Mastering Team Building and Project Management with Innovator Bruno Pesec

Welcome to a riveting conversation with the extraordinary innovator Bruno Pesec, the mastermind behind a groundbreaking freight train and an award-winning board game. His unique perspective on team building and innovation in large enterprises will transform how you perceive the dynamics of your work unit. Packed with insightful discussions, this episode will help you understand how to structure your employee population for maximum effectiveness. Hear firsthand how meticulous attention to individual and team goals, effort, and reward systems can elevate your workforce from a mere group to a finely-tuned team.

The latter half of our chat with Bruno will unravel the essentials of successful project management. Bruno, with his disciplined approach to fund management, milestone-setting, and bad investment protection, will share his tried-and-tested hacks for navigating business projects. His book, 'Augmented Strategy,' further delves into the amalgamation of data and human intuition in decision-making - a concept we explore in-depth. It's a thrilling journey into the art of combining data with personal experiences for improved high-risk decision-making. So, tune in and prepare to redefine your work environment into a disciplined and structured realm that breeds success.

Connect with Bruno: https://www.pesec.no/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining me today. On Failing with People, I have Bruno Pacis with me here. He is the rare innovator who claimed that he's working on a regulation-defying freight train and an award-winning board game. We gotta dive into that statement for sure. In addition to his corporate experience with brands like DMV, dnv and Kongsburg Group, bruno runs a community of entrepreneurs of several thousand members. His trillion-dollar undertaking adopted an organizational change with a specific focus on the issues with innovation in large enterprises. Bruno has co-authored the Augmented Strategy Book, a practical guide to decision-making based on data and human intuition. Welcome, bruno, so happy to have you on the call today.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And so happy to be here with you today.

Speaker 1: 0:48

So tell me, I gotta ask what is this regulation-defying freight train and award-winning board game background of yours?

Speaker 2: 0:57

I'll try to make this sound not so boring, because regulation is involved, but wherever you go in the world, be it Europe, be it North America, you have specific regulations for what kind of trains are allowed to be designed in order to maximize the efficiency of the rail system, and it's very, very strict. People are unaware how strict these things are, and for this one specific model that we wanted to design, a customer asked us for something that they believe was physically impossible. It was a specific type of wagon that you put powder in and then you discharge it. Now, a funny thing is again something that surprises a lot of people that when we're talking about that type of wagons, it's treated almost the same as a nuclear power plant from the safety approach, and we had a lot of radical ideas which meant that, well, we had to defy regulation without sacrificing safety. So that's the let's say, a brief, brief background behind that part.

Speaker 2: 2:04

When it comes to award-winning board game, that was, for those in the video to my left side, actually plain glean. That is something that we made because we were trying to help both entrepreneurs and people in the large companies develop their innovation skills, specifically something called lean startup methodology. The problem is always. You know, give people a book it will not fly. Well, put them in the classroom, they will forget, not because they're stupid, but because it's usually boring and not applicable. And we had this idea. You know, board games they bring people together and they create this feeling of it is simulation, but it feels real because we have real emotion. You get so invested and kind of, even though you're playing, pretend you remember those things because you were so emotionally invested. So that was kind of the background. We made this board game and then it started reading awards because we made it well.

Speaker 1: 2:59

Well, I love it because it adds in the whole engagement between the employees and having that bonding moment as well, which is always a win.

Speaker 2: 3:09

Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 3:10

So, talking about teams and employees, I know that you work on innovation and teams and everything. What's the difference between a team and a growth from your perspective?

Speaker 2: 3:21

I'll share. From my perspective. This is not like sacred text or anything. It's something from experience, practice, and I offer it to your listeners to reflect a little bit on that. What I want to point out the difference between a group and a team is not to say why One is better over the other, but rather to appreciate the difference so that in your own companies you can set up better groups and teams. Think about them in three dimensions One is the goals, second is effort and third is reward.

Speaker 2: 3:55

In groups, we will have individuals together with their individual goals that are rolled up to make, let's say, a goal list of the whole group. In a team there will be no individual goals. A team has a specific goal that they have to either deliver or work towards. Death ties directly into effort because, again, in a group you will have individual effort, they might pull on each other. You know, hey, when you hear I need help with this, could you jump in, could you help me with this? And maybe you will ask me hey, bruno, you know I'm a little bit in a crunch, can you jump in and help me with this? I could say yes, you can say yes, I'm sure we would, but it will still be mostly individually managed and led work Again in the team because there's a group goal. The work would be interdependent because it will always be to the lens of we have the team goal. Therefore, all of us has to contribute to that specific team goal, because that's why we are here.

