Podcast Transcript

[00:01:55] Sean Steele: Welcome back to our regular listeners and to anyone joining us for the first time, we are thrilled to have you. My guest this week is Kerryn Fewster, Founder and Director of Change2020, Organisational Change in People and Culture Consultancy, Established 18 years ago. Is that right, Kerryn?

[00:02:10] Kerryn Fewster: That's right. I know we had our 18th birthday this year.

[00:02:13] Sean Steele: Oh, wow, that's amazing. That's the age of my son, so yeah, I know how long a period that feels like. And so you guys, you partner with Founders and CEOs and their leadership teams providing expertise, advice and support around change and transformation, leadership, culture and M&A mostly. I'm sure you do many other things given the breadth of what that actually means. Is that a fair, sort of high-level summary?

[00:02:36] Kerryn Fewster: Yeah, that's a pretty good summary. Absolutely.

[00:02:40] Sean Steele: Beautiful. Well, Kerryn, it's great to have you here today. For those of you who are listening and heard, episode 84 with John Knight, Founder of businessDepot. I asked John, who he knew after our interview that specialised in how to build high performing cultures, what's ahead of you feels really sort of uncertain, and he mentioned you. And so that was really the context for our chat today is, you know, we've got this rate of change that's increasing, I don't know if it always really feels like that because you only have the context of yesterday, but for those of us who've been around a little while longer, maybe the rate of change feels like it's faster. The level of uncertainty feels like it's increasing. And in that environment, not only do you have to engage people at a hearts and minds level to come on that journey of sort of uncertainty with you as it folds. But I'm curious as to how you think about helping leaders elevate their cultures into one that's actually high performing, and flipping the challenge to an opportunity, so they're not kind of surviving uncertainty, waiting for it to go away with their head in the sand, if you like, and just trying to hunker down and stay safe, but actually finding a way to rally the best of people to help them co navigate it. That's really what today is all about. Are you happy with that as a kind of focus for us today?

[00:03:49] Kerryn Fewster: Sounds good. I'm keen to hear your questions and chat about that. Because obviously, as you rightly say, that is the area that we operate in on a daily basis. So, lots of learning, lots of insights.

[00:04:00] Sean Steele: Well, Kerryn, what led you to, I mean, that's almost 20 years now. What led you to kind of dedicating your professional career to working on these kinds of problems?

[00:04:08] Kerryn Fewster: Yeah, so I thought, that I really liked human resources work, and I found out that not only did I not really enjoy it, I really wasn't very good at it because it's really lots of rules, lots of structure, lots of policy, lots of process. And whilst I think that's all important, one of my major challenges with that was that just because you issue a policy or tell somebody we're doing it this way, it doesn't mean we do it. It doesn't mean we like it. And so often we're not even consulting or asking the people who are impacted by it. So, when I started out in change, I don't even think or recall there being a title of change manager or we knew about stakeholder engagement, we knew about communication, but the idea of really specialising in change was relatively new. Gosh, that makes me sound ancient, but it was relatively new as a concept. And so we were involved and I say we, because originally, when I founded Change2020 with three other directors at the time. And one exited relatively rapidly when he worked out that being a Founder of a new business resulted in zero income, essentially, so he couldn't take a full-time contract and also help build a business that didn't work that way. Our second director, he exited after about seven years. He just different choices and moved into state. Then my third, exited probably about the 10-year mark when, you know, it was probably at the back of the GFC, and again just changes and it was a little bit too, it was just time. And so when we founded that organisation, we were originally working with some very, very big infrastructure projects or energy projects and they needed to engage the people. So that's how we kind of kicked off the idea of working closer with engaging the people and bring them along on this change event, journey, disaster, whatever it might have been. And from there it's really evolved much more into that, working with the leaders and the executive teams now to optimise their performance and their cultures in this environment.

[00:06:20] Sean Steele: Yeah. Okay. Well, it certainly feels like it's grown up as a profession, if you like, you know, and as you said, and I'm very much of the…I've had the opportunity to work with some really incredible people, leaders who absolutely had a big disdain for actually just the sort of the old model of HR where it was really just a kind of service model, as you said, like very policy and process and reactive as opposed to actually like a strategic part of the business with the right seat at the table to help shape the future of an organisation and actually, with a big responsibility for shaping what performance looks like and what success looks like and so on. Can you maybe share, just to give us, I mean given this kind of topic around uncertainty, can you give me a sense of maybe a story from your past, you know, a client that you've worked with, or a company that you think has done a great job in successfully navigating like a really challenging period of uncertainty and drawing out like what some of the key steps were that helped them build or maintain a high performing culture during a really difficult period of uncertainty?

