Latest / The SME Stream / Former Xero CEO Steve Vamos says an open mind is key to navigating change

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Former Xero CEO Steve Vamos says an open mind is key to navigating change · The SME Stream

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Speaker 1: This week on the Business of Tech, powered by two
0:03
Speaker 1: Degrees Business, we talked to one of Australasia's most experienced
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Speaker 1: tech executives on navigating rapid change, fostering innovation, and having
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Speaker 1: those really hard workplace conversations.
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Speaker 2: Steve Vamos forged his career at IBM RAN zero for
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Speaker 2: nearly five years, as well as Microsoft Australia, New Zealand
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Speaker 2: and Apple's Asia Pacific division. For his sins, he even
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Speaker 2: a distint in charge of Ossie Media Empire nine MSN.
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Speaker 2: So he's seen a lot of change and a lot
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Speaker 2: of technological disruption. Now he's written a book distilling what
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Speaker 2: he's learned over forty years.
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Speaker 3: In management, organizations are generally pretty good at saying this
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Speaker 3: is what we need to do. They're also pretty good
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Speaker 3: at giving their people jobs to do. But what they
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Speaker 3: don't do is align those jobs with the things that are.
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Speaker 4: Most important to get to change.
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Speaker 3: And so the alignment process is really where the rubber
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Speaker 3: hits the road.
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Speaker 4: It's where the people at the top take a.
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Speaker 3: Serious interest in the how of getting this stuff done.
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Speaker 1: And you talked to him, Peter in an interview that
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Speaker 1: will get people thinking about their own attitudes to change
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Speaker 1: how they relate to their bosses and colleagues and crucially,
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Speaker 1: how to find alignment with them to get stuff done.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, Steve has incredible experience in some fascinating anecdotes to share,
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Speaker 2: so stick around for my chat with him. Before we
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Speaker 2: delve into that, though, Ben, we've got to talk about
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Speaker 2: the big change Australia rammed through last week on the
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Speaker 2: last day of the parliamentary setting for the year, the
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Speaker 2: ban on social media for under sixteen's OEMG, what do
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Speaker 2: you make of this?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, hang on a second, I just need to climb
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Speaker 1: up onto a soapbox quickly. But I think what's really
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Speaker 1: telling about this story is a lot of it was
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Speaker 1: influenced on the work of a man named Jonathan Height,
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Speaker 1: who published a book called The Anxious Generation, all about
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Speaker 1: the impact of social media on teens and the increase
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Speaker 1: in mental health issues and drawing some pretty straight lines
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Speaker 1: to it. That work has been criticized by a lot
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Speaker 1: of scholars who have said it's a little bit broad,
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Speaker 1: drawing conclusions that maybe other academics can't quite see. But
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Speaker 1: what's interesting is that from that book, Height made a
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Speaker 1: few recommendations get kids off social media. One was banned
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Speaker 1: smartphones in school, and the other ones were get kids
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Speaker 1: more engaged in having responsibility and in interacting as members
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Speaker 1: of a community. And what I think is mind blowing
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Speaker 1: to me is that we have absolutely run away with
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Speaker 1: the first two with the social media and the smartphone issues.
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Speaker 1: And sure, maybe we need better parental education, better ways
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Speaker 1: of managing kids on social platforms, but why aren't we
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Speaker 1: as a community coming together and saying how can we
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Speaker 1: actually get kids together more? And really interestingly, I was
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Speaker 1: talking to somebody yesterday about some failing malls and we've
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Speaker 1: got one here in East Aukland where I live, Packer Animal,
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Speaker 1: and it is having a really tough time of it,
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Speaker 1: lots of roadworks and all these things that are driving
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Speaker 1: it down. And in the spaces where shops used to be,
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Speaker 1: they've put table tennis tables, you know, And it's an
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Speaker 1: example of when there's no company that can make a
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Speaker 1: quick dollar, then we can have places where people can
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Speaker 1: just come and be and exist and socialize. And I
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Speaker 1: think that if we spent more time thinking about how
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Speaker 1: we can get people to connect, creating more spaces for
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Speaker 1: teens and young adults to actually be together and hang
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Speaker 1: out and spend time in a safe place that has
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Speaker 1: adults there as well. Maybe possibly we wouldn't have so
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Speaker 1: many mental health issues. But focusing so heavily on just
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Speaker 1: hammer banning social media, making sweeping legislations about smartphones and
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Speaker 1: schools in this kind of thing is a kind of
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Speaker 1: an escapegoats easy way to say that you're doing something
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Speaker 1: and now I can get back off my soapbox.
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Speaker 2: Well, I'm pretty much standing on the same one. I
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Speaker 2: just think it's I really hate the way they've gone
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Speaker 2: about this, the fact that they ram this through in
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Speaker 2: literally the last day they passed this bill. It does
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Speaker 2: have bi partisan support from the Labor government and the
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Speaker 2: Liberal Democrat coalition, so they all see this as something
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Speaker 2: popular with the electorate and when they do polls, your
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Speaker 2: parents are broadly in the support of this. So they're
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Speaker 2: sort of looking to the election going we want to
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Speaker 2: use this as a soapbox issue. But they haven't outlined
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Speaker 2: how they're going to achieve this. The how of it
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Speaker 2: is completely missing. They've got an age verification sort of
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Speaker 2: trial it's going to be run, but they haven't officially
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Speaker 2: in the in the legislation named what platforms this is
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Speaker 2: going to apply to they've floated a fifty million dollar
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Speaker 2: fine if social media companies are in breach of this
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Speaker 2: or not doing enough to comply with it. So they'll
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Speaker 2: have a year during which time this trial will run.
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Speaker 2: But the how of it is incredibly complex. The French
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Speaker 2: have found they have a similar sort of Under fifteen
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Speaker 2: social media ban, which they've delayed partly because it's so
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Speaker 2: technically difficult to do this, but fundamentally it's going to
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Speaker 2: come down to you need to verify someone's age and
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Speaker 2: how do you do that? And essentially you have to
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Speaker 2: do it for every Australian citizen. You can't just do
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Speaker 2: it for the kids. You've got it. Suddenly you have
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Speaker 2: an age verification scheme forced in on the premise of
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Speaker 2: protecting kids from the homes of social media. So everyone
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Speaker 2: will have to verify their age and that is a
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Speaker 2: complete nightmare from a privacy security point of view. You
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Speaker 2: need to have some secure system and it hasn't been
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Speaker 2: done on a scale like that, So this is really
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Speaker 2: a massive social experiment but also a technological experiment and
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Speaker 2: whether you can actually safely and securely do age verification
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Speaker 2: at scale. Australia and New Zealand have digital identity plans
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Speaker 2: into works, but there's still years away from happening. They're
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Speaker 2: talking about using things like age estimation, analyzing a person's
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Speaker 2: biological or behavioral features to try and sort of estimate
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Speaker 2: their age age inference from a person's life circumstances, all
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Speaker 2: the stuff that they've put on social media. These are
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Speaker 2: not perfect and they haven't been done at scale either
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Speaker 2: for the purposes of age verification. So we're sort of
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Speaker 2: in uncharted territory running this big experiment which essentially amounts
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Speaker 2: to pushing an age verification scheme on twenty six million Australians.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, the question of whether you can
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Speaker 1: get a non idea identifying option working, which is the
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Speaker 1: estimation or inference tools that you talked about. Those are
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Speaker 1: the ideal because there is some measure of privacy preferred.
