very warm welcome tothe show on a cold Melbourne day
that's getting a little bitwarmer, but thanks so much for
joining us today.
Steph Foxworthy (01:41):
Thanks for having me, Chris.
Chris Hudson (01:43):
Alright.
And yeah Steph maybe just talkus through a bit about your
background and your experiencein management consulting and
things you've been doing.
If you wanna start us there.
Steph Foxworthy (01:49):
Yeah, sure.
So when I was younger I thoughtI wanted to be an architect.
So I was studying design andstudied interior design at
university.
And my first kind of.
Jobs out of university were indigital and graphic design.
So that was the early days ofdesktop publishing and
multimedia as it was called backthen.
So I started getting into howtechnology was impacting design
(02:13):
practice.
And that kind of evolved intothe internet as that started to
become a thing.
So I was around the birth of theinternet so I could see the kind
of impact the technology wasgonna have on the way business
was done.
So I started a digital agencywith a friend of mine a long
time ago.
And, left that to go travelingwith my girlfriend who's now my
(02:35):
wife ended up in London andworked in e-commerce over there
helping three mobile set uptheir e-commerce business.
I was there for five or sixyears.
And then came back here andworked in digital agencies.
And over that time, the kind ofpower of technology and the
internet was overwhelming.
Everything was suddenly becomingdigitized.
My work was evolving from,design and making things to
(03:00):
more, strategic, conversationsaround what the future holds,
what the impact would be, howbusinesses could kind of
organize themselves to takeadvantage of that.
And so, my work became more as astrategy director.
I was strategy director atReactive for a number of years.
Reactive was acquired byAccenture about nine years ago,
10 years ago now.
(03:20):
And I moved into the kind ofmanagement consulting world
which was a bit of a cultureshock, going from a small
independent, digital agencywhere we could kind of make
decisions on a dime and do thesorts of work at a relatively
small scale.
I mean, we were a pretty largeorganization when we were
acquired, but, still the kind ofwork was mid-tier kind of market
(03:41):
focused, to moving into, aglobal behemoth like, Accenture,
700,000 people around the world.
That was a pretty big, cultureshock.
But at the same time, the levelof the level of access and
influence in terms of businessdecision makers and the scale of
the work that was beingdelivered there was hugely
exciting.
(04:01):
So for my role a strategist anda consultant with a design
mindset that was prettyexciting.
So I stuck around at Accenturefor quite some time.
And then just recently I've kindof made the shift out of
management consulting and intorunning a services practice
within a social enterprise.
So at our community and workingwith, not-for-profits and grant
(04:22):
making and, fundingorganizations.
So that's been a reallyinteresting shift as well.
So leading the kind of servicesteam at our community, which is
yeah, exciting change and a bitof a, change of pace.
Yeah, very good.
And probably much needed afterall of that.
Yeah, I should say.
Yeah, that's right.
The consulting lifestyle ispretty fast paced.
That's right.
Chris Hudson (04:40):
Yeah.
Maybe it has a shelf life.
I don't know.
Some people go on and on, butit's a hard one.
There's a lot of lifers in thosebusinesses.
Steph Foxworthy (04:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Hudson (04:47):
That's it.
I dunno how they do it.
Yeah, I mean, that transition asyou made, from reactive and into
Accenture, it sounded like itwas a little bit of a shift in
gear.
How would you describe some ofyour observations of how that
worked operationally, was therea different mindset?
Were you thinking that okaythere's a different way of
working here?
What were your thoughts?
Steph Foxworthy (05:06):
Yeah, I think there are some pretty stark
differences between the kind ofemployee mindset, the agency
mindset and then the consultingmindset.
So, yeah.
Okay.
And I feel like there's levelsof kind of pattern recognition
that go with each of thosethings.
So, as an employee or with youraudience focus around
(05:26):
intrapreneurship.
There's levels of control thatyou have around the final
outcome of a program, a project,or the work that you're doing.
You are involved in the shapingof it, the delivery of it from
end to end.
You're kind of accountable forthe outcomes.
You're accountable for the teamswho are delivering that work.
(05:46):
So that aspect of control,responsibility and
accountability is very high forthe people within the
organizations.
Chris Hudson (05:53):
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (05:54):
In an agency life mindset, you're more
focused on project delivery.
You're kind of time boxed in anengagement typically.
So usually there's capabilitythat the organization doesn't
have or.
There's types of output thatthey're not able to produce
themselves perhaps.
Yeah.
So you tend to get brought in towork on a project, it has a
(06:15):
defined lifespan, there'sexpected deliverables at the
end.
Yeah.
And you kind of do your workhanded over hopefully have a
celebration at the end and moveon.
The consultant mindset I thinkis slightly different.
The consultant mindset is builtmuch more on trust around
expertise in a particular domainand good consulting
(06:37):
organizations are kind ofbrought in again and again to
help people work through biggerproblems.
And very often it's about havinga vision for the future around,
where the market's going, wherethe world's going, where
customers are going.
Having a point of view aroundwhat that future looks like and
how it's gonna impact theorganization.
(06:57):
So my experience is that thosekind of relationships tend to be
less time boxed.
They tend to be more kind ofcontinuous and that people will
come back to you and seek yourinput into where that is going
in a more strategic way or inmore of an influencing way.
You have less of a specificfocus on delivery and outcome
(07:18):
in, in a project sense and moreof a guiding role in helping
people kind of navigate changein technology or in strategy or
in business structure.
And so the, yeah, the level oftrust and relationship you need
to build with clients becomes alittle bit more elevated.
I mean, of course, trust andinfluence is.
(07:39):
Consistent across all of thosedifferent mindsets, whether you
are internal, whether you aredoing things on a project basis,
or whether you are providingadvisory services.
Yeah.
But in the consulting side ofthings that, that level of trust
and influence is really superimportant.
Chris Hudson (07:55):
Yeah.
I mean, I was gonna ask thegolden question is how do
consultants get work?
If it's, obviously built intrust but if it's not built
around an outcome all the time,then how does that work do you
think?
Steph Foxworthy (08:04):
I think the level of expertise that needs to
be developed by consultants isis pretty high.
You need to have a track recordof delivery in certain contexts.
You need to have proven thatyou've had a positive influence
on other businesses and theability to kind of draw on that.
Word of mouth is critical inthis.
(08:25):
People move between jobs,between industries and between
companies.
And good consultants get carriedalong.
People work with somebody, theygrow to trust them, and they
call them up in their next roleand they have a similar problem.
I do feel like that that levelof expertise becomes something
that people will draw on againand again.
So, yeah.
When you've demonstrated thatyou understand a problem or a
(08:47):
problem space, that you have aclear vision for where things
are going, and you're able toarticulate that and, share that
with people and help themreorient themselves towards,
where growth might be or where,opportunity might lie.
That becomes something that kindof carries along with you.
(09:07):
Yeah, but it's very muchrelationship based.
Yeah, so it's pretty hard toconvince somebody that you know
what you're talking about ifthey've never seen or heard of
you before from a consultingperspective, you really need to
demonstrate your credentials, Ithink.
Chris Hudson (09:20):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, you were talking a bitabout the internet and then
obviously we jump forward andwe've got AI options pouring out
of every meeting, everyinteraction.
And is definitely a culture nowof people assuming or quickly
getting to the point where theyfeel like they're an expert in
most things, right?
So they can find solutions forthings very quickly.
So how do you think that ischanging and, does that redefine
(09:42):
the role for a consultant,
Steph Foxworthy (09:43):
I think it really does.
I've spent the last year reallyimmersing myself in in ai and
particularly in generative ai.
Yeah.
Because I have exactly the samefeeling I had at the beginning
of my career.
So when I first started lookinginto the internet and started
thinking about the implicationsthat a connected digital world
has on business and life.
(10:04):
This light bulb went off for me.
I was like, this is gonna changeeverything.
It's gonna change the way thatpeople do everything in their
lives.
Yeah.
And so myself and a good friendwho were working in the
multimedia agency, we launchedour own business to start
working in internet.
Yeah.
And that wave has just built andbuilt and it's carried me along
my whole career.
And we started paddling veryhard to kind of catch that wave,
(10:26):
but once the wave was, there itwas a really, not a difficult
thing to keep riding that wave.
Yeah.
Internet and digitaltransformation and technology in
general has been hugelyimpactful in business and been
great for my career and, changedimproved the lives of many
people all around the world.
I have exactly the same senseright now with ai, so I
(10:48):
fundamentally feel like.
The way that AI is emerging nowis gonna change our relationship
with technology.
the way that AI interprets kindof natural language into
instructions, the way that it,works to generate output like
code or imagery or music or,whatever the output format is.
The way that people are engagingwith technology changes
(11:11):
fundamentally and access toinformation changes
fundamentally.
So, what I was talking aboutearlier about expertise,
suddenly if information isavailable, delivered by these
technology solutions in reallydeep, valuable ways.
So, summarizing information,summarizing content that sort of
(11:32):
stuff in the background, then Ifeel like that kind of
interaction with technologybecomes much more valuable.
Chris Hudson (11:41):
Yeah.
I mean, you were talking a bitabout employees agencies and
consulting differences justbefore, and, to put it brutally
and maybe overly simply, but ifthere's like a tick across or a
question mark over some of thosethings in relation to AI and
what the future of anyone'sremit might end up being.
It feels like as an employee,there's always gonna be a role
(12:02):
for facilitating somethingthrough an organization.
That there would be, in theconsulting sense, that might be
a question mark because therewould be deliverables that could
be generated, more easily thanperhaps before.
And then consulting maybeanother question, mark, what's
your thinking?
What do you think is gonna bethe future?
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (12:19):
Yeah.
I feel like there's, there'sthat level of accountability for
delivering the outcome throughto completion is is kind of the
crux of the challenge that facesconsultants going forward.
And to be fair, it always hasbeen.
The cost of bringing in externalpeople to lead programs, has
always been a challenge fororganizations.
(12:42):
Yeah.
And if you are not able todeliver the final outcome, if
your role is to, define theproblem space, design a
solution, influence theorganization to be able to
achieve that outcome on theirown behalf, it's always been the
critique of strategy practicesthat, you come in and, there's
the old saying, you borrowsomeone's watch to tell them the
(13:04):
time.
That's the way people have oftenkind of characterized
consultants.
But you know, if you don't knowhow to read a watch, then you do
need somebody to tell you whatthe time is.
And so I think the way that weare looking at, internal
strategy practices, being ableto gain access to, the sum total
of human knowledge in, thesekind of AI driven environments.