[00:07:24] Kerryn Fewster: Yeah, sure. And there's multiple clients that come to mind. And even though we feel like we're through the crisis of the pandemic, it still has roll-on impacts from there. And so, it is useful just to be able to call on the response time, what people do during that particular period. But one client does come to mind in the finance sector, and you know, in terms of FTEs, they're probably around 200 to 300. So not an enormous organisation, but like the rest of the world were very decisive, very, very rapidly. They weren't sitting around and waiting for what's going to be the next wave of information. Instead, they decided to be quite proactive and take the lead. I think what they did do really particularly well was they engaged people as the person. So, for example, which part of Brisbane do you live in, so we can make sure we create a little hub of contact for you there in, perhaps, where we can go for walks together, and things like that. So, they were very big on the connection element. So, they found out about where do you live, what's it going to be your environment when you are working from a home location. They ensure that those, they thought that it may not be as feasible to work from home whether they've got half a dozen kids under the age of eight or something, and they're juggling everything. And they reset expectations around what good was going to look like for their organisation and that performance, for not forever, but for a finite period of time. They were quite explicit about that. They also doubled down, tripled down on communication. So, the CEO was doing Vlogs. We had, and I say we, because we were working alongside with them, we would continually have short videos on resilience; how to set up your home office, here's a fact sheet on what Sunshine does for you if you can get outside. Little things like that. And they do seem very little, but I think, Sean, that it demonstrated connection and care the whole way through. And so, they were able to make sure that the people who they would typically engage with on a day-to-day basis through the office environment, that to the best of their ability, they continue to connect with them. So, they make quick decisions, they reset standards of productivity just because it was such a foreign environment and we didn't know what good was going to look like. They absolutely, to the point of the danger of overcommunication, which I think is a fallacy, I don't think you can possibly over communicate, the connection of people in their local environments I think was a really important one as well. And the other thing I would say that the leadership team came out and said, we're not sure either. I kind of don't know about men who did know. And so being able to being really open and honest around the fact that we were in such an uncertain place and everyone was learning, but somehow, we are going to get through this, I think, was really quite critical from that perspective.

[00:10:35] Sean Steele: Yeah, the vulnerability really builds trust, doesn't it? And so do you feel like that was already a culture that they had and like, did they have a close and connective culture and these were things that helped to maintain that in a period of uncertainty where people were really being affected by an UNC period? Or do you feel like it was, some of that care maybe wasn't there or wasn't as present and actually this built culture actually improved it during the period? Like what's your perspective on that?

[00:11:03] Kerryn Fewster: It's the latter. And, you know, I really like that question because, you know, as I said, they're in the finance sector. So, the fallout from the finance and Banking Royal Commission, which, you know, there were, every league was being lifted up in terms of performance in that particular industry, pre the pandemic, and it's a highly competitive industry. There was pressure, there was stress. There were very, very long hours. There were quite a few challenges, and you know, the culture was certainly not broken, but in terms of that care and connectivity, because we've been working alongside them for a little while, it was nowhere near as evident as at that absolute height of uncertainty in those very, you know, from the March 2020 through to probably here in Queensland where I know we were somewhat more blessed than other parts of Australia and the world. But, you know, for those first two to three months, I would say that… and you know, we tested it through pulse surveys engagement level was extraordinary because people were so grateful to be recognised as that individual. Or you now know that I live in Barden for example, and I've got four kids and I can't do this with the school run and et cetera. And that's level of openness as well, it wasn't even necessarily part of a conversation unless that was like your close friendship circle at work, but suddenly it became an important insight to make sure that people were okay. So, I would say that it actually improved the culture.

[00:12:36] Sean Steele: And so, what about now? Like, it's obviously of course, dangerous to say, like, we're on the other side of Covid, like who the hell knows, right? But the reality is it's not front page of the news every day. People aren't scared for their lives anymore, like things, a lot of things are normalised and there's a new normal that's obviously still kind of evolving, but it's happening. Are those, do you think they've been able to retain that level of connectiveness? Like yeah, that work that they did sounds like it's really helped and transition through a really high period of uncertainty and create the best possible culture they could in an uncertain environment. What I hear in that is a deep level of care, a deep level of personalised thoughtfulness and a really honest and vulnerable approach as leaders, which doesn't mean you're crying on the phone to them every day, but kind of saying; ‘Hey, we haven't dealt with this before. We'll do it together and we'll have to figure it out together.’ Like that sort of collective nature. What about now? So, let's assume that we're maybe a couple years on the other side of that. Have they been able to retain that? Did it give them a platform where they've been able to build a, let's call it a high performing culture as opposed to just a connected culture? Because there's, I don't know how strong is the link between that and what you consider the elements of a high performing culture, if that makes sense? Like what's happened since, talk to me about that.

