The Company Road Podcast
In this podcast we’ll be exploring what it takes to change a company. Taking the big steps, or the smaller steps in between.
This one’s for the intrapreneurs. You’ll be getting to know some big, brave and darn right outrageous personalities, luminaries, pioneers of business and hearing what they’ve done to fix the thorniest of problems within organisations.
The Company Road Podcast
E78 Ask better, lead smarter: Applying the consultant’s mindset inside your company
"I think there are three things that are really valued in organizations from consultants. The first is consultants come without a legacy bias. So the challenges, the roadblocks, the cultural norms within an organization, consultants are able to sidestep those. So are able to kind of come in and observe those with a bit of a neutral gaze." - Steph Foxworthy
Steph Foxworthy brings over 25 years of experience spanning customer experience, digital strategy, product innovation, sales, and marketing. He was recently managing director at Accenture Song in Melbourne and has driven results for major organisations including Coles and Telstra.
If you've ever wondered how consultants drive change or how to apply that mindset from within this episode is for you.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- The differences between employee, agency, and consultant mindsets
- How consultants build trust and get repeat business through expertise
- The role of pattern recognition in consultant success
- Why consultants can ask "dumb questions" that employees cannot
- How AI is changing the consulting landscape and democratising expertise
- The importance of asking the right questions in an AI-powered world
- Three key things consultants bring: no legacy bias, pattern recognition, storytelling
- The relationship between consultants and organisational politics
- How to know when to be directive versus exploratory as an intrapreneur
- The therapeutic role consultants often play in organisations
- Why design education teaches valuable enquiry skills
- The changing pathways for learning consulting skills
- How AI agents might change business negotiations in the future
Key links
About our guest
Steph is a customer experience, digital strategy and marketing professional with over 25 years' experience.
He’s an advocate for the power of technology to augment human creativity and to help drive growth and impact for customers, businesses and society.
After many years working in digital agencies and consulting, Steph is now Director of Managed Services at Our Community, a social enterprise dedicated to building stronger communities through software, education and services for the not-for-profit and grant-making sector.
Steph is also a non-executive director at Minus18 Foundation, a queer youth charity with a mission to improve the lives of LGBTQIA+ youth.
Steph is married with three high-school aged kids and lives bayside on Boonwurrung country in Naarm, Melbourne.
About our host
Our host, Chris Hudson, is an Intrapreneuship Coach, Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.
Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.
Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors man
For weekly updates and to hear about the latest episodes, please subscribe to The Company Road Podcast at https://companyroad.co/podcast/
Okay. Hey everyone. Buckle up curiously minded intrapreneurs. Welcome back to the Company Road Podcast. And yeah, today intrapreneurs we're gonna be unlocking the secret source behind one of the most powerful forces for change, I think within organizations, which is the consultant's mindset. So often businesses spending huge amounts of money on bringing consultants in or lesser amounts maybe these days. But yeah, it'd be interesting to unpack it today. Incredibly excited to introduce Steph Foxworthy, who is a true powerhouse with over 25 years of experience spanning, customer experience digital strategy, product innovation, sales, marketing, and the whole shebang. So Steph was managing director at Accenture Song here in Melbourne till just recently. And yeah, from massive enterprise overhauls for giants like Coles and Telstra to delivering high impact, digital experiences for non-profits. Steph has driven results for a number of organizations here. So it's gonna be super interesting to get his perspective on this topic. And yeah, if you ever wondered what makes consultants so successful at bringing about change within incredibly complex and difficult organizations, then this is the episode for you. So, yeah, we're gonna talk a bit about the consultants' mindset for us. We'll talk about how it kind of differs from a traditional employee's perspective a little bit, and some of the key skills and traits that intrapreneurs can immediately benefit from. And we'll get into some specific lessons for intrapreneurs on how to apply consulting techniques to drive innovation and impact within your own company, really. So let's jump in. So Steph very warm welcome to the show on a cold Melbourne day that's getting a little bit warmer, but thanks so much for joining us today.
Steph Foxworthy:Thanks for having me, Chris.
Chris Hudson:Alright. And yeah Steph maybe just talk us through a bit about your background and your experience in management consulting and things you've been doing. If you wanna start us there.
