#345 - Get Your Shit Together Or Get Out

Two old friends, forty years of history, and one incredibly honest book about workplace culture. In this episode, Elena Knight from FuturePrint sits down with Simon Edwards, Technical Director at Global Inkjet Systems, and Anthony Lee, a patent attorney at a firm in Adelaide, Australia, who go all the way back to studying physics together four decades ago.

Together they've written Get Your Shit Together or Get Out , a short, sharp book about honesty in the workplace, why softened feedback does more harm than good, and how businesses quietly drift off course without anyone noticing until it's too late. Simon and Anthony talk candidly about why they wrote it, how they pulled it together in just a few months, and why they made it deliberately short enough to read on a single flight.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Backgrounds

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Future Print Podcast, celebrating print technology and the people behind it.

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Welcome to the Future Print Podcast. My name is Ellen the Knight, and today's a bit of a special one. I'm really excited about this. I'm joined by Simon Edwards, Technology Director at Global Intel Systems, and Anthony Lee, a partner at a patent attorney firm in Adelaide, Australia. The two of them actually go back 40 years. They studied physics together back in Australia and have recently written a book together. It's a book about honesty in the workplace, how to clarity, accountability, and a stronger culture in a business without pulling punches. It only went live at the end of July. So this is a genuinely fresh conversation. Welcome both. Thank you for joining me today. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 0:46

It's a pleasure. So, Simon, would you like to just introduce yourself a little bit? Tell me what you do, just for those who don't know, and then we'll come on to you, Anthony.

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Yep. So my background is I've been working in a variety of industries for over 40 years now. It's kind of started from Australia, where I studied physics with Anthony. So we go back 40 years, and I've worked in a range of different areas from optics to digital printing and in-jet printing, and also for a time as a strategic consultant for businesses.

SPEAKER_03 1:18

Fantastic. And how about you, Anthony?

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yes, so um, so now I'm a I'm a patent attorney, but prior to that I was 10 years in industry, so including an initial stint working with Simon uh in sort of ophthalmic lens design, and then uh sort of five years in software development and simulators, sort of sort of uh sort of technology development. And then um I've been a patent attorney now for uh almost 20, 25 years, and I service clients in the sort of photonics, computing, balended inventions over a fairly broad range of uh physics type inventions.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Sounds very clever and very interesting, actually. So

Why Honesty Needs A Book

SPEAKER_03 2:00

um we're actually here, Simon, today to talk about your book. So you've written a book recently. Can you let us know what it's called and who you've written it for?

SPEAKER_04 2:08

Yeah, so the book's called Um Get Your Ex Together. We did use the word. So get your ex together or get out. It's called Get Your Shit Together or Get Out.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:17

It's a book about, I guess, being honest in the workplace. Um it's it's a the title's uh intentionally provocative. Um but the book's not provocative. The book is just a straightforward book about being honest in the workplace, about how to make sure you work in a, I guess, a very sharp and organized fashion. And it just talks about some of the things that we've observed in the industry and the businesses we've worked in, and the sort of the things we see around how people interact. So it's kind of along those lines. Um, I'll let Anthony say a little bit as well about his thoughts on it, and then we can give you a bit more depth about why we did it and how we came about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Okay. Yeah, so uh like the core message, I think, is honesty. Uh, it's about having a good, hard look at your own situation, your own corporate situation, how you deal with people, um, and understanding your own culture and sort of asking yourself some hard questions and potentially maybe asking other people some hard questions, and then trying to empower everyone after asking those hard questions to sort of move forward.

SPEAKER_03 3:28

Yeah, and I think it's quite interesting when you say culture. I think a business can be as amazing as it as it can be, but if the culture's not quite right, there's always something sort of off and it just can't reach its full full potential potential. Sorry. Um, I'm sure you agree with that. And um, so what what what made you write the book? What sparked um the thought to write this book?

SPEAKER_04 3:51

Um well what happened was um Anthony came across to the to Cambridge a couple about a month or so, a couple of months ago, and it was one of those classic things of the two of us sort of sitting around going, gosh, you know, we talk Anthony and I talk about business. We have our whole lives and you know, complain about this and complain about that, and we talk about this and that. And at the end of it, we thought, you know, we should stop complaining about these sorts of things and actually just put down into a book what our thoughts are, addressing the things we could concern us and that we have been worried about, but also not just saying, here's the problem, but actually saying here's a solution. So it's not a book about problem, problem, problem. It's a book about here's an issue, here's a problem, but hey, here's a way that you could solve that, here's the right direction you could take. So each chapter kind of starts off with exploring what the issue is, but ultimately it's about saying, well, how can you make a difference and not complicated differences? So you kind of kicked off with Anthony and I talking about that um and shooting the breeze on it.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Fantastic. So, how long ago was this when you started talking about this? Then how long has it been in the making?