[00:13:53] Kerryn Fewster: Look, I would say there's elements of it. What I would say at the employee base that closeness and connection and care is, still really quite strong. Interestingly, and it's certainly not only this client I'm referring to, but you know, you look at the moment where CEOs are directing people back five days a week, and these organisations, I've got not exactly the same mindset, but awfully similar and that in itself is, I'm so, so curious about watching how this unfolds. So, I have my own personal view about whether that's the right thing or a challenging thing

[00:14:33] Sean Steele: Can you please share that, Kerryn, because I mean, it is a conversation that I have every week with different Founders and in our communities because it seems like the people who've gone… You know, if I just write a couple of my observations from that period where everyone was sort of forced to go fully remote and most people have gone back to some kind of a hybrid model or stayed fully remote, there's probably not as many that have gone all the way back to a full face-to-face model, but let's stay with the, when everyone was forced to go remote, that point in time, the vast majority of people already had those people in place who already had connections with other team members who already had some sense of bond, unity and whatever. And what I had noticed was, many people found it very difficult to bring on board new team members in a remote-only workforce. But it seems like the people who really doubled down and went; we're going remote only, this is never coming back, we're never bringing you back to the office, and we're therefore going to master what it takes to build culture with full remote, seem to be carrying on and doing pretty well and doing so. No, clearly not all of them, but many. And the ones who've maybe had a model where it was really difficult to be hybrid or remote have kind of rushed back to face-to-face and whether it's totally face-to-face, probably finding it a little bit easier to manage, but hybrid, this sort of massive continuum of what does actually hybrid mean and how do we make it work, seems to be so difficult because it's so hard to please everybody. You know, you're trying to find the right balance for what do my customers need, what do my people need, what do they want, how do I make that shift? What do you think, maybe there's probably no ideal model, right? Because I assume it sort of suits the business, but what are your perspectives on what works in that, what seems to be working, what you think will sort of happen in the future? How do people succeed in navigating this new hybrid model?

[00:16:19] Kerryn Fewster: Sure. It's hard, isn't it? Look, firstly, I don't think that the role of any leader is to please everybody. That's the no win game. So, firstly park that because you won't succeed and you'll be destined to fail and feel poorly about yourself. So, don't worry about that one. For me, it's 2023 and I believe that we are just going to continue to see, not necessarily, and hopefully not a pandemic, but look, our world is not settling, it doesn't settle down in any way, shape or form. You know, we're still recovering like the, those who are in the supply chain industry, they're still in times of trying to recover from, obviously the lack of the challenge with importing and exporting, et cetera. Obviously, the turbulence globally has a significant impact because we're a small world now, and I think that the idea of saying we are either all in or all out, or only hybrid, is problematic because there's talent everywhere. There are impacts everywhere. There are opportunities everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I'm talking globally. There are so many fabulous stories of organisations who are paying the most crazy amount of rent to have a beautiful office and maybe a river or an ocean view or a mountain view. However, you only could really attract the people within your, maybe 30K radius. For me, that's just mind blowing. Like in my small organisation, we have a team member based down on Sorento down, Victoria. She worked with us for two years before I physically met her, and now she's been with us for three and a half years. I think I've met her face to face three times, which works for everyone. I mean, I'd love to see her more, but what I'm saying is that that should not be a barrier. So, I think the organisations that are ordering back, that for me, I think will not serve them well into the long term. Having said that, I'm an absolute advocate for connection. We're so much better when we know where we belong somewhere, and human connection is imperative. So, I think it's really important that leaders are looking for how am I bringing my people together? Face-to-face is absolutely ideal. But when we can't do that, how are we having this sort of conversation where I really do feel like I'm being valued, where I'm being listened to, where I can have a tough conversation where you can call me out on my performance, where we can have the feedback. I think unless we learn that skill and learn to get comfortable with it. We're probably going to miss out on massive opportunity because there is no way that all the talent for your organisation sits within your 30K radius of where your office is. And there's great opportunity to be gained from actually saying that our whole approach to work is to find where the talent is and make that work for us. It's a new way of leading and it's a tricky way to lead because that's not how we've grown up. But at the same time, if you think about a leader now who, just a side story. Interestingly, we've been in a research project with Queensland University of Technology for about five or six years now into why some people can tolerate ambiguity more readily in a workplace than others. So, we started that work, that research before the pandemic. But the data tells us that those who are most tolerant of ambiguity in terms of generations, people think it's the millennials, it's actually the baby boomers. And the reason for that, if you think about when a baby boomer started work, when that might have been, I guess I'm thinking maybe the seventies, then they started with a briefcase, probably a pocket protector and a pen and a little notebook. And when they're retired or if they're on the fringe of retirement, if they're retiring with devices, you know, one on their wrist, one in their pocket, their laptops at home and they've gone from centralisation, decentralisation, you know, in terms of all the structures, self-led teams, everything that you could think of that they've gone through. So, we adapt much more readily than we think we do. Now, we are creatures of habit, so we do like it and say, I am the leader. I can see my people in their office. I know where they are, and I know how to contact them. That's easier and that's how we've been brought up. And we are creatures of habit, but absolutely we can adapt and change. We're quite amazing at it actually, but our minds don't remind us of that very often because we are more comfortable doing what we've always known.