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, sure. So when I was younger I thought I wanted to be an architect. So I was studying design and studied interior design at university. And my first kind of. Jobs out of university were in digital and graphic design. So that was the early days of desktop publishing and multimedia as it was called back then. So I started getting into how technology was impacting design practice. And that kind of evolved into the internet as that started to become a thing. So I was around the birth of the internet so I could see the kind of impact the technology was gonna have on the way business was done. So I started a digital agency with a friend of mine a long time ago. And, left that to go traveling with my girlfriend who's now my wife ended up in London and worked in e-commerce over there helping three mobile set up their e-commerce business. I was there for five or six years. And then came back here and worked in digital agencies. And over that time, the kind of power of technology and the internet was overwhelming. Everything was suddenly becoming digitized. My work was evolving from, design and making things to more, strategic, conversations around what the future holds, what the impact would be, how businesses could kind of organize themselves to take advantage of that. And so, my work became more as a strategy director. I was strategy director at Reactive for a number of years. Reactive was acquired by Accenture about nine years ago, 10 years ago now. And I moved into the kind of management consulting world which was a bit of a culture shock, going from a small independent, digital agency where we could kind of make decisions on a dime and do the sorts of work at a relatively small scale. I mean, we were a pretty large organization when we were acquired, but, still the kind of work was mid-tier kind of market focused, to moving into, a global behemoth like, Accenture, 700,000 people around the world. That was a pretty big, culture shock. But at the same time, the level of the level of access and influence in terms of business decision makers and the scale of the work that was being delivered there was hugely exciting. So for my role a strategist and a consultant with a design mindset that was pretty exciting. So I stuck around at Accenture for quite some time. And then just recently I've kind of made the shift out of management consulting and into running a services practice within a social enterprise. So at our community and working with, not-for-profits and grant making and, funding organizations. So that's been a really interesting shift as well. So leading the kind of services team at our community, which is yeah, exciting change and a bit of a, change of pace. Yeah, very good. And probably much needed after all of that. Yeah, I should say. Yeah, that's right. The consulting lifestyle is pretty fast paced. That's right.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Maybe it has a shelf life. I don't know. Some people go on and on, but it's a hard one. There's a lot of lifers in those businesses.
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Hudson:That's it. I dunno how they do it. Yeah, I mean, that transition as you made, from reactive and into Accenture, it sounded like it was a little bit of a shift in gear. How would you describe some of your observations of how that worked operationally, was there a different mindset? Were you thinking that okay there's a different way of working here? What were your thoughts?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think there are some pretty stark differences between the kind of employee mindset, the agency mindset and then the consulting mindset. So, yeah. Okay. And I feel like there's levels of kind of pattern recognition that go with each of those things. So, as an employee or with your audience focus around intrapreneurship. There's levels of control that you have around the final outcome of a program, a project, or the work that you're doing. You are involved in the shaping of it, the delivery of it from end to end. You're kind of accountable for the outcomes. You're accountable for the teams who are delivering that work. So that aspect of control, responsibility and accountability is very high for the people within the organizations.
Chris Hudson:Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy:In an agency life mindset, you're more focused on project delivery. You're kind of time boxed in an engagement typically. So usually there's capability that the organization doesn't have or. There's types of output that they're not able to produce themselves perhaps. Yeah. So you tend to get brought in to work on a project, it has a defined lifespan, there's expected deliverables at the end. Yeah. And you kind of do your work handed over hopefully have a celebration at the end and move on. The consultant mindset I think is slightly different. The consultant mindset is built much more on trust around expertise in a particular domain and good consulting organizations are kind of brought in again and again to help people work through bigger problems. And very often it's about having a vision for the future around, where the market's going, where the world's going, where customers are going. Having a point of view around what that future looks like and how it's gonna impact the organization. So my experience is that those kind of relationships tend to be less time boxed. They tend to be more kind of continuous and that people will come back to you and seek your input into where that is going in a more strategic way or in more of an influencing way. You have less of a specific focus on delivery and outcome in, in a project sense and more of a guiding role in helping people kind of navigate change in technology or in strategy or in business structure. And so the, yeah, the level of trust and relationship you need to build with clients becomes a little bit more elevated. I mean, of course, trust and influence is. Consistent across all of those different mindsets, whether you are internal, whether you are doing things on a project basis, or whether you are providing advisory services. Yeah. But in the consulting side of things that, that level of trust and influence is really super important.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. I mean, I was gonna ask the golden question is how do consultants get work? If it's, obviously built in trust but if it's not built around an outcome all the time, then how does that work do you think?
