The role of the IT leader and why it's changing

Ever wondered if the digital pulse of a leading fitness brand beats differently...

Welcome to this episode of The role of the IT leader and why it's changing, where we sit down with Andy Caddy, the seasoned CIO with a prolific career spanning some of the most iconic brands, including EasyJet, Whitbread, and Virgin Active, before landing at PureGym about 1.5 years ago.

In our conversation with Andy, we explore the intriguing journey that led him to PureGym, delving into the shifts in the role of an IT leader over the years. From the boardrooms of EasyJet to his current role at PureGym, Andy reflects on the evolution of the IT leader beyond a technical role, encompassing team nurturing and leadership traits essential in today's landscape.

We get personal with Andy, discussing his leadership style, his appetite for change, and the joys and challenges that come with being at the forefront of technology in a major business. We uncover the importance of avoiding tech tunnel vision and adopting a broader business perspective, all while maintaining a focus on customer experience.

Join us as we explore the intricacies of inheriting projects and problems in a new role, gaining insights from Andy's experiences and valuable advice on navigating disagreements. The podcast also tackles the demanding task of driving costs down while delivering more, all while striving for competitive advantage.

In the good, bad, and ugly of the evolving IT leader role at PureGym, Andy shares what has worked, surprised him, necessitated tweaking, and what had to be discarded. For aspiring IT leaders, Andy offers a roadmap, detailing the steps to reach the CIO position and the importance of nurturing a personal brand.

Visit AND Digital's website here for the latest episodes and to stay informed.

Follow us on:
Linkedin: and_digital
X: AND_digital
Insta: and.digital

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

We all hear a lot about digital transformation, but unless you've been there and done it, it's easy to feel that transformation is a significant challenge that might seem difficult to conquer. That is why we've launched the Good, bad and Ugly podcast series. Each episode, we talk to people who've been at the heart of transformation and we get under the skin not just of what they did and how they did it, but how it felt to be at the centre of it. Welcome to our podcast being a Digital Leader the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Digital Transformation. My name is Wendy Stonefield and I am the London Hub Executive and your host for today, and I am delighted to be joined by Andy Caddy, cio for Pure Gym today. It's great to have you with us. Thank you for joining us, andy.

Speaker 2: 0:56

Delighted to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:57

I am not going to do your intro. I'm going to hand over to you because you are, of course, the expert in your own career history and journey, so it'd be great if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I'm not one for talking about myself that much, but if I must, then I guess I've been around a long time is how I explain my career to people. I'm a change evangelist and a big fan of delivering change to people, to businesses, to individuals. I started my life in retail, so I start my life at Argos, a great British retailer in the 90s. I think it's been subsumed by Sainsbury's these days, but it was a great place to do my early part of my career. I was lucky enough to work within a number of different brands. I worked for NatWest and I worked for Kable and Wireless, and then I found EasyJet was probably the start of my management career. I fell in love with Low Cost at EasyJet, a fabulous company with a great culture. I stayed there for a while before getting into this fitness sector at Virgin Active. I spent some time at Whitbread as well, and then, more recently, I joined Pure Gym, which has been a great journey for me.

Speaker 1: 2:04

Thank you, andy. That's a whistle stop tour of what is quite a prolific career as a CIO. I'm really interested, as working in the boardroom of some of our most well-loved brands and you've touched on them brands such as EasyJet, whitbread, virgin Active, to name but a few and landing in Pure Gym. It'd be really interesting to understand more about the journey that's led you to Pure Gym and what took you there. What piqued your interest about joining the organization?