[00:21:16] Sean Steele: It's definitely not an easy one to navigate, but one of the things that I draw out of what you said is, this sort of obligation for leaders to remember that, people are human and they're tribal and they need to feel connected to stuff. So, whether they're sitting beside you in the office and yes, you know, there's a whole bunch of things that you miss out on that almost learning by osmosis. You're hearing other people over the phone in a conversation they're having and then it follows on somewhere else and so on. And so, whilst we don't have a fully functioning metaverse or where those things can still happen in a new virtual model, yes, we might lose some of those things. But on the flip side, I think if you can, you just have to work a lot harder, don't you, to figure out how to ensure that people remain connected. All the other principles still remain the same. People need to feel connected. They need to enjoy their work. They have to be clear about what success looks like. They have to feel like they're enabled and empowered to achieve success. They need to have some level of autonomy and agency over how they get things done and so on and so on. Like I don't think those things have changed, but it adds a new layer of complexity for organisations to figure out. Can I switch… Kerryn, I'm interested in your perspective if we kind of switch out of uncertainty into the context of high performing culture. I'm assuming that's something that you work on with your clients. Do you have a framework for that? Do you have steps for that? Like what are the kind of key ingredients where you go, these are the five or the seven or the eight things that you think are the most important ingredients to actually build not just a… and I want to preface this because I've seen cultures that feel great, at least for a period of time. Like have everybody feels very cared for and there's lots of love and you know, we love you and you know everything's going to be fine and we look after you and all the rest. But actually, there's no context of performance. People are not held to account. People are not clear about what success looks like for the organisation, for themselves. They don't get to feel they'd be proud of their work because it's not about that, it's about feeling cared for. It's not actually about performing and feeling the pride that comes with actually being part of a high performing team or culture. So, what are the things that you think that make up a high performing culture?

[00:23:20] Kerryn Fewster: I love that question. I feel immersed in that space at the moment. Fundamentally and without doubt and every single day, it must start with trust, and vulnerability based trust. Not just, I trust that you are going to turn up to that meeting on time. But, I trust that you're going to put your hand up early when you say, I'm stuck, or I don don’t know the answer, or I'm worried I won't be able to deliver. So, it’s that real trust where I don't feel there'll be such a severe consequence if I fail, or if my commitment I made, I was not able to meet it and I've got a reason for it. So, it has to, must up with trust. But you are mentioning around, you know, you've seen caring, loving, kind, cultures, but necessarily are we clear on what the outcome is. More recently, I've been working with a couple of different businesses where there's an abundance of love and kindness. And one in particular, I've started to help them realise that their politeness is actually a disease because they're not having robust conversations. They're having safe conversations and they're trying to hint and maybe, and have you thought about, like really gently.

[00:24:38] Sean Steele: Clues and infer.

[00:24:41] Kerryn Fewster: Absolutely. Can you hear my hint? But empathy, kindness, love, that is not an opposite to productivity, outcome, results. Absolutely not. And actual fact, they go hand in glove. I talked to leaders about, you know, what is your responsibility… particularly if they're a parent, it's easy to be able to draw them to say, when your 16 or 17 year old is probably with the crowd that you are not sure is going to be okay, or they start to want to go out and drive in a car, or whatever it might be, if generally speaking, hopefully you response to; you cannot, or here's your guidelines, or this is how it's really going to work in our family, comes from a position of love, care, and kindness. But the outcome is that they're very clear on what is okay and what is not okay, what the results are expected from this outing. And so, it's quite easy to flip that because I will do that every single time. So, what is it then that's preventing you from having a conversation with your peers if you love them and if you are caring and you are kind, it's because it's uncomfortable for us. So, for as long as we prioritise our comfort to say; oh, I just really don't want to have that difficult conversation. I think that's a disservice, particularly as the leader. You can provide tough feedback, constructive feedback, conflict we know is necessary in an organisation to get a better outcome, otherwise, we are going to be passive and hopeful. And particularly like if you're a Founder, that's maybe going to get you to a place of niceness. But is that going to get you maybe to where your ambition is and the likelihood of that is no. So, I think that at the, in the high-performance teams, the foundation must be trust, then there's got to be a preparedness to have the tough conversations. I would also put in there, and we do work in this space, that ability to adapt. You must be able to adapt. Don't be too wedded to your plan because the world is not going to be tolerant of you being too wedded to your plan. You have to be able to move in that space. So, you know, that preparedness to adapt and it really embrace the uncertainty, obviously communication. You just can't get that one wrong. And you must, as I said earlier, double down on that, the accountability you've mentioned. So more recently, we've been really focusing on helping organisations understand, and it's not new, but it slips that difference between accountability and responsibility. And that if you are accountable, your role is to ensure that task, that project is delivered. Now, if the people below you have not delivered that, and I'm the CEO, I'm coming to you, because you are the accountable person, and I'm not going to encourage you to look and blame and point fingers at your team members. I'm only talking to you about it because you are the accountable person. So, what have you been doing to build the capability below you or the clarity around expectations, et cetera. And I think that, the whole area of blame needs to be almost, you know, let's leave that in the playground, we're adults here, take some responsibility, be the accountable person, have that difficult conversation. And look, I'm not saying it's easy. Absolutely not. But you can. They're not inversely related. Output and productivity is not a disconnect from love, kindness, care, compassion, tolerance at all. They, in actual fact, I think in the modern world, that they are a necessary partnership.