(13:24):
It does change the role of howconsultants approach, some of
this work.
And I feel like that bringingthe outcome forward, helping the
organization change so that theycan start to bring, results into
the world, yeah, that is whereconsulting is gonna need to go.
They're gonna, it's gonna needto be more enabling than kind of
(13:44):
directive.
Yeah, I feel like that is a bitof a change.
Chris Hudson (13:47):
Yeah.
So delivery and implementationfocus, but more around
enablement and empowerment and,up upskilling and that kind of
area.
Steph Foxworthy (13:54):
I feel like the democratization of technology
and tools, with the kind of riseof, new software platforms, this
whole kind of AI generated worldwhere software becomes a bit
more accessible, where lessspecific kind of code expertise
might be required, more kind ofdescribing the problem, to an AI
powered solution.
(14:15):
Yeah, that becomes, moreimportant.
Consultants have always beenreally good at asking the right
questions.
You often hear people kind ofcritiquing consultants that they
come into an organization andthey ask a bunch of dumb
questions.
But because you're an external,because you're an outsider.
You can get away with asking abunch of dumb questions until
(14:36):
you get to the question thatthey can't answer.
So, you can sit there saying, Ineed you to talk me through
these processes or thisapproach, and ask question after
question, and people will lookat you like you're an idiot.
Like, why are you asking methese basic questions?
We've been doing this fordecades, we are obviously, top
of our game as a business,you've come in as an outsider
and you're asking me reallybasic, simple questions.
(14:58):
And they'll answer them, andthey'll answer them, and they'll
look at you like you're anidiot.
And then you get a few days intoa engagement and you start
asking some questions, and thenthey start going, Ooh, haven't
thought about that.
Didn't consider that, or, Idon't know the answer to that.
And then that's where the goldlies.
And I feel like, as an externalparty, you have permission to do
that.
In fact, that's your job.
(15:20):
As an internal, if you startasking dumb questions or
questioning the, the status quoor, there's a lot of
vulnerability to kind of admityou don't know something within
an organization.
Yeah.
Particularly at senior levels.
And that's something that I feellike consultants are very good
at.
But, there's approaches withtechnology now that are gonna
allow people to start askingthose questions or, delving a
(15:42):
bit under the cover of their ownorganizations so that does make
consultants a bit more at risk,I suppose.
Chris Hudson (15:47):
Yeah.
the AI tools are getting quitegood at asking questions back,
right, too.
So you can often find that ithelps steer you to, like a
consultant would, it's helpingsteer you to the answer in the
way that
Steph Foxworthy (15:58):
you might have thought it would appear.
Yeah, exactly.
The prompting side of things Ithink is super important in this
new AI world, and that is allabout asking the right
questions.
So yeah, the people who canformulate the right question,
who can kind of see the pattern,see the system, and know what
questions to ask they're thepeople who are gonna shine in
this new world.
(16:18):
If, if you are committed ormarried to a process yeah,
that's gonna be much harder.
Chris Hudson (16:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And yeah, I mean, questionasking, I mean, how does that
get taught or learned, do youthink?
Where do people find that, thatskill?
Is it taught, is it learned?
How do you best find out abouthow to do that better?
Steph Foxworthy (16:40):
Yeah.
I think consulting is a teamgame.
And so people will learn fromobserving other people, leading
practices like this.
And the questions that peopleare asking and the, the levels
of vulnerability they show interms of asking basic questions
(17:00):
and working their way through aproblem I think that's always
instructive.
I think one of the things thatwill be a challenge going
forward is, the size ofconsulting practices, are
shrinking around the world.
So lots of organizations are,promising that they're going to
use more technology, they'regonna use more ai.
There is downward pressure onthe size and shape of consulting
(17:22):
practices.
I was talking to, a client theother day who runs a finance
business, and they were sayingthat they can see that, their
pathway, their pipeline forgetting people through.
Their business is gonna changeenormously.
People who would previously comein and do process type work.
So, bookkeeping and tax filingand, those kinds of roles where
(17:46):
people learn their craft beforethey can become advisors.
And, before they can start to,be creative in the way that they
solve, client problems, theyreally need to know the basics.
Most of those kind of processdriven roles are gonna be
automated and this client's viewwas that in the next five or so
years, those sorts of roles willbe completely automated by,
(18:10):
software systems.
And so he was asking where is hegonna find his advisory talent?
Like, where is he going to needto look to bring people through
his business so that they areexpert and able to provide.
Creative and complex solutions.
Yeah.
If the basics work is allautomated away.
(18:31):
And he was kind of talking abouta bit of a apprenticeship type
model.
Maybe we get back to this waywhere people are kind of
anointed to join these sorts ofpractices and brought in.
But yeah, work your way up,learn your craft to get to a
point where you have enoughexperience.
Perhaps those kind of pathwaysare gonna be a bit broken by AI
and technology in the future.
Chris Hudson (18:52):
Yeah.
I mean, that's a veryinteresting point.
Puts a big question mark initself around, the hierarchy,
the, the longevity of careers,the engagement around it and the
education system that's feedingthe working world, right?
Steph Foxworthy (19:05):
Yeah, that's right.
Chris Hudson (19:06):
Te teaching people how to think, how to inquire,
how to have a curious mind ifyou're not doing that through
work, then how is it beinglearned or is it not being
learned?
That, that presents a bigquestion.
Steph Foxworthy (19:17):
Yeah, I think that is a really huge question
around educational pathways.
I feel like, my own kind ofcareer grew from a design
background, and I think, designeducation is great at teaching
that sort of inquiry.
Beginning with research,beginning with insight and
observation assessing data,looking for kind of patterns in
(19:41):
amongst all of that stuff, butapproaching it with a creative
mindset.
That's kind of the heart ofdesign inquiry and I feel like
that's critical to all of the.
Sense making that needs tohappen in the world around
advisory services and consultingas well.
Yeah.
I think consulting has had a bigrole to play in terms of kind of
(20:03):
cookie cutter expertise as well.
People have seen one problemsomewhere and, applied the same
solution in other areas.
And so part of what consultingoffers is that kind of lookalike
opportunity within an industry.
Yeah.
And that can be great for thingslike effectiveness and
efficiency for cost reductionand, benchmarking.
(20:25):
But it's not necessarily a greatapproach for things like
differentiation and growth.
So if you're really trying tokind of be an organization
that's more customer centric,that's, trying to differentiate
in a market, then you need moreof that creative kind of design
led thinking as opposed to,benchmarking and evidence.
(20:46):
So design is a kind of designingfuture value.
Yeah, and sometimes that futurevalue is hard to quantify.
Sometimes it needs to behypothesis based and, driven
through experimentation.
And there's many organizationswhere the culture doesn't really
support that.
And so if you are really lookingto kind of define growth and new
(21:09):
opportunities and taking adesign led and a hypothesis led
approach to that you need tohave a culture that's much more
experimental to allow you tokind of pursue that avenue.
Chris Hudson (21:21):
Yeah.
And the learning pathways wouldneed to gear you up for that.
I feel like coming over here,the learning pathway seemed
quite vocationally orientated ina lot of cases.
Yeah.
In Europe, particularly in theUK anyway, you may have gathered
this from while you're overthere, but people will come into
a role, with an arts degree.
And I did an arts degree, butover here, that would be kind of
question in itself.
(21:42):
I'd be scoffed a little bit.
Why are you doing something thatisn't business, as a degree if
you're not, that kind of thing.
But actually the teaching of thethinking process was what was
really valuable from that,critical thinking, lateral
thinking.
it could be anything.
It could be design, as you weresaying.
It could be maths, could bescience.
You are learning how to questionthrough that process as well.
So I feel like maybe some ofthose learning pathways will
(22:04):
become more important over here.
What do you think?
Steph Foxworthy (22:07):
Yeah, I think I agree a hundred percent.
A traditional education in thearts or in design or in other,
more creative areas does helppeople have a broader, base for,
future inquiry perhaps.
And then some of the vocationalpathways.
I feel like that's potentiallygonna be more valuable in the
future.
The idea of kind of learningyour craft in some of these more
(22:31):
kind of high value careersthat's gonna be a bit kind of
carved out by technology.
So, the guy I was speaking towho runs a finance business, he
can see that traditional kind ofaccounting pathways is just
gonna disappear for futuregenerations.
Similarly in, high value roleslike legal profession.
The paralegal or the young kindof lawyer pathway where you are
(22:54):
working your way through a legalfirm that a lot of that work is
going to be automated away.
So yeah where people start tolook for that education.
I think it does come down tobetter ways of approaching
critical thinking.
Looking at alternative ways offraming a problem looking for
critique.
So, collaboration and diversityof thought.
(23:17):
Those sorts of things becomemore valuable into the future.
Chris Hudson (23:21):
Yeah.
And maybe some of the socialsciences and, research and, some
of the data driven work,actually understanding it, how
to analyze how to.
How to report, that kind ofthing.
Yeah.
Because you've gotta be able tointerpret it and without a
critical eye on a lot of theinformation that you see on, in
your web browser, on your phoneevery day you're thinking, okay,
well if this is the truth, is itthe truth?
(23:42):
Yeah.
Should I be questioning thisfurther?
Is it gonna be right?
Is it gonna be good enough?
It's sort of in the eye of thebeholder a little bit as to
whether your AI response is anygood or not,
Steph Foxworthy (23:50):
so,
Chris Hudson (23:50):
yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (23:51):
I think the other thing that's kind of
opening up for us in a moretechnology driven, AI enabled,
world, is that the level ofconfidence that you have around
decisions, potentially doesn'tneed to be as high within
organizations.
Traditionally the cost ofexecution of a business change.
Has been such a barrier to,making changes to either a
(24:13):
product set or a businessprocess that the level of
confidence that leadershipneeds, in order to execute that
needs to be extraordinarilyhigh.
So there's a lot of work thatwas done, historically around
strategy planning, around,research and business modeling.
Data driven analysis and,benchmarking across industry.
(24:34):
A lot of, more backwardslooking, analysis of data, to
build that confidence that itwould allow organizations to
invest in change.
What I foresee happening is thatthe cost of change, particularly
around, technology, starts tocome down in more of an AI
driven world.
(24:54):
And so the ability to.
Experiment with, differentproduct models, with different
service models becomes muchhigher.