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Speaker 1: If we can't get those working, then we will have
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Speaker 1: to go to verification. And in that case it's you know,
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Speaker 1: actually connecting an identity with a account. And if you're
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Speaker 1: on Facebook, for example, that may not be such a
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Speaker 1: huge issue because you tend to present yourself you know,
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Speaker 1: it's a non anonymous platform, but the likes of Reddit,
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Speaker 1: for example, you know, people tend to post there anonymously.
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Speaker 1: For whether you like that or not, there is a
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Speaker 1: measure of privacy and the ability to have those conversations
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Speaker 1: in private can be used for negative as we talked
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Speaker 1: about before, but can also be used for good things,
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Speaker 1: for allowing connection with people who are outside of your
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Speaker 1: social circle who may have a better understanding of your
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Speaker 1: unique perspective. Of course, I'm thinking about people like LGBTQ.
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Speaker 2: I don't know.
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Speaker 1: It just becomes really murky and really difficult to assass
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Speaker 1: and I think you wrapped it up really nicely in
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Speaker 1: your opinion piece last week.
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Speaker 2: We're going to see the rise of this ageous assurance
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Speaker 2: tech market where third parties are going to be relied
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Speaker 2: on and paid large amounts of money by potentially by
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Speaker 2: the tech platforms to do this. So there's that, but
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Speaker 2: the technical difficulty to side. I think what you tapped into,
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Speaker 2: Ben is the fundamental opposition to this is there is
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Speaker 2: a lot of good done on these platforms. We have
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Speaker 2: for twenty years now we have told young people go online,
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Speaker 2: express yourself, use these tools, become content creators, because this
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Speaker 2: is a potential future for you in the digital world.
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Speaker 2: Get comfortable with these tools, and now we're saying no,
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Speaker 2: we don't want you to use them. And you can
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Speaker 2: even go on to express yourself with your friends, you
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Speaker 2: have to prove your identity, so you can't have any
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Speaker 2: anonymity as well. But really I think misses the big
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Speaker 2: problem and gives big tech a sort of an out,
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Speaker 2: which is we need to demonetize children through the use
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Speaker 2: of these highly addictive algorithms that are targeting them and
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Speaker 2: causing We've seen the leaked documents from the likes of
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Speaker 2: Meta about the mental health issues that sort of activity
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Speaker 2: has led to. That's the real issue. How do we
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Speaker 2: tackle that the algorithms the black box, getting more transparency
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Speaker 2: and getting away from that highly manipulative algorithmic targeting. And
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Speaker 2: this gives them a free pass. They'll continue doing that
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Speaker 2: as long as they can tell whether someone is sixteen
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Speaker 2: or not crazy. So I guess the question Ben is,
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Speaker 2: I mean, we have band cell phones in schools here recently.
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Speaker 2: Do you think now our own politicians may be in
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Speaker 2: the same sort of bipartisan spirit, are going to say, well,
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Speaker 2: we like what Ozzie's doing, let's try and do it here.
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Speaker 1: I guess answer so that would be is how populist.
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Speaker 1: Do you think the current government is.
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Speaker 2: So we may see moves have been pretty muted on it.
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Speaker 2: I think like with our government on most tech things,
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Speaker 2: if it's too complicated and expensive, they'll pretty much do nothing.
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Speaker 1: And that is true. Yeah, I imagine there will be
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Speaker 1: some tension between the people in power who want to
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Speaker 1: appeal to the masses who are feeling like they want
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Speaker 1: to blame someone versus the inertia against big tech of
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Speaker 1: just low touch regulation.
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Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, hopefully that winds over.
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Speaker 1: In this case.
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Speaker 4: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: So yes.
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Speaker 1: A bunch of Australian politicians last week took a particularly
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Speaker 1: blunt approach to bringing about change. And they may have
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Speaker 1: been thinking about why Ozzie, teens and kids may be
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Speaker 1: better off without TikTok and Snapchat.
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Speaker 2: But it's really not clear they've thought through that deeply.
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Speaker 2: The how on earth to make a blanket ban work well.
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Speaker 2: Steve Vamos argues that when it comes to leading through change,
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Speaker 2: it's not enough to know the why. You also need
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Speaker 2: to know how you're going to do it.
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Speaker 1: His debut book, called Through Shifts and Shocks Lessons from
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Speaker 1: the front Line of Technology and Change really gets into
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Speaker 1: the nuts and bolts of how to lead through disruption
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Speaker 1: and change, which, let's face it, every organization is facing
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Speaker 1: in spades at the moment.
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Speaker 2: Steve lives just down the road from me here in
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Speaker 2: central Wellington. He's still here after stepping down as CEO
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Speaker 2: of Zero in January twenty twenty three. He's got so
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Speaker 2: much wisdom and experience, particularly in the tech sector. I
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Speaker 2: really enjoyed this chat with him last week at my
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Speaker 2: place here in Wellington.
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Speaker 1: This interview is partly war stories from the tech sector,
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Speaker 1: but there are some practical self help tips thrown into
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Speaker 1: So without further ado, let's listen to your interview with
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Speaker 1: tech sector veteran Steve Vamos.
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Speaker 2: Steve, thanks so much for being on the business off Tech.
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Speaker 2: Really great honor to have you in my house and
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Speaker 2: to be able to talk with you. Forty years at
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Speaker 2: least off experience in the corporate world, in the tech
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Speaker 2: world as well, from Apple and IBM to nine MSN zero,
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Speaker 2: one of our beloved tech companies you ran for nearly
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Speaker 2: five years. You've distilled a lot of your learnings into
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Speaker 2: this incredible book Thought Shifts and Shocks, and the back
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Speaker 2: end of the book in particular is really sort of
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Speaker 2: a self help book for anyone out there who's in
12:41
Speaker 2: a team or is in leadership. So I think people
12:43
Speaker 2: will really find that valuable. But lots of great anecdotes
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Speaker 2: and stories and near which we'll get into some of them,
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Speaker 2: but I wanted to start with something that really stayed
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Speaker 2: with me in the book. Is this idea of the
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Speaker 2: importance of character and love. You to maybe check off
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Speaker 2: by telling us the story of your parents who came
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Speaker 2: from Hungary to Australia. Incredible story there, the character off
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Speaker 2: your parents, what that instilled in you, and what that
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Speaker 2: has done to influence your leadership style throughout your career.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, Peter, great to be with you, so thanks for
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Speaker 3: taking the time to have a chat. Look, really, in
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Speaker 3: my journey, I've come to increasingly appreciate that change is
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Speaker 3: a human challenge. It's also a team and a challenge
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Speaker 3: of collaboration. And when I say it's a human challenge,
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Speaker 3: it really comes down to a whole range of things
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Speaker 3: that are about understanding yourself.
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Speaker 4: And so as I've become more.
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Speaker 3: Aware of that, I look back on my parents, my father,
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Speaker 3: the principles and the beliefs that I was raised with
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Speaker 3: and how they shaped me to be, in a sense
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Speaker 3: a leader who didn't necessarily get everything right. I surely didn't,
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Speaker 3: but it was one really sensitive to other people. And
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Speaker 3: how important that sensitivity to others is to the change journey,
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Speaker 3: and I think it's grossly underestimated.
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Speaker 4: But yeah, my parents' story was one of being very brave.
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Speaker 3: They wanted to change their lives, and I think there's
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Speaker 3: nothing more significant than uprooting yourself at the age of
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Speaker 3: nineteen and twenty and try to escape, and they did twice.
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Speaker 4: His first time unsuccessfully.
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Speaker 2: This was behind the iron.
