Episode 6 - featuring Daniel Lawrence co-founder of Bots For That

In this episode,  I’m excited to introduce you to Daniel Lawrence. He and his business partner, Christian, created a tech company called Bots For That and are located in London, England. 

When I began writing the Culture Secrets book,  (join the waitlist for the book at https://www.cheIliephillips.com/waitlist) I wanted to showcase great cultures from a multitude of industries and business types as well as offer a global perspective on the workplace. When a friend offered to introduce me to Daniel, I jumped at the chance, because not only did it open the doors to an insider look at the tech world, but it also gave me a look into how culture is different in a start-up operation and how the workplace differs in other countries. 

Thanks for listening. Grab the book the original podcast is based on at https://mybook.to/culturesecrets . Want more quick leadership tips? Sign up for my FREE bi-weekly newsletter: Coffee, Culture and Common Sense.  

Check out my website www.chelliephillips.com for more great content. Follow me on LinkedIn.  

Transcript

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Chellie Phillips: 0:06

If workplace culture is your jam, you're in the right place. Check out this episode of culture secrets, the podcast dedicated to creating workplaces for both employees and the company's thrive. Welcome to the culture secrets podcast. I'm your host Chellie Phillips and this week, I'm excited to introduce you to Daniel Lawrence. He and his business partner Christian created a tech company called bots for that and they're located in London, England, I met Daniel thanks to a long term friend Robert toe. We've known each other since high school. And just like I tell my clients who are considering career changes, your network is one of your most valuable tools. Without that intro, I wouldn't have had a chance to learn about Daniel and what they are building. When I began writing the culture secrets book, I wanted to showcase great cultures from a multitude of industries and business types as well as offer a global perspective on the workplace. When Robert offered to introduce me to Daniel, I jumped at the chance because not only did it open the doors to to an insider's look at the tech world, but it also gave me a look into how culture is different in a startup operation and how the workplace differs in other countries. So without any further delay, let's dive into the conversation with Daniel, tell me a little bit about your business how you got started, what it is,