Steph Foxworthy:I think the level of expertise that needs to be developed by consultants is is pretty high. You need to have a track record of delivery in certain contexts. You need to have proven that you've had a positive influence on other businesses and the ability to kind of draw on that. Word of mouth is critical in this. People move between jobs, between industries and between companies. And good consultants get carried along. People work with somebody, they grow to trust them, and they call them up in their next role and they have a similar problem. I do feel like that that level of expertise becomes something that people will draw on again and again. So, yeah. When you've demonstrated that you understand a problem or a problem space, that you have a clear vision for where things are going, and you're able to articulate that and, share that with people and help them reorient themselves towards, where growth might be or where, opportunity might lie. That becomes something that kind of carries along with you. Yeah, but it's very much relationship based. Yeah, so it's pretty hard to convince somebody that you know what you're talking about if they've never seen or heard of you before from a consulting perspective, you really need to demonstrate your credentials, I think.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, for sure. I mean, you were talking a bit about the internet and then obviously we jump forward and we've got AI options pouring out of every meeting, every interaction. And is definitely a culture now of people assuming or quickly getting to the point where they feel like they're an expert in most things, right? So they can find solutions for things very quickly. So how do you think that is changing and, does that redefine the role for a consultant,
Steph Foxworthy:I think it really does. I've spent the last year really immersing myself in in ai and particularly in generative ai. Yeah. Because I have exactly the same feeling I had at the beginning of my career. So when I first started looking into the internet and started thinking about the implications that a connected digital world has on business and life. This light bulb went off for me. I was like, this is gonna change everything. It's gonna change the way that people do everything in their lives. Yeah. And so myself and a good friend who were working in the multimedia agency, we launched our own business to start working in internet. Yeah. And that wave has just built and built and it's carried me along my whole career. And we started paddling very hard to kind of catch that wave, but once the wave was, there it was a really, not a difficult thing to keep riding that wave. Yeah. Internet and digital transformation and technology in general has been hugely impactful in business and been great for my career and, changed improved the lives of many people all around the world. I have exactly the same sense right now with ai, so I fundamentally feel like. The way that AI is emerging now is gonna change our relationship with technology. the way that AI interprets kind of natural language into instructions, the way that it, works to generate output like code or imagery or music or, whatever the output format is. The way that people are engaging with technology changes fundamentally and access to information changes fundamentally. So, what I was talking about earlier about expertise, suddenly if information is available, delivered by these technology solutions in really deep, valuable ways. So, summarizing information, summarizing content that sort of stuff in the background, then I feel like that kind of interaction with technology becomes much more valuable.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. I mean, you were talking a bit about employees agencies and consulting differences just before, and, to put it brutally and maybe overly simply, but if there's like a tick across or a question mark over some of those things in relation to AI and what the future of anyone's remit might end up being. It feels like as an employee, there's always gonna be a role for facilitating something through an organization. That there would be, in the consulting sense, that might be a question mark because there would be deliverables that could be generated, more easily than perhaps before. And then consulting maybe another question, mark, what's your thinking? What do you think is gonna be the future? Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah. I feel like there's, there's that level of accountability for delivering the outcome through to completion is is kind of the crux of the challenge that faces consultants going forward. And to be fair, it always has been. The cost of bringing in external people to lead programs, has always been a challenge for organizations. Yeah. And if you are not able to deliver the final outcome, if your role is to, define the problem space, design a solution, influence the organization to be able to achieve that outcome on their own behalf, it's always been the critique of strategy practices that, you come in and, there's the old saying, you borrow someone's watch to tell them the time. That's the way people have often kind of characterized consultants. But you know, if you don't know how to read a watch, then you do need somebody to tell you what the time is. And so I think the way that we are looking at, internal strategy practices, being able to gain access to, the sum total of human knowledge in, these kind of AI driven environments. It does change the role of how consultants approach, some of this work. And I feel like that bringing the outcome forward, helping the organization change so that they can start to bring, results into the world, yeah, that is where consulting is gonna need to go. They're gonna, it's gonna need to be more enabling than kind of directive. Yeah, I feel like that is a bit of a change.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. So delivery and implementation focus, but more around enablement and empowerment and, up upskilling and that kind of area.