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Speaker 3: Behind the Iron Curtain after the Hungarian Revolution, and then
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Speaker 3: the reaction that happened at that point, and they finally
14:42
Speaker 3: found their way out. Actually, my father said to me
14:45
Speaker 3: that the worst feeling he's ever had in his life
14:48
Speaker 3: was that feeling of being stateless, being a refugee. And
14:52
Speaker 3: he also never let me doubt his anger at politicians
14:59
Speaker 3: and people who were flippant in their description of the
15:02
Speaker 3: refugee struggle, and also the fact that people would pay
15:07
Speaker 3: others to get them out of a country and would
15:09
Speaker 3: take a boat to get to another country when their
15:11
Speaker 3: life depends on it. So but the real message from
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Speaker 3: my father was one of deep respect for others and
15:18
Speaker 3: the rights of others. So whenever I was a bit
15:20
Speaker 3: of a smartass, or i'd say anything in any way
15:24
Speaker 3: derogatory about somebody else, he'd be very quick to sort
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Speaker 3: of slam down on me and say, hey, you know
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Speaker 3: you can do better than that.
15:32
Speaker 2: To that anecdote about you and your brother were playing
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Speaker 2: and you said your sister, no, you can't be in
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Speaker 2: this game, you're a girl. Yeah, it didn't go down well.
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Speaker 3: Real bad, And at the age of twelve thirteen, my
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Speaker 3: brother and I had our father come after us in
15:46
Speaker 3: response to this whole comment that one of us, I
15:49
Speaker 3: can't remember which one of us made, that you can't
15:51
Speaker 3: do this because you're a girl, grabbed us both by
15:54
Speaker 3: the collar, pulled our faces right into his face and said,
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Speaker 3: if you ever dared tell her she can't do it,
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Speaker 3: you can do I'll kill you.
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Speaker 4: Do you understand me? So that was my first lesson
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Speaker 4: in gender equity.
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Speaker 2: Your dad did what thirty eight years at IBM in Australia,
16:10
Speaker 2: you did fourteen, So between the two over fifty years,
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Speaker 2: what was it that he learned and did in this
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Speaker 2: technology company from much of his career that really influenced you?
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Speaker 2: And maybe pointed you in the direction of technology as well.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I loved hearing him talk about the competitive nature
16:30
Speaker 3: of the industry. So he was in sales and technical
16:34
Speaker 3: support of sales for a lot of his careers, so
16:36
Speaker 3: he would tell me about the big deal they were
16:38
Speaker 3: working on, and some they'd win and some they'd lose
16:41
Speaker 3: some of all these losses were hit pretty hard. So
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Speaker 3: I love the competitive nature of it and just in
16:47
Speaker 3: becoming a manager. Before I got there, I spent a
16:52
Speaker 3: year just working as an assistant to salespeople. Then I
16:56
Speaker 3: worked for two years learning how to be an engineer
16:59
Speaker 3: to write software and support customers implementing software for six months,
17:03
Speaker 3: they put me into a customer site to really understand
17:06
Speaker 3: what a customer experience felt like. Then they let me
17:11
Speaker 3: loose as a salesperson. Then they figured I had management potential,
17:15
Speaker 3: and a couple of years in to my sales career,
17:17
Speaker 3: they put me on a pre manager course, and then
17:21
Speaker 3: when I a little after that, they appointed me a manager,
17:24
Speaker 3: put me on a new manager course, and then six
17:27
Speaker 3: months after that I got the most significant feedback of
17:30
Speaker 3: my management career, where on a mandatory process, my team
17:35
Speaker 3: was asked about me as a manager. I thought I
17:37
Speaker 3: was doing great. I thought I was a manager I'd
17:39
Speaker 3: love to work for. The feedback was awful. The people
17:43
Speaker 3: said working for Steve is like being a tool to
17:47
Speaker 3: get his job done. He hasn't got much time for us,
17:50
Speaker 3: and he's just completely focused on his task, and I
17:53
Speaker 3: was shocked. That rocked me and made me realize, just
17:56
Speaker 3: at that point, which was very early in my career,
17:59
Speaker 3: that the way you see yourself isn't the way others
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Speaker 3: will see you, which means be receptive to how others
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Speaker 3: are seeing you.
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Speaker 4: From early on, I've learned that being open to.
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Speaker 3: What others experience, is what they're seeing and feeling, is
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Speaker 3: just super important because it gives you the insight to
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Speaker 3: change and an insight to make judgments about what's most important.
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Speaker 2: Just to finish off on character where we started, I mean,
18:27
Speaker 2: we've just come through a pretty nasty US election where
18:31
Speaker 2: we have a president elect who many would say does
18:35
Speaker 2: not have good character. As a convicted criminal, his attitude
18:41
Speaker 2: and conduct towards women has been appalling, So I guess
18:46
Speaker 2: many a sort of questioning how important character actually is.
18:50
Speaker 2: And you've worked with leaders who were really driven people,
18:55
Speaker 2: I mean Steve jobs was one of those sorts of
18:58
Speaker 2: people at Apple, you went through a number of sea
19:00
Speaker 2: who are probably similar, but he really pitomizes that visionary
19:05
Speaker 2: leader who didn't necessarily treat people very well but was
19:08
Speaker 2: able to mobilize them to achieve something brilliant. How important
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Speaker 2: is character still really and what is the true test
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Speaker 2: of character?
19:20
Speaker 4: That's a great question. The thing is.
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Speaker 3: Character runs through everything and can have a good and
19:30
Speaker 3: a bad influence on everything.
19:32
Speaker 4: So the way I look at the.
19:34
Speaker 3: Change journey is really three steps, which is getting clear
19:39
Speaker 3: about your purpose and priorities. So again, your character might
19:42
Speaker 3: influence your purpose and your priorities, driving alignment, getting people, resources, technology,
19:49
Speaker 3: getting everything aligned behind the things that are most important.
19:53
Speaker 3: And then the third step is to review how you're going,
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Speaker 3: because in change, what you think is clarity may evolve
19:59
Speaker 3: with your experience and you might think you're aligned, but
20:02
Speaker 3: then as you review performance, you go, well, we're not
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Speaker 3: as aligned as we need to be. So you get
20:07
Speaker 3: in a cycle of clear aligned performance review and you
20:10
Speaker 3: keep going through that on a change journey because the
20:13
Speaker 3: destination is.
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Speaker 4: Never straight A to B. But at the heart of it,
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Speaker 4: the calls.
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Speaker 3: You make are in each of those areas defined by
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Speaker 3: the conversations you have and the choices you make, and
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Speaker 3: the human element flows through all those things. So regardless
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Speaker 3: of character, if you are clear, aligned and performance reviewed,
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Speaker 3: and you have the tough conversations that make the hard choices,
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Speaker 3: you can get a lot done. If character is an issue,
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Speaker 3: the big question is over time, what's the outcome. Is
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Speaker 3: the outcome one that's good for people, good for others?
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Speaker 3: And with that, is it sustained? Is it a sustained
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Speaker 3: change that does good? So I think that conclusions around
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Speaker 3: character are really hard to make at the beginning of
21:02
Speaker 3: a journey rather than maybe some time after.
21:05
Speaker 4: I even believe that a big part of.
21:08
Speaker 3: The performance of a CEO is judged by what happens
21:11
Speaker 3: after Rod Drury's performance is zero. CEO after he left
21:17
Speaker 3: is something that was just as outstanding in my opinion
21:20
Speaker 3: as what he contributed as CEO, because he set the
21:23
Speaker 3: company up to do great things after he was no
21:27
Speaker 3: longer in a management role. So that's a test in
21:30
Speaker 3: my view, that's the ultimate test of great character.