Speaker 2: 4:52

And finally, rewards, which should not be ignored, as, even if you're a small startup, you cannot ignore the reward system. Doesn't matter if you have only two buddies in your company. How you start rewarding them will start reflecting how they reward, eventually, their own teams. So in a group, the reward is going to be tied into individual performance, which is tied to individual goal. In a team I think you can already feel where I'm going and there will be reward based on team performance, ie delivery of the team goal. These are subtle, small things that are very easy to overlook, especially as your company grows. And then suddenly you start wondering, like, okay, why is my team not delivering? Why are they fighting all the time for resources? Why are they bringing me their problems that are so easy to fix? They're probably bringing problems because they're actually a group and not a team, and they might be that because of maybe you CEOs accidental creation or failure to create a cohesive team. I'll pause here for a moment just to check in. How is that landing with you and your experience?

Speaker 1: 6:02

Yeah, it lands really well and in fact, there is a previous podcast where an individual talked about how it's really important that the CEOs, as they start to build their company, they actually start to change their scope of what they're working on and becoming more of framework process structure oriented. And that fits really well with what you just said. In regards to you know, you don't think about how you're building your employee population out, how it's groups or teams, and you're right. It's wrong. There's no right or wrong here. It's just in regards to what is what do you need from these individuals and as an individual perspective, or is it a team perspective? And sometimes you could say, yes, it's both. It depends on what. The scenario is right. There could be a time where someone sits in a group and it's individual, but then they also sit in a team and is as well supporting a team effort.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Absolutely. I mean, after all, it's people that get things done, and any CEO, if they want to make their company successful, they have to enable their people to get the work done, be it through groups, be it through teams, be it through whatever and, as you also mentioned, you will have a mix of both. It's not good or bad. It's simply understanding the structure so we can provide the right incentives, the right tools and the right type of encouragement.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Yeah, exactly so when we're talking about startup founders and CEOs, they're being very innovative and as they start to grow out their employee population, to help them continue to build the business and really make business be successful, you need to have people individuals as well as teams be innovative. What is an innovation team and how do you incorporate that into building a structure of the your employee population?

Speaker 2: 7:54

It's a very good question that is actually very rarely asked in practice. So thank you for the first round of your. When we talk about startups or, in general, younger companies that are just established, they usually have very strong founder with a very clear idea. You know, there's some vision, they have a clear idea and then they're executing on that and people start joining them over time so they can help deliver on their vision Eventually, especially if that founder wants to scale organization and their success. That means that they will have to allow and even depend on the ideas of the people in their organization.

Speaker 2: 8:37

Now, ideas don't get executed by themselves. When we talk about innovation teams, in addition to what we said earlier, innovation team at the very, very basic level is having a person attached to an idea. Now we're smiling on video for those that are just listening, like, wow, this is so obvious. And I cannot tell you on how many cases I went because company calls me for help and then they give me a list of 80 ideas and I start asking okay, who proposed that? Whose idea is this? If this idea is accepted, who would be working on it? And there are like 70% of them is orphaned ideas that are collected from somewhere, someone you know. It was just a pitch in an elevator or whatever. All of those are orphaned ideas. They have zero chance of ever coming to life but ironically, they're draining your resources, especially if you're a CEO or a founder of a young company growing up. They're draining your attention, which is extremely limited resource that you want to spend all your energy on growing the company, making it stronger. Not considering 70 ideas that are completely relevant and don't stand the chance of ever being implemented because there's no name attached to. Now smart listener might think hey, bruno, well, I will attach a name to it and those? Well, here is the second part of the problem, because innovation is difficult, just like entrepreneurship is difficult. If it was easy, we would have billionaires running all around all over the place. It's difficult.

Speaker 2: 10:22

If you want people to succeed with their ideas, then you need people that are willing to suffer and I know this sounds horrible. I'm not talking about physical punishments. We are way behind that. I'm just talking about the regular difficulty and uncertainty that comes with dealing with the ideas and innovation processes. The best way to gauge if you have a person that's willing to go through the pain of bringing an idea to life is if they're the idea-own.