Speaker 2: 2:38

Yeah, I mean, as I said, I first got into management or leadership, I would say at EasyJet and at the time I'd just come out of contracting. So I'd been contracting for a while and I'd contracted because I wanted to see the world. I'd done my early career, as I said, in a retailer and I thought I wanted to go out and see things. And actually my contract career was three companies, I mean. It wasn't. I had this great image that it would be a few months here and a few months there. But if you're good and people like you, you stay. So I ended up having an almost a permanent career. And when I came to EasyJet, I was a contractor and I joined to help out on a particular project. But there was something about the culture of the place and the demands of low cost, which is a very different place. It's hard if you've never worked in it, but when you are quite constrained by what you've got and you've got a very clear path to value, so you're trying to deliver something, that's very obvious it's very compelling because it's almost a challenge. What can I do in the time with this money and these people? And EasyJet was great and I spent a number of years there when I went to Virgin Active. That was slightly different but I liked the sector. The sector is really interesting because when your end product is making people fissure and healthier, that's a lovely place to be and there are a few sectors where you can have that sort of reward.

Speaker 2: 3:50

So, having the chance, when I left Whitbread, I had the chance to sort of look around and think about what I wanted to do, and it's something we'll touch on later. But I think be conscious about what you want to do in your career. It was the first time I really sat down and thought what would I really like to do and I wrote a list of sort of attributes for what the job would be and actually got myself into a number of different interviews and positions with very interesting companies. But actually when I sat back I thought these aren't really what I want to do and was confident enough to wait. And along came Pugetium and here was a low-cost company with a great culture, doing fitness, launching globally, doing things that were very interesting both technically but also from a company perspective, and I thought that sounds really interesting. It sounds like me and 18 months later I'm delighted to be here.

Speaker 1: 4:40

Brilliant. So real purpose at the heart of it, like at its core in terms of making people healthier and that being important. And I like the idea that when you talk about low-cost, it's very clean and concise and there's real clarity around what you do and don't do as a business. And I'd imagine, like you talk about the culture there. How would you describe the culture?

Speaker 2: 5:03

The culture is nice, being in a business where you're very connected with the product. I work in a company that delivers membership of gyms essentially to 2 million people in six countries, and we all know what that is and what that means. And if it's done well and people benefit from it, there's almost a good news story every day. We work closely with charities like Mind and the British Heart Foundation and we believe strongly in things like that because we understand that people's lives can be turned around by our good practice in terms of fitness or wellness. So making that available to people, that's quite a passion for us.

Speaker 2: 5:41

Fitness can be something. It's hard enough to get people off a sofa, but when they're going to pay 70, 80, 90 pounds a month for a gym membership, they won't do it. So the challenge there is can you provide a great quality product that people will be inspired to go to at a price that works for them? That's flexible enough. That's the point of us. We're a council anytime subscription service, so join and if your situation has changed, you move on, and that's fine. What we want to do is be at the heart of that for people so that when they decide to join again, it's us they choose. That's a lovely place to be and quite an opportunity.

Speaker 2: 6:13

And I always say to people I'm sure people in my impugnium are bored of me saying it when I was at EastJet and I sat in Lucin Airport looking out over a runway and there was very little other places to go. You sat in an office and you couldn't go anywhere else and you watched a plane take off every two minutes. You felt incredibly connected. You felt I had a part of that. My team, or what we did or the products we launched made that happen and I've always wanted to recreate that wherever I go, and Pure Gym is the first time I really managed to get that in place again.

Speaker 1: 6:42

I have a vision of your office in a gym, Andy. We have a running track that's close.

Speaker 2: 6:48

It's cosmetic, but we have a running track in our office.

Speaker 1: 6:51

Yeah, so it's somewhat close to what you do. That's really interesting. It's particularly interesting, as you're talking about low cost and, in the context of running the office of the CIO and all that you bring to the organization, how that plays out within that business. Because I'm sure if people are being created, there's a tendency to probably add, if anything add cost and whistles and bells that aren't necessarily relevant, particularly when shiny new things come along in our world that might distract or take you off course. Is that a challenge for you? It's always a challenge.

Speaker 2: 7:36

I have this expression that I'm certainly trying to popularize in Pure Complexity is the enemy of low cost. So the moment you say, okay, let's be example, we have three bands of prices today Student, low cost, off, peak rather and standard and the moment you say, hey, let's add a fourth or a fifth, it starts to be, then what does that mean for a single club membership or a multi club membership? What does that mean for different hours of operation? All these things start to become. They multiply up, they square up or even cube up. So you have to be really conscious about why you would do things.

