CX Diaries - with Keith Gait
CX Diaries with Keith Gait is my podcast where I talk to the people at the sharp end of CX and Contact Centres. The Movers and the shakers, the innovators, the disruptors, and the people delivering in the real world who share their personal stories of their journey through our industry
CX Diaries - with Keith Gait
Why Effective Planning is Key to Customer Satisfaction
In this episode of CX Diaries, I connect with industry expert Dave Vernon, who shares his extensive experience in contact centre planning and management.
As workforce efficiency remains a key concern for businesses, understanding how to optimise workforce planning becomes essential for achieving both customer satisfaction and employee engagement. Dave delves into the intricacies of balancing customer needs with colleague well-being and corporate objectives, illustrating that effective planning plays a crucial role in managing these dynamics.
With the growing trend towards hybrid working models, Dave highlights the challenges and opportunities that arise, emphasising how agility in planning can significantly impact operational success. He draws on his experiences, offering practical advice for contact centre's of all sizes and helping leaders understand the implications of their planning decisions. Additionally, the importance of continuous learning and peer collaboration in the field is accentuated, showcasing the relevance of community networks in professional development.
Listeners can expect to gain valuable insights from Dave's journey, his advocacy for the planning profession, and actionable tips to foster a culture of transparency and understanding within their teams.
Join us for an enlightening conversation that not only addresses the complexities of workforce planning but also inspires a new generation of professionals to excel in the industry.
Be sure to check out the YouTube page for the Video version
https://www.youtube.com/@CustomerExperienceFoundation24
Welcome to CX Diaries. Cx Diaries from the Customer Experience Foundation is our podcast where we talk to the people at the sharp end of contact centres and CX, the movers and the shakers, the innovators, the disruptors and the people delivering in the real world who share their personal stories of their journey through our industry. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Dave Vernon of their journey through our industry. This week I'm delighted to be joined by Dave Vernon. Dave is an award-winning industry recognised expert with 20 years experience in contact centre planning management and has held senior planning positions at blue chip companies such as NTL, markthard, hbos and the AA. He's been at the forefront of driving best practice in contact centre planning through nine years as head of membership at the Forum, with the aim of professionalising the contact centre planning industry. Dave, welcome, it's a pleasure to have you with us this afternoon.
Speaker 2:Welcome, Keith. Yep, lovely to be here.
Speaker 1:So the Forum. For those that don't know about the Forum, tell us all about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure. So we're an industry body that's here to support people across contact centres and also in wider planning functions. So we're kind of there for people who are doing all the planning in contact centres insights, analytics and also quality and also customer experience professionals. We also help people in kind of niche planning, such as back office field and branch, and we're a learning organisation back office field and branch, and we're a learning organisation. We also have learning offerings, a modulised virtual learning offering across all these disciplines so people can come along, do something kind of out of their normal role, try to get people to learn, professionalise and let people kind of develop and be involved and also bring them into a community of best practice. So that's what we're all about here at the Forum.
Speaker 1:Why is there a need for that kind of organisation?
Speaker 2:I think it's very easy, keith, when our organisations even if you've had a diverse career, you might work at like three, four, five organisations through your working life what the Forum gives you is access to you know, 150, 160 people, uh, corporate organizations, where people can actually kind of reach out and say I'm facing this, this problem, and usually someone's been through it before so we can give access to that and let people kind of fast track what they're trying to do.
Speaker 2:And also people love to share things like the gotchas, those pitfalls that we've all been through, those battle scars that we have from those difficult moments in our career, and kind of help people understand, you know how to avoid them or you know, if they're going through them, to kind of really learn from that and take that forward. So that's kind of why we're needed. And also, you know, many times these are quite small teams in big organisations so it's sometimes can feel a bit insular and you know, we kind of know what you know within your organization and we accept that all organizations have differences but there's some different kind of, you know, standard ways of operating that run through all organizations. So we allow that to kind of come together and we get members talking. You know we might have health care members talking to large financials, but still, you know, dealing with similar issues, and it just allows people to kind of, you know, really get some extra pair of eyes on what they're trying to do.
