Total Innovation Podcast

1. Aidan McCullen - Award-Winning speaker, Author, and Host of the Innovation Show.

• Wazoku Team • Season 1 • Episode 1

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We're delighted that our inaugural guest is Aidan McCullen.  

Aidan is the host and founder of the  Innovation Show, the most subscribed to innovation podcast, which boasts Bill Gates as a listener and advocate and features on Irelands national broadcaster RTÉ . 

He reinvented himself after a 10-year career after rugby with over 100 caps for Leinster, Toulouse and London Irish and is a full Ireland Rugby International.

Aidan speaks and runs workshops globally on disruption and change for organisations such as Mastercard, Epic Games, Endemol Shine Group, Agilent Technologies, CBC Canada and Toyota and in industries from Pharma to Fintech.

Aidan is the author of the book, “Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life” which features a Foreword by Visa founder and CEO Emeritus, Dee Hock.

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Introduction to Total Innovation Podcast

Welcome to the very first episode of our Total Innovation podcast. To kick things off, we couldn't have a better guest. With a summer of sports and a world of innovation needs around us, it's amazing to kick off a podcast that is inspired by my joint obsessions of business and sports with Aidan McCullen. 

Meet Aidan McCullen: From Rugby to Innovation

If you don't know Aidan, first of all, you should. He's a former professional rugby player who graced the fields with top teams like Leinster and Toulouse. And after hanging up his boots, Aiden transformed himself into a leading innovation expert, bringing his competitive spirit and strategic mindset to the business world as an author of Undisruptable, a keynote speaker, a coach, and a host of the Innovation Show, the number one rated podcast on innovation. 

Today, the tables turn as Aiden joins us as our first ever podcast guest. So without further ado, let's get started. Let's dive in in this episode we're gonna explore how total innovation can drive performance and success from the pitch to the boardroom to get ready for an insightful and exciting starts to our total innovation podcast journey and first up welcome aiden how is it being on the other side of the microphone for once 

it's great man great to be with you and delighted to be honored to be the first guest. 

Well, I think we, we formed this a little bit together, right? Like, I don't exactly remember how you and I met now, but, um, whenever we did, like, um, we've bounced a lot of ideas over, over time. And as this, this idea of total innovation formed in my mind, you were the natural go to person for this. So I don't want to talk too much today that I'm going to pick your brains a little bit.

Exploring Total Innovation in Sports and Business

Let's start with some some scene setting right with the topic of the podcast is total innovation tell me what is total innovation mean to you both in a corporate and a sports context.  

I'll start with the corporate with the board with actually the the playing fields and then move on to the business field the playing field for me is epitomized you know the story of iax and total football.

That's where I first heard about it and where we discussed the idea where players didn't really have a number on their back. And if they did, they moved around the pitch and a confused opposition because everybody had been trained within a certain paradigm of how a game happens.  And what I loved about that was that they broke the paradigm and that confused opposition, because like, you're not meant to do that.

And that idea transferred then later in my life into rugby and to lose the club. I played for Toulouse in particular and Leinster, by the way, at that time, we're aiming to be something like to lose, but I saw Toulouse play when I was 20. I played professional be over in France for a team called Dax. That was my first.

Experience i actually went over to learn french end up getting a contract and i saw to lose play and i just was mesmerized i was like what is this it was like art  and that for me is total innovation and i discovered why they do that later on it's because. It's embedded in their culture  they start at a very young age with the academy and the academy then bring a lot of this as the spine of a team later on and then they pepper the team with missing parts that they might need.

Now if you look at that as a template and you go to a business sense you need people that are trained in a certain way of culture but you also need outsiders because the outsiders will bring in new thinking will also. Question is what you're doing correct and bring new skill sets etc just like for example your countryman jack willis is in toulouse at the moment and he's bringing a whole new paradigm to the.

To the sports to the way they play the game  that for me is total innovation that's what happens in organizations and from a leadership perspective it means. You, you set the culture and the vision by where we're going, that creates a kind of a boundary around what type of things we do, you have certain values, people play to those values and you recruit very, very wisely for those values.

So it all transfers for me.  