Steph Foxworthy:I feel like the democratization of technology and tools, with the kind of rise of, new software platforms, this whole kind of AI generated world where software becomes a bit more accessible, where less specific kind of code expertise might be required, more kind of describing the problem, to an AI powered solution. Yeah, that becomes, more important. Consultants have always been really good at asking the right questions. You often hear people kind of critiquing consultants that they come into an organization and they ask a bunch of dumb questions. But because you're an external, because you're an outsider. You can get away with asking a bunch of dumb questions until you get to the question that they can't answer. So, you can sit there saying, I need you to talk me through these processes or this approach, and ask question after question, and people will look at you like you're an idiot. Like, why are you asking me these basic questions? We've been doing this for decades, we are obviously, top of our game as a business, you've come in as an outsider and you're asking me really basic, simple questions. And they'll answer them, and they'll answer them, and they'll look at you like you're an idiot. And then you get a few days into a engagement and you start asking some questions, and then they start going, Ooh, haven't thought about that. Didn't consider that, or, I don't know the answer to that. And then that's where the gold lies. And I feel like, as an external party, you have permission to do that. In fact, that's your job. As an internal, if you start asking dumb questions or questioning the, the status quo or, there's a lot of vulnerability to kind of admit you don't know something within an organization. Yeah. Particularly at senior levels. And that's something that I feel like consultants are very good at. But, there's approaches with technology now that are gonna allow people to start asking those questions or, delving a bit under the cover of their own organizations so that does make consultants a bit more at risk, I suppose.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. the AI tools are getting quite good at asking questions back, right, too. So you can often find that it helps steer you to, like a consultant would, it's helping steer you to the answer in the way that
Steph Foxworthy:you might have thought it would appear. Yeah, exactly. The prompting side of things I think is super important in this new AI world, and that is all about asking the right questions. So yeah, the people who can formulate the right question, who can kind of see the pattern, see the system, and know what questions to ask they're the people who are gonna shine in this new world. If, if you are committed or married to a process yeah, that's gonna be much harder.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And yeah, I mean, question asking, I mean, how does that get taught or learned, do you think? Where do people find that, that skill? Is it taught, is it learned? How do you best find out about how to do that better?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah. I think consulting is a team game. And so people will learn from observing other people, leading practices like this. And the questions that people are asking and the, the levels of vulnerability they show in terms of asking basic questions and working their way through a problem I think that's always instructive. I think one of the things that will be a challenge going forward is, the size of consulting practices, are shrinking around the world. So lots of organizations are, promising that they're going to use more technology, they're gonna use more ai. There is downward pressure on the size and shape of consulting practices. I was talking to, a client the other day who runs a finance business, and they were saying that they can see that, their pathway, their pipeline for getting people through. Their business is gonna change enormously. People who would previously come in and do process type work. So, bookkeeping and tax filing and, those kinds of roles where people learn their craft before they can become advisors. And, before they can start to, be creative in the way that they solve, client problems, they really need to know the basics. Most of those kind of process driven roles are gonna be automated and this client's view was that in the next five or so years, those sorts of roles will be completely automated by, software systems. And so he was asking where is he gonna find his advisory talent? Like, where is he going to need to look to bring people through his business so that they are expert and able to provide. Creative and complex solutions. Yeah. If the basics work is all automated away. And he was kind of talking about a bit of a apprenticeship type model. Maybe we get back to this way where people are kind of anointed to join these sorts of practices and brought in. But yeah, work your way up, learn your craft to get to a point where you have enough experience. Perhaps those kind of pathways are gonna be a bit broken by AI and technology in the future.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. I mean, that's a very interesting point. Puts a big question mark in itself around, the hierarchy, the, the longevity of careers, the engagement around it and the education system that's feeding the working world, right?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, that's right.
Chris Hudson:Te teaching people how to think, how to inquire, how to have a curious mind if you're not doing that through work, then how is it being learned or is it not being learned? That, that presents a big question.
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think that is a really huge question around educational pathways. I feel like, my own kind of career grew from a design background, and I think, design education is great at teaching that sort of inquiry. Beginning with research, beginning with insight and observation assessing data, looking for kind of patterns in amongst all of that stuff, but approaching it with a creative mindset. That's kind of the heart of design inquiry and I feel like that's critical to all of the. Sense making that needs to happen in the world around advisory services and consulting as well. Yeah. I think consulting has had a big role to play in terms of kind of cookie cutter expertise as well. People have seen one problem somewhere and, applied the same solution in other areas. And so part of what consulting offers is that kind of lookalike opportunity within an industry. Yeah. And that can be great for things like effectiveness and efficiency for cost reduction and, benchmarking. But it's not necessarily a great approach for things like differentiation and growth. So if you're really trying to kind of be an organization that's more customer centric, that's, trying to differentiate in a market, then you need more of that creative kind of design led thinking as opposed to, benchmarking and evidence. So design is a kind of designing future value. Yeah, and sometimes that future value is hard to quantify. Sometimes it needs to be hypothesis based and, driven through experimentation. And there's many organizations where the culture doesn't really support that. And so if you are really looking to kind of define growth and new opportunities and taking a design led and a hypothesis led approach to that you need to have a culture that's much more experimental to allow you to kind of pursue that avenue.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. And the learning pathways would need to gear you up for that. I feel like coming over here, the learning pathway seemed quite vocationally orientated in a lot of cases. Yeah. In Europe, particularly in the UK anyway, you may have gathered this from while you're over there, but people will come into a role, with an arts degree. And I did an arts degree, but over here, that would be kind of question in itself. I'd be scoffed a little bit. Why are you doing something that isn't business, as a degree if you're not, that kind of thing. But actually the teaching of the thinking process was what was really valuable from that, critical thinking, lateral thinking. it could be anything. It could be design, as you were saying. It could be maths, could be science. You are learning how to question through that process as well. So I feel like maybe some of those learning pathways will become more important over here. What do you think?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think I agree a hundred percent. A traditional education in the arts or in design or in other, more creative areas does help people have a broader, base for, future inquiry perhaps. And then some of the vocational pathways. I feel like that's potentially gonna be more valuable in the future. The idea of kind of learning your craft in some of these more kind of high value careers that's gonna be a bit kind of carved out by technology. So, the guy I was speaking to who runs a finance business, he can see that traditional kind of accounting pathways is just gonna disappear for future generations. Similarly in, high value roles like legal profession. The paralegal or the young kind of lawyer pathway where you are working your way through a legal firm that a lot of that work is going to be automated away. So yeah where people start to look for that education. I think it does come down to better ways of approaching critical thinking. Looking at alternative ways of framing a problem looking for critique. So, collaboration and diversity of thought. Those sorts of things become more valuable into the future.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. And maybe some of the social sciences and, research and, some of the data driven work, actually understanding it, how to analyze how to. How to report, that kind of thing. Yeah. Because you've gotta be able to interpret it and without a critical eye on a lot of the information that you see on, in your web browser, on your phone every day you're thinking, okay, well if this is the truth, is it the truth? Yeah. Should I be questioning this further? Is it gonna be right? Is it gonna be good enough? It's sort of in the eye of the beholder a little bit as to whether your AI response is any good or not,
Steph Foxworthy:so,
Chris Hudson:yeah.