Speaker 1:Okay, and what's your role at the foundation?
Speaker 2:So at the forum my role is a director, so I've kind of been away and come back.
Speaker 2:And it was good to be away because I went and worked in a vendor world in the contact center, so working for a WFM organization as a, as a principal solution consultant.
Speaker 2:So, coming back to the forum, it's kind of allowed me to take those two lenses and bring that together. And I came back to the forum as a director to kind of really push on and try and grow the community, really push forward our learning agenda also take forward our standards framework, which is about allowing people to understand how they compare to other organisations, how their planning function, insight function, kind of stacks up against the framework and also stacks up against the industry and allow those people to kind of step out and also do some standards work as well. So it was about coming back and really kind of pushing that forward and really kind of growing the community, which know, as we, you know, so we've got 156 corporate organizations, um, so it helps to uh, you know, the more we get, the more lenses we get, the more kind of best practice we get, uh, and with the awards program as well, that really encapsulates it all together. So, yeah, that's that's. That's what I have come back to the forum to do, keith.
Speaker 1:So talk to us about and this is a long subject talk to us about why planning and WFM is important, why business needs to do it and do it.
Speaker 2:Well, planning and WFM is important. Well, most organisations your workforce is your most expensive resource, that's usually your biggest cost on your balance sheet and most organisations contact centres, back office, field operations, branches are very heavy on that front-facing people and you want to be able to do that as efficiently as possible and try and kind of forecast what's coming down within your organisation and put the best supply as you can to that kind of anticipated demand. Get that wrong can be very expensive but also can very damaging for your brand. If you've got lots of you know cause queuing, you know things not being answered, not getting back to people, that can really kind of cause cause issue. So planning is there to kind of as I always say, keith, we're there to kind of keep that tension. It's kind of three lenses within our world. We've got the, we've got the customer. Obviously we need to be there for our customer, uh, and we want to try and make sure that we've got the right people in the right place at the right time with the right skill. But we've also got to have that colleague lens across it as well. So, understanding that, yeah, you know we the best, the best shift pattern might be everybody working every weekend but colleagues, you know people aren't going to work, that that's not going to work from a work-life balance uh perspective. Uh, we're not going to retain our staff. So where any efficiencies we get from that is lost in you know, our attrition and people walking out the door. So we're kind of trying to build all that.
Speaker 2:And then the final thing is obviously our corporate. Uh, you know uh, targets, what the cup, you know what our organization organization's trying to deliver, you know be that kind of first call resolution, kind of improve our, you know, net promoter score, it's kind of those three things trying to hold that together and if a good planning team will try and deliver that and kind of also that will move. You know, at certain points that will be all about the customer. If you think about a retail environment golden quarter, you know we can't be abandoning course, we can't be losing that revenue. So you know we focus on customer. Other times it's all about the colleague and them getting that. You know time away to develop uh, and you know, get through training if we're putting in new systems. And then also you know for for the corporate to make sure that we deliver on what we've set out.
Speaker 1:OK, so if someone's new to planning, tell us what the basics of planning are, give us the whistle stop guide to the basics of planning, basic blocks Yep.
Speaker 2:So basic planning. You know what planning is all about is obviously we have a planning cycle that's well published out there. So the first point is, obviously it have a planning cycle that's well published out there, uh. So the first point is obviously it's around forecasting. It's around getting that uh understanding you know what's coming through the door, be that in it'd be widgets, be it calls, uh, and then also kind of having that as a as a long-term plan. So we've got the demand of what's coming in, but then also understanding what we think the supply will be against that, looking at assumptions such as average handling time, productivity, utilisation, adherence and things like that. So that's that kind of top-level segment has kind of been able to say this is what's coming in, this is what we think is, you know the people we need to kind of handle what's coming in. And then we have the scheduling and allocating resource. So that's about building the shifts, trying to match up the demand over kind of an intraday period.