Daniel Lawrence: 1:18

we had sort of toxic culture, Robert will already tell you the same, we both experienced some incredibly toxic culture. Over our years together, we've been Brothers in Arms trying to fight from within the systems in many, many different companies from clients. And employers who we both worked with, we've both seen very extreme and toxic people, our souls are one of the better word we've come across enough of them in our time. So what we used to do was, I guess, we used to help companies become more productive, more efficient, operate more optimally, and we used to help them transform and change and improve their processes and how they work. And one of the things we've never really tackled as part of what we're used to do with the technology, because what most companies have so many diverse, sort of unconnected in a patchwork of systems that we can never really fix anything. And so when something called robotic process automation came up, it's something that myself and Christian, who Robert also knows, is something that we started to look at, because we thought this could be a bit of a game changer because it means you don't have to change any of your actual technology systems, you can automate them without having to integrate without having to change them all at the surface level. And therefore you can eliminate loads and loads of manual work that we were basically shutting off and redesigning and putting it on lifting and shifting it in low cost locations, which was great, and it delivered huge returns. But it was a hell of a pain in the ass to do you know, and it took you know, it took two years or more to do it properly in any sort of reasonable sized company. So this thing called bots came along, and myself a Christian look to them thought actually, there's something in that we jumped on early, we're an early adopter of it. And we we joined our forces are two companies together. And we started looking seriously at bots and how that would work. And really, since we got up and running around 2017 properly, and then lockdown happened, the global pandemic hit us. And we started getting really busy suddenly, then because everyone's way of working suddenly changed through force. So people couldn't go to colleges, for their classes, they had to dial in on a zoom call, and no one systems were set up to handle things in life and work in that way. So we started to get very busy, we grew quite a lot through lockdown. And it was a in some ways it's it's there's a springboard for us to accelerate our growth and what we were doing and to evolve our own business strategy. And so we did So ever since then, we've been continuing to grow and bootstrap our business. And we've we've, we've grown, we've hired people, we've lost people we've hired again, and we've lost him again. And we keep going back and forth. And I think culture has played a very big part of that, because people think what they want to do is join a startup. But the realities of that are far different from what people look for in in their employment. They know the psychological comfort that people see in a regular salary, annual increases in pay, regular working times structured, you can see five levels above you, all those sorts of things where it's fairly static, it's fairly rigid. It's fairly comfortable. I think it's think and people think go great start a startup sounds like a wonderful idea. I can I can go broad I can get lots of experience. But the reality is, it's a little bit different. And I think culturally, that requires a different mindset. And it's something that we do from when we when we advertise jobs. One of the things we talk we did the four C's, so we do BD compensation and also sort of one of the four C's is culture. So one of the first things that we speak to when we first meet a candidate and for the first time, we don't talk about competencies goes, we don't talk about a compensation package, we talk about culture, because we don't want to have a misfit. And that's the first thing we ever talk about with pitchers. So we probably exclude 80% of our candidates on the first call. And it's all because what we really do is eliminate potential candidates that aren't going to be a good fit. We give them examples. So for example, our culture, our, I guess, our culture, and our values are almost synonymous, right, but we put them together. Our acronym for our value based system is recipe. And the reason is, if it there's a link for that, because what we build now is bot recipes, which are pre built bot activities that you can say, maybe there's a bot that takes your information out of your Salesforce system and put and creates an invoice in your accounting system, for example. So we have these pre built recipes, bots, so we came up with an acronym actually tied to that as well, just to give us a little bit of consistency, and a bit of fun, really, so our value is acronym is recipe, which is respect, excellence, customer integrity, performance, and execution. So when we first speak to a candidate we go through, this is what it is, this is what we really value above all else. And here's a few examples of the kind of person who wouldn't fit. What do you think so we give them examples of the kind of person that wouldn't fit our culture. And we just have a very open and honest exchange on that. And a lot of time that people go, yep, you know what I thought, This is what I wanted. But actually, those two things there, that one there and that one, then that's really not me, and I'm not going to fit, and most people would, would actually exclude themselves at that point, which is good, because it saves us wasting time, all the way down the road. But the one or two that get through are the ones that are going all the way to the end, generally speaking, and they're the right ones. And we're right for them. And they're right for us, and it tends to last longer. That way. So that's, that's, I guess, how we approach from the very, very start. And the other thing I'm the reason we we I guess we have those guiding values is that when you're a startup or one of the one of the attributes, I suppose of what we do is there isn't a big, high tall structure, a lot of our communication has to be horizontal and quick, to be effective. So if you're relying on getting a decision from someone above them, and above them, you're not going to work, it's not going to fit, right. So horizontal, quick, rapid, fail fast, move on Learn, get on with the next one. So that's that's kind of the the approach that we take. And because of that, you can't really police or policy size, everything that you do, you've got to fall back on something. And it's that fabric, that's our values, really, so that, you know, if we know that educate, execution is paramount, we've got to deliver, right. And if we know that good enough, ain't good enough. If we have those guiding principles, if you don't know, you can always sort of fall back on those guiding principles to make a decision as to what to do. Because you know, I can't be everywhere, and I shouldn't be. And it allows people, I guess it gives them a framework to sort of work towards, you know, and we all make mistakes, but it gives you something better than nothing at all, I think and that's, that's probably how we've structured ourselves.

Chellie Phillips: 8:03

I love that. So my book itself has is based around creating a value culture, and value as my acronym. So V is vision a is accountability L is leadership, you is the uniqueness of the people, and E is the engagement that you create by growing this value culture. You're the recipe model. I love that, because I think it falls under that, that that vision piece. So tell me a little bit about how you your partner, when you were sitting down starting this, what is the visioning process like as, as the leaders of this organization is how do you get to okay, this is going to be our culture model. How do you how do you work through all the pieces and parts and come up? Okay, this is what we're gonna go with?

Daniel Lawrence: 8:44

Yeah, that's an easy one to ask. So, what we didn't do, although we were sort of management consultants, we didn't take the typical management consulting approach where you sort of write a book, and then you go off and see does this work? What we did was probably spent the last couple of years fumbling around making mistakes, finding out what worked and what didn't, because companies are our clients also have their own culture, that we can't obviously bend to every single one. So we we've learned, I guess, through the last few years, what works for us were, what things lead to successful outcome and which things don't. And that all really came when you boil it down when we when we looked back, and we thought, well, that's that's a good client for these reasons. And this was a bad client for those reasons. And we Dig Dug in a little bit and understood why. And we looked across the environment. And we looked at finance, and we looked at customer look at all those factors. We came back down to those those simple things, those very simple core values. Exactly in a nutshell. So we did it in reverse order. And now we've embedded that in as our that's sort of what we thought we were doing anyway. Now it's just make it tangible. So that everyone knows it. And that's the hard part is is everyone knowing it and holding each other accountable. That's the hard part because if we do something that doesn't honor those We have to call each other out on it. And that's uncomfortable. Yeah,