The Importance of Culture and Leadership

Yeah, I think one of the things that you and I have spoken about in the past was that, you know, the 90 minutes on the pitch represents about 1 percent of the total time in the week, right? And that, to a degree, the output of that 1 percent is the 99 percent of what happens around all of that.

Um, and you sent me an article recently, um, on that from, uh, from, uh, I think a Toulouse perspective, um, if I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, right, that really looks at that culture from the youth, you know, the really young youth all the way through and building that. Yeah. That ethos and mindset in, which isn't just about the 1 percent 99%, but actually is about generations to come as well.

And that mindset, I think, you think that's something that does pervade in business in that parallel can be taken into business, or is it all too, too short term and sort of shareholder results driven, do you think, from a business innovation perspective? 

Well, unfortunately, yeah, yeah. Well, like the culture you build can also hold you hostage.

I think as well. So you build a certain culture of the way things are done around here. You build a certain capability of the way people work around here. And over time that sets like concrete. And  if an organization isn't constantly questioning that and refreshing it. The mindset can actually hold you hostage to a world that no longer exists in a business sense.

And the same happens in an, in a sporting sense. So I'll give you an example. Recently, Simon, Italy, you might know as a national team had been doing quite well,  their, their provincial teams had been doing quite well, Treviso and these types of teams. And then from a financial sense, they pulled the academy, all the work they had put into this academy.

And they had used the guy actually who set up the Irish academy here. A guy called Steven Abboud, they, they used him, he set up the academy. And then when he left, they just all done all his work. So they had been seeing the fruits of that early labor, planting those seeds. And you know you just think about this as a as a garden i'll plant these guys over here and when they're mature enough i'll move them over to the main plot of land where the garden is.

And this is what happened in in italy and it's starting to crumble already and this is what happens in organizations. 

Challenges and Parallels in Sports and Business

If they're not looking for new opportunities and threats using tools, like the multitude of tools you provide with mozuku, for example, they're, they miss those opportunities for the future.

They're exploiting at the, at the expense of exploring for the future. And that ultimately becomes undone, especially in the world we're in today.  

Which is interesting, right? Because there's a lot of data. Obviously, we can, you can see that. And you know, you've, you've been in the, in the weeds and played the sport at a top level.

But I imagine most of the fans could see some of that. And so, and it's also somewhat true from a corporate perspective, right? Like the results are obviously slightly different than do you win or not on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon from a business perspective. And it can be a little bit slower to see that.

Exponential cliff edge that is coming your way, but it is often something that can be seen and felt yet. You know, you don't necessarily make those adjustments. Why do you think that's true in the sports world? And what parallel could you draw from that? Like, why would, why would you start to undo something that seemingly working and start to break it?

And, you know, and, you know, is that a strategy that they're playing in a different direction that could be right or wrong? Or, you know, Bad leadership. You know, what, what is it? What is the parallel there? 

I see this man all the time where a new leader comes in, you know, you know, yourself, you've dealt with these types of leaders, you've had meetings, you've had pitch meetings, you've sometimes they've gotten rid of the work that you have done, for example, as an innovation consultant working where it was, maybe you've brought in tools, the head of innovation that had hired you.

Moves on and then they undo, they take out the system. And usually what it is is some CFO or CEO might come in and go, you know what, what are we doing with this thing? It's costing us X a year. What's the benefit? What's the outcome? And they can't because it's so difficult to see in the early stages. So it's always in a financial reason, or there might be some new investors into the business, some, some VC investors, for example, maybe it's a scale up that has a new VC and the VC goes, actually, we'll put a new leadership.

We'll look at all the causes. All the costs will dress up the bride and we'll sell it on. And that is a killer of businesses all the time. That's exactly what happened. For example, in Italy, undo all that hard work because of the immediate return on investment is not clear.  And as you know, there's so many levers when it comes to innovation, there's culture, this mindset, there's psychological safety, there's the capabilities inside the organization.

There's the vision of the leadership team that's being shared and consistently articulated throughout the organization. That's the exact same for sports. Simon.  

Yeah, somewhere at the heart of that, I guess, is like, what is our winning aspiration? Like, what does winning look like? And I think in the, in the top teams, that isn't just about, well, we score more points than the other team, right?