And the kind of granular natureof, how you go to market with a
product or a service becomesmore of a, a kit of parts and a
bit of a puzzle where you kindof, stitch things together in
(25:15):
the moment and, per client needrather than, manufacturing one
massive product and putting itto market and saying, take it or
leave it.
Yeah.
Some of the conversations I'vebeen having with some of my
clients recently, kind ofinstructive about this one
example was some guy in thestates put together a voice bot
that he deployed on his energycompany and he, sent it out into
(25:35):
the world and got it to try andrenegotiate his energy bill.
And it was a voice agent, so itcalled up on the telephone.
It spoke to, a service agent.
It tried to renegotiate hisbill.
They got very confused aboutwhat was going on, asked whether
it was a, digital assistant.
Yeah.
And it disclosed that it was adigital assistant and they said,
well, I can't negotiate with youthen, and hung up.
(25:58):
But it called back hundreds oftimes before, oh my, before
somebody, some administratorsomewhere was, it was escalated
to and, made some change that,he was happy with.
Yeah.
And that kind of nature of howproblems are gonna be solved in
the future.
If you have a little agent thatis able to go off and negotiate
with a business, at a verygranular level and is completely
(26:20):
tireless.
It fundamentally changes the waythat businesses need to deliver
their services.
You need to atomize your productinto the smallest bit you can
negotiate on, and you need to beprepared for these tireless
agents that are going to comeand, whittle away your margins
wherever they are.
And very few businesses areprepared for that kind of future
(26:41):
where, they have digital agentsnegotiating with them, one way
or another on every aspect oftheir product or service.
So that kind of experimentalapproach to the market and your
products and your services Ithink that's gonna become a much
bigger thing.
Yeah, so it fundamentallychanges the way businesses
organize themselves to deliver.
Chris Hudson (27:05):
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, it's frightening, isn'tit?
I think the, the art of salesand, the kind of the soft sell,
the hard sell, the nuance, thehuman relation, the relational
side to business is kind ofbeing whittled down.
It feels like a little bitthere.
You're just gonna get hounded bysome robot.
Maybe the catchphrase will, itwon't be so much, I, we won't
negotiate with terrorists, butwe won't negotiate with robots.
(27:27):
Yeah.
Sounds like there's something inthat I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, there are somepeople that are standing up to
that and they're saying, okay,there's ai.
But, to Andrew Griffiths who'san author here, and he's based
in Tasmania, and yeah, he'stalking about human intelligence
a lot in some of his socialcontent.
And, there, there's definitely akind of a bit of a rebellion
(27:49):
against AI in some cases, but,from an intrapreneur's point of
view and the skills and traitsthat we've been talking about,
would you be saying, lean in orlean out or do a bit of both?
Or what would your advice bethere?
Steph Foxworthy (28:01):
Yeah, I'm a lean in guy.
Yeah, I feel like, as I said therelationship with technology is
fundamentally changing.
Yeah.
And this kind of natural.
If you think about AI as a newkeyboard or a new mouse, it's
just a new way to getinformation into a computer and
get the computer to respond toyour needs.
Yeah.
(28:21):
I feel like that's where thingsare going.
And the tools available to us inthe future will be even better
at, allowing us to get outputsthat meet our needs.
And just the way you ask forthat output is going to be the
skill that people, aredeveloping.
So, yeah, that ability to kindof, be able to engage with
(28:44):
technology in a way that givesyou what you want, I think
that's the skill that peoplewill be learning, in the future.
Over the last couple of yearswe've talked about it as prompt
engineering, as if it's acareer.
I don't think it is a career.
I think it's a way of engagingwith technology more broadly.
I think that's the sort of thingthat people will be being
taught, more, your point about,critical thinking and, lateral
(29:09):
thinking, I think that's gonnabecome more important.
Because understanding theproblem space, asking the right
questions and framing them inways that, try to avoid bias
and, preconceived ideas.
I feel like that's where,consulting practices are gonna
go in general, but also, if youare an entrepreneur or you are
(29:31):
somebody trying to have acreative approach to solving
problems, within anorganization, those skills are
gonna be critical.
Chris Hudson (29:39):
Yeah.
But you need to know how toapply it and what to ask about.
It's kind of like.
if there's a Michelin star chefin your house and they were
gonna cook dinner tonight, butyou had no idea what kind of
food they could make, and youhad no ideas for what they could
cook, then you'd have to work itout in some way and prompt, the
right outcome for it to be likethe most amazing meal you ever
had.
You're having to design ityourself effectively.
(30:00):
So people need to learn that.
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (30:03):
One thing that's, emerging at the moment
that I've seen people doingquite a lot, particularly on the
AI front, is asking the AI whatquestions they should ask.
And so when you think aboutthese kind of consulting
practices and, learning fromobserving other people, the same
applies to learning fromtechnology.
So, if you're asking what shouldI ask or what should I know
before I step into this problemspace?
(30:25):
The speed to learning.
In this new world is going to beincredibly rapid.
So, your ability to, find outwhat background reading you
should do, or summarize the kindof research that might be
important.
Learn who are the kind ofprecedents and experts in the
space.
That sort of stuff now is at ourfingertips.
Yeah.
And and I think that makes a bigdifference to the way people
(30:47):
start to think about problemsolving as well.
In the past, the effort youwould have to put into, research
a particular problem spacewithin an industry or dig up
precedents or look for casestudies or find out who are the
who are the experts, whatresearch you should be drawing
on.
Yeah.
That was, that was the intensivework in and of itself.
(31:08):
And that work now might be a bitmore available to us.
So, streamlining that kind ofapproach.
Chris Hudson (31:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I was gonna comeback to as well, we were talking
a bit about the consultantsmindset just before, and it felt
like we, we got somewhere in, inkind of understanding the
differences there.
But maybe we can go into alittle bit around how, the
skills that consultants havecould be applied, within an
organization or howintrapreneurs could benefit from
(31:36):
those skills in some way aswell.
So, so not just ai, but there,there's definitely a, it's a
service orientated mindsetultimately.
I mean, it is advisory initself.
Yeah.
But, there's a sense ofpartnership, there's a sense of
collaboration.
There's direction and leadershipand, some of these skills or
traits that could be essentialto entrepreneurs.
(31:57):
What do you think consultantscould teach intrapreneurs in
that sense?
Steph Foxworthy (32:00):
Yeah, I think there are three things that are
really valued in organizationsfrom consultants.
The first is consultants comewithout a legacy bias.
The challenges, the roadblocks,the cultural, norms within an
organization, consultants areable to sidestep those.
(32:24):
So are able to kind of come inand observe those with a bit of
a neutral gaze.
They're able to bring,experience of how other
organizations do it.
And that's highly valued andthat's one of the reasons why
consultants are often brought inbecause organizations, dunno
what they don't know and theyreally want that outsider's
perspective.
(32:44):
That's harder to achieve as.
An employee or an entrepreneur.
But you can research that andbring in, the voice of outside
and try and find, examples ofhow others do it to inform that.
The other thing that the secondthing that the consultants bring
that's also highly valued, Ithink is is the pattern
(33:07):
recognition.
So, one of the reasons whypeople bring in consultants is
that, that they have experienceof seeing how problems have been
solved in multipleorganizations.
And so they're kind of joiningthe dots.
And that pattern matching is iswhat people are after.
They're looking for someone whocan come in and say, I've seen
(33:28):
this problem before.
I have some approaches.
That might help you solve this.
Sometimes that comes withshortcuts.
Sometimes that comes with,coaching of how to go work
through the problem.
Yeah.
And organizations really valuethat.
I think often people withinorganizations, find it
challenging to talk about, whatthey've done elsewhere.
(33:52):
And it comes with that insiderbias.
People have lived experience inall sorts of ways.
Building a culture where thatdiversity is celebrated and,
people are able to contributebased on that sort of, lived
experience, adds enormous valueto internal teams.
So, that kind of culture needsto be nurtured and supported and
(34:12):
that's hugely important.
And yeah, I think the third.
Aspect, in my experience that,consultants are really good at.
And, one of the reasons whypeople step into a consulting
career is, because they're ableto do this is the storytelling,
and influence side of things.
(34:32):
painting the vision of apositive future, and influencing
people in leadership and, withcontrol, that this is the right
step to take.
That can be very difficult toachieve as an insider.
people you're working with everyday, you kind of get to know,
what they like and what theythink and what they do.
(34:53):
And it's very difficult to kindof effect change with people
that you work with every day interms of, painting a positive
future and giving someone avision.
Yeah, so sometimes having anoutsider come in to kind of do
that is a bit of a shortcut.
But the other thing to reflecton is that a consultant is
(35:15):
really there to make, to maketheir clients look good.
And so a good consultant isalways working very closely with
somebody with influence withinthe organization.
And sometimes it's useful tohave an outsider's voice, that
people can kind of listen to,that you've paid a lot of money
for.
(35:35):
And so sometimes, the checkbook,suggests that this person's
voice is worth listening to.
Yeah.
But ultimately somebody withinthe organization needs to buy
into the vision.
And they need to kind of own thevision and they need to deliver
that vision.
So, it is a partnership and Ifeel like sometimes
organizations need that externalvoice, for a bit of extra
(35:56):
credibility, but ultimately, thepeople within the organization
are the ones who are signing upfor that storytelling.
Yeah.
So I think intrapreneurs canreally learn from, outsiders in
agencies, outsiders inconsultancies about how they
present their ideas and howcompelling they make that kind
of vision for the future.
(36:17):
How well supported it is withevidence or precedent or
examples, case studies andfundamentally how,
evidence-based it is in the end,like, what sort of data are you
using to showcase why this is abetter decision than others.
In my experience, consultantsare very good at that.
They come with a book ofbenchmarks and, examples that
(36:40):
they can draw on.
Often that's through work thatthey've done themselves, but
sometimes it's, by doing marketscans and research.
Sometimes internal teams can bea bit less, evidence-based or a
bit less thorough in some ofthat, storytelling.
So I feel like there's a lotthat internal teams can learn
from, just seeing how, externalswho are brought in to solve a
(37:01):
particular problem, how they goabout telling that story.
Chris Hudson (37:05):
And it's funny, isn't it, because the people
that are, that align well withinthe organizations to the
consultants, are often theintrapreneurs and they're
looking to trailblaze in somesort of way too.
So they're there.
To observe in the situation, tounderstand the process and
advocate for it within theirorganization.
And they'd probably pick up allof those traits through the
process, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy (37:25):
Completely agree.
Chris Hudson (37:26):
Yeah.