21:32
Speaker 4: Is what happens after you're gone? What did you leave behind?
21:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's time will tell, I guess. For for Trump,
21:40
Speaker 2: for Trump version two, what legacy he leaves and how
21:44
Speaker 2: long it lasts really two big problems you're outlining in
21:48
Speaker 2: the book here. Our ability to lead and respond to change,
21:52
Speaker 2: you right, is not good enough to put it kindly.
21:55
Speaker 2: And change is best managed through great teamwork and collaboration.
21:59
Speaker 2: But a lot of us work in mediocre teams. So
22:02
Speaker 2: the real theme here is changed. I mean, take us
22:05
Speaker 2: back to some of those companies you worked in that
22:08
Speaker 2: were facing massive change, big blue IBM company that was
22:13
Speaker 2: known from mainframe computers. Every bank had an IBM mainframe,
22:18
Speaker 2: big expense of computers. Then we had the mini computer
22:21
Speaker 2: revolution come along. IBM was faced with a choice here,
22:25
Speaker 2: do we embrace this and become a PC maker or
22:29
Speaker 2: do we sort of stick to our roots, which is
22:31
Speaker 2: big computers, big ticket items. What was it like sort
22:35
Speaker 2: through the eighties. We're working in a company that was
22:38
Speaker 2: confronted with disruption and change and was really struggling to
22:42
Speaker 2: actually embrace that change.
22:44
Speaker 4: Yeah.
22:45
Speaker 3: Look, the eighties were, in a sense a good decade
22:49
Speaker 3: for IBM, and then as you entered the nineties is
22:51
Speaker 3: when it really struggled. There's so many elements to what
22:57
Speaker 3: is important in change. So if we take an individual.
23:01
Speaker 3: For an individual, I always say, you've got to be
23:06
Speaker 3: willing to suspend your beliefs and learn, become a learned
23:10
Speaker 3: or rather than know it all, become a learn it all.
23:12
Speaker 3: And we've seen in many industries. We'll touch on a couple,
23:14
Speaker 3: but there was a classic situation that was quite pivotal
23:18
Speaker 3: in industry where the person in control of the relationship
23:23
Speaker 3: with Microsoft is a guy called Jim Cannavino.
23:25
Speaker 4: He was an IBM.
23:27
Speaker 3: He came out of the obviously the big computer side
23:29
Speaker 3: of IBM, and I heard the story and it's validated
23:34
Speaker 3: in stuff other people have written, maybe not exactly as
23:37
Speaker 3: I heard it, but Cannavino was then in charge of
23:41
Speaker 3: the Bill Gates relationship and Microsoft and IBM had a
23:44
Speaker 3: mindset that the hardware was most important. The software was
23:47
Speaker 3: just this thing you had to do to sell boxes.
23:51
Speaker 3: So he went into the relationship with Gates and ultimately
23:53
Speaker 3: made a big mistake in allowing Microsoft to go off
23:57
Speaker 3: and do Windows when really at that point they had
24:01
Speaker 3: Microsoft under contract. And what led to that was his
24:05
Speaker 3: belief system the software wasn't that important. But it even
24:09
Speaker 3: went further than that, because the story was that in
24:12
Speaker 3: a group.
24:12
Speaker 4: Of five hundred people.
24:14
Speaker 3: He said the words that if God believed in distributed computers,
24:18
Speaker 3: which is computers everywhere, he would have put your brains
24:20
Speaker 3: in your fingertips. And the point about that is, once
24:24
Speaker 3: you and we saw in media industry, banners won't work,
24:27
Speaker 3: digital media will never pay. That's what the experts said
24:30
Speaker 3: when I was at ninety meters said years ago. And
24:33
Speaker 3: it's holding too close to your belief system that and
24:39
Speaker 3: not being open minded that is so dangerous. And that's
24:42
Speaker 3: why I emphasize a couple of things very much in
24:45
Speaker 3: the book. One is change is hard for us, and
24:49
Speaker 3: it's hard for us as people because we meet it
24:51
Speaker 3: with fear until we understand it. It's hard for us
24:56
Speaker 3: because we're generally told not to make mistakes, and we
25:00
Speaker 3: generally are praised for what we know rather than what
25:03
Speaker 3: we learn. And that way of thinking is great for
25:06
Speaker 3: things you don't want to change, but hard when you're
25:09
Speaker 3: confronted with new things, because those you know anything new
25:14
Speaker 3: is the realm of mistake making.
25:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you point out that that conformist conditioning,
25:21
Speaker 2: as you put it, is actually quite useful in a
25:25
Speaker 2: way of shielding you from risk, but particularly in the
25:29
Speaker 2: tech game. Taking those risks is what will get you
25:33
Speaker 2: the reward and in some cases save the company or
25:36
Speaker 2: allowed to thrive. And one of the things, one of
25:39
Speaker 2: the big themes in the book is finding alignment. How
25:43
Speaker 2: do you bring all of these people together? And it
25:47
Speaker 2: might be worth reflecting you came into zero. It was
25:50
Speaker 2: a relatively mature company, dynamic founder Rod Drury, but very
25:58
Speaker 2: big company by the time you got there. How do
26:01
Speaker 2: you follow up a founder like that and find alignment
26:05
Speaker 2: with this group of people that you've inherited to actually
26:09
Speaker 2: build on what Rod has created, but take it in
26:13
Speaker 2: the direction it needs to go. It obviously needed to
26:15
Speaker 2: go somewhere different after that first ten year period or
26:19
Speaker 2: something like that.
26:19
Speaker 4: What was that like?
26:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, it look it was awesome, awesome experience. We actually
26:25
Speaker 3: went from fifteen hundred to forty five hundred during my time,
26:28
Speaker 3: so essentially the business tripled and the challenge and the
26:33
Speaker 3: way that I approached it was really that we had
26:36
Speaker 3: to really focus on what it is we wanted to be.
26:39
Speaker 3: So we actually changed our purpose statement from being about
26:42
Speaker 3: accounting to being about being a platform, a trusted and
26:45
Speaker 3: insightfuled platform for small business. So we reviewed what it
26:49
Speaker 3: is we're here to do and it was more than
26:51
Speaker 3: accounting software because the Zero platform opened up to thousands
26:56
Speaker 3: of applications and different use cases the partnerships the company had,
27:02
Speaker 3: so getting clear about purpose and then prioritization that was
27:05
Speaker 3: always the hardest thing for me because there were so
27:08
Speaker 3: many things we could do and wanted to do. The
27:12
Speaker 3: tough aspect of prioritization is saying no to good ideas
27:16
Speaker 3: and good people. And there were acquisitions that we looked
27:19
Speaker 3: at that everybody wanted to do, and I had to
27:21
Speaker 3: be the bad guy.
27:22
Speaker 4: At the end of the line.
27:23
Speaker 3: He said, you know what, it's a great idea, but no,
27:25
Speaker 3: because we need to focus. You know, I wouldn't give
27:28
Speaker 3: myself ten out of ten on the prioritization stakes either,
27:32
Speaker 3: you know. It's one of those things you really struggle with.
27:35
Speaker 3: So yeah, let others score how I went on that.