SPEAKER_04 4:56

Uh Anthony can answer that.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Well, I guess that was May. Was that right? Yeah, that's right. It hasn't been, yeah. So I mean, the the the book, like once we once we got our act together, we it moved very quickly because we sort of knew what we wanted to do. We knew what we wanted to focus on. It it's not a not a very long and complex book, you know, on organizational behavior. It sort of sets out a structure and a skeleton almost for you to sort of apply to your own business experience, you know, and again focus on this honesty and looking at your own situation, but looking at it honestly because you're you're probably the best person to understand your own business, but like look at it through the lens of you know being completely honest.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

So it's a sorry, just really quickly. So you're target it targeting it at business owners who want to look at their own business or also at employees, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

I guess it's targeting anybody to interact with people in their own business place. You know, it's um there's a lot of things in there just about you know, when you're talking to someone, just tell them the truth about a situation. Or if you think they're not doing the right thing, tell them now because not everyone should have the opportunity to course correct as soon as they think it is, and there's no point in holding back on it. If you soften it, you feel like you're being kind to them, but actually you're not being kind at all. By softening the blow, you're actually doing the opposite. What they want to know is what do you think? What can I do about it? When do you think I need to do something about this? When when are the course correct? And I think I've learned in my life that um people really like the this the truth and honesty. Um, what they don't want is months go by. Two months later, someone says, you know, two months ago that wasn't delivered on time and it was not good enough. And that doesn't help anybody. Um kind of rolling back to kind of how we pulled it all together, because the time frame sounds awfully short. Um, but in the true spirit of the book, where we came up with the title, I guess we both agreed, well, if we're gonna do this, let's just get it done quickly because there's no point. We know what we we know what we know, we have a view, which shouldn't take as long to put this together. Um, it would be different if we were, you know, 10 years in industry, but we've not. We've been around for you know 30, 35 years in in business. So our thoughts are fairly well formed. And so what we did was we drew on a lot of information we've had in the past, a lot of conversations, Anthony and I've had before. Um, I was a strategic consultant for about six years. So I've got a lot of material which I used as a strategy as a consultant in that time. Um, and also I've kind of maintained that through my business life. I've always kept a repository, let's call it, of documents of things I've written, thoughts I've got. So it was a matter of just pulling all those together and just formulating into a structured approach. So yeah, it came together really quite quickly, um, which was pleasing. Um we leveraged, you know, a knowledge base primarily. Um, we used a little touch of AI, but not a lot, just to basically finesse it. And then we actually put it to an editor in Queensland, a professional business editor. He's been doing this for himself about 30 years. Um, and that was like gold having someone with that sort of experience and background. First off, are we on the right track? Um, which he said definitely. He was really quite surprised, actually. And then secondly, you know, course correcting it, truing it up, cleaning it up, getting it really kind of polished. And he was very helpful with that.

SPEAKER_03 8:26

So,

Truthful Feedback With Support

SPEAKER_03 8:27

Simon, you mentioned earlier about just telling people straight, not softening things up. Um, I think there's a common approach where you give someone two positive points before you're delivering the criticism, the sort of the classic feedback sandwich. And do you agree with that or do you think you should give it to them straight? Because some people might not take that well.

SPEAKER_04 8:45

Um, we'll find in the book there's a it's a quite quite a significant section on that, in fact. I mean and the basic philosophy that we have is you need to tell people the truth to start with, but at the same time, you don't leave them hanging. You know, you've got to say, here's the truth of the fact, here's what we could do about it, let's do it together. Let's agree how we're gonna do it together, and I'm I can be a resource for you. So I think it's I prefer the approach of honesty followed by support, followed by clarity. So, you know, what is the right thing? What am I expecting of somebody? But at the same time, you don't leave them on a limb. So, you know, the positive outcome, the positive news is we can together work out what the right direction is, and the positive position is I'm here to help you as everybody else is. I think one of the things we see a lot or I see a lot is um people are unclear as to who's responsible. But to be responsible to something doesn't mean you have to do it yourself. Everybody else is there to pull on to come to help you with that. So take responsibility, and with responsibility comes, you know, elicit assistance from around you because everybody's, you know, I think I've never seen a situation where people aren't really willing to help out someone that has a target or a goal they need to achieve.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