Steph Foxworthy:I think the other thing that's kind of opening up for us in a more technology driven, AI enabled, world, is that the level of confidence that you have around decisions, potentially doesn't need to be as high within organizations. Traditionally the cost of execution of a business change. Has been such a barrier to, making changes to either a product set or a business process that the level of confidence that leadership needs, in order to execute that needs to be extraordinarily high. So there's a lot of work that was done, historically around strategy planning, around, research and business modeling. Data driven analysis and, benchmarking across industry. A lot of, more backwards looking, analysis of data, to build that confidence that it would allow organizations to invest in change. What I foresee happening is that the cost of change, particularly around, technology, starts to come down in more of an AI driven world. And so the ability to. Experiment with, different product models, with different service models becomes much higher. And the kind of granular nature of, how you go to market with a product or a service becomes more of a, a kit of parts and a bit of a puzzle where you kind of, stitch things together in the moment and, per client need rather than, manufacturing one massive product and putting it to market and saying, take it or leave it. Yeah. Some of the conversations I've been having with some of my clients recently, kind of instructive about this one example was some guy in the states put together a voice bot that he deployed on his energy company and he, sent it out into the world and got it to try and renegotiate his energy bill. And it was a voice agent, so it called up on the telephone. It spoke to, a service agent. It tried to renegotiate his bill. They got very confused about what was going on, asked whether it was a, digital assistant. Yeah. And it disclosed that it was a digital assistant and they said, well, I can't negotiate with you then, and hung up. But it called back hundreds of times before, oh my, before somebody, some administrator somewhere was, it was escalated to and, made some change that, he was happy with. Yeah. And that kind of nature of how problems are gonna be solved in the future. If you have a little agent that is able to go off and negotiate with a business, at a very granular level and is completely tireless. It fundamentally changes the way that businesses need to deliver their services. You need to atomize your product into the smallest bit you can negotiate on, and you need to be prepared for these tireless agents that are going to come and, whittle away your margins wherever they are. And very few businesses are prepared for that kind of future where, they have digital agents negotiating with them, one way or another on every aspect of their product or service. So that kind of experimental approach to the market and your products and your services I think that's gonna become a much bigger thing. Yeah, so it fundamentally changes the way businesses organize themselves to deliver.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, definitely. I mean, it's frightening, isn't it? I think the, the art of sales and, the kind of the soft sell, the hard sell, the nuance, the human relation, the relational side to business is kind of being whittled down. It feels like a little bit there. You're just gonna get hounded by some robot. Maybe the catchphrase will, it won't be so much, I, we won't negotiate with terrorists, but we won't negotiate with robots. Yeah. Sounds like there's something in that I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I mean, there are some people that are standing up to that and they're saying, okay, there's ai. But, to Andrew Griffiths who's an author here, and he's based in Tasmania, and yeah, he's talking about human intelligence a lot in some of his social content. And, there, there's definitely a kind of a bit of a rebellion against AI in some cases, but, from an intrapreneur's point of view and the skills and traits that we've been talking about, would you be saying, lean in or lean out or do a bit of both? Or what would your advice be there?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I'm a lean in guy. Yeah, I feel like, as I said the relationship with technology is fundamentally changing. Yeah. And this kind of natural. If you think about AI as a new keyboard or a new mouse, it's just a new way to get information into a computer and get the computer to respond to your needs. Yeah. I feel like that's where things are going. And the tools available to us in the future will be even better at, allowing us to get outputs that meet our needs. And just the way you ask for that output is going to be the skill that people, are developing. So, yeah, that ability to kind of, be able to engage with technology in a way that gives you what you want, I think that's the skill that people will be learning, in the future. Over the last couple of years we've talked about it as prompt engineering, as if it's a career. I don't think it is a career. I think it's a way of engaging with technology more broadly. I think that's the sort of thing that people will be being taught, more, your point about, critical thinking and, lateral thinking, I think that's gonna become more important. Because understanding the problem space, asking the right questions and framing them in ways that, try to avoid bias and, preconceived ideas. I feel like that's where, consulting practices are gonna go in general, but also, if you are an entrepreneur or you are somebody trying to have a creative approach to solving problems, within an organization, those skills are gonna be critical.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. But you need to know how to apply it and what to ask about. It's kind of like. if there's a Michelin star chef in your house and they were gonna cook dinner tonight, but you had no idea what kind of food they could make, and you had no ideas for what they could cook, then you'd have to work it out in some way and prompt, the right outcome for it to be like the most amazing meal you ever had. You're having to design it yourself effectively. So people need to learn that. Yeah.
