Hear Estelle’s fascinating stories, from how an untimely bout of chicken pox at university set her on a path to the quality career she has excelled in and the range of challenges she has applied business excellence tools and methodology to. Listen out for her example of what good quality looks like – it’s an absolute gem!
More from PMI:
Hear Estelle’s fascinating stories, from how an untimely bout of chicken pox at university set her on a path to the quality career she has excelled in and the range of challenges she has applied business excellence tools and methodology to. Listen out for her example of what good quality looks like – it’s an absolute gem!
More from PMI:
Hello, and welcome to PMI's podcast leading for Business Excellence. Our podcast brings inspiring stories from across the globe and a multitude of sectors from great leaders who share their experience and what Business Excellence means to them. I'm Susanna Clarke, and in this episode, I'm joined by Estelle Clark, who today has a portfolio career, which includes the UKAS policy Advisory Council, the charter Policy Institute, a hydrogen automotive manufacturer, a trustee of the engineering Council, and co-director of Strategic Arrow. What's particularly interesting about the Estelle's career is the range of organizations she's worked with. This includes IT, powerplants, assurance and financial services. It's a fantastic example of how the skills of Business Excellence really are effective across every sector. I was fascinated to Estelle's stories from how an untimely bout of chickenpox at university set her on the path to the Quality career she's excelled in, and the range of challenges she's applied Business Excellence tools and methodology to. Listen out to her example of what good quality looks like - it's an absolute gem. Hello, Estelle, and welcome to our podcast Leading for Business Excellence.
Estelle Clark:Good afternoon, Susannah,
Susannah Clarke:it's great to have you with us today. Thank you.
Estelle Clark:And it's absolutely lovely to be with you. I'm expecting to have a load of fun,
Susannah Clarke:good. And what I'd like to start off with if you could just introduce yourself, tell us a bit about you, your career and what you're doing today.
Estelle Clark:Thank you, Susannah. So let me start with what I'm doing today, because that's probably a little bit shorter. So my name is Estelle Clark. I'm a director and founder of a boutique consultancy called strategic arrow that helps our clients deliver their business obligations, and all of their compliance requirements, along with being true to their mission and purpose. And having great fun there. I'm also a director of a car manufacturing startup, that's making a little supercar that runs on hydrogen. And that's, that's really exciting. I do quite a lot of ad hoc advisory activities to various bodies in relation to corporate governance and the operate operationalization of corporate governance. And finally, I'm one of the trustees of the engineering Council. as you have achieved. So that's, that's, that's the now
Susannah Clarke:that's the now and the true portfolio career which it must be interesting.
Estelle Clark:Yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I've been trying to create for some time, a very happy, happy now I've managed to, to make it. So career in a nutshell, degree in business, and thought that I was going to be wanting to go into marketing, because that's what I enjoyed most at university, set up a number of interviews during the traditional milk round as folks do, largely the marketing roles with companies I'd heard of, and very unfortunately, as I thought at the time, but maybe not. So as my career is turned out, I got chickenpox during all of the interview period for the whole as a milk round, and also running into the first part of the the exam. So that's at least my excuse for the exams. So when it came to the end of the time at university, and I got my degree etc. I used to almost uniquely didn't have a job because I hadn't gone to any interviews. And it was a time we're talking now 1974 when the economy was rebounding, there were a lot of jobs available. And so I wasn't particularly worried and during the summer holidays, I looked at what I might do, and all of IT companies were recruiting. So it was just a question of which one and I joined what was then known as ICL and later on became Fujitsu ICL. And now is Fujitsu services UK, I believe. And what I thought at the time was well I'll stick there for a year I don't really know this company. Until next years milk round, then I'll go back and do what it was I'd always intended. And just over 26 years later, I left ICL. So did a two year apprentice technical apprenticeship went into a number of technical advisory roles for clients on all sorts of products that no longer exists, and people don't remember any longer. But when the usability of the stuff was really hard, and therefore you had to hold hands of your customers a lot more than nowadays, and then ended up after a variety of roles not only in technical roles, but project management roles, business development roles. A small consultancy time ended up as they're called Quality Director, which you might want to ask a question about later. So I ended up with the Quality Director for what then was Fujitsu after which for all of their activities outside of Asia, this was a really, really big company. And I loved the job. But I slightly fell out with the executive team and left in agreement, but reluctantly because I couldn't see that I any longer like this the strategic direction of the company, and so left after 26 years having never imagined that I would never leave. And then did what I did before was looking around at what jobs were available, and found that I was offered three roles in quality because by this point in time, I decided that was where my career was gonna lie. I enjoyed Business Excellence, I enjoyed continuous improvement. And in Fujitsu, it was a very well, it was a very well baked quality cake. And I just iced it a little bit nicer. And I thought I'd quite like to go somewhere where maybe the cake had a bit of a problem. And so I was offered three roles. And I took the one that I liked most, I thought, funnily Susannah, all of them were in Belgium, all of them in Brussels. And so I moved to Brussels, and I worked as Vice President of Business effectiveness for the joint venture between ABB and Alstom, power businesses, which after a few months, became Alstom entirely. So I worked Alstom for five years. And then at the end of that period of time, I moved back to the UK, having been in Brussels, worked in Paris, worked in Zurich, and then they were going to move me to Germany and I, I just thought tax, my tax returns are getting really tricky. Now, I'm going to come back to the UK and regroup. And having understood that I've learnt a lot from working in a different industry decided this time around with my third job after 30 years of working, that I still wanted to work in quality. But this time, I wanted a different sector by choice, and took the role of the first quality director on the top team with the Financial Ombudsman Service, when it was getting established back around the turn of the century, when that new type of regulation came in with the FSA, set up at the same point in time, did that for two or three years until I realized that probably, although the company was very interesting, the organization very interesting that 'Complaints R Us' as the entirety of the activity of the organization really wasn't going to keep me engaged for that much longer. And having set it up, I thought rather it really rather well. I then looked for my fourth career choice to change and landed a role on the top team of Lloyds Register, Lloyds Register a business that many people will know due to LRQA, the certification body, but also having businesses and at that time, in rail, in marine and and in energy. But of course, it being an entirely different type of business. It was a technical consultancy, working on technical type of assurance, and therefore more of a sort of more consultancy, advisory than the sort of hands on roles that I've been having at Alstom, or, or Fujitsu. And I did that for five or six years until I thought that I was getting to the point where if I was going to have a portfolio career, I you know, ruddy well ought to get on and do it. And that's what I did. And that brings us up to date.