27:39
Speaker 3: But alignment that you mentioned is really important because in
27:42
Speaker 3: times of change, organizations are generally pretty good at saying
27:46
Speaker 3: this is what we need to do. They're also pretty
27:48
Speaker 3: good at giving their people jobs to do, but what
27:51
Speaker 3: they don't do is align those jobs with the things
27:54
Speaker 3: that are most important to get done to change. And
27:57
Speaker 3: so the alignment process is really where the rubber hits
28:00
Speaker 3: the road. It's where the people at the top take
28:03
Speaker 3: a serious interest in what it means and the how
28:08
Speaker 3: of getting this stuff done, which means you have to
28:11
Speaker 3: partner with your management layer by layer and really understand
28:15
Speaker 3: the conflicts that doing new things provides with doing what
28:18
Speaker 3: you've been doing, help them make the trade offs and
28:21
Speaker 3: make sure they get the resources and support they need,
28:25
Speaker 3: because if you don't do that, all that happens in
28:27
Speaker 3: the middle of the company as it gets bigger and bigger,
28:30
Speaker 3: is you've got managers sitting there going, I'm struggling every
28:33
Speaker 3: day to do everything I'm doing, and now you want
28:34
Speaker 3: me to do all this extra stuff. Where's the person
28:36
Speaker 3: I'm going to talk to about the trade offs here?
28:39
Speaker 3: And that's where alignment becomes essential. It's why the intentions
28:45
Speaker 3: of the top don't become the work of those who
28:47
Speaker 3: do the work because the alignment focus is inadequate.
28:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, there's a lot of great stuff
28:54
Speaker 2: in the book about how you put that into practice,
29:00
Speaker 2: and it's really about hearing from other people. Listening to
29:04
Speaker 2: other people's views so crucial in the fast moving tech
29:09
Speaker 2: sector in particular, of people down in the bales of
29:13
Speaker 2: the company writing the code for the software as saying
29:16
Speaker 2: to you, I don't think this is going to work
29:19
Speaker 2: in the midterm, little one the long term, and you
29:21
Speaker 2: don't listen to them, You've got a real problem there.
29:23
Speaker 2: And some of the companies you've worked for, we saw
29:25
Speaker 2: that that became an entrenched problem for them, in the
29:28
Speaker 2: likes of IBM, that they really struggle to overcome.
29:31
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's really it's true.
29:32
Speaker 3: The thing is, if you want to change things, and
29:34
Speaker 3: you really believe you have to, you have to make
29:37
Speaker 3: the change agenda the big agenda, because otherwise it just
29:40
Speaker 3: gets drowned out by what you've been doing. So, you know,
29:44
Speaker 3: everywhere I learned that at Microsoft Australia, when you know,
29:49
Speaker 3: it wasn't early in my career that I figured out
29:52
Speaker 3: this alignment thing, and I didn't do it on my own.
29:54
Speaker 3: We had slow growth at Microsoft Australia and we were
29:58
Speaker 3: challenged by Steve Bormer leaders to come up with a
30:01
Speaker 3: strategy to accelerate growth, and the core of that strategy
30:05
Speaker 3: was being better in the eyes of our customers.
30:07
Speaker 4: Because I don't know if you remember.
30:09
Speaker 3: Back, but Microsoft's reputation for customer service wasn't great, But
30:14
Speaker 3: nowadays you don't hear that anymore. You know that the
30:17
Speaker 3: company has really done much much better. So we were
30:20
Speaker 3: at the beginning of this need to change that. And
30:23
Speaker 3: so when we went through what was going to be
30:26
Speaker 3: the best way to improve customer service, we realized it
30:29
Speaker 3: wasn't one.
30:30
Speaker 4: Function of the business. It required every function.
30:33
Speaker 3: Of the business to play. So what we had to
30:35
Speaker 3: do was to get into the detail. So, Okay, what
30:38
Speaker 3: does it mean to improve customer service? It could be
30:40
Speaker 3: we're going to improve our CRM. It could be we're
30:43
Speaker 3: going to run training for our salespeople. Well, then if
30:46
Speaker 3: that's your intention, what's the action, who's going to own it,
30:50
Speaker 3: who are they delegating it to, and what actions are
30:52
Speaker 3: they delegating And you have to get specific around those
30:55
Speaker 3: actions and follow up and have really good operational people
30:59
Speaker 3: who hold you to account. So this function of operations
31:03
Speaker 3: in the tech world is one of defining the actions
31:07
Speaker 3: that come from a strategy and making sure those.
31:09
Speaker 4: Accountable deliver on it.
31:11
Speaker 3: And I learned that in an I call it level
31:14
Speaker 3: or the planning, which is cascading critical objectives layer by
31:18
Speaker 3: layer and having people sign up to deliver it having
31:23
Speaker 3: had the conversation about what they might have to stop
31:25
Speaker 3: doing or what additional support you need to give them.
31:28
Speaker 4: It's just closing the loop.
31:30
Speaker 3: And they're the difficult conversations that are sometimes avoided.
31:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to talk about that because that, I
31:35
Speaker 2: think is the thing that people will relate to the most,
31:38
Speaker 2: the difficult conversations. Just on Microsoft, Sachaadella's being at the
31:42
Speaker 2: helm of the company for a decade or more in
31:44
Speaker 2: our huge change Agent really brought Microsoft into the cloud
31:48
Speaker 2: computing space with Azure. Went big on that what if
31:52
Speaker 2: you observe from a fire off? How he approaches things
31:55
Speaker 2: that is really pertinent to this change dealing with change.
32:01
Speaker 4: Yeah.
32:01
Speaker 3: Look, I've been fortunate to have met with such a
32:05
Speaker 3: couple of times over the years. First when I worked
32:08
Speaker 3: for Microsoft in Seattle. He was one of the product
32:11
Speaker 3: leaders back then and I was running the international online business,
32:14
Speaker 3: and so I went to have a chat with him
32:16
Speaker 3: and shared my thoughts on what was holding us back
32:19
Speaker 3: in the digital media world, and I found him really
32:23
Speaker 3: open minded and a real learning oriented guy.
32:25
Speaker 4: Then.
32:27
Speaker 3: But Microsoft's an amazing company. I mean, the ability to
32:30
Speaker 3: execute strategy there is undeniable and I've also in the
32:34
Speaker 3: book paid a little bit.
32:36
Speaker 4: Of a tribute to Steve Boormer, because.
32:38
Speaker 3: You know, it's kind of fashionable to look at Steve
32:40
Speaker 3: and say, well, he's a CEO.
32:43
Speaker 4: Wasn't as successful as it could and should have been.
32:45
Speaker 4: No one's ever is.
32:47
Speaker 3: But Steve turned Microsoft from a PC company software company
32:52
Speaker 3: into the powerhouse enterprise business that it is, and without that,
32:56
Speaker 3: the next steps couldn't have been taken. So I think
33:00
Speaker 3: that such a success now such a has said this himself.
33:04
Speaker 3: You know, some credit goes to Burma for what such
33:08
Speaker 3: has been Ablett accomplished as well.
33:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, difficult conversations and you've had many of them in
33:14
Speaker 2: your career, some of them you recount in the book.
33:18
Speaker 2: One really interesting one has actually happened at zero around diversity.
33:23
Speaker 2: I mean difficult conversations around laying people off, having to
33:27
Speaker 2: say to people your time is up in this organization.
33:30
Speaker 4: You know that.
33:31
Speaker 2: I think most people listening, that's what keeps them up
33:34
Speaker 2: at night. Try having those very difficult conversations. But we
33:37
Speaker 2: have new things coming at leadership teams and CEOs, things
33:40
Speaker 2: like diversity. Maybe tell us about that that issue that
33:43
Speaker 2: came up at zero that you had to deal with.