There's another part which isalso maybe slightly more
relational, having made, and Ithink you did this as well, the
transition from agency toconsulting.
It feels like in an agencyworld, and this applies within
organizations as well, but in anagency world, there's definitely
more of that.
I guess more directivemanagement, where clients might
(37:48):
say, okay, this is what I wantand can you go make it, that
would happen within anorganization too.
But in a consulting world, itfeels like the footing's a
little bit more equal becauseyou're partnering and, you're
not necessarily there just toprovide a service, but you're
there to be part of the businessin some sort of way.
So there's a distinction therein how you would handle yourself
as an intrapreneur.
In one case you would be Yeah,I'll do that research and I'll
(38:10):
write a report and I'll give itback to you and I'll provide you
with a deliverable, in aconsulting.
Mindset.
It might be more aboutquestioning it, checking whether
it's Right, benchmarking it asyou were saying, bringing in
your own knowledge base.
And I feel like there's a nuancethere, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy (38:25):
Yeah, I do.
I do.
I think my experience of agencylife, was very often that, we
would dealing with, middlemanagement as opposed to senior
leadership or board leadership.
And that there was a particularproblem that was well understood
that needed to be solved, thatwas more capability or capacity
led.
(38:46):
I had a client years ago say tome I'd do this myself if I had,
the time and the team.
Yeah, but I don't, so I need youto do it.
And his point was, I know whatthe problem is.
I know how I wanna solve this.
I'm getting you to do itbecause, I can't.
I don't have the time or thebandwidth or the team to do this
myself.
(39:07):
And so his, his kind of coachingwas, I'm gonna tell you what I
want.
I'm gonna tell you what I needand I expect you to execute it
and I want you to do itefficiently.
And it's a bit of a grudgepurchase.
If I didn't have to spend thismoney, I wouldn't.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And that was, that was a prettyinstructive relationship kind of
conversation.
It's like, okay, I'm gonna takeinstructions from this guy.
(39:28):
I'm gonna add advice where Ican, where I think I add value.
But fundamentally, he's notlooking for us to question, his
decisions.
He's looking for us to executeon a program.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
That, that expectation was quiteclear and, we did it and it went
very well.
And, we worked together for manyyears but that relationship was
(39:48):
a bit more transactional.
Whereas there are other clients.
Who I've sat down with.
And they were, brutally honestand said they had no idea how
they were going to tackle thisproblem, and we were gonna have
to work through it together.
Yeah.
And it was gonna need to be muchmore creative and it was gonna
need to be much morecollaborative and, we were gonna
explore multiple potential,futures that this could be.
(40:12):
And those, for me personally,those kind of conversations are
much more energizing.
Yeah.
I'm an ideas person and I'm astrategic person and I like to
kind of have multiple options infront of me.
And I like to think I can kindof follow the bouncing ball
through those through those kindof problem spaces and add value
that way.
But yeah, I think you're rightthat there is a kind of an
(40:33):
influencing And conceptualdifference between, what you're
being asked for as a executionpartner and what you're being
asked for as a strategic or aconsulting partner.
Chris Hudson (40:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And do you think an intrapreneurcould identify, in a sense which
role to play in which situationif they were working within an
organization?
Steph Foxworthy (40:55):
Yeah, I think the questions are are pretty
similar.
If you are being given adirective by senior leadership,
and the problem space seems tobe, well-defined and the
hypothesis of what the futureholds and where the value is
very clear, then you areprobably falling into execution
mode.
But if you can observe that theway that the problem has been
(41:18):
framed, seems a bit naive or itseems like, it's kind of rushing
at the solution.
That not every opportunity hasbeen explored.
Then you could probably put onyour consulting mindset and say,
well, hang on a minute, have weconsidered alternatives?
Do we have other options aheadof us?
I think that is very, like yousay, it's very relational.
It's how you relate withleadership.
(41:39):
And, with your management to beable to kind of achieve that.
Is it time boxed?
Is it time pressured?
Is there a result that isrequired in short order?
Often they're the sorts ofthings that drive that kind of
directive behavior.
Whereas, the more experimental,more exploratory mindset,
sometimes needs a bit morepatience, a bit more, vision
(42:01):
around it.
And so, the strategy there canbe a bit more emergent rather
than directive.
Chris Hudson (42:08):
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
I think sometimes if you're,asking a very open question in a
more pointed context wherepeople just wanna move through
the meeting, get the answer,you've almost gotta give a bit
of rationale, a bit of contextas to why you're stopping the
train in its tracks at thatpoint, because otherwise people
are just like, what is thisperson talking about?
And that's a completedistraction from what we're here
(42:28):
to do.
So, yeah, you gotta know youraudience a little bit.
Yeah.
What what I mean, we're comingto the close now, but, maybe I
could ask you this questionabout hard lessons learned and,
from a relational point of viewis there anything in that area
that you wanna share, either asa story or as a learning around,
what not to do in a relationalsense within an organization?
Steph Foxworthy (42:50):
Yeah, I think I think one thing that I've
observed a lot and coming from adesign background where where
the process is highly valued.
We need to start with researchand we need to, speak to
customers and we need tosynthesize and we need to,
create opportunities and we needto do our, double diamond and we
need to, explore all of these,opportunities.
(43:12):
And if any of those steps areshortcut or, undervalued
designers can feel veryfrustrated about being forced to
deliver something without havinggone through all the steps.
Yeah.
I feel like, whilst thatprocess, does deliver value from
end to end, being able to beadaptable.
Around that and, recognize thatsometimes there is levels of
(43:37):
knowledge or levels ofexpertise, within your
organization or within otherpeople, or within teams that you
may not understand.
Yeah, I feel like that is a bitof a pitfall for, creative
people and, intrapreneurs insideorganizations.
You have a particular way youwanna approach a problem and,
you may have found value indoing that, many times before.
(43:59):
But when you start to try and,execute that within an
organization, sometimes it maynot be appropriate and you might
need to, pivot and change and bea bit more comfortable in,
ambiguity and uncertainty.
Sometimes the experience thatother people have that you may
not have had yourself.
Can shortcut you to a goodanswer.
(44:22):
I've seen a lot of people kindof stick rigidly to a process,
that I can see as an outsider orI can see through the work that
I've been doing is frustratingstakeholders and, not building a
great relationship.
So I feel like, that kind of,reading the room, knowing when
you need to be able to defendyour process and when you need
(44:42):
to be able to move on, thatcomes through, learned
experience and delivery scars.
I think.
So, it is not easy to understandwhen that's going off the rails,
if you don't have the experienceof having seen it happen again
and again.
Yeah.
But yeah, I do feel like there'sa lot of ability to enforce a
process when adaptability issometimes a bit more valuable.
And that can be something tothink about.
(45:04):
If you're trying to work throughand you're starting to see, you
getting pushed back or somepeople are not really valuing
the way you are tackling aproblem, you might need to think
a bit more creatively about howyou approach the problem.
Chris Hudson (45:16):
Definitely.
I think you gotta know, when togo all out and, put a bit of
drama and a bit of theateraround it you wouldn't labor it,
but, you can over labor some ofthe points that you're trying to
make as a consultant when peopledon't really want to hear it.
You just want to be venting andthat's something that you learn
over time, obviously
Steph Foxworthy (45:31):
not to do that.
Yeah, I think that's a goodpoint actually, That as a
consultant, you are very often atherapist that, You will hear
the negativity and thefrustration and, when people are
kind of telling you about thebarriers they face, it is a bit
of a, therapeutic relationship.
And what they're really askingyou to do is to play that back
to leadership and to decisionmakers, to showcase that people,
(45:56):
want to do a better job and theywant to deliver a better
outcome, but they're kind ofheld back by their own
organizations.
As a consultant, I feel like youoften get those sorts of
conversations where you are ableto diagnose, process problems or
relationship problems or, someissue that the organization
wants changed and fixed.
(46:17):
That's much harder to surfacewhen you are, an insider.
But the same toolkit applies.
So if you can kind of get thevoice of the end user, captured
in a way, play that back, showthat it adds time and cost and
delay, then that's equallyvaluable from insiders as it is
from consultants.
I sometimes think that, Peopleare more open with consultants
(46:38):
sometimes, because, they've gotless to lose.
Chris Hudson (46:42):
And I've seen this happen within, within meetings,
within workshops, people aretrying to shine a light on the
situation, within theorganization.
But it's almost misinterpretedsometimes.
It feels like, some peoplewithin the room think there's
some agenda at play and they'rejust saying it to protect their
own team or their own interests,or that sort of thing comes in a
little bit.
So the consultant is there tokinda give the neutral,
(47:03):
impartial view.
But, it's a hard one I think forintrapreneurs to navigate in
that sense because
Steph Foxworthy (47:08):
The politics, is much harder to navigate as an
insider sometimes.
You can be a neutral kind ofthird party as an external
consultant.
You can enforce that kind ofanonymity around feedback and,
frame it as a problem to besolved as opposed to a
relationship.
That needs to be fixed.
Those sorts of things are a bitof an advantage sometimes as an
(47:28):
outsider.
Chris Hudson (47:29):
All right.
Well, thanks so much Steph.
Really enjoyed the chat today.
We've had a lot of good chatsaround, exploring the role of
consultants, the consultantsmindset, what we can learn from
consultants and, how consultantsdo what they do in some
respects.
So we could spend a lot moretime talking about that as we're
both consultants.
But, one take out me is that, Ithink consultants make good
conversation around thesethings.
(47:49):
We ask each other questions andwe have a curious mindset.
So yeah, really enjoy theconversation.
I appreciate you coming onto theshow as well.
Thanks so much.
Steph Foxworthy (47:57):
Yeah, thanks very much, Chris.
It's great.
Okay.
Hey everyone.
Buckle up curiously mindedintrapreneurs.
Welcome back to the Company RoadPodcast.
And yeah, today intrapreneurswe're gonna be unlocking the
secret source behind one of themost powerful forces for change,
I think within organizations,which is the consultant's
mindset.
So often businesses spendinghuge amounts of money on
bringing consultants in orlesser amounts maybe these days.
(00:28):
But yeah, it'd be interesting tounpack it today.
Incredibly excited to introduceSteph Foxworthy, who is a true
powerhouse with over 25 years ofexperience spanning, customer
experience digital strategy,product innovation, sales,
marketing, and the wholeshebang.
So Steph was managing directorat Accenture Song here in
Melbourne till just recently.
And yeah, from massiveenterprise overhauls for giants
(00:50):
like Coles and Telstra todelivering high impact, digital
experiences for non-profits.