[00:28:28] Sean Steele: Yeah, I love that. And you know one of the things I'm really reflecting on whilst you're talking about that, is the conversation that I had with Amy from Radical Candor and we unpacked that framework and just that beautiful simple diagram for leaders to years to go. This is actually, you know, the perfect blend between caring deeply and challenging directly. Like you can do both at the same time. It's not one or the other, as you said. It's actually about doing both in the same reason that with my, it's sort of Chief People Officer in the last several companies and all the subsidiaries that we had, we always called out our “HR function”, if you want to put it in inverted commas, and I'm doing air quotes because I'd never have called our function HR, it's always been called People and Performance to ensure that people get the context that like performance is okay, performance is to be expected. Actually, that's the kind of environment everybody wants to be in. And what you lose good people over is by allowing these just niceties and like poor performance from people, you know, that absolutely pisses off high performers like nothing else. You know, if they're looking around going, I'm carrying people here, and they're not having their failings addressed in any way, no one's being held to account, that's not a place I want to be. People want to feel proud of what they want to do, then therefore they've got to be in an environment that does perform, and therefore you do have to have those things in place. Okay.

[00:29:53] Kerryn Fewster: Most definitely.

[00:29:56] Sean Steele: Sometimes, if we… And one of the other things I would reflect on in what you said is that, in a period of uncertainty, all of those things can still be possible. So, you might be redefining what success looks like and actually maybe having to redefine it a bit more regularly. You're having, you mentioned the ability to adapt. And so, for example, we always, with all of our ScaleHQ clients, we always set three year strategy, but it's reviewed every year because the world changes and you only set 90 day plans as your execution rhythm because the world changes, and so you have to be willing to adapt. But so, what I'm hearing from you is actually, in a period of uncertainty that becomes even more… so, it's about as you're adapting, you might be resetting what success looks like, recognising that you may have to do that again, and that's okay. It's actually about having clarity for now, like as much clarity as we can create for now on what success looks like now. So, if people can feel successful, even if it changes, even if the environment changes, that's okay. That's also to be expected. It's not a failing of leadership, not to be able to have a crystal ball and know exactly what's going to happen and charge a way through it, it's actually about the ability to rally people as you charge your way through it.