33:46
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's that was a really really difficult issue, and
33:50
Speaker 3: it's a pretty it's even in the context of this conversation,
33:52
Speaker 3: a hard one that just sort of brush over. But
33:57
Speaker 3: we had we had an issue where one of our
34:00
Speaker 3: staff members posted to our internal channels their very strong
34:08
Speaker 3: beliefs that they could not celebrate Pride months for their
34:12
Speaker 3: own personal religious beliefs. And whilst we all appreciated that
34:17
Speaker 3: people believe that's no shock to anybody, it was the
34:20
Speaker 3: way that that was communicated that which I won't say here,
34:24
Speaker 3: but it was hurtful.
34:26
Speaker 4: You know.
34:26
Speaker 3: In the case of Zero, there was no question as
34:30
Speaker 3: a company we stood behind our LGBTQI people and their
34:37
Speaker 3: rights to express what they wanted to express. We also
34:41
Speaker 3: actually didn't have an issue with that person's beliefs or
34:45
Speaker 3: their ability to express them. Was how they said it,
34:47
Speaker 3: and it's that responsibility just to speak about others in
34:51
Speaker 3: a way that's respectful. So what we came to was
34:54
Speaker 3: most important to come with some principles, and the principle
34:57
Speaker 3: in that case is that we always believe that we
35:00
Speaker 3: have to support first party over third party, and what
35:04
Speaker 3: you want to be and what you see as your
35:06
Speaker 3: identity is I'm going to rate that more important than
35:09
Speaker 3: what a third party thing says about you. And I
35:13
Speaker 3: think that's a principle it can hold for because you
35:16
Speaker 3: are the authority, not the other person.
35:19
Speaker 4: So our reaction was not the censor.
35:21
Speaker 3: It was more to respond more effectively than we did
35:24
Speaker 3: in that particular instance where we responded too slow and
35:28
Speaker 3: we didn't respond in a way that was sensitive enough
35:31
Speaker 3: to those that were hurt.
35:32
Speaker 4: So that was what was behind the learning. Really tough,
35:35
Speaker 4: tough one.
35:36
Speaker 2: It is tough, but it's something that every company is
35:40
Speaker 2: sort of grappling with at the moment. We've seen sort
35:43
Speaker 2: of social activism, the rise of that. Maybe it's a
35:46
Speaker 2: generational change. You know, gins its are more inclined to
35:53
Speaker 2: be socially active and champion causes that are important to
35:57
Speaker 2: them in the workplace. I mean, is there a place
36:01
Speaker 2: for that. Probably didn't happen back in the mid eighties
36:04
Speaker 2: at IBM, but it's a factor now.
36:06
Speaker 3: It's a new phenomenon in the context of certainly my journey.
36:09
Speaker 3: It's the last you know, five ten years that this
36:11
Speaker 3: has really become such a strong focus.
36:14
Speaker 4: Look, there's a couple of things to this.
36:17
Speaker 3: You do have to have some idea of where you
36:19
Speaker 3: want to weigh in as an organization and where you wait.
36:22
Speaker 4: So, for example, with Roe versus.
36:23
Speaker 3: Wide, we had some of our people say we should
36:27
Speaker 3: not do business in states at out law abortion. Clearly
36:30
Speaker 3: we were responded and said, no, we aren't going to
36:33
Speaker 3: do that, so sorry, but no, and so you do
36:37
Speaker 3: have to. But that was fairly straightforward, but there are
36:40
Speaker 3: others where it's not as straightforward, and you have to
36:43
Speaker 3: you have to decide what position are going to take.
36:45
Speaker 3: The other one, which was kind of my final words
36:48
Speaker 3: on the subject and the zero context, was remember why
36:51
Speaker 3: we're here. You know, business is about providing a service
36:56
Speaker 3: and products to customers, and let's not let all the
36:59
Speaker 3: very very many distractions that there are in the world
37:02
Speaker 3: and the distance between us in a world of hybrid work,
37:06
Speaker 3: get in the way of us remembering why we're here
37:08
Speaker 3: and the job we have to do. And so, in
37:12
Speaker 3: a maybe a bit of an old fashioned way, I
37:15
Speaker 3: did sort of send the message that all these things
37:18
Speaker 3: are important, but our position, our let's call it privilege
37:26
Speaker 3: to be able to weigh into these issues is founded
37:29
Speaker 3: on customers buying our products.
37:32
Speaker 4: And never forget it, it's not an easy journey, but
37:36
Speaker 4: that's the reality.
37:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you were at zero, you had to see
37:47
Speaker 2: in everyone home because of the pandemic. So hybrid working
37:50
Speaker 2: for thousands of people, and we've sort of seen this
37:53
Speaker 2: tension since then as we come back to hybrid working
37:57
Speaker 2: in the office. That connection, obviously combined with knowledge, is
38:01
Speaker 2: the key to human potential. Have we lost something inherently
38:06
Speaker 2: with that sort of Workers obviously want flexibility and to
38:09
Speaker 2: be able to set their own hours and work from
38:12
Speaker 2: wherever they want. But in your experience, having worked in
38:16
Speaker 2: lots of different workplaces, lots of large teams, that connection
38:21
Speaker 2: that people get in the workplaces at really gold.
38:25
Speaker 4: Yeah.
38:25
Speaker 3: Look, there's no doubt that physical contact provides an opportunity
38:31
Speaker 3: for things to happen that are perhaps less planned, you know,
38:36
Speaker 3: those accidental collisions, those connections that you make. Look, the
38:40
Speaker 3: hybrid world of work is here to stay. And what
38:43
Speaker 3: I mean by that is there'll be any range of
38:46
Speaker 3: workplaces that are fully remote through to fully at the office.
38:49
Speaker 3: The decision as to which way you go, I think
38:53
Speaker 3: does depend a lot on what you're trying to accomplish.
38:56
Speaker 3: And my view is your job is not to stay
39:00
Speaker 3: with what's the answer, but to start with what are
39:02
Speaker 3: we trying to accomplish and accomplishing that objective, whatever it
39:06
Speaker 3: might be, what do we need to do what needs
39:09
Speaker 3: to be done? And that's a question that isn't asked
39:12
Speaker 3: often enough. We talk about why we do what we
39:14
Speaker 3: do and what we're doing, but pause and think about
39:18
Speaker 3: how are we going? How are we doing it? So
39:20
Speaker 3: there's a question I always encourage people to ask, which
39:24
Speaker 3: is of your team and your team members get together
39:27
Speaker 3: and answer the question about how well with what we
39:32
Speaker 3: have today, with the money, the resources and everything else
39:37
Speaker 3: we have today, how well today, with what we have today,
39:40
Speaker 3: are we performing relative to what's possible as a team,
39:44
Speaker 3: as a team, not as individuals as a team, and
39:47
Speaker 3: the beauty of that conversation is you're not pointing a
39:49
Speaker 3: finger as the manager, You're not pointing the finger at
39:51
Speaker 3: any individual and score it out of ten and you'll
39:55
Speaker 3: find that I've experienced. My experience is that only third
40:00
Speaker 3: twenty to forty percent of people I ask have ever
40:03
Speaker 3: worked on a team they rated eight or more out
40:07
Speaker 3: of ten. The rest of them, you know, a good
40:09
Speaker 3: team is a six or seven. And so then you say, well,
40:12
Speaker 3: what's the one thing you would do to improve how
40:15
Speaker 3: you're working together, what the score is. And ninety percent
40:19
Speaker 3: of those things have nothing to do with the industry
40:21
Speaker 3: people are working in. It's all to do with how
40:23
Speaker 3: humans are working together. There could be issues, They're not clear,
40:26
Speaker 3: there could be they're misaligned, they're not having honest conversations.
40:30
Speaker 3: There could be those issues, And by really focusing on that,
40:34
Speaker 3: you can start to see how the potential your people
40:38
Speaker 3: and teams have can be improved from where they are today.