Steph has driven results for anumber of organizations here.
So it's gonna be superinteresting to get his
perspective on this topic.
And yeah, if you ever wonderedwhat makes consultants so
successful at bringing aboutchange within incredibly complex
and difficult organizations,then this is the episode for
(01:12):
you.
So, yeah, we're gonna talk a bitabout the consultants' mindset
for us.
We'll talk about how it kind ofdiffers from a traditional
employee's perspective a littlebit, and some of the key skills
and traits that intrapreneurscan immediately benefit from.
And we'll get into some specificlessons for intrapreneurs on how
to apply consulting techniquesto drive innovation and impact
within your own company, really.
(01:32):
So let's jump in.
So Steph very warm welcome tothe show on a cold Melbourne day
that's getting a little bitwarmer, but thanks so much for
joining us today.
Steph Foxworthy (01:41):
Thanks for having me, Chris.
Chris Hudson (01:43):
Alright.
And yeah Steph maybe just talkus through a bit about your
background and your experiencein management consulting and
things you've been doing.
If you wanna start us there.
Steph Foxworthy (01:49):
Yeah, sure.
So when I was younger I thoughtI wanted to be an architect.
So I was studying design andstudied interior design at
university.
And my first kind of.
Jobs out of university were indigital and graphic design.
So that was the early days ofdesktop publishing and
multimedia as it was called backthen.
So I started getting into howtechnology was impacting design
(02:13):
practice.
And that kind of evolved intothe internet as that started to
become a thing.
So I was around the birth of theinternet so I could see the kind
of impact the technology wasgonna have on the way business
was done.
So I started a digital agencywith a friend of mine a long
time ago.
And, left that to go travelingwith my girlfriend who's now my
(02:35):
wife ended up in London andworked in e-commerce over there
helping three mobile set uptheir e-commerce business.
I was there for five or sixyears.
And then came back here andworked in digital agencies.
And over that time, the kind ofpower of technology and the
internet was overwhelming.
Everything was suddenly becomingdigitized.
My work was evolving from,design and making things to
(03:00):
more, strategic, conversationsaround what the future holds,
what the impact would be, howbusinesses could kind of
organize themselves to takeadvantage of that.
And so, my work became more as astrategy director.
I was strategy director atReactive for a number of years.
Reactive was acquired byAccenture about nine years ago,
10 years ago now.
(03:20):
And I moved into the kind ofmanagement consulting world
which was a bit of a cultureshock, going from a small
independent, digital agencywhere we could kind of make
decisions on a dime and do thesorts of work at a relatively
small scale.
I mean, we were a pretty largeorganization when we were
acquired, but, still the kind ofwork was mid-tier kind of market
(03:41):
focused, to moving into, aglobal behemoth like, Accenture,
700,000 people around the world.
That was a pretty big, cultureshock.
But at the same time, the levelof the level of access and
influence in terms of businessdecision makers and the scale of
the work that was beingdelivered there was hugely
exciting.
(04:01):
So for my role a strategist anda consultant with a design
mindset that was prettyexciting.
So I stuck around at Accenturefor quite some time.
And then just recently I've kindof made the shift out of
management consulting and intorunning a services practice
within a social enterprise.
So at our community and workingwith, not-for-profits and grant
(04:22):
making and, fundingorganizations.
So that's been a reallyinteresting shift as well.
So leading the kind of servicesteam at our community, which is
yeah, exciting change and a bitof a, change of pace.
Yeah, very good.
And probably much needed afterall of that.
Yeah, I should say.
Yeah, that's right.
The consulting lifestyle ispretty fast paced.
That's right.
Chris Hudson (04:40):
Yeah.
Maybe it has a shelf life.
I don't know.
Some people go on and on, butit's a hard one.
There's a lot of lifers in thosebusinesses.
Steph Foxworthy (04:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Chris Hudson (04:47):
That's it.
I dunno how they do it.
Yeah, I mean, that transition asyou made, from reactive and into
Accenture, it sounded like itwas a little bit of a shift in
gear.
How would you describe some ofyour observations of how that
worked operationally, was therea different mindset?
Were you thinking that okaythere's a different way of
working here?
What were your thoughts?
Steph Foxworthy (05:06):
Yeah, I think there are some pretty stark
differences between the kind ofemployee mindset, the agency
mindset and then the consultingmindset.
So, yeah.
Okay.
And I feel like there's levelsof kind of pattern recognition
that go with each of thosethings.
So, as an employee or with youraudience focus around
(05:26):
intrapreneurship.
There's levels of control thatyou have around the final
outcome of a program, a project,or the work that you're doing.
You are involved in the shapingof it, the delivery of it from
end to end.
You're kind of accountable forthe outcomes.
You're accountable for the teamswho are delivering that work.
(05:46):
So that aspect of control,responsibility and
accountability is very high forthe people within the
organizations.
Chris Hudson (05:53):
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (05:54):
In an agency life mindset, you're more
focused on project delivery.
You're kind of time boxed in anengagement typically.
So usually there's capabilitythat the organization doesn't
have or.
There's types of output thatthey're not able to produce
themselves perhaps.
Yeah.
So you tend to get brought in towork on a project, it has a
(06:15):
defined lifespan, there'sexpected deliverables at the
end.
Yeah.
And you kind of do your workhanded over hopefully have a
celebration at the end and moveon.
The consultant mindset I thinkis slightly different.
The consultant mindset is builtmuch more on trust around
expertise in a particular domainand good consulting
(06:37):
organizations are kind ofbrought in again and again to
help people work through biggerproblems.
And very often it's about havinga vision for the future around,
where the market's going, wherethe world's going, where
customers are going.
Having a point of view aroundwhat that future looks like and
how it's gonna impact theorganization.
(06:57):
So my experience is that thosekind of relationships tend to be
less time boxed.
They tend to be more kind ofcontinuous and that people will
come back to you and seek yourinput into where that is going
in a more strategic way or inmore of an influencing way.
You have less of a specificfocus on delivery and outcome
(07:18):
in, in a project sense and moreof a guiding role in helping
people kind of navigate changein technology or in strategy or
in business structure.
And so the, yeah, the level oftrust and relationship you need
to build with clients becomes alittle bit more elevated.
I mean, of course, trust andinfluence is.
(07:39):
Consistent across all of thosedifferent mindsets, whether you
are internal, whether you aredoing things on a project basis,
or whether you are providingadvisory services.
Yeah.
But in the consulting side ofthings that, that level of trust
and influence is really superimportant.
Chris Hudson (07:55):
Yeah.
I mean, I was gonna ask thegolden question is how do
consultants get work?
If it's, obviously built intrust but if it's not built
around an outcome all the time,then how does that work do you
think?
Steph Foxworthy (08:04):
I think the level of expertise that needs to
be developed by consultants isis pretty high.
You need to have a track recordof delivery in certain contexts.
You need to have proven thatyou've had a positive influence
on other businesses and theability to kind of draw on that.
Word of mouth is critical inthis.
(08:25):
People move between jobs,between industries and between
companies.
And good consultants get carriedalong.
People work with somebody, theygrow to trust them, and they
call them up in their next roleand they have a similar problem.
I do feel like that that levelof expertise becomes something
that people will draw on againand again.
So, yeah.
When you've demonstrated thatyou understand a problem or a
(08:47):
problem space, that you have aclear vision for where things
are going, and you're able toarticulate that and, share that
with people and help themreorient themselves towards,
where growth might be or where,opportunity might lie.
That becomes something that kindof carries along with you.
(09:07):
Yeah, but it's very muchrelationship based.
Yeah, so it's pretty hard toconvince somebody that you know
what you're talking about ifthey've never seen or heard of
you before from a consultingperspective, you really need to
demonstrate your credentials, Ithink.
Chris Hudson (09:20):
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, you were talking a bitabout the internet and then
obviously we jump forward andwe've got AI options pouring out
of every meeting, everyinteraction.
And is definitely a culture nowof people assuming or quickly
getting to the point where theyfeel like they're an expert in
most things, right?
So they can find solutions forthings very quickly.
So how do you think that ischanging and, does that redefine
(09:42):
the role for a consultant,
Steph Foxworthy (09:43):
I think it really does.
I've spent the last year reallyimmersing myself in in ai and
particularly in generative ai.
Yeah.
Because I have exactly the samefeeling I had at the beginning
of my career.
So when I first started lookinginto the internet and started
thinking about the implicationsthat a connected digital world
has on business and life.
(10:04):
This light bulb went off for me.
I was like, this is gonna changeeverything.
It's gonna change the way thatpeople do everything in their
lives.
Yeah.
And so myself and a good friendwho were working in the
multimedia agency, we launchedour own business to start
working in internet.
Yeah.
And that wave has just built andbuilt and it's carried me along
my whole career.
And we started paddling veryhard to kind of catch that wave,
(10:26):
but once the wave was, there itwas a really, not a difficult
thing to keep riding that wave.
Yeah.
Internet and digitaltransformation and technology in
general has been hugelyimpactful in business and been
great for my career and, changedimproved the lives of many
people all around the world.
I have exactly the same senseright now with ai, so I
(10:48):
fundamentally feel like.
The way that AI is emerging nowis gonna change our relationship
with technology.
the way that AI interprets kindof natural language into
instructions, the way that it,works to generate output like
code or imagery or music or,whatever the output format is.
The way that people are engagingwith technology changes
(11:11):
fundamentally and access toinformation changes
fundamentally.
So, what I was talking aboutearlier about expertise,
suddenly if information isavailable, delivered by these
technology solutions in reallydeep, valuable ways.
So, summarizing information,summarizing content that sort of
(11:32):
stuff in the background, then Ifeel like that kind of
interaction with technologybecomes much more valuable.
Chris Hudson (11:41):
Yeah.
I mean, you were talking a bitabout employees agencies and
consulting differences justbefore, and, to put it brutally
and maybe overly simply, but ifthere's like a tick across or a
question mark over some of thosethings in relation to AI and
what the future of anyone'sremit might end up being.
It feels like as an employee,there's always gonna be a role
(12:02):
for facilitating somethingthrough an organization.
That there would be, in theconsulting sense, that might be
a question mark because therewould be deliverables that could
be generated, more easily thanperhaps before.
And then consulting maybeanother question, mark, what's
your thinking?
What do you think is gonna bethe future?
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (12:19):
Yeah.
I feel like there's, there'sthat level of accountability for
delivering the outcome throughto completion is is kind of the
crux of the challenge that facesconsultants going forward.