Speaker 2: 8:11

I like that about low cost. I like the fact that what you're trying to do at the end is trying to make this very simple and make it very easy and replicable so that you can provide this service at that price all over the place in the same way. That's really key You're right about. In technology, we love to go off on a tangent. We love to go find something and do something clever, trying to focus and harness that enthusiasm to do it in a way that keeps the purpose, which is keeping things in a way that we can provide at this price for everybody. That's the key.

Speaker 1: 8:43

Yeah, I think it's really interesting because I think your starting point is efficiency, Whereas in a lot of organizations they're trying to retrospectively bake that in.

Speaker 2: 8:53

Yeah, I don't think you can become low cost. I've had this argument at previous companies. It's really hard. If you don't start with that ethos then it's very hard to get yourself there and very few companies succeed in that. Mostly, your culture has been baked in from the start and it's almost impossible to unwind. Most companies that do something in low cost airlines, hotels, whatever they go and do it separately. They do it to the side because they can do a startup culture, establish a new company, and that's what they do. That's how they achieve low cost. Taking an oil tanker and deciding you're going to make a speedboat just does not work.

Speaker 1: 9:27

Yeah, it's interesting and probably not a conversation if the economy is booming and everything's going well in your sector, but if it's a more challenging economic climate, the need to push for the efficiencies there so probably some interesting discussions in that space to unpack. But in terms of if you look back over the last few years and over your career, I think invariably as digital has become what it is today and our CEO has a great phrase about software eating the world in a positive way, of course but the role of the CIO has changed really fundamentally and it'd be really interesting to hear a little bit of your perspective on that and what's driven it and how CIO leadership has had to really respond to that.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Yeah, I'm on the same page as Paramjit in that respect. The moment software becomes reliable and easy and replicatable, then you're in a very different place to where we used to be. I think CIO's and IT leadership back in the day 20 years ago was about security and control and interpretation of these horrible big contracts. It's about having someone on the board who sort of understood this very complex area. Now a lot of that's gone and I remember, as cloud became very commonplace and AWS and Azure and Google all these things became much more commodity products in eight, nine years ago. As that started to become very obvious, this is how the world was going to go.

Speaker 2: 11:02

I used to do a talk called chiefly irrelevant officer, because I thought that we're in danger here. If you don't adapt, you're in danger of being the oddbod in the room who's still talking about the boxes and the wires and no one really wants that. The board put up with it because you had to have somebody, because you had a 20 million pound oracle contract and no one else understood it. That's not the case these days and I think the role has changed to be somebody who's much more complementary to his or her executive peers, who can communicate really well across everybody because we're in a rare position, a very privileged position actually. My job is to speak to everyone. I cannot leave anyone out, because I've got to understand what's going on in every part of the business, because I can help usually and make things better. Not everyone has that opportunity. You have to be a great communicator.

Speaker 2: 11:52

I think it's more about EQ than IQ these days. It's much more about understanding and being compassionate and empathetic about where people are. It's not a computer says no era anymore. What you're trying to think about is how can I help you and what we do. At the end of the day, you've also got to be a realist. I'm a terrible optimist. I love to do it. I want to solve everything and do everything all at once. But you've got to understand you can't do that because you set yourself up for failure. You have to be real and you have to be pragmatic. This set of skills I think if I look back even 10 years, is quite different. When I look at the good CIOs and CTOs and my peers, they are a different set of people than when I first came into leadership.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Really interesting. My almost 30 years of working in our space, I suppose, often used to find myself caught between a CMO and a CIO. It was often quite a scary place to me. You'll point around really often being the glue between the stakeholders, in terms of you facilitating what they all need to happen to come together At the end of the day, you want them to talk to you.