Speaker 2:So working through the days and the intervals, so making sure Monday's our busiest day We've got the most people in on Monday. If Friday's our quietest day, at least people on a Friday, you know if, and then kind of working all the intervals in between that and then you know we usually lock that down because people want to know when they're working. So there's usually a horizon around that four to six weeks where we kind of put that down. And then we've got kind of the the tactical planners, who are there to make sure that plan that's all been put together happens. You know those assumptions are delivered against and if there's any deviation on those assumptions, uh, that's kind of called back to feed back into the forecasting capacity to make that better.
Speaker 2:So that's kind of how the planning cycle works as we work through and that's why it's it's really important and that's why what you know, what we've been trying to do over the last you know we've been in I think we're our 23rd year this year is around taking some of this mystery away and making this a profession, because most of us in this profession, keith in planning, we've all been kind of probably worked as agents or team leaders and kind of fell or kind of moved into this area because we have some acumen around numbers and and things like that.
Speaker 2:We want to bring this together so that you know planning and contact centers are a whole scene is like, you know, hr it finance. You know, we want to really kind of make sure that people work into this and it's really important to us that we bring that next generation of people through, especially with this hybrid working world. Now, it's kind of how do you get visibility of planning as much if you're not in the office? So, yeah, that's that's, that's what kind of planning is all around and that's what we're trying to kind of make planning become.
Speaker 1:OK, so you've talked to us about the planning horizon and locking that down. Talk to us about intraday, because, um, the organizations I've worked at, the uh intraday people seem to be, uh, they're always very, very busy. So talk to us about the uh fine art of intraday management yeah, so the fine art of intraday.
Speaker 2:So intraday is kind of intraday. It can be kind of seen as seen as near time planning or on the day planning, but all usually kind of can be looking it's a close horizon, maybe a week out, and bringing that on today and it's about controlling the intervals. It's about making sure that most of we have the technology now that breaks down our intervals into kind of 15 minutes, so it's trying to deliver throughout the day a consistent service through that, that, the skills around it. Keith, it's around being proactive. You know it's very easy to kind of just get caught, you know moving things around in the day, but if we can always get ahead of it it kind of really helps. And I think we've got.
Speaker 2:You know, as you said, always seem really busy, but I think there is a kind of a shift coming out. There is technology out there that's helping that intraday world, uh, where there's more kind of automation. Those intraday people are moving away from just kind of maybe moving skills around to actually being, you know, uh, kind of looking at root, you know, looking at rules and things like that, writing rules into systems, into the real-time automation products that are out there to try and make proactive decisions. And I think also, I think the days have gone. You know, I'm sure in your day you might have seen that the intraday team very busy, but also kind of maybe seen as the people that said no, you know, to things.
Speaker 1:Cancel your training session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cancel your training session. It was all about that. It was kind of customer. It was always. You know we're talking about those three lenses. It was around customer and corporate. You know people need to be there for the customer and that delivers our kind of.
Speaker 2:You know the arbitrary 80-20,. You know 80% of calls in 20 seconds, no rhyme or reason why that's been set. That is again changing. Now. People are setting different service levels around what's right for their company rather than the 80 20 which actually comes from. That was just what was coded into the original wfms all those years ago. It was just that was what put in there or left it on that default setting, uh.
Speaker 2:But that you know, we ran a real-time, uh, virtual networking group, uh, this week and we're actually talking about what are we doing for our colleagues and I think that you, you know the real time view is now changing to kind of I've got to look after my colleagues as well.
Speaker 2:It can't be just about the customer, because you know we've you know we've been through a massive problem with recruitment and attrition. It's just about settling down the hybrid world after COVID. The colleagues are so important now and we're having the real time people now are actually having to think you know what we might have to sacrifice some customer today and some of our corporate goals because we've got to do this for the colleague and trying to articulate that back up the chain now and real-time people trying to kind of really understand what their strategic goals are of that company and aligning in what they're doing to line into that. You know, if we've got a colleague first sort of program, our time, you know, should be delivering a colleague first program. Yeah, they've got to look at, look after the customer and and the performance as well. But yeah, so it is a it is a more rounded role now and I think that's been the challenge for those people over the last couple of years is coming around to that mentality.