And to be fair, it always hasbeen.
The cost of bringing in externalpeople to lead programs, has
always been a challenge fororganizations.
(12:42):
Yeah.
And if you are not able todeliver the final outcome, if
your role is to, define theproblem space, design a
solution, influence theorganization to be able to
achieve that outcome on theirown behalf, it's always been the
critique of strategy practicesthat, you come in and, there's
the old saying, you borrowsomeone's watch to tell them the
(13:04):
time.
That's the way people have oftenkind of characterized
consultants.
But you know, if you don't knowhow to read a watch, then you do
need somebody to tell you whatthe time is.
And so I think the way that weare looking at, internal
strategy practices, being ableto gain access to, the sum total
of human knowledge in, thesekind of AI driven environments.
(13:24):
It does change the role of howconsultants approach, some of
this work.
And I feel like that bringingthe outcome forward, helping the
organization change so that theycan start to bring, results into
the world, yeah, that is whereconsulting is gonna need to go.
They're gonna, it's gonna needto be more enabling than kind of
(13:44):
directive.
Yeah, I feel like that is a bitof a change.
Chris Hudson (13:47):
Yeah.
So delivery and implementationfocus, but more around
enablement and empowerment and,up upskilling and that kind of
area.
Steph Foxworthy (13:54):
I feel like the democratization of technology
and tools, with the kind of riseof, new software platforms, this
whole kind of AI generated worldwhere software becomes a bit
more accessible, where lessspecific kind of code expertise
might be required, more kind ofdescribing the problem, to an AI
powered solution.
(14:15):
Yeah, that becomes, moreimportant.
Consultants have always beenreally good at asking the right
questions.
You often hear people kind ofcritiquing consultants that they
come into an organization andthey ask a bunch of dumb
questions.
But because you're an external,because you're an outsider.
You can get away with asking abunch of dumb questions until
(14:36):
you get to the question thatthey can't answer.
So, you can sit there saying, Ineed you to talk me through
these processes or thisapproach, and ask question after
question, and people will lookat you like you're an idiot.
Like, why are you asking methese basic questions?
We've been doing this fordecades, we are obviously, top
of our game as a business,you've come in as an outsider
and you're asking me reallybasic, simple questions.
(14:58):
And they'll answer them, andthey'll answer them, and they'll
look at you like you're anidiot.
And then you get a few days intoa engagement and you start
asking some questions, and thenthey start going, Ooh, haven't
thought about that.
Didn't consider that, or, Idon't know the answer to that.
And then that's where the goldlies.
And I feel like, as an externalparty, you have permission to do
that.
In fact, that's your job.
(15:20):
As an internal, if you startasking dumb questions or
questioning the, the status quoor, there's a lot of
vulnerability to kind of admityou don't know something within
an organization.
Yeah.
Particularly at senior levels.
And that's something that I feellike consultants are very good
at.
But, there's approaches withtechnology now that are gonna
allow people to start askingthose questions or, delving a
(15:42):
bit under the cover of their ownorganizations so that does make
consultants a bit more at risk,I suppose.
Chris Hudson (15:47):
Yeah.
the AI tools are getting quitegood at asking questions back,
right, too.
So you can often find that ithelps steer you to, like a
consultant would, it's helpingsteer you to the answer in the
way that
Steph Foxworthy (15:58):
you might have thought it would appear.
Yeah, exactly.
The prompting side of things Ithink is super important in this
new AI world, and that is allabout asking the right
questions.
So yeah, the people who canformulate the right question,
who can kind of see the pattern,see the system, and know what
questions to ask they're thepeople who are gonna shine in
this new world.
(16:18):
If, if you are committed ormarried to a process yeah,
that's gonna be much harder.
Chris Hudson (16:24):
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely.
And yeah, I mean, questionasking, I mean, how does that
get taught or learned, do youthink?
Where do people find that, thatskill?
Is it taught, is it learned?
How do you best find out abouthow to do that better?
Steph Foxworthy (16:40):
Yeah.
I think consulting is a teamgame.
And so people will learn fromobserving other people, leading
practices like this.
And the questions that peopleare asking and the, the levels
of vulnerability they show interms of asking basic questions
(17:00):
and working their way through aproblem I think that's always
instructive.
I think one of the things thatwill be a challenge going
forward is, the size ofconsulting practices, are
shrinking around the world.
So lots of organizations are,promising that they're going to
use more technology, they'regonna use more ai.
There is downward pressure onthe size and shape of consulting
(17:22):
practices.
I was talking to, a client theother day who runs a finance
business, and they were sayingthat they can see that, their
pathway, their pipeline forgetting people through.
Their business is gonna changeenormously.
People who would previously comein and do process type work.
So, bookkeeping and tax filingand, those kinds of roles where
(17:46):
people learn their craft beforethey can become advisors.
And, before they can start to,be creative in the way that they
solve, client problems, theyreally need to know the basics.
Most of those kind of processdriven roles are gonna be
automated and this client's viewwas that in the next five or so
years, those sorts of roles willbe completely automated by,
(18:10):
software systems.
And so he was asking where is hegonna find his advisory talent?
Like, where is he going to needto look to bring people through
his business so that they areexpert and able to provide.
Creative and complex solutions.
Yeah.
If the basics work is allautomated away.
(18:31):
And he was kind of talking abouta bit of a apprenticeship type
model.
Maybe we get back to this waywhere people are kind of
anointed to join these sorts ofpractices and brought in.
But yeah, work your way up,learn your craft to get to a
point where you have enoughexperience.
Perhaps those kind of pathwaysare gonna be a bit broken by AI
and technology in the future.
Chris Hudson (18:52):
Yeah.
I mean, that's a veryinteresting point.
Puts a big question mark initself around, the hierarchy,
the, the longevity of careers,the engagement around it and the
education system that's feedingthe working world, right?
Steph Foxworthy (19:05):
Yeah, that's right.
Chris Hudson (19:06):
Te teaching people how to think, how to inquire,
how to have a curious mind ifyou're not doing that through
work, then how is it beinglearned or is it not being
learned?
That, that presents a bigquestion.
Steph Foxworthy (19:17):
Yeah, I think that is a really huge question
around educational pathways.
I feel like, my own kind ofcareer grew from a design
background, and I think, designeducation is great at teaching
that sort of inquiry.
Beginning with research,beginning with insight and
observation assessing data,looking for kind of patterns in
(19:41):
amongst all of that stuff, butapproaching it with a creative
mindset.
That's kind of the heart ofdesign inquiry and I feel like
that's critical to all of the.
Sense making that needs tohappen in the world around
advisory services and consultingas well.
Yeah.
I think consulting has had a bigrole to play in terms of kind of
(20:03):
cookie cutter expertise as well.
People have seen one problemsomewhere and, applied the same
solution in other areas.
And so part of what consultingoffers is that kind of lookalike
opportunity within an industry.
Yeah.
And that can be great for thingslike effectiveness and
efficiency for cost reductionand, benchmarking.
(20:25):
But it's not necessarily a greatapproach for things like
differentiation and growth.
So if you're really trying tokind of be an organization
that's more customer centric,that's, trying to differentiate
in a market, then you need moreof that creative kind of design
led thinking as opposed to,benchmarking and evidence.
(20:46):
So design is a kind of designingfuture value.
Yeah, and sometimes that futurevalue is hard to quantify.
Sometimes it needs to behypothesis based and, driven
through experimentation.
And there's many organizationswhere the culture doesn't really
support that.
And so if you are really lookingto kind of define growth and new
(21:09):
opportunities and taking adesign led and a hypothesis led
approach to that you need tohave a culture that's much more
experimental to allow you tokind of pursue that avenue.
Chris Hudson (21:21):
Yeah.
And the learning pathways wouldneed to gear you up for that.
I feel like coming over here,the learning pathway seemed
quite vocationally orientated ina lot of cases.
Yeah.
In Europe, particularly in theUK anyway, you may have gathered
this from while you're overthere, but people will come into
a role, with an arts degree.
And I did an arts degree, butover here, that would be kind of
question in itself.
(21:42):
I'd be scoffed a little bit.
Why are you doing something thatisn't business, as a degree if
you're not, that kind of thing.
But actually the teaching of thethinking process was what was
really valuable from that,critical thinking, lateral
thinking.
it could be anything.
It could be design, as you weresaying.
It could be maths, could bescience.
You are learning how to questionthrough that process as well.
So I feel like maybe some ofthose learning pathways will
(22:04):
become more important over here.
What do you think?
Steph Foxworthy (22:07):
Yeah, I think I agree a hundred percent.
A traditional education in thearts or in design or in other,
more creative areas does helppeople have a broader, base for,
future inquiry perhaps.
And then some of the vocationalpathways.
I feel like that's potentiallygonna be more valuable in the
future.
The idea of kind of learningyour craft in some of these more
(22:31):
kind of high value careersthat's gonna be a bit kind of
carved out by technology.
So, the guy I was speaking towho runs a finance business, he
can see that traditional kind ofaccounting pathways is just
gonna disappear for futuregenerations.
Similarly in, high value roleslike legal profession.
The paralegal or the young kindof lawyer pathway where you are
(22:54):
working your way through a legalfirm that a lot of that work is
going to be automated away.
So yeah where people start tolook for that education.
I think it does come down tobetter ways of approaching
critical thinking.
Looking at alternative ways offraming a problem looking for
critique.
So, collaboration and diversityof thought.
(23:17):
Those sorts of things becomemore valuable into the future.
Chris Hudson (23:21):
Yeah.
And maybe some of the socialsciences and, research and, some
of the data driven work,actually understanding it, how
to analyze how to.
How to report, that kind ofthing.
Yeah.
Because you've gotta be able tointerpret it and without a
critical eye on a lot of theinformation that you see on, in
your web browser, on your phoneevery day you're thinking, okay,
well if this is the truth, is itthe truth?
(23:42):
Yeah.
Should I be questioning thisfurther?
Is it gonna be right?
Is it gonna be good enough?
It's sort of in the eye of thebeholder a little bit as to
whether your AI response is anygood or not,
Steph Foxworthy (23:50):
so,
Chris Hudson (23:50):
yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (23:51):
I think the other thing that's kind of
opening up for us in a moretechnology driven, AI enabled,
world, is that the level ofconfidence that you have around
decisions, potentially doesn'tneed to be as high within
organizations.
Traditionally the cost ofexecution of a business change.