Speaker 2: 13:08

If they think you're an obstruction because you're being controlling, they will find a way around you. You can't control everything anymore. People can go and buy off the shelf software and get up and running and do stuff without you. They should be able to do that and actually I encourage that where we can. But of course you want to know about it and you want to look for opportunities to either use that again or link it with other things or create bigger value, being the person they want to come and talk to first. That's where you want to be. That's a very different skill. That's showing people the art of the possible and that's being a great communicator. That's being transparent about stuff. I think they're pretty new skills for this industry. Actually I regret not being 20 years younger, because that's how I always saw it. I didn't like the fact that IT was often technical and got in the way and was desperate to make a better headway by doing things quicker. But often you were restricted by the situation at the time.

Speaker 1: 14:02

Really interesting. How would you define yourself as a lead if you were to describe your leadership style? You've touched on a couple of the core traits of a CIO today, but really interested in how you describe yourself.

Speaker 2: 14:19

I put the basis of it all of. I want my team and the people who work in my function to really feel like they are connected to a business, they understand their path, that we play in that and that I'm wholly transparent about what's going on. That's that the communication is key for me. I sort of describe it. The way I think about this all the time when we're talking about organization design and where I'm working with my leadership team, is I want to create the function that I wish I'd worked for when I was earlier in my career. That's what I'm always thinking Are we all acting how I would like? If I was a developer or a project manager or a working in QA and I was looking up at the leadership team, are they behaving and are they acting how I would want? That's sort of how I hold myself to account. A lot of it's about having good listening skills, being brave enough to admit you're wrong and always thinking about how we line up individuals and teams so that they understand the value they can deliver, Because I think that's the powerful thing.

Speaker 2: 15:19

I think most people in technology some people, obviously. There are people who are technologists and we still need those, but increasingly I find that most people in technology, what they're really interested in is how did the thing I do? How did that make a difference? If you don't play that back, I think it's just frustrating. It's such an opportunity. We're so lucky in technology and what's really lucky about it is it gets better every year. There's more and more things. There's more magic you can apply to a business. Almost every year we can do things this year. We couldn't do three years ago. We certainly couldn't do 10 years ago. What's an opportunity and how do we make the most of that?

Speaker 1: 15:54

It's really inspirational to hear you talk in those terms, in that what's coming next and I suppose you obviously relish challenge and change what are the things you really enjoy most around the role and what are the things that you have wake up in the middle of the night concerned about, if you do?

Speaker 2: 16:21

I love change. I'm a sort of change agent, because what you're looking for is how to make things better, and the world never stays still, so it's never a steady state. So how do you apply all of this stuff? How do you help people become better, whether it's their career? So my standard speech join us. You might be with us for three years, but I want you to leave as a better person than when you came. How do we work together to make that happen? So you get the best out of your career and we get the best out of you. That's kind of my standard. We're approaching people because I think you've got to be realistic. People don't stay for 20 years anymore. Therefore, that's probably the mode most of us are in. So if we mutually have an understanding, that's great.

Speaker 2: 17:00

And then, from my technology and IT perspective, I enjoy any time we can make things a bit easier improve a product, make a customer experience better all those things. I can't walk past somebody doing a bad thing in PowerPoint or Excel and without telling them you know there's an easier way. I hate people wasting their time, and we are blessed with the ability to surprise and delight people every day of our career if we do things right. On the flip side, what do I wake up? I don't really. I mean, I suppose I should say cyber, because that's what everyone says, but I don't really worry about that. We have it in a pretty good position where we are. We can always improve. I hate the fact that has to be something we worry about. It's sort of it's just an unfortunate byproduct of if you create systems the way we do, the way the industry does, bad people will find ways around them and you have to protect against that. That's just insurance, right, and insurance is dull, so you just got to make sure that works.

Speaker 2: 17:59

What worries me and what drives me is not being able to do enough, and there's we can never quite get everything done. That's how I feel about generally about the world we live in. There's probably 20 projects we could be running right now to make our business better. We can probably only do five of them. That is always frustrating for me and, as I said earlier, I'm an optimist, so I have to surround myself with realists who keep me grounded to say no, andy, remember we said we can only do five. Let's not schedule 10, because I'm just desperate to make things happen and to make a better world for our employees and our teams and all the rest of it. So that's the stuff that, if you like is. The hard bit to handle is when you're desperate to beat to change things to the better. Sometimes it's really hard to say do you know what? This year we're gonna have to leave that as it is, bad as it is.