Speaker 1:Very, very interesting. A lot of organisations have quite large planning teams because they've got quite large service operations. I know myself, when I ran NHS Direct we had one of the biggest planning teams in the country and they did an amazing job. What would you say to our listeners that are perhaps running a smaller or a micro contact center that might have 15 staff, 20, 25 staff? They haven't got a team, they've got cost justification issues. They probably can't afford or haven't looked at the latest WFM software. What would you say to those sort of businesses? How do you as an organization go about that?
Speaker 2:I think it's being clear in what you're trying to do and also if we've got these, if we've got a really small centre, is, you know, really rolling down to. You know we expect agents and team leaders and the agents to understand why certain things happen in a contact center. You know taking them through, you know what is shrinkage, you know what does that mean. You know it's a real but, but you know it's, it's basic terms. It's it basically means you're not with a customer and I'm paying you. Now that's not a problem because that's right. You know we've got to give you holidays. You know we've got to. You will have some time off for absences and things like that. But in the office we also need people to kind of be doing one to ones and things like that. But we don't kind of share this kind of base information of you know why things are. So I think if you're in a small centre, it's making sure that your team leaders and agents kind of understand those basic principles of contact center. You know things like the power of one. You know the difference one person makes. That service level isn't linear. You know we lose two people. That could be the difference between an 80 service level and a 40 service level.
Speaker 2:You know it's very, you know, in these small centers especially one person matters. You know. I think it's getting through that everybody matters. I think if we can give that kind of you know understanding, people tend to not go to work to do a bad job. So if we can give this understanding you'll find that actually you'll probably get a bit of self-management out of those areas and sort of like a you know, as you say, keith, wfm and planning teams. They kind of come in really above that sort of you know 45, 50 fde organizations below. I think we give that knowledge and you know, if you've got somebody who's got a bit of Excel skills you can pick it. You know we have calculators that can be used and some basic principles that can be used to help those people through. But I think it's really important massive assumptions in our industry. That kind of everyone understands you know why it's important that you know you're there when you're shoving it and it generates different behaviours that we expect from people than normal kind of office-based roles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and talking about that influencing, how do planners and how do you, as the forum, help the planning departments help influence the execs and senior managers about the importance of it and the ROI of what you're delivering?
Speaker 2:yeah, well, we had. We had some great help in that. Uh, keith, it was called COVID. Uh, because that really, you know, you know that that really focused minds around what you know, the, the power of planning. You know, being able to kind of, you know, it wasn't just about getting the technology to get people home, it was being able to kind of, you know, it wasn't just about getting the technology to get people home, it was being able to kind of still make sure that we had the people there, that they were rostered rightly, you know, and bringing in all these different ways of working now that have come in. I think that's been a that's been a great benefit for the support functions and the contact centre. It's shown what they can deliver and what they can do, and that's been a massive movement with the execs.
Speaker 2:I think what we're still trying to do is make sure that.
Speaker 2:You know it would be great if every large organisation had a director of planning, like there's a director of HR, there's a director of finance, and that is more prevalent.
Speaker 2:We're seeing that role becoming more prevalent now because there is an understanding there, because you know a lot of the time, planning is the enabler of finances, great wonderful plans to happen and I think that's where we're kind of working through the organizations with finance and planning work, uh, handing, handing glove, you know, if there's there's a direct link to kind of cfos and stuff like that and also, I think, the cfo and, you know, chief customer officers, they're the kind of ones that we can really kind of influence and explain what we do and how it impacts them for them.