Steph Foxworthy:One thing that's, emerging at the moment that I've seen people doing quite a lot, particularly on the AI front, is asking the AI what questions they should ask. And so when you think about these kind of consulting practices and, learning from observing other people, the same applies to learning from technology. So, if you're asking what should I ask or what should I know before I step into this problem space? The speed to learning. In this new world is going to be incredibly rapid. So, your ability to, find out what background reading you should do, or summarize the kind of research that might be important. Learn who are the kind of precedents and experts in the space. That sort of stuff now is at our fingertips. Yeah. And and I think that makes a big difference to the way people start to think about problem solving as well. In the past, the effort you would have to put into, research a particular problem space within an industry or dig up precedents or look for case studies or find out who are the who are the experts, what research you should be drawing on. Yeah. That was, that was the intensive work in and of itself. And that work now might be a bit more available to us. So, streamlining that kind of approach.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. Sure, of course. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was gonna come back to as well, we were talking a bit about the consultants mindset just before, and it felt like we, we got somewhere in, in kind of understanding the differences there. But maybe we can go into a little bit around how, the skills that consultants have could be applied, within an organization or how intrapreneurs could benefit from those skills in some way as well. So, so not just ai, but there, there's definitely a, it's a service orientated mindset ultimately. I mean, it is advisory in itself. Yeah. But, there's a sense of partnership, there's a sense of collaboration. There's direction and leadership and, some of these skills or traits that could be essential to entrepreneurs. What do you think consultants could teach intrapreneurs in that sense?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think there are three things that are really valued in organizations from consultants. The first is consultants come without a legacy bias. The challenges, the roadblocks, the cultural, norms within an organization, consultants are able to sidestep those. So are able to kind of come in and observe those with a bit of a neutral gaze. They're able to bring, experience of how other organizations do it. And that's highly valued and that's one of the reasons why consultants are often brought in because organizations, dunno what they don't know and they really want that outsider's perspective. That's harder to achieve as. An employee or an entrepreneur. But you can research that and bring in, the voice of outside and try and find, examples of how others do it to inform that. The other thing that the second thing that the consultants bring that's also highly valued, I think is is the pattern recognition. So, one of the reasons why people bring in consultants is that, that they have experience of seeing how problems have been solved in multiple organizations. And so they're kind of joining the dots. And that pattern matching is is what people are after. They're looking for someone who can come in and say, I've seen this problem before. I have some approaches. That might help you solve this. Sometimes that comes with shortcuts. Sometimes that comes with, coaching of how to go work through the problem. Yeah. And organizations really value that. I think often people within organizations, find it challenging to talk about, what they've done elsewhere. And it comes with that insider bias. People have lived experience in all sorts of ways. Building a culture where that diversity is celebrated and, people are able to contribute based on that sort of, lived experience, adds enormous value to internal teams. So, that kind of culture needs to be nurtured and supported and that's hugely important. And yeah, I think the third. Aspect, in my experience that, consultants are really good at. And, one of the reasons why people step into a consulting career is, because they're able to do this is the storytelling, and influence side of things. painting the vision of a positive future, and influencing people in leadership and, with control, that this is the right step to take. That can be very difficult to achieve as an insider. people you're working with every day, you kind of get to know, what they like and what they think and what they do. And it's very difficult to kind of effect change with people that you work with every day in terms of, painting a positive future and giving someone a vision. Yeah, so sometimes having an outsider come in to kind of do that is a bit of a shortcut. But the other thing to reflect on is that a consultant is really there to make, to make their clients look good. And so a good consultant is always working very closely with somebody with influence within the organization. And sometimes it's useful to have an outsider's voice, that people can kind of listen to, that you've paid a lot of money for. And so sometimes, the checkbook, suggests that this person's voice is worth listening to. Yeah. But ultimately somebody within the organization needs to buy into the vision. And they need to kind of own the vision and they need to deliver that vision. So, it is a partnership and I feel like sometimes organizations need that external voice, for a bit of extra credibility, but ultimately, the people within the organization are the ones who are signing up for that storytelling. Yeah. So I think intrapreneurs can really learn from, outsiders in agencies, outsiders in consultancies about how they present their ideas and how compelling they make that kind of vision for the future. How well supported it is with evidence or precedent or examples, case studies and fundamentally how, evidence-based it is in the end, like, what sort of data are you using to showcase why this is a better decision than others. In my experience, consultants are very good at that. They come with a book of benchmarks and, examples that they can draw on. Often that's through work that they've done themselves, but sometimes it's, by doing market scans and research. Sometimes internal teams can be a bit less, evidence-based or a bit less thorough in some of that, storytelling. So I feel like there's a lot that internal teams can learn from, just seeing how, externals who are brought in to solve a particular problem, how they go about telling that story.