Susannah Clarke:I love the the fact that for you. It's the quality and it's the Business Excellence that runs through your career as the line is the common thread.
Estelle Clark:Absolutely.
Susannah Clarke:And the different industries in which you've applied that that we must have seen some amazing things over your time
Estelle Clark:Oh, I have
Susannah Clarke:I'm quite interested in when you said that your when you were at Fujitsu, it was a well baked cake. And then moving on. You was specifically looking for a cake that was less well baked.
Estelle Clark:I was
Susannah Clarke:Tell me a bit more about that change in the role what it needed from you in your quality role.
Estelle Clark:Absolutely. So at Fujitsu the quality approach and the Japanese business have been established for many decades. And there came a time when Fujitsu suggested, I suspect suggested with a capital S that ICL adopt its own quality approach and ICL adopted Crosby, Philip Crosby. And lots of people went to the Philip Crosby quality college and learned not only about the principles within quality improvement, and I think they call it quality, quality improvement for the individual. But also we had opportunities to train as trainers to train everyone in the company. This was a total shift it everyone was being trained simultaneously and lots of processes were being were being put in place. I was working in a small business and on the day that someone turned To ask, who's going to run the quality improvement introduction in this small business, I was on leave. And when I came back I found that was it. And so, you know, this was not a choice This was as random as my going to Fujitsu in the first place. But I found that I absolutely loved it. And putting in place the, all of the quality approaches and processes for small business led me to want to do something wider. And so when a job came up in in ICL, Fujitsu HQ in quality, I applied, I got it. And it was rather small job because it was looking after Europe and ICL, Fujitsu was largely in the UK, that was its heritage. And then after about two or three years, ICL bought Nokia data. And all of a sudden, I had the biggest best bit of the business and I kept in place, and therefore, I was able to a degree to develop part of my own quality approach. But recognizing the Japanese influence, recognizing Crosby, recognizing what Nokia did, which was something completely different, because they were very young and sort of hip and sort of, you know, they had some much more what I would now recognize as agile and lean approaches to things, they were making PCs, Fujitsu was making mainframes. And so I understood the distinction between a very fast beat business where new range of products every 26 weeks, versus a business where things happened much more slowly. But in all of that, I'm talking about things were done really well. And whilst I was in the quality role working in HQ, ICL won the British Quality Award that was established in the early 90s, it then won the European Quality Award, and we won the, the Portuguese and Dutch and, you know, going for everything that was there almost. And the reputation of the company for having a very solid, technically great product existed all the time I was there, that's what I mean, about there being you know, the cake was really, really good. So obviously, you can continually improve anything. But the, the fundamental thing was that the design of the product was good, the development of the product was good. And the project management of the, of the product unit project management was was good. And, and so I was not, it wasn't exactly tinkering around the edges. But it was, as I said, I put on nice icing. And then the next year, I piped the icing a bit differently in the year after that i've you know, I put some figures on it, put the bride and groom on this cake. And so when I went to Fujitsu, what they were sorry, when I went, when I went to ABB Alstom power. What the offer was, was that there were two parents of this company, they both had very different approaches, that every other member of the senior management team came from one of them. But neither of them would agree that the quality director came from one of the parents, because they thought that that was a position of power in relation to, you know, you've got two sales processes, two development processes, whatever, the choice between them was going to sit very heavily with the quality director. And they weren't what they were, therefore chose to have somebody coming in from outside. But the expectation was, obviously that there was going to be a large amount of change, because we had to have everything and was this was supposed to in the merger was partly for effectiveness, but also for efficiency, the you know, we needed to pick the most efficient of the options. So I knew that there was a big quality job. This wasn't just about, you know, another set of icing, there was a big task of selection to do. And the company said that in addition to doing that for everything, they also recognize that in relation to the sales processes and the project management processes, that it might be the case that neither parent had something that was suitable, because at this point in time, the energy industry were deregulating, and therefore able to sell to merchant plants, or people who previously only own casinos real example. whereas previously, you sold to the central electricity generating board, or electricity divorce. And that was it. And there was a different understanding. If you have one client who buys everything with loads of their own engineers, than when you're selling to people who just want to have the power station delivered, press a button and have to fire up. So they said to me, during the interview, could you help us make the choice between all of the other processes but could you come with a mind that says we're going to start again or do something much more radical in relation to sales and project management? So we agreed I moved country I turned up on day one at the head office in Brussels. Interestingly, the head office of the parents were in Paris in Zurich, but they wouldn't agree to be an either of those. So Brussels was I might my my language mutually inconvenient. And on day one went to talk to the CEO. Who I was working for. And he started off with saying we have a problem, we have a problem that we haven't told you about. And we have a problem that we didn't know when you took the role. And what I'm telling you here is information that's in the public domain. This is a circumstance that's being reported on is that they had found a problem in in the flagship components of the power station, but largely the turbine. And until that was sorted out, they