[00:31:04] Kerryn Fewster: Oh, most certainly. I mean, so much of that is so right. If you are a leader who thinks you've got a crystal ball, you're kidding yourself, that's not the case and you're not demonstrating that you are a real human who goes, I'm not sure either. And you mentioned the word clarity, our almost like a motto is ‘Provide clarity over certainty.’ People want certainty. They crave it. Our brains crave it. There are so few things that you and I are certain about other than, you know, ideally the sun coming up and going down each day. And I ask people this question and it's around that focus on, what's in your control? Because they want, give me the answer, tell me what's going to happen. It's like, you tell me what's going to happen, you tell me absolutely what does the next three months look like? And I don't do that to be, I guess I do, do it to challenge their thinking because when their expectation is that a leader has a crystal ball, I can tell you absolutely. It's unfair and it's unreasonable. And at the same time, we have to let, from a cultural perspective, we need to make sure that we're building that level of, and it is a skill, like, how do I sit in this level of discomfort without wanting to throw my toys out of the cot? How can I equip myself? How do I keep myself informed? Am I being curious or I'm just waiting to be fed information and all the answers. That, as we move forward, for me, it's a fundamental skillset, whether you are a Peter and Turner, or a nurse or a CEO of a large organisation. If you cannot be prepared to adapt and find your own way to get some comfort for yourself, and that will be through asking great questions. So, general level of curiosity. Being brave enough to say, you know, I don't know yet. Or move into another area in a workplace to try and learn more. That whole concept of learning is, if you're not learning something new each week, and I mean that genuinely, that would concern me. And I don't mean that it has to be through obviously a degree or anything from a tertiary perspective. But if you haven't got that level of curiosity to ask; well, what if? Could we do it this way? Have we thought about…? And I mean that every employee at every level can have that capacity because we definitely know the leaders are not the owners of all great ideas, it doesn't flow up that way. And so, I think if, and I know I'm sort of jumping around, but I've come back to that high performance culture, having an organisation where every level, every role just has a bit of a mindset about I don't have certainty, what do I need to be clear about? How will I gather that clarity for myself? For some people it might be a week, and also how do I get myself comfortable with the fact that we don't have certainty? What might I be able to do? How can I alter my way of thinking because with the research that we have complained with or are still working with an ongoing partnership. But one of the main outcomes in terms of building your tolerance with discomfort and ambiguity, is they're all human skills. They're around mindfulness, creativity, courageousness, curiosity, assertiveness. There's focus, which is certainly those short term plans, but it certainly wasn't developed more Gantt charts, that's not going to be the solution moving forward. So, building those very human skills.

[00:34:45] Sean Steele: That's for sure.

[00:34:46] Kerryn Fewster: Yeah, exactly. So, building the human skills is critical.

[00:34:51] Sean Steele: Well, it feels like, what's interesting is, you know that humans need uncertainty as much as they need certainty, actually need and crave both. Like we don't love just routine boring things never change. Like we actually do need some uncertainty in our environments. There's almost a bit of a reframe there to go, actually this is great because we know there's going to be growth opportunities. It's going to require our creativity. But if people only have uncertainty, then not everybody handles that super well. So, you know, I guess there's an opportunity there to create certainty on the things that we can control or the things that we can focus on that we know in the absence of whatever changes they make sense for right now. And so that's a place where we can focus, knowing that actually the environment could change around us very rapidly. Like I imagine, let's take an example, if you are running a copywriting business, ChatGPT came along and all of a sudden in seven days, you're going, geez, we could be, you know, all of your team are going, I think we could all be replaced in the next three months. If you had a client who came to you with that problem, in that kind of environment where there was like a really clear technological disruption, people could be, and in reality, could be out of jobs. Like it's not just a sort of an assumption without any potential evidence, like it could be a reality. What are the first couple of steps that you encourage leaders to take when they realise there's some real uncertainty, it's probably valid for lots of different reasons, whatever it is. You know, there's a regulation change or compliance problem, or you know, whatever the problem is. How do you encourage people to think about the first steps they take when all of a sudden, they've got a whole bunch of people in their business who are very uncertain and nervous?

[00:36:36] Kerryn Fewster: Sure. So, I guess there's a few things. A very, this might sound quite simplistic, but the very first thing I'll encourage people to do is stop and take a deep breath and just calm themselves as much as they possibly can. As the leader, to equip yourself with as much information as you can, get your hands on immediately. Anything that's happening in your industry that's demonstrating how rapidly these disruptions coming along, and to create a narrative really rapidly about, what might this mean for us? So not what it does mean, what it might mean for us. Communicate, get out in front of it as soon as you possibly can. This is what we do know. This is what we don't know. This is what we think might happen, and this is when I'll let you know when we have a bit more information. So most certainly get the information you can, get on your front foot. And don't ever go out to try and say, it's okay, we've got this. Like no one saw ChatGPT coming at this pace that's come out. I mean, it is quite extraordinary. The other thing that we do, and I know it's a 30 plus year old term now VUCA, but it's just so relevant. So, you take a copywriting business, so they won't be the only one who are going; oh wow…

[00:37:52] Sean Steele: Just for those people who haven't heard, can you just explain what the acronym means?