Speaker 1: 18:48

Yeah, I'm really interested in your prioritization approach in that context and particularly through. You talk really eloquently about being connected into other stakeholders. Ultimately, you're delivering an experience to a customer, both when they walk into your gyms but in terms of their interface with you through your digital channels. How do you prioritize, based on the fact that you're never gonna be able to do everything you want to, particularly, I would assume, in a business that has grown at immense pace and is really ambitious as well?

Speaker 2: 19:29

Well, we're a commercial business, so we have to prioritize around. How do we become a successful business? Now, if you do it right, success can come not just out of more money, which is a very basic metric, but out of pleasing members so they stay longer, as an example, and so that's about customer experience. So you are trying to look at all the things we have to do and we have a way of rating things that need to be done so that we can be realistic about what we can achieve and we know the value we're gonna get out of that. Along the way, there are some stuff that you can't value. You can't. It's really hard to put the value on a new HR system Really tough. There are some pound signs there in efficiency, but at the end of the day, there is a moment when you know it's the time to do stuff like that because it's making it really hard for our teams. So we need to change it, because we become inefficient or it's a bad experience or we're making every day difficult. So there's an element of common sense.

Speaker 2: 20:28

We have a very sensible commercial prioritization process for most of our work. This is where coming back to simplicity and having a very clear model. If I think back to my days in Kegel and Wiles on that West Bank, these are very big, complex businesses. You're just a cog in a wheel. There is a million other things going on very hard to really see the wood for the trees. I'm very fortunate to work in a business where we know exactly what we're doing and how we make that happen. So success for me is making sure we've got a commercial model that works, making sure we're offering products that work for our members on the website and people sign up, giving an experience that's complementary to what our brilliant teams and our gyms do, so that people enjoy being a member of Pure Gym and stay longer, and therefore everybody wins in that situation.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Yeah, really interesting, and you've obviously worked in regulated and now and not regulated, and I'm sure that brings something different, both culturally but also in terms of freeing you up as a CIO as well.

Speaker 2: 21:31

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, I mean I can't tell you. One of the things that really attracted me to Pure Gym was the culture, and I've worked in lots of different companies. Good culture, not so good culture. When you see something that's so good, you want it to stay like that, and I feel like that's one of my jobs. I've got a technology role, but I've also got an executive management role of saying we need to protect this because it's special and most people who join us talk about it. We're very lucky.

Speaker 2: 21:57

I think it's something about the fact we've got a large workforce out there delivering a great product and that keeps you honest about what we do. Our management team is one of the best management teams I've worked with and you don't want to upset the apple cart here. Of saying let's make sure, as we grow across countries, when it starts to become a bit more difficult about sensitive people, we need to do things in a standard way. You may or may not be able to do what you want locally. How do you do that in a way that keeps the culture and keeps that feeling of togetherness? We have a value called shoulders to shoulder, and I've never seen values lived so well. I know I'm pretty good at this, but Peer Jam very good at and shoulder to shoulder, which is let's take on problems together. It means it's a very low politic environment. It's fabulous. I feel very privileged to be part of that.

Speaker 1: 22:48

What is interesting because that brings back to you about emotional intelligence, people really being able to admit when they've made mistakes being vulnerable, the psychological safety aspect of being able to be shoulder to shoulder.

Speaker 2: 23:03

Yeah, everyone should be able to fail once. Failure is part of our nature and in technology we need to try things often, so we shouldn't be worried about failure, but it's having honesty and transparency that counts.

Speaker 1: 23:19

Yeah, great, and I was gonna ask you in a kind of it doesn't feel relevant given the compensation we've had, but you customer, whether it's employee experience, customer experience, those things seem very much at the core of what you do, whereas I think some IT and tech functions have had to really work hard to bed down the customer within the context of what they do and give purpose and meaning in light of the customer. But that just feels like it hasn't really been, isn't really a massive issue, been an issue for you, I think you still have to.