Has been such a barrier to,making changes to either a
(24:13):
product set or a businessprocess that the level of
confidence that leadershipneeds, in order to execute that
needs to be extraordinarilyhigh.
So there's a lot of work thatwas done, historically around
strategy planning, around,research and business modeling.
Data driven analysis and,benchmarking across industry.
(24:34):
A lot of, more backwardslooking, analysis of data, to
build that confidence that itwould allow organizations to
invest in change.
What I foresee happening is thatthe cost of change, particularly
around, technology, starts tocome down in more of an AI
driven world.
(24:54):
And so the ability to.
Experiment with, differentproduct models, with different
service models becomes muchhigher.
And the kind of granular natureof, how you go to market with a
product or a service becomesmore of a, a kit of parts and a
bit of a puzzle where you kindof, stitch things together in
(25:15):
the moment and, per client needrather than, manufacturing one
massive product and putting itto market and saying, take it or
leave it.
Yeah.
Some of the conversations I'vebeen having with some of my
clients recently, kind ofinstructive about this one
example was some guy in thestates put together a voice bot
that he deployed on his energycompany and he, sent it out into
(25:35):
the world and got it to try andrenegotiate his energy bill.
And it was a voice agent, so itcalled up on the telephone.
It spoke to, a service agent.
It tried to renegotiate hisbill.
They got very confused aboutwhat was going on, asked whether
it was a, digital assistant.
Yeah.
And it disclosed that it was adigital assistant and they said,
well, I can't negotiate with youthen, and hung up.
(25:58):
But it called back hundreds oftimes before, oh my, before
somebody, some administratorsomewhere was, it was escalated
to and, made some change that,he was happy with.
Yeah.
And that kind of nature of howproblems are gonna be solved in
the future.
If you have a little agent thatis able to go off and negotiate
with a business, at a verygranular level and is completely
(26:20):
tireless.
It fundamentally changes the waythat businesses need to deliver
their services.
You need to atomize your productinto the smallest bit you can
negotiate on, and you need to beprepared for these tireless
agents that are going to comeand, whittle away your margins
wherever they are.
And very few businesses areprepared for that kind of future
(26:41):
where, they have digital agentsnegotiating with them, one way
or another on every aspect oftheir product or service.
So that kind of experimentalapproach to the market and your
products and your services Ithink that's gonna become a much
bigger thing.
Yeah, so it fundamentallychanges the way businesses
organize themselves to deliver.
Chris Hudson (27:05):
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, it's frightening, isn'tit?
I think the, the art of salesand, the kind of the soft sell,
the hard sell, the nuance, thehuman relation, the relational
side to business is kind ofbeing whittled down.
It feels like a little bitthere.
You're just gonna get hounded bysome robot.
Maybe the catchphrase will, itwon't be so much, I, we won't
negotiate with terrorists, butwe won't negotiate with robots.
(27:27):
Yeah.
Sounds like there's something inthat I think.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, I mean, there are somepeople that are standing up to
that and they're saying, okay,there's ai.
But, to Andrew Griffiths who'san author here, and he's based
in Tasmania, and yeah, he'stalking about human intelligence
a lot in some of his socialcontent.
And, there, there's definitely akind of a bit of a rebellion
(27:49):
against AI in some cases, but,from an intrapreneur's point of
view and the skills and traitsthat we've been talking about,
would you be saying, lean in orlean out or do a bit of both?
Or what would your advice bethere?
Steph Foxworthy (28:01):
Yeah, I'm a lean in guy.
Yeah, I feel like, as I said therelationship with technology is
fundamentally changing.
Yeah.
And this kind of natural.
If you think about AI as a newkeyboard or a new mouse, it's
just a new way to getinformation into a computer and
get the computer to respond toyour needs.
Yeah.
(28:21):
I feel like that's where thingsare going.
And the tools available to us inthe future will be even better
at, allowing us to get outputsthat meet our needs.
And just the way you ask forthat output is going to be the
skill that people, aredeveloping.
So, yeah, that ability to kindof, be able to engage with
(28:44):
technology in a way that givesyou what you want, I think
that's the skill that peoplewill be learning, in the future.
Over the last couple of yearswe've talked about it as prompt
engineering, as if it's acareer.
I don't think it is a career.
I think it's a way of engagingwith technology more broadly.
I think that's the sort of thingthat people will be being
taught, more, your point about,critical thinking and, lateral
(29:09):
thinking, I think that's gonnabecome more important.
Because understanding theproblem space, asking the right
questions and framing them inways that, try to avoid bias
and, preconceived ideas.
I feel like that's where,consulting practices are gonna
go in general, but also, if youare an entrepreneur or you are
(29:31):
somebody trying to have acreative approach to solving
problems, within anorganization, those skills are
gonna be critical.
Chris Hudson (29:39):
Yeah.
But you need to know how toapply it and what to ask about.
It's kind of like.
if there's a Michelin star chefin your house and they were
gonna cook dinner tonight, butyou had no idea what kind of
food they could make, and youhad no ideas for what they could
cook, then you'd have to work itout in some way and prompt, the
right outcome for it to be likethe most amazing meal you ever
had.
You're having to design ityourself effectively.
(30:00):
So people need to learn that.
Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy (30:03):
One thing that's, emerging at the moment
that I've seen people doingquite a lot, particularly on the
AI front, is asking the AI whatquestions they should ask.
And so when you think aboutthese kind of consulting
practices and, learning fromobserving other people, the same
applies to learning fromtechnology.
So, if you're asking what shouldI ask or what should I know
before I step into this problemspace?
(30:25):
The speed to learning.
In this new world is going to beincredibly rapid.
So, your ability to, find outwhat background reading you
should do, or summarize the kindof research that might be
important.
Learn who are the kind ofprecedents and experts in the
space.
That sort of stuff now is at ourfingertips.
Yeah.
And and I think that makes a bigdifference to the way people
(30:47):
start to think about problemsolving as well.
In the past, the effort youwould have to put into, research
a particular problem spacewithin an industry or dig up
precedents or look for casestudies or find out who are the
who are the experts, whatresearch you should be drawing
on.
Yeah.
That was, that was the intensivework in and of itself.
(31:08):
And that work now might be a bitmore available to us.
So, streamlining that kind ofapproach.
Chris Hudson (31:13):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sure, of course.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I was gonna comeback to as well, we were talking
a bit about the consultantsmindset just before, and it felt
like we, we got somewhere in, inkind of understanding the
differences there.
But maybe we can go into alittle bit around how, the
skills that consultants havecould be applied, within an
organization or howintrapreneurs could benefit from
(31:36):
those skills in some way aswell.
So, so not just ai, but there,there's definitely a, it's a
service orientated mindsetultimately.
I mean, it is advisory initself.
Yeah.
But, there's a sense ofpartnership, there's a sense of
collaboration.
There's direction and leadershipand, some of these skills or
traits that could be essentialto entrepreneurs.
(31:57):
What do you think consultantscould teach intrapreneurs in
that sense?
Steph Foxworthy (32:00):
Yeah, I think there are three things that are
really valued in organizationsfrom consultants.
The first is consultants comewithout a legacy bias.
The challenges, the roadblocks,the cultural, norms within an
organization, consultants areable to sidestep those.
(32:24):
So are able to kind of come inand observe those with a bit of
a neutral gaze.
They're able to bring,experience of how other
organizations do it.
And that's highly valued andthat's one of the reasons why
consultants are often brought inbecause organizations, dunno
what they don't know and theyreally want that outsider's
perspective.
(32:44):
That's harder to achieve as.
An employee or an entrepreneur.
But you can research that andbring in, the voice of outside
and try and find, examples ofhow others do it to inform that.
The other thing that the secondthing that the consultants bring
that's also highly valued, Ithink is is the pattern
(33:07):
recognition.
So, one of the reasons whypeople bring in consultants is
that, that they have experienceof seeing how problems have been
solved in multipleorganizations.
And so they're kind of joiningthe dots.
And that pattern matching is iswhat people are after.
They're looking for someone whocan come in and say, I've seen
(33:28):
this problem before.
I have some approaches.
That might help you solve this.
Sometimes that comes withshortcuts.
Sometimes that comes with,coaching of how to go work
through the problem.
Yeah.
And organizations really valuethat.
I think often people withinorganizations, find it
challenging to talk about, whatthey've done elsewhere.
(33:52):
And it comes with that insiderbias.
People have lived experience inall sorts of ways.
Building a culture where thatdiversity is celebrated and,
people are able to contributebased on that sort of, lived
experience, adds enormous valueto internal teams.
So, that kind of culture needsto be nurtured and supported and
(34:12):
that's hugely important.
And yeah, I think the third.
Aspect, in my experience that,consultants are really good at.
And, one of the reasons whypeople step into a consulting
career is, because they're ableto do this is the storytelling,
and influence side of things.
(34:32):
painting the vision of apositive future, and influencing
people in leadership and, withcontrol, that this is the right
step to take.
That can be very difficult toachieve as an insider.
people you're working with everyday, you kind of get to know,
what they like and what theythink and what they do.
(34:53):
And it's very difficult to kindof effect change with people
that you work with every day interms of, painting a positive
future and giving someone avision.
Yeah, so sometimes having anoutsider come in to kind of do
that is a bit of a shortcut.
But the other thing to reflecton is that a consultant is
(35:15):
really there to make, to maketheir clients look good.
And so a good consultant isalways working very closely with
somebody with influence withinthe organization.
And sometimes it's useful tohave an outsider's voice, that
people can kind of listen to,that you've paid a lot of money
for.
(35:35):
And so sometimes, the checkbook,suggests that this person's
voice is worth listening to.
Yeah.
But ultimately somebody withinthe organization needs to buy
into the vision.
And they need to kind of own thevision and they need to deliver
that vision.
So, it is a partnership and Ifeel like sometimes
organizations need that externalvoice, for a bit of extra
(35:56):
credibility, but ultimately, thepeople within the organization
are the ones who are signing upfor that storytelling.
Yeah.
So I think intrapreneurs canreally learn from, outsiders in
agencies, outsiders inconsultancies about how they
present their ideas and howcompelling they make that kind
of vision for the future.
(36:17):
How well supported it is withevidence or precedent or
examples, case studies andfundamentally how,
evidence-based it is in the end,like, what sort of data are you
using to showcase why this is abetter decision than others.
In my experience, consultantsare very good at that.
They come with a book ofbenchmarks and, examples that
(36:40):
they can draw on.