Or we sell more product than the other team. It's, it's a very defined thing. You know, you can imagine that from a Steve Jobs apple through to a Pep Guardiola team or the Dutch football team we spoke to.  The examples you gave from Lens to Toulouse as well, which, which, which goes more into a culture and an identity than than anything else, you know, it almost rather lose playing well than win playing badly, right?

Which is a, which is another way of thinking, thinking about that. Um, I don't know how that does translate through to the corporate world. In a tangible way, maybe, you know, do you think you can feel it? Cause I find culture so, so hard to be tactile and, and, and, and tangible. Right. And so we use it as this thing, but I don't know how you could apply it.

It feels much more tangible in the, in the, in the theater of sports. But do you think  

The Role of Psychological Safety and Reward Systems

take, take, for example, psychological safety. So you make a mistake in the, in, in the pursuit of some innovative idea.  That's never been done before that should be, you should be given a tap on the back for that. You should be given it, not a kick in the ass.

And say, for example, I go to Toulouse as a new player, which I did. And I try something and it was the right thing to do. But the guy outside me wasn't on the same page as me.  Initially they'll give you a pass on that. So they won't be coming down and you go, Oh, you should have given that pass exactly the way it should be.

It's more like it was in the right spirit. Good idea. So you were doing the right thing here. Just didn't come off. Well done. And literally that happened to me with the best coach in the world at the time I had was the guy Gino Vez and that was the culture. That was the way of thinking. And we used to look at videos of matches afterwards, and this is the kind of commentary it was like.

So if you made a stupid mistake. You were told it was a mistake but if it was a mistake in the pursuit of something that could have been beautiful if it was, if it came off, it's like a good idea and literally they'd go bonnie day and you'd move on to the next thing. It's the same in organizations no mistakes they're not the same mistakes the mistakes that are something you never tried before and then something that's just. 

A common practice inside the organization. So that needs to be distinguished. And, and if people then there's a book by a guy called Steve care, not the coach, by the way, there's a Steve care coach, but another book  called reward systems. He's a forthcoming guest on the innovation show.  And he, he talks about the folly of rewarding a while expecting B.

So translate that into an organization. I want people to be more innovative around here. But if they make mistakes, it can be career damaging for them. So they're not given a pat on the back and go well done for trying that thing that didn't work out. Instead, only the people who bring in profits that are immediately recognizable and tangible are recognized around here.

And all this stuff is the exact same thing between sports and business.  

Yeah, I like, I like that parallel. I was thinking as you were talking actually, like, what is the equivalent of  the, the coach or the manager in the organization, right? Cause it's not really the CEO or  arguably even the C suite, right?

You could say it is in some, in some clubs, but in most it's not, it's more into that, you know, That management layer where I think things do die or fly, right, like there is there is a lot to be thought of in that and how the culture set for the team is very driven by the personality of that person and that, you know, a new person coming in often wants to reset that themselves.

Culture's got to pervade more deeper than the more deeply than that into identity and psychological safety, as you said, so. I like that. We don't have a load of time today. So I thought I might take us in a slightly different tangent. 

Continuous Improvement and Borrowing Ideas

And the idea of total innovation covers this, you know, this broad spectrum of everything from, um, you know, we imagine this from the places we work or play and the way we do things today and the capabilities that we have today, but looking to continuously improve on those things all the way through to radically rethinking things, right?

Maybe in the sports world, that's the, You know the Fosbury flop in the top right hand corner is totally changing the way that you do you do the thing that you're doing. Maybe in the middle there is the sort of moneyball type thing bringing data in to to change the game in your favor when perhaps your capabilities are not as not as strong as everything else.

And then in the bottom left hand corner, and I know there's a lot of this in sport, that just you know that strive to continuous improvements. Um, partly because I know there's there's lots of Adjacencies that we can borrow from other places and partly because there's just lots of things that probably we once thought were true that maybe aren't so true.