Speaker 2: 23:57

You always have to keep yourself focused. It's very easy. I'll give an example, which is we operate. Our biggest region is clearly the UK. We're number one in the UK and this week's our business week. We're in January and it's the busiest week and 100,000 people joined Pure Gym this week, which is great.

Speaker 2: 24:15

The people around the business, and myself included, don't join every day. We don't go through the process of joining and we sat down the other day and went wow, our join process has got quite clunky. We didn't. You just don't realize it, because you work on it and you add things and you do, and actually, when you view it through the eyes of a new member, go, oh, we could do lots to improve this, but you don't. You have to remind yourself of that. So you have to keep yourself honest in those situations.

Speaker 2: 24:43

We are lucky because I think when you're, when you're not very far from the, from the cold face of delivery, and we try and get back to I try and get our teams out to gyms with, again lucky, we open a lot of gyms so we can use the gyms as before they open to have team meetings and things like that, which is great. We go out and Work with our operational colleagues. Just go and have a look and see what's going on. You're lucky in that situation. Not everyone has that. Again, I've worked in companies where you're quite along, a few degrees away from that. But I think, having a passion for that as a person I mean I I can't stand going to a bad website and I get frustrated Because surely we've solved all the problems.

Speaker 2: 25:20

You know, going through and choosing a product, selecting and paying for it has been done a million times and you still find websites where it doesn't work, and it's just. I wonder about the developers, the engineers who've who've done that work? Have they not seen good? Good, you know, it's just. It frustrates me. So I think maybe there's something in me as well that just doesn't accept bad experience. It lies too short to be wasting time or struggling or doing going to. I went To my train ticket website just yesterday and I was sort of Frustrated at how many times of it said to me oh, you haven't put in your, your destination. I'm like I come to this website every day. Actually, it was the app that comes this app every day.

Speaker 2: 25:58

You know who I am, you don't know I travel every day and book tickets and you're still saying, hey, you haven't been your destination and it's really badly. It was really badly. The experience wasn't very obvious either. So, yeah, I get, I, I find stuff like that, things I just want to solve.

Speaker 1: 26:13

Yeah, and it's as you say. I suppose it's never a done thing. There's a con, there's a need to constantly keep on top of it and I think consumer behavior Does. It continues to. Consumers continue to demand more, so the more intelligent our products that we put out have the capacity and can be, and the more they're they're impacted by those experiences that are positive and intuitive and Intelligent, the more they're gonna demand that. So, yeah, I had a similar experience yesterday with a financial Institution that I won't name and went to log into an app as a new customer, which is hugely frustrating. So, yeah, and I thought, who who's? Who's not experienced this within that organized?

Speaker 1: 26:59

Yeah, I tested it and and experienced it from a customer for spy.

Speaker 2: 27:03

I can't all technology be delightful, you know why can't it and it's possible, right and, and I think you, you risk. We're technologists, so we'll persist and we'll go through this stuff, but you risk people who just are uncomfortable with technology not just thinking I can't do this. You know there are people with deep and fears of going online and doing things and if you don't make it really easy for them, they'll just stay away.

Speaker 1: 27:23

But the role of tech to delight the customer is huge, isn't it? And, and you know, it's great to to hear a CIO talking in those terms and have that real Focus in in that that's what you need.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Empathy, though, yeah, empathy. You've got to put yourself in those shoes. If you don't, if you're the source of personal things, well, they're bound to figure that out. You'll never do a good experience. You've got to be thinking well, what about this person, that person, and what about that?

Speaker 1: 27:47

the unhappy paths you know yeah, and and often it's the differentiator in terms of retaining the customer or or not, in terms of that experience for sure.