Chris Hudson:And it's funny, isn't it, because the people that are, that align well within the organizations to the consultants, are often the intrapreneurs and they're looking to trailblaze in some sort of way too. So they're there. To observe in the situation, to understand the process and advocate for it within their organization. And they'd probably pick up all of those traits through the process, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy:Completely agree.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. There's another part which is also maybe slightly more relational, having made, and I think you did this as well, the transition from agency to consulting. It feels like in an agency world, and this applies within organizations as well, but in an agency world, there's definitely more of that. I guess more directive management, where clients might say, okay, this is what I want and can you go make it, that would happen within an organization too. But in a consulting world, it feels like the footing's a little bit more equal because you're partnering and, you're not necessarily there just to provide a service, but you're there to be part of the business in some sort of way. So there's a distinction there in how you would handle yourself as an intrapreneur. In one case you would be Yeah, I'll do that research and I'll write a report and I'll give it back to you and I'll provide you with a deliverable, in a consulting. Mindset. It might be more about questioning it, checking whether it's Right, benchmarking it as you were saying, bringing in your own knowledge base. And I feel like there's a nuance there, don't you think?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I do. I do. I think my experience of agency life, was very often that, we would dealing with, middle management as opposed to senior leadership or board leadership. And that there was a particular problem that was well understood that needed to be solved, that was more capability or capacity led. I had a client years ago say to me I'd do this myself if I had, the time and the team. Yeah, but I don't, so I need you to do it. And his point was, I know what the problem is. I know how I wanna solve this. I'm getting you to do it because, I can't. I don't have the time or the bandwidth or the team to do this myself. And so his, his kind of coaching was, I'm gonna tell you what I want. I'm gonna tell you what I need and I expect you to execute it and I want you to do it efficiently. And it's a bit of a grudge purchase. If I didn't have to spend this money, I wouldn't. Oh, really? Yeah. And that was, that was a pretty instructive relationship kind of conversation. It's like, okay, I'm gonna take instructions from this guy. I'm gonna add advice where I can, where I think I add value. But fundamentally, he's not looking for us to question, his decisions. He's looking for us to execute on a program. Yeah. And that's fine. That, that expectation was quite clear and, we did it and it went very well. And, we worked together for many years but that relationship was a bit more transactional. Whereas there are other clients. Who I've sat down with. And they were, brutally honest and said they had no idea how they were going to tackle this problem, and we were gonna have to work through it together. Yeah. And it was gonna need to be much more creative and it was gonna need to be much more collaborative and, we were gonna explore multiple potential, futures that this could be. And those, for me personally, those kind of conversations are much more energizing. Yeah. I'm an ideas person and I'm a strategic person and I like to kind of have multiple options in front of me. And I like to think I can kind of follow the bouncing ball through those through those kind of problem spaces and add value that way. But yeah, I think you're right that there is a kind of an influencing And conceptual difference between, what you're being asked for as a execution partner and what you're being asked for as a strategic or a consulting partner.
Chris Hudson:Yeah. Yeah. And do you think an intrapreneur could identify, in a sense which role to play in which situation if they were working within an organization?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think the questions are are pretty similar. If you are being given a directive by senior leadership, and the problem space seems to be, well-defined and the hypothesis of what the future holds and where the value is very clear, then you are probably falling into execution mode. But if you can observe that the way that the problem has been framed, seems a bit naive or it seems like, it's kind of rushing at the solution. That not every opportunity has been explored. Then you could probably put on your consulting mindset and say, well, hang on a minute, have we considered alternatives? Do we have other options ahead of us? I think that is very, like you say, it's very relational. It's how you relate with leadership. And, with your management to be able to kind of achieve that. Is it time boxed? Is it time pressured? Is there a result that is required in short order? Often they're the sorts of things that drive that kind of directive behavior. Whereas, the more experimental, more exploratory mindset, sometimes needs a bit more patience, a bit more, vision around it. And so, the strategy there can be a bit more emergent rather than directive.