didn't want to sell anymore. And until and then without selling any more, they didn't have any projects. So consequently, the thing that they wanted the least was the new sales project process. And the new project management process, what they wanted was an analysis of what went wrong and potentially something more fundamental, done in relation to design and development and manufacturing, to try to sort the problem. And, of course, I had no relevant background here at all. I mean, I've, you know, I've been on a PC factory in Finland. But there wasn't, you know, that that type of manufacturing that designed to order manufacturing wasn't a world to find that I knew, development taking eight years, but wasn't something I knew projects, taking five years wasn't something I knew. And so I know that I would never have been offered this job had that been, you know, had everyone on the top team been aware at the time they offered it to me. But I was there, and they had the problem. And the chief executive said to me, something which I will never forget, and I think must be the best gift that anyone's ever given anyone working in quality, which was he said two things. He said, firstly, we've got 50,000 people in this company, as of today, 49,999 of us have exactly the same background. You're the 50,000th. And we have this issue. So if the quality director had the same background, I'm not I don't think that it would have stopped us having this problem. So that was the first bit you know, you're different. And then the second piece was accepting your different. He said, you've been boiled in different fat than the rest of us. What I'd like you to do is to promise that you won't jump into our fat and taste the same, can you please retain the difference? And please, can you go and question and do whatever it is you need to do to help us work out what's happened, because I don't think we're going to do it on our own. Because we're all in this paradigm, where all of our products previously have worked. So we don't know how to go about this issue of things not working. And actually there was a whole set of people were in the grieving curve, people were denying and then fighting and then, you know, crying almost. And so very, very different circumstances from, you know, how can we gloss the Fujitsu cake a little bit better, and so huge. In at the deep end.
Susannah Clarke:Yes, of course, and very brave, not only for you, but also for that CEO enlightened really.
Estelle Clark:Amazingly so, I think because he rather stood, I don't think I realized at the time how much he stood alone on that, and that some other people there were going, look, it's all unfortunate. And we know she's turned up, but just like, you know, like, pay her off, and get someone who knows what they're talking about. But I suspected he must have thought that that would have taken three months, you know, easy, even if you've got an interim person to come in, and I was there. So I suppose he thought that at least maybe he could test me and see how it was, it was working. And of course, what I did was to say, I think what I'm never gonna understand this, if this isn't about me, trying to suddenly sort of staying up at night and trying to do a master's in a combined cycle, turbine, etc, that there were experts in the company, and I needed to tap into their understanding. But I needed to bring my methodology to try to bring that to the fore. And I also recognize that the company was a merger of mergers and merges. So the companies that come together over the previous 50 years, I imagine maybe more to form this company. And there were other parts of the company where turbines worked. And so part of the solution was about encouraging teams to get together outside of those people who would just in that specific instance. And that was quite difficult because these teams were still in different countries from different heritage. In some instances, they were having products that competed with each other, you know, not withstanding of which we of course, we've got the new merger, you know, and so there's some opportunity for people not involved to be a bit carping about some of this stuff. But a large part of the solution was by learning from a completely different business who had done things differently, and who were able to ask the technical questions where I tried to keep people on track in relation to be open mindedness, no blame. Let's share everything and can make it, I think what I did, what I did mainly was make it a safe place. Because there were quite a few people who were who were we need a solution? And can you please come up with one. So that's one of the main things I did was to create the circumstances where it was safe to say anything. And the second thing, Susannah, was that there was equally there was a desperate need for reality. Because the standard redesign rate, one of these things was between five and eight years. And the company couldn't not sell things for five or eight years in the, in the big part of the market, the large power station part of that part of the market. And so they needed to do things faster. But everybody knew that a large gas turbine took 60 months to, to develop. And in fact, I remember one specific, this was so funny, I remember one particular meeting where all the relevant people together, and I tried to say, look, we can not do this in 60 months, the company won't be here, I'd like you to tell me how to do it in 60 days, I remember saying that, and crossing off on the you know, on a slide six, whatever. And could you just go away for a couple of days, and then no holds barred? Let's just, you know, brainstorm all of the ways that we could do things much faster. And so people came back after whatever time I'd given them. And whereas i'd crossed off 60 months and put in days, they'd crossed off days and written months again. You made a mistake, we understood this was a task. And then and then they sort of said, Could we have 60 weeks as a sort of compromise. And so because this wasn't doing the job, this was the this was this was to get people thinking about differently. And in the end, it probably took something in the order of three years, but it didn't take five years. And so that was another role to be played. But I remember my chief executive at Fujitsu never let me have anything as a project that was more than 26 weeks from start to finish. Because he said if we can design, manufacture, deliver, install, you know, a new range of PCs every 26 weeks, why do you think your quality stuff can take longer? So I was I came from a different place. And I think that understanding a different beat rate was also really key part of the of the solution, because I was impatient. And I wanted to get going.