Often that's through work thatthey've done themselves, but
sometimes it's, by doing marketscans and research.
Sometimes internal teams can bea bit less, evidence-based or a
bit less thorough in some ofthat, storytelling.
So I feel like there's a lotthat internal teams can learn
from, just seeing how, externalswho are brought in to solve a
(37:01):
particular problem, how they goabout telling that story.
Chris Hudson (37:05):
And it's funny, isn't it, because the people
that are, that align well withinthe organizations to the
consultants, are often theintrapreneurs and they're
looking to trailblaze in somesort of way too.
So they're there.
To observe in the situation, tounderstand the process and
advocate for it within theirorganization.
And they'd probably pick up allof those traits through the
process, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy (37:25):
Completely agree.
Chris Hudson (37:26):
Yeah.
There's another part which isalso maybe slightly more
relational, having made, and Ithink you did this as well, the
transition from agency toconsulting.
It feels like in an agencyworld, and this applies within
organizations as well, but in anagency world, there's definitely
more of that.
I guess more directivemanagement, where clients might
(37:48):
say, okay, this is what I wantand can you go make it, that
would happen within anorganization too.
But in a consulting world, itfeels like the footing's a
little bit more equal becauseyou're partnering and, you're
not necessarily there just toprovide a service, but you're
there to be part of the businessin some sort of way.
So there's a distinction therein how you would handle yourself
as an intrapreneur.
In one case you would be Yeah,I'll do that research and I'll
(38:10):
write a report and I'll give itback to you and I'll provide you
with a deliverable, in aconsulting.
Mindset.
It might be more aboutquestioning it, checking whether
it's Right, benchmarking it asyou were saying, bringing in
your own knowledge base.
And I feel like there's a nuancethere, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy (38:25):
Yeah, I do.
I do.
I think my experience of agencylife, was very often that, we
would dealing with, middlemanagement as opposed to senior
leadership or board leadership.
And that there was a particularproblem that was well understood
that needed to be solved, thatwas more capability or capacity
led.
(38:46):
I had a client years ago say tome I'd do this myself if I had,
the time and the team.
Yeah, but I don't, so I need youto do it.
And his point was, I know whatthe problem is.
I know how I wanna solve this.
I'm getting you to do itbecause, I can't.
I don't have the time or thebandwidth or the team to do this
myself.
(39:07):
And so his, his kind of coachingwas, I'm gonna tell you what I
want.
I'm gonna tell you what I needand I expect you to execute it
and I want you to do itefficiently.
And it's a bit of a grudgepurchase.
If I didn't have to spend thismoney, I wouldn't.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
And that was, that was a prettyinstructive relationship kind of
conversation.
It's like, okay, I'm gonna takeinstructions from this guy.
(39:28):
I'm gonna add advice where Ican, where I think I add value.
But fundamentally, he's notlooking for us to question, his
decisions.
He's looking for us to executeon a program.
Yeah.
And that's fine.
That, that expectation was quiteclear and, we did it and it went
very well.
And, we worked together for manyyears but that relationship was
(39:48):
a bit more transactional.
Whereas there are other clients.
Who I've sat down with.
And they were, brutally honestand said they had no idea how
they were going to tackle thisproblem, and we were gonna have
to work through it together.
Yeah.
And it was gonna need to be muchmore creative and it was gonna
need to be much morecollaborative and, we were gonna
explore multiple potential,futures that this could be.
(40:12):
And those, for me personally,those kind of conversations are
much more energizing.
Yeah.
I'm an ideas person and I'm astrategic person and I like to
kind of have multiple options infront of me.
And I like to think I can kindof follow the bouncing ball
through those through those kindof problem spaces and add value
that way.
But yeah, I think you're rightthat there is a kind of an
(40:33):
influencing And conceptualdifference between, what you're
being asked for as a executionpartner and what you're being
asked for as a strategic or aconsulting partner.
Chris Hudson (40:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And do you think an intrapreneurcould identify, in a sense which
role to play in which situationif they were working within an
organization?
Steph Foxworthy (40:55):
Yeah, I think the questions are are pretty
similar.
If you are being given adirective by senior leadership,
and the problem space seems tobe, well-defined and the
hypothesis of what the futureholds and where the value is
very clear, then you areprobably falling into execution
mode.
But if you can observe that theway that the problem has been
(41:18):
framed, seems a bit naive or itseems like, it's kind of rushing
at the solution.
That not every opportunity hasbeen explored.
Then you could probably put onyour consulting mindset and say,
well, hang on a minute, have weconsidered alternatives?
Do we have other options aheadof us?
I think that is very, like yousay, it's very relational.
It's how you relate withleadership.
(41:39):
And, with your management to beable to kind of achieve that.
Is it time boxed?
Is it time pressured?
Is there a result that isrequired in short order?
Often they're the sorts ofthings that drive that kind of
directive behavior.
Whereas, the more experimental,more exploratory mindset,
sometimes needs a bit morepatience, a bit more, vision
(42:01):
around it.
And so, the strategy there canbe a bit more emergent rather
than directive.
Chris Hudson (42:08):
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
I think sometimes if you're,asking a very open question in a
more pointed context wherepeople just wanna move through
the meeting, get the answer,you've almost gotta give a bit
of rationale, a bit of contextas to why you're stopping the
train in its tracks at thatpoint, because otherwise people
are just like, what is thisperson talking about?
And that's a completedistraction from what we're here
(42:28):
to do.
So, yeah, you gotta know youraudience a little bit.
Yeah.
What what I mean, we're comingto the close now, but, maybe I
could ask you this questionabout hard lessons learned and,
from a relational point of viewis there anything in that area
that you wanna share, either asa story or as a learning around,
what not to do in a relationalsense within an organization?
Steph Foxworthy (42:50):
Yeah, I think I think one thing that I've
observed a lot and coming from adesign background where where
the process is highly valued.
We need to start with researchand we need to, speak to
customers and we need tosynthesize and we need to,
create opportunities and we needto do our, double diamond and we
need to, explore all of these,opportunities.
(43:12):
And if any of those steps areshortcut or, undervalued
designers can feel veryfrustrated about being forced to
deliver something without havinggone through all the steps.
Yeah.
I feel like, whilst thatprocess, does deliver value from
end to end, being able to beadaptable.
Around that and, recognize thatsometimes there is levels of
(43:37):
knowledge or levels ofexpertise, within your
organization or within otherpeople, or within teams that you
may not understand.
Yeah, I feel like that is a bitof a pitfall for, creative
people and, intrapreneurs insideorganizations.
You have a particular way youwanna approach a problem and,
you may have found value indoing that, many times before.
(43:59):
But when you start to try and,execute that within an
organization, sometimes it maynot be appropriate and you might
need to, pivot and change and bea bit more comfortable in,
ambiguity and uncertainty.
Sometimes the experience thatother people have that you may
not have had yourself.
Can shortcut you to a goodanswer.
(44:22):
I've seen a lot of people kindof stick rigidly to a process,
that I can see as an outsider orI can see through the work that
I've been doing is frustratingstakeholders and, not building a
great relationship.
So I feel like, that kind of,reading the room, knowing when
you need to be able to defendyour process and when you need
(44:42):
to be able to move on, thatcomes through, learned
experience and delivery scars.
I think.
So, it is not easy to understandwhen that's going off the rails,
if you don't have the experienceof having seen it happen again
and again.
Yeah.
But yeah, I do feel like there'sa lot of ability to enforce a
process when adaptability issometimes a bit more valuable.
And that can be something tothink about.
(45:04):
If you're trying to work throughand you're starting to see, you
getting pushed back or somepeople are not really valuing
the way you are tackling aproblem, you might need to think
a bit more creatively about howyou approach the problem.
Chris Hudson (45:16):
Definitely.
I think you gotta know, when togo all out and, put a bit of
drama and a bit of theateraround it you wouldn't labor it,
but, you can over labor some ofthe points that you're trying to
make as a consultant when peopledon't really want to hear it.
You just want to be venting andthat's something that you learn
over time, obviously
Steph Foxworthy (45:31):
not to do that.
Yeah, I think that's a goodpoint actually, That as a
consultant, you are very often atherapist that, You will hear
the negativity and thefrustration and, when people are
kind of telling you about thebarriers they face, it is a bit
of a, therapeutic relationship.
And what they're really askingyou to do is to play that back
to leadership and to decisionmakers, to showcase that people,
(45:56):
want to do a better job and theywant to deliver a better
outcome, but they're kind ofheld back by their own
organizations.
As a consultant, I feel like youoften get those sorts of
conversations where you are ableto diagnose, process problems or
relationship problems or, someissue that the organization
wants changed and fixed.
(46:17):
That's much harder to surfacewhen you are, an insider.
But the same toolkit applies.
So if you can kind of get thevoice of the end user, captured
in a way, play that back, showthat it adds time and cost and
delay, then that's equallyvaluable from insiders as it is
from consultants.
I sometimes think that, Peopleare more open with consultants
(46:38):
sometimes, because, they've gotless to lose.
Chris Hudson (46:42):
And I've seen this happen within, within meetings,
within workshops, people aretrying to shine a light on the
situation, within theorganization.
But it's almost misinterpretedsometimes.
It feels like, some peoplewithin the room think there's
some agenda at play and they'rejust saying it to protect their
own team or their own interests,or that sort of thing comes in a
little bit.
So the consultant is there tokinda give the neutral,
(47:03):
impartial view.
But, it's a hard one I think forintrapreneurs to navigate in
that sense because
Steph Foxworthy (47:08):
The politics, is much harder to navigate as an
insider sometimes.
You can be a neutral kind ofthird party as an external
consultant.
You can enforce that kind ofanonymity around feedback and,
frame it as a problem to besolved as opposed to a
relationship.
That needs to be fixed.
Those sorts of things are a bitof an advantage sometimes as an
(47:28):
outsider.
Chris Hudson (47:29):
All right.
Well, thanks so much Steph.
Really enjoyed the chat today.
We've had a lot of good chatsaround, exploring the role of
consultants, the consultantsmindset, what we can learn from
consultants and, how consultantsdo what they do in some
respects.
So we could spend a lot moretime talking about that as we're
both consultants.
But, one take out me is that, Ithink consultants make good
conversation around thesethings.
(47:49):
We ask each other questions andwe have a curious mindset.
So yeah, really enjoy theconversation.
I appreciate you coming onto theshow as well.
Thanks so much.
Steph Foxworthy (47:57):
Yeah, thanks very much, Chris.
It's great.
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