And there's also uh oh, I was just gonna cut in there, sorry. Um there's also there's also a step in there about being honest with yourself. Maybe, maybe the issue in the how you're approaching, are you giving this person the right background system support and so forth? So having having that sort of evaluation of of what your role in the whole thing is before sort of going in and saying, Oh, well, I need to have this conversation because you know, so-and-so is not meeting this particular whatever. But just like, well, let's ask ourselves what what are we doing to help in this situation? Or what, you know, maybe it's maybe it's me, not you.

SPEAKER_03 10:38

Yeah, maybe the message isn't portrayed in the correct way so that the person isn't receiving it um in the way that it should. Um, and also I guess there's different generations within a company as well. I guess adapt it slightly to depending on who you're talking to, um, because that's an interesting factor as well, because we've obviously got all this, you know, this young workforce are coming in, and I guess they work slightly differently to sort of the you know, the more established, more experienced workforce. Do you do you see that at all?

SPEAKER_04 11:07

Uh well, yes, certainly. I think the I mean, in all the businesses I've worked in, there's a range of ages and backgrounds and these sorts of things. Um, but I still feel there's kind of one fundamental threat is that people like to know where they stand. I think most people do. Um, they don't like to find out later bad things. I think coming and also coming back to something Anthony has said, I think that um people also respect that, you know, if you're going to talk to someone about performance or outcomes or whatever the case may be, quite rightly you need to look at yourself and say, have I put the right processes in place? Um and there's a quite a strong section in the book about that is self-awareness. You know, have I got the right processes? Have I supported the person properly? Maybe you want to have a conversation with someone, it's uh it starts with, I don't think I've supported you properly because I wasn't clear enough. So I need to give you some clarity so you know what needs to be done, because maybe that's where the disconnection is. And I think it's kind of a bit of both of those things about recognizing that you might not have provided people what they need, you might not have had the clarity, be truthful about where they are. Telling them the truth about what's going on isn't necessarily a reflection on them. It can easily be a reflection on other people and yourself that you haven't actually delivered what they need to be able to do what they need to do and perform properly.

SPEAKER_03 12:26

Absolutely. And I guess also that if you like you say, you you give someone a target and they can't achieve it, they also then need to be honest back, right? And say, actually, I can't achieve it because A, B, and C, and then go and find the solution together. Um, and what what do you feel was the hardest part of getting this book finished? So I'm assuming the idea was there, and then was it the start putting pen to paper, or was it sort of because you obviously Simon, you in the UK, Anthony, you in in Australia. I mean, how did you work together on that?

SPEAKER_00 13:06

A lot of drafts going backward and forward. Um as you would expect, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

I think the one we've got full-time jobs as well, I guess. So you're doing it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:17

Yeah, getting up early in the morning. I mean, surprisingly, you know, it's one of the things I I found I've been waking up a bit earlier having done this because I'm eager to get something turned around quickly. I think the thing is that because Nathan and I know each other so well that you know conversation is so easy. You know, we send a message, we don't, again, actually, interestingly enough, we don't send text messages that are padded with fluffy stuff. You know, we send text messages, oh, we need to do this. Can you do that? Straight to the point. We don't need to do that. And so that helps a lot, by the way, to get something like this together really quickly is because one, we know each other personally. Um, we're we're both good with technology, we both know what we want to do. We're both we're ambitious to get this finished and get it done. So, yeah, I think the communication part wasn't the hardest. Um, in fact, I mean, surprisingly, there wasn't a lot of difficult things in this, to be honest. Um,

Publishing Fast And Keeping It Practical

SPEAKER_04 14:06

we've also managed to get it into Amazon, into the Kindle. We got an Amazon Books. Um, I've put it, we've got it with uh what's called Eleven Reader, which is one of the more innovative audiobook companies now, which is quite cool. Really cutting edge things. So people want to have it in I don't know, uh John Wayne's voice, they can, which I would think is quite interesting. Um I kind of like I kind of like the idea of a bit of John Wayne in our book.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah, I do too.