Susannah Clarke:It's interesting, isn't it? Because I think that a lot of people would say that, that the impatience often comes from leadership, you know that that? And actually, it's quality that's pushing back and saying we can't do it quickly. And yet, I'm listening to you saying you were impatient. You believe you could get it done more quickly. So, tell me a bit more about the methods you were using, that you felt would help them go at that sort of speed?
Estelle Clark:Oh, yeah. So I mean, Susannah, so it's absolutely right. And I and I've been in similar circumstances. But of course, the first thing was that I had the business understanding that taking longer was not an option. So not only was the company not selling things, but it was also it was it was getting charged liquidated damages by clients whose power plants weren't working in the way that they had contracted. So this was this was a burning platform that was burning very fast. And I wanted to make sure that that that clarity was there with all of the technical folks who were going to be part of the solution. And I felt that some people had been pussyfooting around this issue. And I remember on one particular occasion, when I was very frustrated by the lack of progress, and anticipated that at the next meeting, it would be this the same thing and we wouldn't move on, I actually got a whole load of French Monopoly money. And I set fire to it in the meeting with a cigarette lighter, every time that they had wasted in my mind 20 euros, not wasted, but just got this is this is what it's costing while we're here. And I think that that sort of dramatic premium, that that directed attention, this is serious and to what degree we have to be prepared to try some things and I think what happened previously was everybody was going for perfection and we need to get it too big, maybe some things need to be good enough and not not any more than that. Not that not the blade of the turbine itself. But some of the surround sound stuff had to be good enough and and to know more. So that was one thing. The second thing I've already mentioned, which was that I'm not having anyone who's too precious to ask for help from someone else. So we are we are going to ask everybody was the was the second thing here. And thirdly, can we please make sure we all understand the extent of this issue. Because we've you know, we've said that the turbine doesn't work, they don't actually work properly. What else is there do we know whether there may be other things and two things occurred there that I, I'm okay with now, but at the time I rather wish wouldn't happen. One was that the technical change that actually ultimately was the cause of this, which I won't even try to explain, had been built into a number of other developments. And so there were a number of other products that were in development, which would have potentially had the same issue. And so the portfolio of developments was not part of the originally included in the original scope, well, you don't want those projects going on as if nothing's happening, you want them to be linked in with what you're doing with the one that's going to open up the understanding of the technical issues. So there had to be an audit of about another 100 projects to work out which ones of them had something that might be similar. So that was one set of things. And the other thing that happened was that I introduced Lean Six Sigma into the into the company. So there was no standard improvement method methodology. At that point in time. I knew Lean Six Sigma, it seemed to me to be the right the right thing to have in people's minds, not just from project managers, black belts, green belts, running specific projects, but more as a sort of philosophy to help people, senior very senior managers think about how to streamline processes take out non value added steps. And, and I found fairly early on that I needed it, because one of the things that needed to happen was it 75 power plants needed retrofitting. All over the world, you know, these aren't all sat by head office. And so teams of people would need to go out, take technical things apart, do stuff, put them all back together again. And that do stuff was on the project plan as 34 days. And I was given the task to see whether I could reduce it, because 34 times 75 with no power output from these engines, with more liquidated damages equals a lot of money. So they said every minute you can shave off for 34 days is a you know, is really valuable. If you can shave a day off, it means squillians, you know, loads and loads of money. So I started with it. Yes, I've got a black belt who can work on there. So if you could you give me the design spec, that shows me how you use the 34 days. And then I was just going to do all my standard stuff, you know, you know, value stream mapping and looking at, you know, all of the places where Wait, time is wasted and where the product doesn't, you know, the thing doesn't move to see how to shave time off. And then it turned out that was 34 days was aspirational, at the time of development of the engine, and nobody ever expected to have to do it, or certainly never expected to have to do it out of ones and twos. And so there was no process for this. And so I got the black belts and said it's not quite, you know, not quite as we thought sunshine. And we took over a test engine, a test power station in Switzerland. And having tried to design a process, the the Six Sigma folks with the technical folks work out what needed. There was over 1000 items that needed to be changed. So it wasn't trivial. And we ran the simulation simulation, we did it but we timed everything. And it took over took over 60 days. And I was trying to get it down from 