[00:37:55] Kerryn Fewster: Sure. So, VUCA, is V for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. And it was born from a war back in the Middle East in the 80’s or 90’s. And it was because the enemy was creating such chaos for the US military because they weren't marching forward and behaving in the way that war typically had been battled. So, they were using lots of different techniques and tactics and continually outsmarting what was centuries of proven warfare. Now I know it's not a very positive conversation. But that term, VUCA - Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity was born out of there because they didn't know how to respond to it. So, if you look at ChatGPT, that throws organisations and not just copyright, like works in tertiary. You know that legal, there's so many areas at the moment that they're just going; goodness gracious, and it's essentially, what's it been, six or seven months since it's really come about. So, what we would often do with organisations and do, do we go, let's have a look at what VUCA means in this industry. How about if we flip all of that? What's the positive… if everyone else is reeling from the volatility, where's the possibility for us in this place? Because if they're all trying to bunker down and secure their clients and say, oh, that's no good. We're much better at our copywriting than ChatGPT could ever be, and we've got this personal relationship. The reality is that that might be a short-term solution, but it's probably not the forever solution. But if you were to flip over, all the elements of VUCA and look, where is the opportunity in the Volatility in the market for us? How might we be able to steer ourselves this way? How could we reposition our service offering or our connection with our clients and our employees? When we look at the uncertainty, how do we make that Uncertainty and that sense of chaos? How do we be the first to respond? How do we go faster? Because we know everyone else is probably still reeling from it. With the Complexity, complexity is a wonderful place for opportunity. It's well hidden. You've got to really be able to sit with it, but knowing that others might be getting caught up in knots around all the challenges associated with it, what's clear for you in this space, if you were to be the first to market or if you were to alter your offering slightly to the left because that looks clear for you? And the Ambiguity is as rapidly as possible, trying to find where can we cope with all the unknowns, what is known in the unknown, and move towards what are we going to control? So, turning that over into an opportunistic mindset as opposed to a fear, dread, and exhaustion mindset. And it's interesting. Sure. Like I see people's faces light up with it. We often use that sort of technique in a workshop or working one-on-one with leaders and just say, just take a moment, and it does take a moment, flip over, “What if” and start with that “Imagine if”, “How about”, you know, some sort of opening style question and you'll literally see their minds wandering, because you can see their eyes wandering around going; well, maybe, maybe. And it just helps because a positive mindset is much easier way to see the future than negative and being frightened because then we shut down and we closed down.

[00:41:38] Sean Steele: And I think that's absolutely bang on. And it reminds me a couple of clients that I've got that have just had major courage and taken the right approach of going; well, actually, I think my entire business model could get disrupted here. So, now I can either, sort of fight tooth and nail to sort of, somehow dig the business model into an even more, into a strong defensive position and hope that it doesn't end up disrupting me. Or, I can go; I can see an entirely new business model if I put my Founder hat back on in the way when I started this company. And go, hang on, there's a new business opportunity here. This is what other people are probably going to be doing. Maybe I need to get into that business so at least I'm learning about whether I'm going to compete, whether I'm going to have to completely change my business model, or whether it's going to be an adjunct, maybe my business model will die and maybe it will be reinvented. Well, you can either be one of the people who disrupts your own model, or you can wait to be disrupted and have a watch, a slow and failing death, like you can't be afraid of tackling, whatever that is. And you always get nervous, of course, because you immediately think of all the responsibility and all the salaries and all the families and everything that would be affected by it. But the reality is you've got to be able to move with that information and find your way through that. And I always think, what you can never promise people, as you said, is that it's going to be all right. You can't promise people what's going to happen and you can't promise people what decisions, you are going to have to make to ensure that you can protect the business and as many people in the business as possible. But what you can promise them is, that you'll be transparent and as soon as you've made decisions that you'll communicate those decisions. And then you'll always give people adult information so they can make good decisions for themselves, for their own families and their own futures. And you can always promise that as long as you honour it. And I think people really respect that. You know, I've had to take, you know, many companies through numerous very difficult periods where there's lots of redundancies and so on, or we just had to pull back costs because whatever, lots of things had changed, but they always really appreciate knowing that, you'll just get transparent information from us and it may not be information that you love, but you'll get to decide what to do with that information. We'll tell you what your options are and we will always try to protect, and number one job is to make sure this business survives, like that's number one priority. And so, we'll honour that in the way that we communicate with you.

[00:43:54] Kerryn Fewster: Most definitely. It's not easy, but I don't think you have a choice, and that is the courage.

[00:44:00] Sean Steele: Yeah. Your alternative is to put your head in the sand, hope it goes away, and you'll just start losing people, and your business becomes very disengaged and hard to reorient towards anything else. Kerryn, that's been super interesting. Can I ask, have you got any resources that you would highly recommend for leaders who want to learn more? You know, there's many Founders who listen to this podcast who, in reality have never led a business bigger than the one they're leading today. They haven't grown up as professional CEOs and then started a company. They have grown up with technical skill in a certain area and then started a company, and now they're just kind of making it up as they go. And many of them as a result of just having to hustle for years and years and years, haven't had the time to do much professional development, don't really know where to turn to level up their leadership because you know, I find that when you're in seven-figure business and it's going well until the point where you actually need other leaders involved, you can kind of like just get by with your charisma and telling them whatever and what to do, and then all of a sudden you actually have to flip into a leader and who knows how to lead leaders. And that is a different skillset if you've never done it before. Where would you direct them to? Books, resources, tools, courses, where would you point them if there was a couple of things that you think are really instructive?