Chellie Phillips: 10:03

I have, you know, I'm looking at you, we're talking about the structure of a startup versus the structure, maybe as a corporation that's been in the business for a long time where you have the levels of hierarchy. And yours is more horizontal based right now. So how does that accountability look in there is like, how do you instill that across is that, okay, everybody is equally accountable for making sure that we're all on the same page, and that we're all living by these,

Daniel Lawrence: 10:28

it's very much that and if you look at our so we have our annual strategy. And then we have a quarterly one. And that quarterly one gets very, very tangible, very, very real, very practical, and the outcome of that everybody has some part of it, on delivering it. So that if, if any one of us miss, we all miss. So it is it is jointly accountable. And so much as if two of us fail, well, guess what, we all failed, and we all not getting anything, that's just the way it goes. So if I don't get the deals in and get them signed, I failed, and there's no money to go around for extra bonuses. If we don't finish projects on time, we don't get the money, and there's no bonuses. So all those things, they're all very collaborative, and all joined up very closely. So we all know that we've all got to succeed and all for us all to succeed. There's no I did. Okay, chaps. So there's not a lot, we either all fail or we all succeed in that way.

Chellie Phillips: 11:26

So one of the things one of those focuses on the fact that culture doesn't have to look the same across the board for it to be a great fit, and that there are different cultures and different organizations, and they can all still succeed and all still get to the same part where both the business and the employee thrives. So you talked a little bit about the hiring process. But one of the things that I'm I'm really seeing is that companies that are really successful in this culture model and in business itself is that they're working to retain the great workers that they have. So they're not going someplace else. And one of the things that I've heard a lot, I talked to a couple of recruiters and everything and and one of the things that they're seeing across the board, is that doing re interviews, like throughout the years, like, you know, what is working for you? What's not working for you? Are we meeting the promises that we told you when we hired you? Is this what you expected? What what Weren't you expecting? Are you seeing any of that inside?

Daniel Lawrence: 12:21

Yeah, I don't think it probably doesn't feel as formal or structured as that. But yes, it does slightly out that summer. We do I guess throughout the year, I think it's probably harder. And this is probably a general observation in terms of values. COVID was a pain because it changed so many things forever. irreparably. Did everyone ever go back, right. So most people, I don't know what it's like in the US. But most people still are not returning to the office on max, maybe a day, maybe two days a week, at most, some some a lot less than that. And I think I think we've we're missing out. I think we're missing out a lot by not physically interacting. I think that's creating a bigger challenge than we've ever had. I think it's the same for anyone. It's a professionally, it's a challenge. Without the social interaction. It's those little things that little cooler moments where you overhear a comment, you interject, that's where the correction of culture happens more naturally. And it's very difficult. If you only talk to someone for 35 minutes, in a 40 hour week, you're missing out on so much. I think that's the biggest challenge that we've we've got, we've got overcome and we still haven't got a result for that. I mean, that's what we've that's one thing we've got to work on. That's one thing we need to improve on next year and how we address that. So there's that there's internet, there's so many interactions that I think we're missing out on that I think culture is going to suffer values are going to suffer. And it's going to make the challenge harder, because they're they could end up speaking more with a client than they could with their colleagues, which the risk is then they start seeing that and culture as predominantly to ours. And that could well be a mistake could not be in the best interest. So

Chellie Phillips: 13:55

that's been a challenge for a lot of people that I've talked to you now that COVID really changed the way that the office functions and interacts and even Gallup did a study on the fact that you know, people are happier at work when they have a friend at work and that kind of thing. You know, like it just, it makes the day better when you have somebody who enjoy being around. And I think I think people are very much like I think I think we're relational anyway that that we thrive on being around people and having people in our lives and so that is going to be a bigger challenge going forward. It's been interesting to see how some are are tackling it. My eight to five job professionally. I'm in the utility business. We've been back well we've been back pretty much from the beginning because of the essential service function. I've everybody has to have electricity at their house. We did do a little bit from home we did some hybrid stuff, but pretty much when we got back we had we all came back because you just you just have to be here depending on if they're storms or anything like that. I haven't had to deal that with a lot of the other a lot of other people in my life. They're still on a hybrid schedule. They might go in two days a week or you know it They really don't have those interactions anymore. And it's, it's very quickly eroded the culture that they had prior to that. And I think it's going to be even harder to get it back. You know, like, once you've had it, and then you lost it, I think it's harder to go back to where you came from sometimes

Daniel Lawrence: 15:16

early. It's like when your kids leave home or go to university and you come out in the crowd, they've changed this the same sort of thing we do suddenly get together with your work, is there anything worse? They weren't like that before?