Speaker 2:To kind of go to the other parts of the C-suite, I'd say it's work in progress, keith. It's still not there, but it's definitely been massively accelerated over the last three years and it's not seen now that, oh, you know, the support functions are just a cost centre. You know pretty much all the contact centres were viewed as a cost centre back in the day. I think that's now changing. Seeing that we need these, you know we need the technology, we need the teams to really enable us to make sure that we deliver on what we're trying to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and very much about that efficiency message that you started off with, I can imagine. Yeah, I think it is around that efficiency. But it's also about making sure that you know we do protect all these kind of great and wonderful colleague plans that everybody have for their organisation. It's usually the planners that have to make it happen. It's got to be scheduled, it's got to be put in, it's got to be understanding. You know there's a cost behind that and that's not saying it's wrong. It's just saying that if we're doing this, you know there's probably a. You know it's kind of explaining that yeah, it might be extra three, four percent on your shrinkage target, but if we're going to offset that, offset that against the eight percent reduction on attrition, it's probably the right thing to do. Uh. So it's just kind of bringing that together and just explaining the situation that these great strategic plans that you have when it brings down to the bottom end that this is, this is what's going to happen amazing, and where does it go wrong?
Speaker 2:where does it go wrong or?
Speaker 1:how does?
Speaker 2:it go. I think it goes wrong when, uh, there's not that alignment or we get that top-down sort of ethos that you know people make. You know what we call the hippos the highest paid person's opinion. Whenever we see top-down methodology and little bottom-up coming back and it's just that sort of like C-suite's made a decision and it's a real tell, command and control culture, keith, that's when it tends to go wrong.
Speaker 2:Sometimes the planning team's not brave enough to push back and just feel that they've just got to go with it. It's tough to push back, especially if you're pushing back maybe two or three layers above in the hierarchy. It is a tough one to do, but that's what we see Even now. We've seen that, haven't we? Across the industry, with a lot of these hybrid working initiatives constantly changing as maybe a new person comes in, people want to kind of go back to what they had and we can't really go back to that. So I think that's when it goes wrong is when it's top down, we don't get any kind of move book and we're not brave enough to push back, to go.
Speaker 2:You know what. You know those assumptions that you're putting in. You know we can make any sort of cost saving on the spreadsheet. We can make any sort of cost saving on a spreadsheet, but if we're slicing 120 seconds off AHT, who's going to make that happen? Not the planning team that needs to go to the operation. Are they in agreement that they've got strategies in place to do that? And if we're just taking it out flat, well, that's not how it usually works. It's usually a glide path as we move down. It's these sort of things, when they happen like that, keith, that it all kind of falls apart.
Speaker 1:Okay, really interesting. Thank you more personally, dave. Talk us through your journey through the industry. How did you get started? How did you end up?
Speaker 2:where you are today. Well, yeah, I've had a bit of a circulation over the last kind of month or so, keith. Because a bit of a circulation over the last kind of month or so because I went back to actually the site I started at uh to run the leaders of the future uh program there with intradm which was actually. I started working for mercury communications back in 1995 as a billing agent which was a challenger to bt uh, very fortunate to go in and that is now virgin media and I'm back to the virgin media site at withenshaw. So it was very odd walking back into where I used to kind of be an agent and kind of looking how things had changed and things had moved on. But I was very lucky at that point because it was a brand new set up contact centre. It had actually brought in an American company called Trinity Horn to set it up the first consultants remember those guys. So it was set up with with this kind of methodology. That was really cutting edge at that point which was all around. You know acds were in, wfm was in in 97, one of the first ones, tcs, uh came in. So I was there as an agent, had a great step up to a proper step up to leadership program where you'd go to the unit of cape because of part of cable and wireless cable and wireless university down at coventry, keith. So just, fortunately, you know, coming in at that point ain't quite new and the you know the contact center was quite new. As you've been there, you kind of you know, moved up and I moved up to a team leader and part of the deal was you can be a team leader. You have all this lovely development, be a team leader, but you do the night shift, you do do the full midnight shift. That was your deal, that was your kind of where you the gift to get. So I did that. And then it got into looking at WFM and things like that. So I started looking after the schedules on the evening.
Speaker 2:Then I worked off and went to work on dialers. So I went and did a couple of years on dialers and this was all happening and through this time it was transitioning from Mercury to cable and wireless to NTL. And then I left there after eight years and went to be resource planning manager for sorry, it was service delivery manager for Barclaycard, and that's when I started managing dual sites and that's where lots of skills came from being able to kind of understand how to manage remote teams and things like that HBOS looking after their service delivery team there. There they went to the aa as national planning manager. So again that was looking after all that what they call indoor resource, because obviously they've got the patrols out. But then we did this dispatch area that was dispatching and that came to me. So I started getting some looking into into field and things like that.