SPEAKER_04 14:33

It's quite exciting. It's interesting. I mean, it's a really cool model. I think people should explore that and do it through our book would be great. Um, and then we've just recently got it into the Google Play Store, so you can get it through Google Books as well. Um fantastic. Yeah, so it's worked out well, self-published, which has been interesting.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Yeah, oh, good, that's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:51

I'd say the one of the biggest challenges, just really unpicking all of that actually, getting through how the Kindle store works and getting Google Play lined up and those things have been um probably the highest challenge. But of course, Anthony, and our backgrounds are technical, so you know, we just swallow up technical stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Work out these sort of things quite quickly.

SPEAKER_03 15:14

Fantastic.

Tools For Meetings And Culture Repair

SPEAKER_03 15:15

And if you were to say there's one thing about this book that I would like the reader to take away, what that what would that be?

SPEAKER_04 15:20

I'll let Anthony kick someone off.

SPEAKER_00 15:23

Oh, I well, I think I mean, we've said it sort of a number of times, that this sort of idea about being honest. And as soon, like even in a in a sort of a your own, say, your corporate culture or whatever, like what is actually your culture? It is actually what you're doing. Be honest about that. And if it's not what you want to do, then like get on to changing it. So that first sort of introspection, maybe, or just just you know, honest review of what you're actually doing. And I think a lot of people will come to this book thinking, oh, I know that there's something that's not quite right, or we're not quite optimum. We're doing all businesses do things well, some not so well, and so on. So it's always always a mix, but it's just that that step of of of of that clear-eyed analysis of what what you of what's going on, and then saying, All right, well, do we want to fix that or or do we want to keep going?

SPEAKER_04 16:18

I think the other thing I was gonna say is um what I hope people get from the book is there's a lot of good questions in it. Um, for example. Yeah, so for example, um, you know, one of the pieces is about meetings. Um when you put a lot of people in a room at the same time, there's a lot of time dedicated to that. So if you've got 10 people in a room for an hour, that's 10 hours of time.

SPEAKER_02 16:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:44

You walk out of that meeting with unclear decisions, or anybody walks out with a lack of clarity, that's 10 hours that could be completely wasted. So, you know, for example, one section of the book says, ask these four questions before you leave a meeting. Who's responsible for something? You know, who's what's the action, what's the time scale, when is expected to be delivered? Ask yourself those questions. If you walk out of a meeting and those haven't been answered, you've probably failed in the meeting, unless it's for something else. Um, so I want people to get from the book that there's sections in the book which really provide some direction and some very simple things. And then there's another section on course direction. So we've put together like a 10-point plan on, you know, you've seen these things, you understand the issues. Uh, maybe some of them are true for you, some of them aren't. But here's a 10-point plan of how to course correct your business and your culture. Um one thing that's really hard to shift is culture of a business. As a culture slides in the wrong direction, which means one which is becoming less efficient, where people are covering themselves, where timelines slip, where people say it's okay for a timeline to slip. That's okay, you know, because it has before, it always likes that. That's okay. Recovering that, it can it can take a matter of six months for that to happen from something which is okay to something which isn't great, but it can take years to bring it back in line. It's a bit like losing a customer. You know, the minute you lose a customer, losing a customer can take a day. Getting them back can take a year. And so part of the thread in the book is how do you start to shift the culture back in the right direction again? Because it is going to take time, but there's some practical steps in there in each section. Um, and the other thing I'd like people to see is that at the beginning of each chapter, it sort of summarizes the chapter. So once they've read it, they can come back and go, Oh, I just want to refresh myself on this, but this needs to read the first page of the chapter. And if the only thing they take away is to read the first page, first page of the chapter, they've actually gained quite a bot because that's a snapshot. So it's got a slightly different structure to what other business books would have in that regard.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Okay. It sounds really interesting because I guess that the the person reading it has to sort of be honest with themselves and with their company first. And you talk about honesty quite a lot. Um,

Where The Book Goes Next

SPEAKER_03 18:59

and w where do you see this book going? Do you see there might be a second version or you've got such a wealth of experience? I mean, you obviously want to s to have a little rest in between, but you've got such a wealth of experience within different companies, within industries. It would be uh quite a sort of a good thing to maybe go into consultancy within businesses, going in and maybe doing an audit for people. I mean, obviously, you know, further down the line, but is that something you've ever thought about?