Chellie Phillips: 15:27

I know, one of the things about creating a great culture is trusting in the leadership that's putting this out for you. And the fact that they they walk, walk the walk that they're putting out there in front of people. So tell me a little bit about how do you personally, as a leader in this organization, emulate the culture that you want your employees to

Daniel Lawrence: 15:45

have? That's awesome. Well, I suppose it's, it's something that we do because we because we measure ourselves quarterly, so quite tightly. We, we have a particular policy meeting every fortnight every two weeks, and that is to review. Where are we what's going well, what's not done? Well, what's changed, who's had some successes, who has some failures, and we're quite, I guess it's a fairly, I'm fairly open about everything that happens. I like to think I'd take responsibility and accountability for all of it. I always say I'm the when I whenever I do a podcast, or he always says what do you do? They'll say, I'm the guy who takes the credit for nothing and the blame for everything. So that's how I like to think I lead, I don't think it's always the case, because you know, people are people, we all have complex beings, right. But but that's how I like to think I would always take control of it. And then I sort of by I guess, osmosis, you hope that that sets the theme for everyone else do the same. And I think largely it does, and I don't, I don't really see anyone in here, that doesn't really take the same approach. You know, they they all take responsibility, they all take accountability for the outcomes they take responsibility for, for getting the sleeves rolled up and getting stuck in because we're a smaller company. And that's the only way that we can succeed, there is no one else who's going to take care of that you've got to do and sometimes that means getting your fingers in other people's pies, and just getting on with it, getting it done. So I think that does happen. It's not it's not something I guess I questioned, but we haven't, we haven't really called it anyone, no one's called in it and is out on not really staying true to our, to our belief

Chellie Phillips: 17:24

that you must be doing a good job of it, then.

Daniel Lawrence: 17:28

No one's ever told me.

Chellie Phillips: 17:33

I love it. So I guess I'll say too, is if someone's starting a company, or even if they're not starting a company, if they already have one, and they've been walking around going, something's not quite right, we need to work on some things. What are what are some steps? Or what are some of the thought process as a leader that you go through? As you're preparing to maybe? Okay, I need to I need to address this culture issue that we have, how can you get ahead of it? What What should you put your thoughts into it? And maybe what are some roadblocks that you might encounter along the way?

Daniel Lawrence: 18:05

Yeah, I think the major roadblock is always openness. Some people are afraid to be honest with themselves. Some people are afraid to be honest with others. And I think as long as there's not a toxic behavior, I think generally speaking, most people are fairly honest. But you've got to be honest with yourself as well and put your hands up. So I think that's really the major, the only real major bullet robot to be honest with you, because nothing moves forward. Unless there's honesty. So that's probably the number one thing, I think, why I'm quite a logical, rational thinker. As much as I like to be something different. That's basically what I am. I'm a logical rational planner. So what I always tend to do is, rationally look at a situation I start to sub categorize it into sub, categorize and structure it in a way that I can understand it, and then present it back to others. And that because that's how I operate. So that's what we did when we when I sat down there, right? Well, let's look at what's worked over the last few years, what's what's been what's led to really pleasant happy moments, what's led to having clients that we love working with, and the ones that we haven't, and why, and examining, where we've succeeded and where we failed. And that's really where I always start with it. And then I tend to then things naturally bucket themselves up into customer and finance and numbers and culture and and they tend to do in that sort of naturally, I guess we're gonna bring together into groups. And from that, and then we sort of instructed us how we ended up with our recipe structure because it was those simple factors that really to step back from it. There. Those three things are all the same thing. Those two are the same, those 10 are all the same type of thing. And then you end up with these six things really, that underpin what makes us successful. What makes us happy. What makes us Expo

Chellie Phillips: 19:52

so you brought up finances, and one of the things I'm hearing a lot is that there's not a line item on the budget this As culture, but yeah, culture can impact productivity, it can improve your benefits through wellness, it can impact hiring, firing, retraining, retention, all of that kind of stuff. So culture can have a major impact on the actual bottom line of an organization. So, you know, one of the things that when especially Panasonic when I was talking, there was talk about the process of getting everybody on board that when they first started talking with the board and different things about some culture initiatives was that they just cultures Fufu, like, I can't wrap my head around what what what do you what is this culture thing that you're talking about? Maybe you can address that a little bit is How does culture play into the financial aspect of an organization? And then how did you begin to incorporate some of those things in your processes and your other line items to be able to do the things that keep the people that you want to keep?