Chris Hudson:Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I think sometimes if you're, asking a very open question in a more pointed context where people just wanna move through the meeting, get the answer, you've almost gotta give a bit of rationale, a bit of context as to why you're stopping the train in its tracks at that point, because otherwise people are just like, what is this person talking about? And that's a complete distraction from what we're here to do. So, yeah, you gotta know your audience a little bit. Yeah. What what I mean, we're coming to the close now, but, maybe I could ask you this question about hard lessons learned and, from a relational point of view is there anything in that area that you wanna share, either as a story or as a learning around, what not to do in a relational sense within an organization?
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, I think I think one thing that I've observed a lot and coming from a design background where where the process is highly valued. We need to start with research and we need to, speak to customers and we need to synthesize and we need to, create opportunities and we need to do our, double diamond and we need to, explore all of these, opportunities. And if any of those steps are shortcut or, undervalued designers can feel very frustrated about being forced to deliver something without having gone through all the steps. Yeah. I feel like, whilst that process, does deliver value from end to end, being able to be adaptable. Around that and, recognize that sometimes there is levels of knowledge or levels of expertise, within your organization or within other people, or within teams that you may not understand. Yeah, I feel like that is a bit of a pitfall for, creative people and, intrapreneurs inside organizations. You have a particular way you wanna approach a problem and, you may have found value in doing that, many times before. But when you start to try and, execute that within an organization, sometimes it may not be appropriate and you might need to, pivot and change and be a bit more comfortable in, ambiguity and uncertainty. Sometimes the experience that other people have that you may not have had yourself. Can shortcut you to a good answer. I've seen a lot of people kind of stick rigidly to a process, that I can see as an outsider or I can see through the work that I've been doing is frustrating stakeholders and, not building a great relationship. So I feel like, that kind of, reading the room, knowing when you need to be able to defend your process and when you need to be able to move on, that comes through, learned experience and delivery scars. I think. So, it is not easy to understand when that's going off the rails, if you don't have the experience of having seen it happen again and again. Yeah. But yeah, I do feel like there's a lot of ability to enforce a process when adaptability is sometimes a bit more valuable. And that can be something to think about. If you're trying to work through and you're starting to see, you getting pushed back or some people are not really valuing the way you are tackling a problem, you might need to think a bit more creatively about how you approach the problem.
Chris Hudson:Definitely. I think you gotta know, when to go all out and, put a bit of drama and a bit of theater around it you wouldn't labor it, but, you can over labor some of the points that you're trying to make as a consultant when people don't really want to hear it. You just want to be venting and that's something that you learn over time, obviously
Steph Foxworthy:not to do that. Yeah, I think that's a good point actually, That as a consultant, you are very often a therapist that, You will hear the negativity and the frustration and, when people are kind of telling you about the barriers they face, it is a bit of a, therapeutic relationship. And what they're really asking you to do is to play that back to leadership and to decision makers, to showcase that people, want to do a better job and they want to deliver a better outcome, but they're kind of held back by their own organizations. As a consultant, I feel like you often get those sorts of conversations where you are able to diagnose, process problems or relationship problems or, some issue that the organization wants changed and fixed. That's much harder to surface when you are, an insider. But the same toolkit applies. So if you can kind of get the voice of the end user, captured in a way, play that back, show that it adds time and cost and delay, then that's equally valuable from insiders as it is from consultants. I sometimes think that, People are more open with consultants sometimes, because, they've got less to lose.
Chris Hudson:And I've seen this happen within, within meetings, within workshops, people are trying to shine a light on the situation, within the organization. But it's almost misinterpreted sometimes. It feels like, some people within the room think there's some agenda at play and they're just saying it to protect their own team or their own interests, or that sort of thing comes in a little bit. So the consultant is there to kinda give the neutral, impartial view. But, it's a hard one I think for intrapreneurs to navigate in that sense because
Steph Foxworthy:The politics, is much harder to navigate as an insider sometimes. You can be a neutral kind of third party as an external consultant. You can enforce that kind of anonymity around feedback and, frame it as a problem to be solved as opposed to a relationship. That needs to be fixed. Those sorts of things are a bit of an advantage sometimes as an outsider.
Chris Hudson:All right. Well, thanks so much Steph. Really enjoyed the chat today. We've had a lot of good chats around, exploring the role of consultants, the consultants mindset, what we can learn from consultants and, how consultants do what they do in some respects. So we could spend a lot more time talking about that as we're both consultants. But, one take out me is that, I think consultants make good conversation around these things. We ask each other questions and we have a curious mindset. So yeah, really enjoy the conversation. I appreciate you coming onto the show as well. Thanks so much.
Steph Foxworthy:Yeah, thanks very much, Chris. It's great.