Speaker 2: 10:52

So if Guinevere proposed an idea, even if that idea is maybe slightly less better than some idea without a name, I'll take Guinevere because I know that she put that idea and, if I can help refine that, I know that she is more probable to kind of endure and take that further because she was willing to put herself forward. What do I need? Anonymous that doesn't even dare to put their name on an idea? Or the other way around. What do I do with an idea that was thrown from someone and then they expect someone else to pick it up? Why should they if you yourself are not willing to pick it up? So this human element of developing ideas is critical, regardless if you're a three person startup company or 30,000, 300,000, you know, incumbent, this kind of just more rotting from market to market. I'll post here for a moment.

Speaker 1: 11:51

Yeah, that was great. So my takeaway on that is an innovative team is composed of having ideas that are attached with a name someone who's actually going to take it and own it and run it. If I say, hey, I want to paint my house purple that's a random color, but you know and then I expect someone else to do it, it's probably not going to get done. But if I'm the one that's what I call a DRI the direct responsible individual for that idea or projects then I'm going to spearhead and make sure I get the resources I need, but figure out the timing. How am I going to implement it and actually get it done, you know, with approval of the corporation saying, yes, let's paint this house purple.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Exactly exactly that's it, and you know, when I talk about these things, I talk with you, etc. I focus on this very small, small things that are overlooked, because, in my experience, getting all those small things right is easy. It's a matter of discipline. But, counterintuitively, getting all those small things right produces great results. Like we do not need to talk about the latest fanciest innovation entrepreneurial framework with 24 steps that will bring you great success. Forget about it. You know small things. Great people invest in your people. Provide right tools for that. Write frameworks bye bye. Enjoy success.

Speaker 1: 13:18

I love it. I love it. Well, let's talk about that. What makes an innovative team viable?

Speaker 2: 13:25

Okay, so let's say, you have the basic tracks. So there's the Grenovier she wants to paint her house pink. What? What next? So let's say that this house is part of some business, so we make this business, but we just put the law in the background. What? What?

Speaker 2: 13:40

I would suggest several elements to look into is first okay, you're proposing that we paint this house pink. Is that the line with our strategy? Let's say, we're running a candy company, so it is. Of course we want to be pink candy company. Therefore, this is aligned with our strategy and overall objectives. It will feed into it. Wonderfully, checkmark off, okay.

Speaker 2: 14:03

Next question I would ask Grenovier why is now the right time? Why should we pay the house pink today and not maybe six months, 12 months, 24 months? Now, this is a subjective estimate. We're always dealing with subjective estimates. We have to collect the best data we have, but ultimately, the founder has to make a decision with the data they have available at hand. But the founder must trust the idea owner and their proposal. So I'm trusting you, grenovier, and I'm interested. I want to hear from you.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Okay, what are the reasons? What are the arguments? Maybe you will have arguments that we need to paint it today, maybe you will be able to tell me, hey, there's no difference if we paint it today or next six months, and I'll say thank you. This gives me an option to kind of choose should we start with a project today, tomorrow, a few months from now, etc. Alternatively, if you don't have the information or data, then I would ask how would you know that the time is right now? So that is kind of for, let's say, those really uncertain ideas. Let me give you an example. We might say the time to paint our house pink is when another can destroy all the ones across the street. So this is just an example. So you can see, we put a condition without a specific month. So if something happens, then we act. So we had alignment, we have timing and finally, final thing is funding.

Speaker 1: 15:40

So okay, you know what makes the world goes round.

Speaker 2: 15:44

Exactly, but it's also now a suggestion on funding. Usually, maybe startups don't have initially that problem, but they will get it soon, especially if they go for capital, either venture capital, private equity or any other form of risky capital and that is how you release the funds. So let's say we need X amount of money to paint the whole house pink. So we need to invest in color, we need to invest in brushes, we need to invest in people, because, well, it's what you and me, whenever you're going to paint it, we gotta overlook a team painting it. What we might do first while we are deciding that is let do you know, a shade of pink? Is it going to be on brand? Can I just give you 0.5% initial investment so you figure that out before we make a big investment? Who knows, maybe it would look horrible, maybe we can just paint a small plank and see how it would look. So it's not enough just to secure the funding, but actually tie it in with specific milestones. So if you're thinking about big project, let's say you need, for simplicity, let's say, 10 million dollars to make something. You would not collect all 10 and then, hey, here here's team take all 10. That's a pot to ruin.