40:41
Speaker 2: Part five of the book is really the self help part.
40:44
Speaker 2: It's condensing down what you call must do diagnostics, playbooks,
40:50
Speaker 2: must do toolboxes. Tell us about some of these tools,
40:52
Speaker 2: where they've come from, and how they might be useful
40:55
Speaker 2: to people who are dealing with change, with the need
40:59
Speaker 2: for alignment and having those hard conversations.
41:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, the tools, they're all tools that I've been taught
41:09
Speaker 3: very little of It is something that I've sort of invented.
41:12
Speaker 3: It's just the tools that good HR leaders. You know,
41:15
Speaker 3: my brother's been influence and some of the stuff that
41:17
Speaker 3: I do with the work he does, and a whole
41:20
Speaker 3: bunch of reading as well as well. I'm a big
41:25
Speaker 3: reader on a lot of this domain, so I've taken
41:28
Speaker 3: those tools and made it really easy for what you
41:32
Speaker 3: do is you go to that part of the book
41:33
Speaker 3: and you say, here's a list of challenges you might
41:36
Speaker 3: be facing. Here is what I would do in your situation,
41:39
Speaker 3: and these are the steps.
41:40
Speaker 4: You need to take.
41:41
Speaker 3: And it was really important for me to add that
41:44
Speaker 3: into the book because the why and the white Yeah,
41:47
Speaker 3: we get that.
41:47
Speaker 4: It's the how how do I do that?
41:49
Speaker 3: How do I have a hard conversation with someone who's
41:51
Speaker 3: not performing. How do I get my team aligned when
41:55
Speaker 3: we're not on the same page. How do I look
41:59
Speaker 3: at my product organization and work out how I've got
42:03
Speaker 3: them focused on delivering the right outcomes for the business.
42:07
Speaker 3: Those are the things that are the biggest challenges I've faced,
42:11
Speaker 3: and I've put in there the tools and the steps
42:14
Speaker 3: I've taken and learned to take that help along the way.
42:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're all laid out there. That's incredibly useful
42:21
Speaker 2: part of the book, along with those anecdotes that bring
42:24
Speaker 2: them to life. How you use those tools. Just finally
42:27
Speaker 2: interested to know what the future holds for you. You're
42:29
Speaker 2: here in Wellington, You obviously love Wellington. Your sort of
42:32
Speaker 2: roots are really in the Sydney area. But you're still
42:35
Speaker 2: here intrigued to know what you take of sort of
42:38
Speaker 2: what is going on in this city at the moment,
42:42
Speaker 2: A city grappling like a lot in this country, a
42:44
Speaker 2: lot of other cities with change, not enough money, huge
42:47
Speaker 2: infrastructure issues. You've got a lot of people who aren't
42:51
Speaker 2: necessarily in alignment on our councilor you've got a mayor
42:54
Speaker 2: trained to wrangle all of these all of these people,
42:58
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you how do you navigate this?
43:00
Speaker 2: What are some of the tools that they should be
43:02
Speaker 2: using to try and get through this intact?
43:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, Look, that example and many others are examples of
43:10
Speaker 3: how challenging chanin is. Change is, particularly at scale. And
43:14
Speaker 3: I think again, it's not easy, so and it's never perfect.
43:20
Speaker 3: It's never changed. Big significant change never happens without upsetting people,
43:25
Speaker 3: you know, and having to do things that you don't
43:29
Speaker 3: necessarily enjoy. I mean, that's why if your conversations and
43:32
Speaker 3: hard choices are avoided because we don't want to hurt people,
43:35
Speaker 3: We don't want to be the bad.
43:37
Speaker 4: Guy or girl whatever. But you know, it.
43:42
Speaker 3: Comes down in my view, to making sure you don't
43:45
Speaker 3: make the mistake of moving too fast.
43:48
Speaker 4: Into what we need to do.
43:51
Speaker 3: Before you've talked about why and how. You know, why
43:57
Speaker 3: is change needed. You've got to get agreement on that first,
44:02
Speaker 3: and then how is change going to happen.
44:04
Speaker 4: It's almost like.
44:06
Speaker 3: Laying out the map for how we're going to get
44:08
Speaker 3: to the right actions before we actually try.
44:12
Speaker 4: And throw ideas around.
44:14
Speaker 3: I was sitting in a meeting a few years back
44:17
Speaker 3: with a bunch of high profile business, government and other
44:20
Speaker 3: leaders talking about tax reform in Australia and the workshop
44:26
Speaker 3: was come up with your thoughts on this, And as
44:29
Speaker 3: soon as we started the conversation, people were throwing out suggestions.
44:32
Speaker 3: You know, raised GSD cut GESD raised my medicare levy
44:36
Speaker 3: and there was all these ideas and when it came
44:39
Speaker 3: to me, I said, hang on a minute, before we
44:40
Speaker 3: get into what we want to do here, why do
44:42
Speaker 3: we need it? Are we clear and how are we
44:45
Speaker 3: going to get it? What's the process for getting reformed
44:47
Speaker 3: to happen? So I would encourage and this is no
44:51
Speaker 3: simple answer. There isn't one anyone, whether it's here in
44:55
Speaker 3: Wellington or anywhere in the world that's working on a
44:57
Speaker 3: complex change initiative.
44:59
Speaker 4: To spend more time.
45:00
Speaker 3: On the why and the how than they're inclined to,
45:03
Speaker 3: because we naturally want to get to the what are
45:05
Speaker 3: we going to do? Too fast and without the foundations,
45:10
Speaker 3: it's going to be one person's opinion and judgment versus
45:14
Speaker 3: the other, not grounded on something we collectively agree on.
45:19
Speaker 2: So what's next for you? You've been a non executive
45:23
Speaker 2: director on a number of boards Medibank, Fletcher Building, Challenging
45:27
Speaker 2: One as well. David Jones going through a huge change too.
45:31
Speaker 2: Do you have another big CEO role and are you
45:34
Speaker 2: moving more into this sort of directorships and mentoring and
45:39
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff.
45:40
Speaker 4: Yeh.
45:40
Speaker 3: Look at this stage, Peter, I'm focused on something that
45:44
Speaker 3: I love doing, which is teaching and helping others with
45:49
Speaker 3: their challenges around change and leading their organizations and teams.
45:54
Speaker 3: So the book's a big focus getting the message out
45:57
Speaker 3: and hopefully helping people by, you know, in a sense,
46:02
Speaker 3: providing something that is the most positive feedback I.
46:06
Speaker 4: Could get is that the book is useful. The people are.
46:09
Speaker 3: Using it, going back to it as a handbook and
46:11
Speaker 3: referring to sections of the book when they face different challenges,
46:15
Speaker 3: and then speaking and providing whatever help I can. The
46:21
Speaker 3: thing I'm most passionate about is seeing the quality of
46:24
Speaker 3: leaders of people in our workplaces improve, because that will
46:28
Speaker 3: improve the work life of people every day, which has
46:33
Speaker 3: downstream effects on happier households, greater well being. And the
46:38
Speaker 3: people leadership role is so important to so many aspects
46:43
Speaker 3: of what goes on in our economy and in every
46:48
Speaker 3: aspect of it that you know, it's just an area
46:51
Speaker 3: where I want to shine a light on it, and
46:52
Speaker 3: so we need to get invest more in developing our
46:55
Speaker 3: people leaders to be the best they can be.