Speaker 2:And then, uh, we won an award with the fort with what was the planning forum at that point because we did a massive piece of work with uh boston consulting when oc and c bought the aa. That's when I came to the forum and did nine years here and then so I've been to work for aspect software as a solutions consultant and then come back here. So it's been a been a 23 year journey. But again, winding right back to the start that agent point to move in. You know that I think that's really still really important, that I think there's always a great wealth within our agent population of people who've got skills that you don't know that are there, that I think the hybrid culture makes it harder to pick those out. But I think there's always great opportunity to kind of bring people through into our, you know, into this sphere really.
Speaker 1:What are you most proud of? What are the biggest achievements?
Speaker 2:Biggest achievements? Well, the award that we won back in 2007 at the AA. That was a great achievement, you know we we did a lot of work to make things more efficient and took about £12 million out of a £32 million budget. Painful, because working with it was really unknown as well. Keith, working with venture capitalists to see how they function and where they focus on so that really kind of was one of the good things was going through that and surviving.
Speaker 2:That was good and I think just being able to, you know, coming up from you know it just shows, you know, I started off as an agent. I didn't have a degree at that point and it just shows you how far you can come through in this industry if you've got you know, vocational skills. I did do a degree course as I went through. I wanted to do that, so I picked up a kind of a BSc. I was going through what I was doing, but I think it's, you know, I think I'm proud that I've managed to kind of do this for 20, 25 years and I've really enjoyed it a career. And I'm not done yet. I've still got a few years left yet.
Speaker 1:Yeah, talk about some of the challenges you face. What's perhaps the biggest issue you're about to overcome?
Speaker 2:issues I've had to overcome is that in kind of professionally yeah or personally, whatever you want to talk about yeah, I think it's been.
Speaker 2:I think what we've had to overcome is kind of the value that we can bring. It was often seen like our planner in the. What was the value that we can bring? You know it was often seen like oh, planet are in the corner, they're the ones that will say no to your holidays. I can remember getting introduced to that at one of my, at one of the roles I was in as a manager, and I can remember calling can I have a word? You know we're taking the inductees round do and showing what we, what we can do, and I took a lot of teams.
Speaker 2:Uh, keith have been kind of a kind of uh, brow beaten. They kind of lost the confidence. They were just kind of and really with they were just glorified admin teams and I think you know that's kind of the was always overcome was kind of setting out clear purposes, clear kind of uh, boundaries and spans, control, because I think that's it can be clear. You know you own that, we own that. This is where we interact, this is where we join. You know, making sure we have that kind of cadence as we work through, kind of.
Speaker 2:You know we'll have touch points and understand, because there's always that tension between an operation and a planning team, because we're there to challenge each other, but there, as I said, we're there to challenge each other, but there were, as I said, we're in, we're there to deliver for the customer, for the colleague, and the corporate goals. And I think being able to kind of go through that and develop people as well you know, I think that's one of the things I'm really kind of want to overcome is that most of the time they were just kind of giving a wfm and just show what buttons to press and then when something spat out out wrong, no one picked it up. It just said, well, that's what comes out of the computer. So it's kind of getting under making people understand what was coming out. You know what was rolling around. I think that's what made my jump to the forum is that I wanted to make sure that, you know, these people get developed as much as agents, as much as team leaders, as much as much as our ops people.