[00:45:08] Kerryn Fewster: Sure. And I love that term, leaders of leaders. I think that and it's almost like, you wake up more in morning and go; oh goodness, I have to step up. I've got to now work at level, I can't be rolling my sleeves up every day. So, there's an abundance of information out there on the internet. I mean, to be perfectly honest. I listen to books and I love all those type of things, but TED Talks are extraordinary. There are so many great TED Talks out there. I think that McKinsey, that they're curious to me, I believe that they really stepped up their level of focus on leadership through the pandemic. In the past, you know, a lot of the documentation was around process and data, et cetera. They're probably, I mean, obviously they've got a monstrous reach, but their content, so I certainly subscribe to them. I find them really interesting. The work of Patrick Lencioni, that's been around for some time, but his podcast is so, so accessible. It's called “At the Table”, it's 30-minutes, and it's real short and sharp and relatively quick and you can listen to that. I think that the book that I recommend to nearly anyone who's wandering around is actually The Resilience Project. So yes, they have a podcast, but the book, The Resilience Project, which is fundamentally based on the ability to express gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness in all walks of life. And it's an Australian book, and it's so relevant to people, because the author is a Founder now of the business of, The Resilience Project, which is quite significantly in terms of its growth. So, you learn about what steps he went through, but again, there are those human areas that you really need to make sure you're paying attention to. A leader of leader needs to step away from focusing on task. They need to focus on how they're inspiring, influencing, and challenging their leaders. Not to be going, have you ticked this? Have you ticked that? So, we know how to do management 101. Stepping into that next level that those type of areas that I've mentioned, would be really, really useful. Certainly, there's information also out there around dealing with uncertainty. I mean, we've got some blogs on our website and things like that, that might exist as well. But I actually think that the recency of information that we can get through a TED Talk, through an HBR article, a McKinsey article, or as I say, you know, At the Table podcast, for example, adds the most value because they're often, well, they're so relevant to what we're experiencing right here, right now.

[00:47:54] Sean Steele: Right now. Okay. Yeah. And I think, a lot of Founders resonate with that because not many of them will take the time out to do a deep course, a really long course. And so, something that they can pick up that's super relevant right now, it's based on research they can apply immediately is often really valuable. Thank you so much for that, Kerryn. Look folks, I really hope you've enjoyed today's conversation with Kerryn. You know, if you are thinking about, one of the things I love about this conversation is, you know, we do a lot of work with Founders and strategy. We have a course called ScaleUps Roadmap that helps them build out a growth strategy and an execution plan. And the whole point of that is not getting wetted into some 150-page document that takes you forever to build because as Kerryn just highlighted, the world just changes way too rapidly. But you also need to ensure that even in periods of uncertainty, you are making some kind of forecast as to how you think you're going to build medium term competitive advantage. And when I say medium term, I'm only talking about three years. I'm not talking about 12 years or 15 years or 20 years. Like you still have to be making sure that you're doing important things, not just urgent things. Otherwise, you end up just operating during those environments and then all the things start affecting you because you're not actually carving a path through anything. And so, the idea is to make sure that you have a couple of really key focuses, maybe two or three big initiatives that have come out of robust thinking about strategy, and then you are reflecting on that. And those, if they need to change, then they need to change. But making sure you've got a little bit of clarity first. So, if anyone wants to learn more about how we teach Founders how to do that, you can go to ScaleUps Roadmap, just go to the ScaleHQ website (www.ScaleHQ.com.au) and click on courses. But before we wrap up. Kerryn, is there anything else that you would like to leave with our audience or any sort of questions you'd like to leave with them or anything that we've missed today that you want to cover?

[00:49:29] Kerryn Fewster: , I guess I would just, as a reminder to people, you've been changing all your life and you're better at it than what you think you are, so realise that. And I guess the other thing I would say is, seek clarity over certainty because you'll get that much sooner, which will give you a sense of peace, so you'll be able to move forward from there. But I'll be happy to chat to anyone about that.

[00:49:48] Sean Steele: That's awesome. Kerryn, how would people get in touch with you if they want to chat?

[00:49:50] Kerryn Fewster: So, they can contact me directly at Change2020, Kerryn Fewster on LinkedIn, and also my second company is AdaptiQ Minds, which is www.adaptiqminds.com and that's the company that resulted from the research project with QUT. So, they can reach me that way.

[00:50:10] Sean Steele: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Kerryn. It's been a real joy to chat to you today.

[00:50:15] Kerryn Fewster: Yeah. Thanks, I've really enjoyed it too. Cheers,

[00:50:20] Sean Steele: My pleasure. Okay, see you soon.