I think you told me once that, you know, when you were first came into the game of Mars bar or something was a healthy snack, right? Um, as an example, and I was reading recently about how. The All Blacks, you know, went to the ballet to watch how ballet dancers delicately lift people because that helps, you know, with with the gracefulness of the lift and a line out, for example, and but looking to borrow things and remove things that, you know, we once thought were true.

Those things happen a million times a day inside large, large organizations. Could you Could you share any examples from the sports world? I just stole your Mars bar one, but any others that you might have that you could share? 

Well, yeah, you're, you're constantly building on  the knowledge available to you at the time and just like say with innovation or any type of strategy now is there's more data available.

What the data that you're using needs to be clean and it needs to be as it's known as the single version of the truth you need to know the data needs to be clean it needs to be not siloed as it most often is through organizations the bigger the organizations the more siloed the data and it's not it's not the single version and. 

If you go back to a sports world, so I played at just after the, the sport when professional Ruby went professional, it had been kind of semi professional, particularly in places like France, even Australia, South Africa. And that's why they were so far for so long because they had people so much focusing on the sport they were doing weights, they were eating well, et cetera.

But the knowledge at the time available to us was when I played for Lanster professionally in there. In the early days of was like ninety seven ninety eight those kind of times and i think i went professional in ninety five or something like that and afterwards and we think this was great like there was a table on the table was full of drinks like sugary drinks like powerade. 

And which you'd kind of forgive, but not when you were having five or six of them.  And then it would be like Mars. There was like literally a box of bars, bars, and these kinds of bars, like Nutri grains, but the problem was like, they were available there and you were kind of going, this is all new. So people will be filling their pockets with them and eating them loads of them.

Not knowing like the, the, what you were doing was creating this huge sugar spike. But beyond that as well, Simon, I mean,  like not betraying some of the guys, but a lot of the guys would have a drink the night before a game, even at an international level, all, and this is not just Ireland, it's everywhere. A lot of, a lot of teams had that.

Now I'm going to tie this back to something you said.  

Diversity and Neurodiversity in Teams

That is not the job of the leader of the organization to make sure that doesn't happen that is the job of senior players with inside the team unfortunately back then the senior players were the ones clinging on to the old culture.  The new players, like, for example, me, I was like this cause I wasn't that talented.

I have to tell you, and I'll tell you a story, a funny story that I rarely tell people in a, in a moment about that  I was like, I did everything right. I, I, I used to man, I used to. Cook mince and then put it into water and put it in the fridge so the fat would come to the top and i'd scrape it off so i used to literally rinse the mince so i did everything possible brown rice broccoli oh man i was thinking about it now i'm almost gagging. 

What some of the older players still persisted with the old ways i was so frustrating and you see that exact same same paradigm happen. In business is where newcomers come in maybe ahead of innovation trying to change the organization and you have somebody. Clinging to the old ways of the ways things are done around here and unfortunately they have the power.

The old paradigm has the power and quashes the new and the new eventually leaves. So it takes a while for that new paradigm to change. And as Max Planck, the German physicist, famously said that change doesn't happen often because somebody has a great new idea. And everybody goes, that's a great idea.

It's often happens at one funeral at a time because the old guard die out.  And this happens in sports sometimes. You need the old people to die out in order for the organization to move on. But to just bring a full circle to something you said previously, it's not the job of leadership. They set the vision.

They set, they hire the right people, but then what you want in sport is a player led team where the team police is itself. Where the team is looking at and going to go on, I don't accept that, that, that your standards are crap today. What's, but they might go, Hey man, what's going on today? You're not ready yourself.

It might start with a position of care, but if it happens repeatedly, it's going to go on what's going on with you. And you know, so you're trying to weed that out and the team does it itself because ultimately, yeah, you can have all the water boys running on what messages to the players all you want, but ultimately the team needs to know what to do on the, on the pitch.

And that's exactly what you want in an organization.  

Yeah. I think on the pitch and around it as well, right? Like you do generally feel that in these high functioning teams, that it's a, you know, it's a high functioning units and that, you know, the, the 15 players, the 11 players, the, whatever it is on the, on the pitch of really an extension of that.