34. And so I haven't got a problem of shaving off a 34 I've got a problem of how to get from 60 something to 34 in the first place, which isn't like can you save a day? This is like can you half this process. And so it was yet another circumstance where the taking a lot of time overthings wasn't going to wasn't going to work. And so I was very lucky because when I was at Fujitsu, one of the projects I worked on, which was sort of quite Agile Lean was I'd worked on the replacement of all the point of sale devices, the cash desks in the airport duty free. And the airports replaced the put out to tender the contract for that every three years. I think it was at that point in time. And at that point when I was doing this Allsders, Debenhams, and House of Fraser which are whichever them is still around would contend. And typically the company that didn't have the contract would win because they would put in a lower or a higher bid but winning that they would give back in relation to having much that facility and although they all use the Fujitsu point of sale devices, they all had to be removed and the other companies once had to be put in between the the time of the last flight leaving in the evening from Heathrow and the time of the first flight leaving in the morning. So that was something like six and a half hours to completely unfit and fit a shop and test it was working and had customs come in and do do some checks that it was running okay. So I was well used to be laying it all out. Did this more than once this thing, laying it all these components out and shaving, you know, timing your minutes and your seconds and people, you know, really down to the final thing. And that's exactly what I did with the, with the 67 days was the I know that, you know, when we first called for the new blades, somebody weren't like, well, where are they who said, you know, and so it was just all of that, all of that stuff, but over and over and over until we got something that was okay. And then training everyone in it such that we had multiple teams who could do this and who were all competent. But that really, Lean Six Sigma earnt it's place in that company at that time. And that
Susannah Clarke:I can't imagine how you almost actually how you would have done it without it.
Estelle Clark:No, I'm not normally. And I was so pleased that I had something to fall back on. Because I think if I just said, Look, I'm taking over the test rig for the next two months, but didn't have any experience. It's the fact that that might be successful, then I think people would have questioned it because they had other things they wanted to do with it. And as I said in the, in the end, it all worked. And that project was 160 million projects, and it was up that black belt project. Just sort of can they make a million a year sort of stuff is. But that was that was that was all very exciting. But I don't think I did anything that was I didn't do anything that was different than falling back on all of the tools that I've learned elsewhere, and recognizing that the tools work, no matter what the concept, the context, and that the fact that it was power plant was almost irrelevant, that I just had to think what tools worked, and I had to rely on those. And I had to have my I had to have my technical buddies, and I had to then keep keep everyone who was watching and that sort of hoping that this would work, give them confidence. So I know time did I falter on that this is gonna work. And there were days when I was thinking, you know, today I don't feel so confident, you know about some of the stuff I'm doing. And obviously I didn't do this alone. There were 10s of people involved in this. But we had to do it because this the future of the company was was on this. Yes. And but it turned out being one of the most exciting one of the most rewarding. And certainly I learned more there than anywhere else in my whole career. And yet I wonder whether had I known whether I would have whether I would have taken it.. I suspect I'm I might not have, just because it was such a putting on your big boys trousers.
Susannah Clarke:Yes. And I can imagine that after 26 years at Fujitsu. Had you known, what you were going to be asked to do? Yes, you could, it would have been completely reasonable of you to have said, I am not ready. I'm not ready, I'm not prepared. I haven't had that experience. But what I love about the story is how everything you learned, you applied, and how it all came, you know, it all delivered what you needed.
Estelle Clark:Yeah. And it was with that confidence that I joined the Financial Ombudsman Service. So I knew that one of the one of the key things that I could bring is I could see when the wallpaper was ugly, at a time when other people had just got used to it. And so in interviews, people would be saying, oh, but you've never worked in dog food processing previously, you know, you can't possibly understand. And I would say that, what you need to know is it's the fact that I don't understand which is the thing that I the biggest thing that I bring, because everyone else here understands I went back to the 50,000 people in the company, I'm your person who's different. And, and I know I've proven it, you know, I proven that works. And so that I was absolutely looking for greenfields what I wanted for my third job wasn't trying to take a cake that was parts of parts of which were wonky. And do equal leaps that have put two cakes into one I wanted no cake. And so I wanted that greenfield and that's what I was really lucky to, to have. And I went into that with a lot more confidence than then I would have done otherwise.
Susannah Clarke:So you went to the Financial Ombudsma it was your greenfield they had no quality position.