46:58
Speaker 2: Well, it's an incredibly useful book. I've already found parts
47:01
Speaker 2: of it that resonate with me in which I will use,
47:03
Speaker 2: So thanks for that. We'll put links to exactly where
47:06
Speaker 2: you can find it. Thanks so much, it's been great
47:09
Speaker 2: to meet you. Thanks for coming on. Good luck for
47:11
Speaker 2: what's ahead for you.
47:13
Speaker 4: Thanks Peter, really appreciate you having me.
47:18
Speaker 2: So Ben Steve Vamos all those companies he's worked for
47:23
Speaker 2: faced massive disruption Apple in the mid nineties and crisis
47:27
Speaker 2: IBM coming out of the nineteen eighties, the mainframe Kings
47:31
Speaker 2: and not really transition into the PC world particularly well
47:35
Speaker 2: nine MSN you know, a media company on the back
47:39
Speaker 2: of the dot com crash, trying to monetize their content
47:44
Speaker 2: in a very challenging world with Google and Facebook eating
47:48
Speaker 2: their lunch.
47:49
Speaker 1: Glad we thort of that issue out, so he's.
47:54
Speaker 2: Sort of seen it all probably, you know. The key
47:58
Speaker 2: thing that reason with me is what he calls in there,
48:02
Speaker 2: this mindset shift that you need to go through in
48:06
Speaker 2: his opinion, from control freak to connector and enabler. And
48:10
Speaker 2: it's clear from you know, his philosophy to management is
48:16
Speaker 2: very much not be from the top, this is how
48:19
Speaker 2: it will be done. Sure, you maybe need to do
48:23
Speaker 2: that as a CEO, make the hard calls and have
48:25
Speaker 2: the hard conversations, but very much about how do you
48:29
Speaker 2: create this alignment? How do you bring four and a
48:31
Speaker 2: half thousand people, for instance, at zero along with you?
48:34
Speaker 2: And that autocratic, top down approach isn't going to cut
48:38
Speaker 2: it anymore, particularly with the modern millennial workforce, that they're
48:42
Speaker 2: not going to buy into that sort of change. And
48:44
Speaker 2: it's you know a lot of the CEOs we talk to,
48:48
Speaker 2: they sort of spout this sort of mantra, but living it,
48:52
Speaker 2: when it comes down to it, is really difficult. So
48:54
Speaker 2: how do you actually live this on a day to
48:57
Speaker 2: day basis, And it comes down to things like being
49:00
Speaker 2: willing to listen, to go into a meeting and ask
49:03
Speaker 2: for feedback about your performance, which is the sort of
49:06
Speaker 2: things that Steve has been doing through his career, and
49:11
Speaker 2: having empathy for people in the organization who are going
49:14
Speaker 2: through that massive change. If you can't demonstrate that you
49:17
Speaker 2: truly have that empathy for them, they're not going to
49:20
Speaker 2: buy into the massive change that you want to go through.
49:24
Speaker 1: It's crazy, isn't it. Who would have thought two way
49:26
Speaker 1: communication is the key to good relationships?
49:30
Speaker 4: You know.
49:31
Speaker 1: I mean, maybe it's maybe it's the millennial in me,
49:34
Speaker 1: but that's just something that I've heard many many times
49:37
Speaker 1: growing up, you know, particularly around making personal relationships work.
49:41
Speaker 1: But I think we're starting to realize that. And maybe
49:44
Speaker 1: it's because we've had that message so often that now
49:47
Speaker 1: the modern workforce expects it in the workplace too, And
49:50
Speaker 1: workplaces are expecting more of people as we go on
49:53
Speaker 1: in life, and so if you want to get more
49:55
Speaker 1: out of them, then you need to treat them like
49:56
Speaker 1: human beings and not like cogs in a machine.
49:59
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you look at all of our institutions at
50:02
Speaker 2: the moment, and they're all grappling with this. Look at
50:05
Speaker 2: the health sector, you know you've got massive change budget cuts,
50:09
Speaker 2: scrapping most of their digital and data division at the moment,
50:13
Speaker 2: so you'll have a lot of people in there and
50:15
Speaker 2: a lot of critics saying this is the wrong direction
50:18
Speaker 2: to go in. How are you ever going to get
50:20
Speaker 2: people on board with this sort of change. So that's
50:22
Speaker 2: the I think where the rubber hits the row. To
50:24
Speaker 2: Steve puts it as the difficult conversations and you have
50:28
Speaker 2: to push through change and you have to be a
50:30
Speaker 2: change agent. It's an unsustainable position to have, you know,
50:36
Speaker 2: big budget losses and that sort of thing, be blowing
50:40
Speaker 2: the budget. But how do you bring all the people
50:42
Speaker 2: along so that the future for the organization is going
50:45
Speaker 2: to retain all of that talent really difficult, and every
50:47
Speaker 2: organization around the world, we've got so many of them
50:50
Speaker 2: in New Zealand at the moment that are really in
50:53
Speaker 2: the midst of that, and frankly a lot of them
50:55
Speaker 2: not grappling with it very well. We do have these charismatic,
50:58
Speaker 2: visionary leaders who are quite brutal about pushing change through.
51:05
Speaker 2: But I think what Steve is basically saying is when
51:08
Speaker 2: you have someone who is incredibly visionary and has You
51:12
Speaker 2: have to have a real strong vision of where the
51:15
Speaker 2: organization needs to go. But that alone is not enough,
51:19
Speaker 2: as we're seeing with some of these sort of tech
51:22
Speaker 2: leaders who push through massive change. How sustainable is that?
51:27
Speaker 2: And I think we're seeing wheels come off a little
51:29
Speaker 2: bit in Elon Musk's Empire, is that people are jumping
51:34
Speaker 2: off that train that he is driving because they've just
51:38
Speaker 2: had enough. So how sustainable is your approach as a
51:42
Speaker 2: change agent? Are you just burning people up and casting
51:45
Speaker 2: them aside in order to achieve your big vision? Eventually
51:52
Speaker 2: you're going to end up alone. Yeah?
51:55
Speaker 1: All right, Well that's it for this week and we've
51:58
Speaker 1: only got two episodes to gooh for twenty twenty four.
52:02
Speaker 2: Thanks so much to Steve Vamos's book Through Shifts and Shocks,
52:06
Speaker 2: Lessons from the Frontline of Technology and Changes, out now
52:09
Speaker 2: from publisher Wiley, in bookstores and on Amazon. We'll put
52:12
Speaker 2: a link to where you can find it.
52:13
Speaker 1: That's it for this week. Only two episodes to go
52:16
Speaker 1: for twenty twenty.
52:16
Speaker 2: Four, and next week is a real goodie. We catch
52:19
Speaker 2: up with some of the country's best journalists who've covered
52:22
Speaker 2: a year of major change in all things tech to
52:25
Speaker 2: get their highlights from twenty twenty four and what to
52:27
Speaker 2: expect next year. It'll be packed with useful insights.
52:31
Speaker 1: Show notes for the business of tech in the podcast
52:33
Speaker 1: section of Business Desk dot co dot z, where you
52:36
Speaker 1: can stream this podcast in full every week. It's also
52:39
Speaker 1: available from iHeartRadio or on your podcast platform off Joyce.
52:43
Speaker 2: Get in touch with your feedback and we'd love to
52:45
Speaker 2: hear your suggestions for upcoming guests. To email Ben benat
52:49
Speaker 2: Business deesk dot co dot nz.
52:52
Speaker 1: You can also find us on LinkedIn, port blue Sky.
52:55
Speaker 2: Another episode coming your way next Thursday, so then have
52:59
Speaker 2: a great week
53:02
Speaker 4: You don't have a boot