Daniel Lawrence: 20:52

Yeah, on a practical level, it's really critical for us because if I were when we're out, working with clients, it's very easy to get sidetracked to get lost going down rabbit warrens data and detail and issues that we shouldn't be there can consume our time, but the whole project out of sync. So all those things have a factor. So I think and all of that affects you. And so you've got things like performance as one of our key values in it. That's so at the start, whenever we have a project, we have a timeline agree we have a cost degree, we have a number of hours that we're going to spend, they're all part of our culture of everyone's now aware. When we start a projects, we know that we're going to be measuring ourselves and and be held accountable to it. So those those sorts of things that we've we've taken them from just being a value based in a culture on a piece of paper, to embedding them into a lot of our processes, frameworks. Suppose there's a lot of them we've embedded in. And that's the same for how we price, how we serve How was spent on customer services, we've got got a lot of metrics that we've embedded into our performance review as well, that all link back to recipe. So excellence to be to be pleased the customer to be hit the deadlines, do we do the right thing? Did we hit them out, all those sorts of things are all embedded in so then we've taken a lot of it and embedded it directly into what we do. That makes it directly measurable. So we know. But the other aspects are probably harder. The one thing I always remember, and I never forget it because I was on a course in Dublin, the day 911 happened. And it was Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And it's it's stuff like sharpening the sword, it's things that to this day, I've never forgotten when we almost need to have a culture balance sheet. And I would almost use the Stephen Covey sort of framework. Because there's a lot of stuff in there that almost leads to having a Balance Sheet A debits and credits side of the culture based system, the value based system, and I guess we taught it up indirectly or you know, without thinking about it, but maybe one of the it's one of those things, it's almost like going to the balanced scorecard and having an extra step on there, which takes those more qualitative value based aspects and puts them on there too. And measures ourselves because we do it, we do it without thinking about it, but we haven't done it to the same extent, because it's harder, I suppose. Right?

Chellie Phillips: 23:18

It's hard to measure, okay, responsibility, or it's hard to measure honesty, you know, I mean, there's not a number. Okay, you're okay, you're 80% Honest. Okay. Rarely do that. So yeah, it's harder to measure. And it's been really interesting hearing, you know, like, some of the some of the companies that really touches like, even like their human processes are the ones where they really have to get very clear. And you know, a lot of people have basically told me that your culture initiative can't be an HR initiative, it has to be a total organization initiative. And a lot of times, I think that's where culture gets shoved, it gets shoved in HR, and it's like, oh, you need to have a company picnic, you need to have this, it's, and that's really not what culture is at all.

Daniel Lawrence: 24:01

No, it's not actually. It's definitely not that, in fact, it's all the other things that no one remembers,

Chellie Phillips: 24:06

that's a great way to put it. It's all the stuff that's going on in the background. And so they're not going to show up to your company picnic, if you're not doing these other things. And

Daniel Lawrence: 24:15

and that's the thing, it will end up subverting your your plan. That's that's the that's the thing with it, isn't it? It's, it's almost one of those hygiene factor, you didn't notice it until it's there for till it's not there. All the while else, it's all it's all finding and running smoothly, until it's suddenly not there. And that's when you realize it and that's when it gets measured really, what it's not when it's missing, or its absence.

Chellie Phillips: 24:37

Well, I promised I'd keep you 30 minutes, and then I wouldn't go any parting thoughts that you have on culture and being able to create one where both businesses and employees thrive?

Daniel Lawrence: 24:50

I think that the most important thing, and this is one of the things I did is I didn't just sit down and do it by myself. I got everyone to sit down and we made these observations together. So It was a joint initiative so that everyone came up with and contributed to it. As opposed to me sitting down writing it up as a typical management, it's often the same, right? This is our culture tomorrow. It was more a case of everyone made observations on what they'd learned and what was working and what wasn't and what they wanted. And we, we avoid it from that. And I think that's probably the most important thing of always. Don't sell a culture. Ask.

Chellie Phillips: 25:25

That's very good advice. be wonderful. All right, well, I will let you go. I appreciate it so much. Hope you have a great rest of your day and rest of your week. Thanks for listening to this episode of the culture secrets podcast. I believe Daniels parting advice might be some of the most important information he shared. Don't sell a culture. Ask if you're interested in learning more about building a strong people centered culture in the workplace and hearing more from Daniel and other cultural leaders like him join the waitlist for my book culture secrets. At Chellie phillips.com backslash waitlist, you'll be notified when it's available at your favorite bookseller lists scheduled to arrive on April 29 2023. If you have comments or questions, please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, drop me a rating and share the link with a friend. I love the chance to come speak early to discussion on culture at your business organization. If you're interested, please visit my website at WWW dot Chellie phillips.com That ch e ll ie pH I ll ips.com. Remember building a value culture is your competitive advantage and the backbone of any successful organization.