Speaker 2: 17:01

There are so many stories and cases where startups get huge funding and then they go buying bean bags and crap they don't need, instead of investing in kind of you know, establishing cash flows, increasing their learning velocity and developing and growing their business. That's because when you get huge amount of money, it seems like everything is possible. Guess what it isn't. The world doesn't change just because it suddenly got resources.

Speaker 2: 17:29

So what is much better approach, especially if you're a founder and are working with risk and ideas, is to tie and release small parts, almost like dog dog feeding, and say, hey, there is, this is a small part of funding to achieve first milestone. Then, in that satisfactory, the timing is still right, the people are still right and it's still aligned with the company goals, let's release next amount of funding. This protects the organization and the capital resources of the organization because the founder or the management team has the option to stop early. So at every of these milestones you can stop early, which actually helps you protect the whole organization, because then you can take funds and use them for another idea. I'll stop here for a moment, because it's been different elements of what makes it. Oh yeah, yes.

Speaker 1: 18:25

And maybe does that play into the whole your board game and the lean project and kind of having this very structured approach.

Speaker 2: 18:34

Yes, it is present in the board game, although in the board game we do not focus on this thing, but other parts of how to develop products, businesses, models, etc. And it's a combination of smaller elements that together, as I said earlier, they produce great results. This can be reduced almost to kind of a checklist style no, imagine, hey, there's an idea for when, a bit okay, checklist, there's the idea. Checklist, there's a person checkmark. Checkmark Okay, is this a line with our company strategy, ambition, vision. Checkmark yes, is now the right time. Checkmark yes If it's X no, when is the right time? And then review it then. Do we have the funding? Can we release the first investment? Checkmark yes. If no, why not? So it's kind of it is big picture. You know people talk about systematic, holistic end-to-end. Well, here I am talking about end-to-end, but very, very simple. Remember what I said discipline, discipline, yes 100%.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I do find that like working with founders sometimes it's hard to get them to be focused like that, because you know what makes a good founder and entrepreneur is they have so many ideas, so it's really helping them. I mean, even take this like we're talking about it from a team perspective, but I can really see how a CEO, founder, you know, or someone who's starting to think about starting their own business they have an idea, using the same methodology to keep themselves on track and making sure that this is the right approach and this is the right thing to do now for the business. Or to launch a business or add something, you know, another product or another vision to the business without, you know, causing harm to what's already been already there. So I love it. This has been so much fun.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Okay, before we end, I got to ask what is your book Augmented Strategy all about? I love I'm a data girl and I'm obviously in human, so human intuition. But for the two of those you got me intrigued, give me a little nugget from your book on what it's about.

Speaker 2: 20:46

Okay. So I co-wrote that with Dr Dominic Delevan and he's like your guy on AI, machine learning before all of this exploded. You know he's been developing that all his life and we've been chatting about Canon because we're both data fans but also human intuition fans and when we talk about, you know, gut feeling or kind of a six sense is not a good way to talk about, but some people use that. It has this aura of mysticism and whatnot. The thing is it's not mystic. What we say is gut feeling is actually accumulation of our life experience.

Speaker 2: 21:22

And then, at the same time, if you remember all the big data and everything, there was kind of a push where 100% objective, ignore, suppress the humanity, just trust the raw data. Well, we are walking the middle path and we say, hey, get the data you need and trust the human experience. And then we flip it the other way around. So we say, don't start with the data you have and what you know, start with what you want to achieve, where you want to go. For example, if you're a founder, if you want to figure out, hey, is this the right product for this kind of people? That's your starting point.

Speaker 2: 21:57

Then you ask what kind of data. Do I need to find that out and how do I get that data, Instead of sitting at home and like, okay, what data do I have and what could I make with that data? That's much less likely to succeed. So kind of that was the focus of the book that we wrote. It is all focused on that. Okay, you have a high end decision or high risk decision. How do you leverage all the data and how do you leverage your own personal experience, but also of your own employees?

Speaker 1: 22:30

I love it. I'm definitely going to look into it. So, Runa, this has been so much fun. I've learned so much I hope the listeners have. There were several nuggets and takeaways that you have provided such great information and tools to help CEOs and founders be able to really structure their teams and to an innovative team that's viable and be able to actually move forward and making their company be successful. So thank you so much, Bruno, for your time. Appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 23:00

Thank you, thank you.