Speaker 1:And that's still a challenge now to to get that development for these specialist roles yeah, I I think that the survey in planning, the ability to adapt, the agile react, is vastly underestimated. It's not just about, like you say, the programming of the, of the software, it's that ability to react and I often, I often think about when I ran nhs direct and I would sometimes turn up at a site and say, right, I'm taking 200 people off the phones for an hour to do a little bit of a town hall with them and I could hear the intraday team just crying into their cups of tea about how they were going to cope with that for the next hour and a half and they're not going to impact for the rest of the day, the week or the month. I suppose and I think that comes back to what you've talked about is it's not just about customer and corporate, it is about a colleague as well that ability to adapt really important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think before that that's the way most of most of would have reacted. But it's now saying that's fine, keith, you take them off, that's fine, that's great for those people. Yeah, as long as you understand that, and this is what's going to happen because of it. But I'm just telling you know it's, but it's not kind of kind of shouting at you, it's just put it's just, it's just pointing out the impacts, uh, but saying you know, that's great, because what you're saying today is actual priority is that you want to speak to those people. So we're going to make that priority. This is what it's going to do over here and we will do what we can to mitigate that yeah, yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 1:So, as you know, dave, and we always like to ask our guests to uh, reflect and help those coming up through the industry, as we did, so you can go back to being 25 again, and what advice would you give to younger self?
Speaker 2:uh, that is a good one. Uh, right, you can't do everything yourself, yeah, as much as you think you can. It took me a while to realise that. You know you need to delegate and when you delegate it doesn't probably come out exactly how you want it. It will come back. You know, if it comes back, 70% done how you want it, that's a great effort and be accepting of that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then through that process, process, make sure that you kind of trust. Trust your people, don't micromanage. I think it's really hard, especially when you're an experienced manager, to try and see everything because you don't want to make a mistake. You end up micromanaging. Uh, so kind of setting out the you know, the trust with your people, but also kind of explaining that there is consequences of that. I'm going to give you a latitude. I'm not going to tell you how to get to the end goal. You can get there, but you need to get there. You know I'm giving you that space. If you don't deliver, then that's not on. There'll be a consequence behind that. I think sometimes we forget we have to kind of lay out to people that, yeah, I'm going to give you this space to do it, but you know around that, uh, saying no, I think that's really a strong thing to do and but giving the why you're saying no, talk to the story behind it as well.
Speaker 2:Uh, and I think, just understanding that if you've been in an organization for for for a long time, moved to another organization that happened to me early, you know, after I've done eight years at cable and wires, I went to one of the financials and I lost all that business knowledge, uh, and that was a real struggle, that was a real shock to me because I kind of knew everything then I didn't know everything.
Speaker 2:Uh is that you have to understand that you cannot know everything. You know some roles, you will, you'll get to know a business inside out, but some you just kind of need to pick the main things you need to know and you'll hear everybody tell you that every organization is different and there are, but there is, you know, similarities all the way through that you can pick up and when you move roles and move through as you move up that career ladder, you can't know as much, you can't get as far down as you used to be able to, and you just have to kind of let that go and hopefully trust your people to kind of know that knowledge, keith, that that'll be my, my tip.
Speaker 1:Absolutely fantastic, dave, and I would completely endorse all of that from uh, from my career too. So how do you unwind and escape from it all? What do you like to get up to outside of work?
Speaker 2:well I am. I am unwinding and escaping from it right now because, you might notice, you might go that's. That's a strange background behind. I'm actually in my uh caravan in wales, uh, near snowdon. So I kind of, with this new hybrid world I try and work out of here a lot of the summer, uh, so that kind of allows me to unwind. Uh might not sound and unwind to a lot of people, but I do listen to a lot of uh, heavy metal, uh and things like that. So I'm into uh bands like slipknot and slayer and uh, metallica and things like that I often go to download and uh and things like that. So yeahnot and Slayer and Metallica and things like that I often go to Download and things like that. So, yeah, I know it's a rock and roll lifestyle, doesn't really fit with the caravan, but that's what I like to do. And then, on the flip side, I also do like to go on cruises as well.
Speaker 1:So a bit of an anomaly, keith, I'm still trying to keep that rebellious piece but I am kind of moving into that kind of oh yeah, cruising, that sounds nice. Full caravan, that sounds nice, amazing. Dave, it's been wonderful having you with us today. Thank you so much for great insights and I hope our listeners have found this as insightful as I have. You can find out lots more about the Customer Experience Foundation at cxoorg and we hope you can join us next time on CX Diaries.