SPEAKER_04 19:32

Well, um, definitely. I mean, I think that um it'll be interesting to see where it goes. I think that we've so anything I've structured the book and the copyright around all these sorts of things in a way that that could we could um maintain that approach actually. So, you know, we've set up the company, um, which you can see the company name in the book. Um, and that is the company that we formulated because we always begin with the end in mind, which is also an important strategy, is you know, it might end up where you've suggested, you know, it might be coming something where we can be a franchise or we could build other products around it. So we've organized ourselves that way to start with. And I guess the other thing is I will be going to Australia um end of next week. I suspect over a few glasses of wine, Anthony, I would think about whatever the book will be.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:18

We bounce bounce a few ideas around. Uh but I certainly think that there's a opportunity for a series of these with some little twists on them. Um, obviously not replicating much of the book from one to the next, but we've got a few ideas, so look out for it.

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Yes, fantastic. And what I'll do is I'll link I'll link the the sort of the Amazon link or or you know the pod um the um download link in our podcast so that people can download it and look at it. Yeah, it's great. Pillars. And it's a good size, I think, because if you if you come in with a book that's you know five half long, it sort of looks off a little bit, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 21:00

Yeah, I mean it's only this big.

SPEAKER_03 21:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:02

That was intentional in that we didn't want to have a book which somebody would take too long to read. So ideally, you know, the strategy was, and this was our thinking, is somebody's in an airport or they're getting on a plane, they're going traveling, they should be able to take that with them and read it within the time they're on an airplane, basically. So this is kind of like an aeroplane read event. Um I've had a couple of people respond and say they bought it and read it the whole thing in the evening, one evening.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Yeah, they kind of got into it.

SPEAKER_04 21:28

Yeah, they literally spent an hour and a half reading it and found a lot of value. And then one person particular person who I won't name, but he said he um he read it, took some notes, read it again, and then gave it to his dad.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 21:42

Um, so I think there's nothing better than somebody reading a book and giving it to their parents to read. Because that's what it's like.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Absolutely, because that's a an endorsement.

SPEAKER_04 21:49

It's an endorsement, yes, that they're some value in it.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Yeah, absolutely. So when exactly did it go live? When exactly did it start, sort of uh when the book actually got published. Yeah, when it actually got published.

SPEAKER_04 22:03

I think it was the uh thing do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

It was around about like 28th, 29th of July, like just the yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Okay, so it's literally a brand new baby. Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, well, I'm gonna get hold of it and read it. And then we should do another podcast and talk about what I thought of it.

SPEAKER_04 22:23

Oh, that would be good. That would be fantastic. Then you can do all the talking.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

I'm happy sitting back listening to you.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

So we'll interview you instead.

SPEAKER_02 22:33

Yes, fantastic. Yeah, and you can yeah, see what I've remembered.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

Um, is there anything else you'd like to add? Or

Friendship, Impact And Farewell

SPEAKER_03 22:42

it's been a fantastic conversation. I've really enjoyed talking to you, and I'm really excited about this for you. It sounds amazing, and you've been friends for so long, and to do this project together must be such a great sense of achievement, especially now that it's published.

SPEAKER_04 22:55

It is. I mean, it's started to hit both of us more recently, where Anthony said to me a few times, he said, um, this is real. It's like we actually did what we said we would do.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

Yes, that's right. We followed our own uh direction. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:12

Well, I think it's personally, I think I've I've quite refreshed by it. I found actually um the opportunity to re-engage with Anthony in this way has been really nice because we did come back a long way. But you know, distance makes it hard to keep those friendships going, and it's been a really nice way to keep my keep that relationship with Anthony going. Um have the opportunity to hopefully um provide push something back into the community and the society and just generally society and business of hopefully that somebody will learn something. If people get one thing out of it, that's great. You know, they don't have to get 10 things. If somebody gets one thing, they go, Wow, that really makes me think differently. I really need to think about that and I'll work on it, and they do it. That's a win for us. That's the sort of win we're after. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Well, you've all got your Christmas presents sorted then for the whole thing. They'll all be the same size.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

Very true.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Yeah, well, it's been an absolute, absolute pleasure to have you today. And um, yes, I hope you raise a glass together in Australia when you're over there, Simon. When are you going at the end of the month, did you say?

SPEAKER_04 24:19

Uh going next Thursday.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Oh, exciting.

SPEAKER_04 24:22

Fantastic. Yeah, that'll come around very quickly. Excellent.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Yeah, it will, it will. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been an absolute pleasure.

SPEAKER_04 24:30

Right, and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_03 24:32

No, pleasure.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

That's okay. Thank you too. And thanks to all our listeners, and we'll catch up with you on the next episode of the Future Print Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Bye bye. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe now for more great audio content coming up. And visit futureprint. And to catch up on content from Future Print events at all three units time on the Future Print Podcast.