Estelle Clark:Yes, because the financial services and markets act FISMA came into being in 2000. And that set up this infrastructure as a Financial Services Authority to regulate the retail market. It set up the Financial Ombudsman Service as the adjudication place for consumers who had issues and it set up the financial services compensation scheme to pay out if any firm's went went bust. And then of course, between 2000 and when I joined in 2005 really that that had to get going you know it was an act and then it had to work out what that meant and and so on. I joined in 2005, an organization that probably been around for about a year. But during that time that, you know, everybody moved into a building, they recruited all the people, you know, there were still people around at that point in time, trying to work out who did what I mean, it was it was a brand new company, but it's but it was a brand new big company, it was a brand new company with well over 1000 staff. So there was a lot of, a lot of difficulty and understanding just how to get things to knife and forking things through, I think it's how it was. Because there was a degree of taking seven, I believe, previous ombudsman services, working in pensions, and mutual societies, and banking and investments of various types, and bringing them all together. And none of what had happened before being relevant, because the act changed everything. And all of the predecessor has been so tiny, because the circumstances under which you could bring a complaint was so limited, but the action made it much easier and encouraging people to bring, bring complaints. And so of course, complaints started coming in, you know, unhappy for a while, and then, you know, you get the post every day. And then it's trolley and trolley and trolley and that. And so the big thing, there was two things. One is this process has to be really efficient. There's one process, as I said earlier 'Complaints R Us', and I probably didn't, but'Complaints R Us' is how I thought of it. That's what the company did, it got complaints, and it needed to make a decision about whether the firm or the consumer was right. And usually it was one or the other as opposed to you both are. So so it had to be able to do that really quickly because complaints were coming in at something like 100,000 - 120,000 per annum, from a standing start with 1000 new staff, most of whom hadn't done this before. And the second thing was that there had to be absolutely, the only thing that was needed above efficiency was there had to be consistency. So I have a similar complaint. So if one complaint came in, and then something very similar to it came in, but went to two completely different people, you had to know that the outcome would be identical. Because otherwise, if those, you know, the firm's had to have trust that the decisions were being made, right, and if that, you know, the same firm got two results, but one said, you're liable. The other one said, No, you're not. And they could see that the two things were the same, then the reputation of the whole, the whole of the business, you know, the whole of that new sector would be compromised if you have any of those, any of those certain many of those. And so that was what was drummed into me was the what we need is we need the systems that ensure that that consistency. And so the job was a lot of to do with setting up the knowledge management activities. So that everything was documented really religiously, that there were team leaders who went through and identified these commonalities that everything was tagged, that there were the casework discussions between people at various levels so that we could ensure that we adjudicated the same way that we gave some things out to multiple teams, multiple people. So you know, to check that that was then rock solid. And that we were able to triage those things, then that seemed to be the sort of more mundane, you know, I got charge, my bank statement had the wrong things on it sort of stuff, as opposed to, you know, my jewel investment swap product wasn't working or you know, that there was there were different levels of complexity here. And so they needed to have the sort of triage into the straightforward system, the ones that you gave to your senior folks, and the ones that basically with handcrafted ones that work that went to it to the Ombudsman, as opposed to an adjudicator.
Susannah Clarke:I like your example, if they needed two things, they needed consistency, they needed efficiency. I think, you know, what's your view in the world in general? About that's what isn't that what organizations want? And how do they get it, what are the things that they need to do to get that consistent.
Estelle Clark:It's an interesting point, because I hadn't thought of it quite like that. But as you've mentioned it I can see that. I think the Ombudsman Service have that in spades, because of the immediacy of the feedback if something had been in consistency of absolutely have been being seen. And so one of the things there was that there, these are first amongst equals, you couldn't let one get ahead of the other for a moment. They had to march in tandem. So, so there were times when I think that I possibly went too far on the consistency. And then the caseload, the backlog went up. And of course, that's another reputational issue and and people suffer. There's people's livelihoods at stake, and you were sort of really reminded that because this is a business consumer business, I was completely, it was completely different than a power plant not working, where there's a big conglomerate who owns it. But we had people turning up in the business and saying, you know, I'm not getting paid this week, or I'm not, you know, I can't afford to, to pay this bill with this, this financial company, for whatever reason, you know, you've got to help me otherwise, I'm on the streets. And so the, the obligation you have to your customers came came across in quite quite a different a different way. I think it's, I think it's important to articulate those two and to make sure that one doesn't get ahead of the other. And when, of course, there were people that in the operation side who were pushing for efficiency, and there were people on the sort of more legal side, who were, who were pushing for the pushing for the consistency. And of course, those internal stakeholders had to be kept in check with each other and not to allow one to think that they were more important than me and the other. The other thing, Susannah, was to set expectations. And so the original expectation to turn around time was something that wasn't able to be met, and not the fault of the organization. But of course, you have no idea how many you're going to get, but the complaints you're going to get. And what became apparent was that the complainants have to complain to the financial services firm first. And if they don't like the response they get, then you can complain to the Ombudsman. However, certain financial services firms not naming any - basically just decided to not do a very good job with their own complaint handling and leave it all to the Ombudsman with the expectation that they didn't have