That bigger system, right? And that it is a real system that that's merely the outputs of that system as well. I'm not sure I'll ever forget the phrase, rinse the mints either. Now, Aidan, thanks for that.  I'll tell you 

on the rinse the mints. I'll tell you this, this is, uh,  this is a funny story. And, uh,  sometimes you could call it embarrassing, but I'll tell you.

So the, the, I played for Ireland and the coach that capped me for Ireland. Was a guy called Eddie O'Sullivan. And I, I wanted to, at the end of my career, make sure there was nothing else I could have done or not done. Right. So I really wanted to just have closure.  And have no regrets and I, and I didn't really, cause I wasn't that talented.

The player was just a really hard worker. So I went met him for breakfast. I was actually talking to him about creating a leadership program. And I just threw him this question, Eddie, anything else I could have done? I don't think I shouldn't have done. Perhaps I shouldn't have gone to France or something like that.

And he says, stop right there. Aiden there's three types of player in the world.  There's a disciplined player, there's a talented player on the job of me, the coach or any coach is to make the discipline, the talented player disciplined.  And I, there was silence and we both leaned in and I was like, and he was waiting for me to bail him out.

And he goes, you, my friend were brilliantly.  And we both laugh like that. And I'm like, it was like, I was so relieved because if he had said, you know, you didn't deliver on your talent or something like that, you would have been  so disappointed, but it also speaks to. The importance of diversity in a team or neurodiversity in an organization is you want different people with those different kind of approaches and you see it in the best teams you'd like take to lose right who beat lenster recently in the final european cope.

That to lose has such a diverse team in that you have some guys who are monsters, massive guys. And then you have probably one of the smallest pound per pounds for strongest players. Who's the best player in the world, Antoine Dupont, who, who was the number nine for Toulouse and they're doing the same jobs as each other.

And to, to bring a full circle to what I said about total innovation. And I asked at the start, when I played in Toulouse, I'd start off at number eight or number seven sometimes,  and then about 60 minutes into the game, they take off a second row and they'd, I'd go into the second row. So this is number four or five, but it's still have the number seven, maybe or eight on my back.

And they used to call it last song, sir, which means the elevator. So you'll just go open floor in the elevator. And, you know, to the opposition, it's like kind of gone, they have now two number eights on the T or, you know, a seven playing in the second row and you're going, what, and it's just confusing to an opposition and also kind of gone, these guys, what they call them were polyvalent players, which means you could play any position.

And that's, that's difficult to replicate.  

It is, but I think it's the crux of a lot of what we need to try and unlock from a corporate innovation perspective, right? Like that idea of the polyvalent player, um, and arguably, therefore, not really having an innovation team, right? But having an innovation ability across, across an organization, um, and certainly that whole concept of, you know, diversity, neurodiversity. 

We're going to do a later podcast with someone on that, on that topic as well, because I think it's, um, It's important that I've read a myriad of different different levels. Um, as we go forward, we're going to slightly start to draw towards a close. I think, and maybe get a little bit, um, a little bit tangible, um, in terms of some of the recommendations.

We've pulled out bits and pieces as we've gone through. 

Actionable Steps for Businesses

But what are some of the actionable steps you think that businesses could be taking? To try and, you know, learn from sports in terms of adopting total innovation. And I was, I was just throwing my initial thoughts not to steal one of yours, hopefully, which is, I do think the benefit that sport has is it tells its story at least once a week, right?

It gets out there and lives and breathes that thing. And often, Innovation doesn't really do that, right? It might it might have a glorious success, but it takes years and years and years to get there and often has stepped over many dead bodies on the way to get there as well. And we kind of forget or it has its glorious failures.

And I think there's there's a part of that storytelling and that theater that is important, but not in the way that it's done at the moment, right? That we've got to try and unlock.  

There's so much look in sports for a player to make it through, but there's a system behind it. So there's a. If you think about it like a funnel, like the funnel is very wide at the bottom.

So even today, there's a load of kids now playing mini rugby in Ireland. Very, very few. I mean, you're talking one to 3 percent will make it through to the top level. Like, I don't even know the percentages, a tiny percentage. When I see that now, I feel very grateful for having had the career I've had. But if you, if you started with the only ambition is like, you're only worth something.