to have this mediation, and they everything got passed through. And so the forecast number of cases was nothing like the actual number of cases because we didn't have this early step in the process in relation to some firms. Now, that got sorted out by the FSA coming in and setting the rules in year 2, 3, 4, etc. But does it start with it was it was a bit of a it was a bit of a free for all. And so we had to set, you know, set some different expectations. And one of the things that I had noticed was going wrong in the expectation setting, was that the complainant, notice that you thought that their complaint started when they posted their complaint, and possibly even earlier than that, given that they've already had a complaint with someone else. So they were already very sort of, you know, anxious about this. Whereas the Ombudsman, I thought would measure the time as a complaint from the from when the when the post arrived, but actually, they the time of the complaint was measured from when it was given to an adjudicator, and they started working on it. Well, once you've got a backlog, you know, there's a difference in you know, there's a difference there. And sometimes that could have been a big difference. And that led to the communication, in some circumstances not being quite right, right, because the Ombudsman is probably saying, but we always turn them around in you know, like two weeks or whatever, but they could have been waiting for three. And so that's, that's sort of seeing it from the perspective of your customer. And putting yourself in your their shoes was something that I bleated on about quite a lot, because people in the business was so busy. And you know, just I've got here's another one, I'll open this up, that just just just take a moment and think about it. And that was that was one of the things that a small, lovely story, but I think was very, its appetite in terms of leadership of Business Excellence, initiatives, improvement, etc. Was that one of the things that the Ombudsman Service could do, if a complaint had got that had been adjudicated, and the will the firm were found to be at fault was it was the choice of the adjudicator, what type of redress was given? And so sometimes it was putting it right. Yeah, that was all that was, you know, we've charged you 50 pounds, you shouldn't have paid, you will give it back to you in your next bank statement. Sometimes it was like, sure I speak into spoken to your company about this previously, doesn't look as if you've made any root cause changes, which is what, of course was part of this part of my job was to see to a degree where the firm's followed through and learn from all of this stuff to prevent other problems. But you could do other things. And there was one particular occasion when a firm had been really niggly and senior folks have been asked it for goodness sake. You know, we can't be dealing with this. It's all too small. And the adjudicator made the requirement that a very senior director from an exceedingly large bank, personally took a bunch of flowers and hand delivered it to a nice, a very old lady complainant who lived in the Isle of Wight. And I remember he sort of that was but he's going to take me a day and that was when the job got really that good. That's when he got fun and got you know, got nice was that what you wanted to do was to make the issues that had been caused real to all the people who are going to who needed to take notice of them. And there for once you've had an opportunity to do that in a slightly different way.
Susannah Clarke:the idea of that. And I can, I can imagine, when having delivered the flowers when the the chairman got back, other conversations were had very seriously
Estelle Clark:the only thing was I wanted to go. I wanted to shadow but it wasn't, that wasn't possible.
Susannah Clarke:And so, given the breadth of the sorts of experiences that you've had, the the work that you've lead, if someone came to you, and they were, you know, relatively early on in their career, and they they asked you for advice on what you think makes a great leader, what would you say to them?
Estelle Clark:Oh that's a tricky questions. It's, it's, as I said, in the sense that I'm not sure it's cookie cutter, I think there's a lot of different people I've seen who've been great leaders, I think it's important to be true to yourself. And so you can only lead from a place that means something to you. And so I'm, I know what that I know where that place is in me and where that comes from. And therefore I know where at why I have confidence and conviction, and I'm determined and, and bossy and tenacious and all that all the rest of it. Because when you're leading people, they want to trust that, that that's what do they want to know that they can trust in you. And you believe in what you're saying. And they also need to trust that you're going to see it through and take them with you and, and make it safe for them to be to be part of that. And so there has to be a piece that's that where you can open up and say, You know what, I don't know, I don't know how to do this. As opposed to bullshitting your way through. I think the worst thing is, if you always say the opposite, it's okay today. So there have been occasions when I've gone and said, I really, really don't know how to deal with this. But I haven't said this briefly. So you know, that all the rest of the time you've been, you know, you've been safe. And I think that coming from that, that, that that sort of that transparency, and an openness and honesty, and I'm gonna say humility, but the minute you say humility, you're not being humble when you say it. But I, you know, Alstom I don't know everything, I just know what the bits that I know. And I know that I'm a mile wide and an inch deep. And I'm hopeless without a whole load of people who are a mile deep and an inch wide. And I just need to understand what it is that I that I bring, which I think is a broad understanding, a reasonable amount of tenacity. And, and quite a lot of real tenacity, what I mean, isn't it, we are going to we are going to do this. And I have said it on two occasions to teams, when I didn't know how we were. I was just convinced that we were on I known later on that that's what really what people bought into, because they they knew I didn't know and pretended I didn't pretend I did. But they knew that I would die in the in the attempt, rather than rather than not. And that's what got them to give that give their all. So the Alstom one was one of those. And then there was one that was later.
Susannah Clarke:Yes, thank you. I think that what she said, would resonate with, you know, with many people, because that is what we're looking for, isn't it? It is the things that that we can become passionate about, where we, because we feel safe when we feel when we trust the leader that we're working with?
Estelle Clark:Yes, yes. And I being being open to people's input. So it's co creation of the team and the methods and everything, you know, everything else. So I'm not a follow me. And I'm, you know, I'm bringing people I like to think,
Susannah Clarke:Yes. Estelle, what's the best ever experience of quality you've had?
Estelle Clark:You know, Susannah, that the answer to that comes immediately to mind. I have one that I think is so stunning, that nothing else comes close. And so the circumstances are that I was working. I was working for Alstom in India. They had an office not too far from Mumbai airport. And I went to India once or twice a year. So, I'm in Mumbai, the BA flight back to London leaves at something like 330 in the morning. And you have that question in your mind. Do you stay up and feel awful or do you go to hotel check in and get up at half past two and feel awful. And I decided to do the latter tried to get some some sleep. So my only requirement was I said to my pa booked me into the hotel that is nearest to them. terminal building. That's, you know, so I don't minimize the time. So she did. And she put me into a hotel called the Orchid. And so I had no requirements other than closeness, but on the day I went there, checked in, I know, eight o'clock in the evening, something like that. They looked at me at reception desk, because the presumably that I was Western woman said, are you in a British passport? Are you on BA123? That leaves at 0345 in the morning, 0330. Morning, and I went, Yes, I am. So we've had a lot of people in similar circumstances, we recommend that you have an early morning call at 0230, something like this, that we put you in a taxi at 0250. To 0230, when the call comes, we give you a pot of coffee. And we also give you a plate of fruit. And they said at this point, they said, we find find a plate of fruit is really energizing for someone who wakes up in the middle of the night. And so I said, I agree all of that. And if your plate of fruit can make me feel half human, at whatever, you know, whatever time the alarm is going to go, I'm really, really happy. So that's what happened. We did all of that. It all worked. The call came, the coffee came, the fruit came, the taxi came, I caught the flight. Over a year later, I'm back in Mumbai, and I'm going back on the same flight. Sometimes I went somewhere else. And so Orchid was fine. Book me in at the Orchid. So I turn up at the Orchid, same thing go up to the reception desk. And they said to me, Good Evening Mrs. Clark, are you here as you were last time to catch BA123 So I thought, well, that's neat, you know, they're not going to have that many English women. And they've obviously got a good CRM system where they documented this, and the receptionist has access to it. So I'm quite impressed the fact that they did that felt good. And she said, just to let you know, we pre booked your call at 0250. as last time, is that what you'd like? Pretty good, not wasting any time here checking. Yes. And she said under a cup of coffee, pot of coffee as you had previously. And I said yes. And then she said, and just to let you know, we booked you a plate of fruit. And I remember that conversation about the conversation about that plate of fruit being really energizing. And she said, but we noticed that you ate it all up. And we were worried that we hadn't given you enough. So I've ordered you a larger one.
Susannah Clarke:Wow.
Estelle Clark:And then I thought what had to happen in the processes of that hotel for somebody to notice with someone who's potentially might have only stayed for one night, the cleaning lady of that room must have known that she was voice of customer. And that her job wasn't just to clean the room. But she was noticed, notice how I used it. And to notice that I had eaten a whole bowl of fruit. And I guess that she probably hasn't many, many experiences of her own of international travel in a hotel in the middle of the night to be caught falling back on. And then she would have had to told someone in the hotel about this, because she probably didn't have access to the CRM system herself to be typing this in. And not only do they have to put it in the CRM system, but someone that had to do some learning from that insight that led to when this woman comes back, give her a bigger one. And then they had to remember to do it. And I know it's not a very big example of customer care. But I just thought the engineering of that. And the perspective of voice of customer putting yourself in the customers shoes throughout the organization was absolutely phenomenal. And I use it as an example when I'm trying to get folks to go like 'well I never see a customer, how am I supposed to know' to just think differently about it, you must have a clue someone in your organization has a clue. And if you do you listen to those people, you might find you can offer something that's completely different than everyone else. And so that was the that was that was my little my little story.
Susannah Clarke:It's it's lovely because it's at the heart of customer delight, isn't it?
Estelle Clark:isn't it?
Susannah Clarke:It's how can we drive the customer delight.
Estelle Clark:In lots of in lots of small ways, but it really didn't cost I paid for a bigger plate.
Susannah Clarke:Yeah. But you didn't mind.
Estelle Clark:I don't mind. No, of course not. No I felt cared for. And I felt that that must be wonderful to be a member of staff there to feel differently than presumably many other Indian folks cleaning people's hotel bedrooms to think that you had something else that you could offer. was a was a nice, nice feeling.
Susannah Clarke:It has been absolutely fascinating talking to you. And I really appreciate your time today.
Estelle Clark:It's been a pleasure.
Susannah Clarke:My last question is going to be if you were reincarnated. And you could come back as any leader. Whoever that may be, who would you come back as and why?
Estelle Clark:And so right now, I think I probably come back as the chief executive of Amazon because I think that company has the opportunity of showing how large companies can behave versus matebook yet how they can and should be a when when large organizations have a lot of leverage. I mean, if I sleep on it, I might think of someone else. But for right now, I think it would be really useful to have one of the large, high tech companies showing how to lead the way, genuinely. And I'm not seeing, I'm not seeing that, so let's have one look at that has a lot of a lot of leverage.
Susannah Clarke:Super. Thank you Estelle, in the real pleasure talking to you. I really hope you enjoyed this episode of pmis podcast leading for Business Excellence. If you'd like to know more about how you can develop your career in business excellence, and transform your organization, please drop us a line team@pmi.co.uk we'd really love to hear from you.