If you make it through to the top, you'd never, never start the sport in the first place. So having  a, an overarching love for doing it or a mindset for doing it becomes important to get people onto the pitch. If you want to call it that in an organization that that equivalent is, well, you're going to have loads and loads of flowers.

Very few are going to bloom all the way through. So that means you have loads of experiments to lose. For example, have loads of players in the academy. Only one or two or three will then become stars or in the team later on. Even less will probably go on to play for the national team  but if the ambition was like to make all everything we do everybody we invest in needs to make it all the way through they'd never do it and i think that's one of the biggest things that i see in innovation is that there's so much pressure on the idea.

And if there's so much pressure on the idea to make it through  people will protect this they'll lie about it they'll try and torture the data so it says what they wanted to say. And ultimately it's going to fail. So culture mindset. And what I mean by that is more than giving people the permission to try things and overarching vision consistently articulated, like you said, it's not. 

Once a year at a big leadership event where you bring in a keynote speaker. Instead it's consistently articulated. This is where we're headed. This is our vision. Here's some  evidence that we're making closer to that vision. I want to, I want to call out and recognize Simon Hill for this effort that he made.

It didn't work out, but it was, he was thinking the right thing towards that vision  and that consistent message throughout the organization, and not just by the CEO, but the people around the CEO, by the executive suite, by their managers, layer by layer. As the organization goes down, that's what changes cultures. 

Yeah. I think that, that, that example you gave earlier of you, you, you tried the right thing and therefore your teammates applauded that right. And gave you that recognition very much carries through from, uh, from that example, so you, you told me that you joined rugby just after the professionalization of rugby.

And I think saw, uh, you know, drastic change in. 

Closing Thoughts and Where to Find More

The whole setup of that sports a la total innovation particularly for the clubs that you were lucky enough to be at that time so for a slightly provocative last question before i kind of folders that walk us out when will when will innovation go professional. 

It should be shouldn't you know i was thinking about this simon i was speaking on the event the other day.  And I realized that  a lot of the most innovative companies in the world, don't even  think they're innovative. They just think it's business as usual. They think that's the way businesses run. And often it's because  the founder is still either close to the organization or is still a chair person to the organization or the message or the story of the founder is kept alive.

And I think that's what happens. We forget that all organizations start off as entrepreneurial organizations. And that's like we talked about earlier on their mindsets kind of crystallize and solidify over time. And oftentimes they get caught with that same mindset for a different world. And they they're held hostage past.

And the idea of total innovation being fluid for me is that  it's consistently kept alive. There's consistent messaging about it. There's consistent experiments about it and they don't have to be big. That's the thing that they do not have to be big, especially. What the tools that are available today they don't have to be big and you can leverage the crowd you can leverage outside in very easily.

It doesn't have to be big expensive hotels that you hire to bring all these people together you can do it virtually and i think that's the idea of total innovation for me is just. Keeping the outside questioning you on the inside.  

Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it. Maybe, maybe we'll end it there.

I'm also, you know, you're going to hear me talk a lot over the next little while of trying to make the invisible visible, because I think there is a lot of good happening as well, but it's very hard to, to see and recognize and quantify and, and therefore celebrates on that, on that basis as well. Um, which obviously you can do every 90 minutes, you know, whether you whether your team's doing well or not, right?

You can still live and breathe that thing and and critique and read it in the papers the next day endlessly as i'm sure you have So, thank you. Thanks. Aiden. It's been a really good first walk through. It's been a good first episode For folks that want to follow you more, where can they find you? Um, I gave you a good introduction at the start, but where can they find more about you?

Well, i'm available on linkedin. I have a A newsletter on sub stack we have of course the corporate explorer series sponsored by Wazoku and your good self simon as well which is on the innovationshow.io and the reason i chose .io is because of the idea of input and output. That's these great guests on the show every week i do read their book i take a lot of time to do so and then i push the findings from that with the gas there and it's an honor to do so every week. 

Yeah, it's a, it's a cracking show as well. So I'm going to echo that. Do check out the podcast. If you guys don't already do so, um, I'm an avid subscriber and Aidan, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. 

Absolute pleasure. Thanks, man.

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