Speaker 1: 27:59

So, yeah, really, really interesting, and We'll have people listening who may be new in roles as we traverse 2024 and Picking up new gigs that have perhaps they're inheriting things, inheriting projects and challenges, joining new businesses as somebody who's who's run a number of different portfolios and made different moves Into big roles. How have you navigated that change of picking up a portfolio that's at differing levels of maturity, things in flight that you might not necessarily have done yourself? I'm just interested in the process you go through have been through historically when you land.

Speaker 2: 28:51

You have to be thoughtful Depends on the person. As I said earlier, I'm a great advocate for change, so I have to be careful not just to dive in and be thoughtful about these things what's going well, what's not. I would always say, wait it's. Especially if it's your first position, then you are, you are finally in the seat where it's your decision. So so, doing things, going forward with things aren't going well, decided to change something, keeping the status quo. These are all your decisions and if you're Not careful, you can you can leap off trying to make a good impression. I Would just take the time. No one's expecting magic in the first few months. Take advice. There are good communities of like-minded Leaders. There are consultants. Good consultancies are many, many different people who can come in and help you. No one would expect one individual to be able to give the answer to everything. That that's what I would say.

Speaker 2: 29:45

I've had. I've joined companies where, when I joined Virgin active, they were in the middle of a Writing of a member management system the core of the product and it was all going very badly and we had to be a bit of analysis on what is going on here because we spent they've spent millions of pounds and at that point that could have been my career at virgin active, looking after the system. That just wasn't working. So we had to be very Thoughtful about how we approached that. But we did eventually cancel that project and and start again and actually had a very, very good story that came. That came of that in the end. Other times I've joined and you've just left it for a while because you just want to see what happens, because you just have to be Conscious that you can't take everything on and whilst you might want to make a good impression, those things Are often Expensive, take a long time. So another six months to make the right decision. That's what I would say is just be thoughtful about it.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Yeah, interesting, and Particularly we may you know, in a period where there's a very high profile public case in flight, I I think the post office case is gonna Lead to some really interesting discussions in our sector. Definitely that I think it's important, the kind of the retro of all retros, because I think, from a client in employee Partner Perspective, I think there's some really key learnings in there for everyone on that look any projects, any piece of large-scale IT work that doesn't go as planned to annoys me, you know, frustrates, because you think how could you, how could you let that happen?

Speaker 2: 31:26

mostly sensible people Equipped with the right tools and resources will make sensible decisions and if they're led right, they'll get to the right answer or They'll say you can't do it. What you end up with the problem you get with is ego and politics getting in the way of good decision-making, because, at the end of the day, if it's not gonna work, it won't work. Doesn't know how much money you throw at it. And I think that's the the problem of bruised egos, of people deciding that they wanted to make decisions or persist with something, when perhaps that what was a play was a political agenda, not, not, not the sort of the business value agenda. That's unfortunate and that happens all the time. You know, happens all the time.

Speaker 1: 32:02

Yeah, yeah, really interesting and as we kind of traverse 2024, and I heard recently in in a CFO Piece of research that the number one priority was efficiency not surprising Coming from the, the CFO community. We've touched on the cyber business. Pure jim is in the focus that you have as a low-cost business. Driving costs down is often very much part of what most CIOs are tasked to do and I'm just really interested in how you, how you manage this, is it? I mean, is that because of the, the type of business pure jim is, it's not really a consideration because that's be a you for you, or Is that something that is front of mind for you and a constant in your gender?

Speaker 2: 32:55

It always has to be front of mind. You can't, it shouldn't be your driver. It's not the only thing you can't cost save your way to success. That doesn't happen, but it has to be in your blood. I can't stand waste. I can't stand looking at something and thinking that's twice the price it should be. But you have to. You've also got to balance it. I Look at pure jim. I wasn't at pure jim during coronavirus, I was doing my, doing something else.

Speaker 2: 33:16

But they had during the pandemic, you know, a very tough time. The whole the industry closed up overnight. Never experienced it ever. We had to shut down. We were 24 hours business and suddenly we were closed and the management team did a fantastic job of managing through that. And when we came out the other end, we were then went into the Ukraine war and cost of living crisis. So as I joined, we were in that mode and deciding, hey, do you know what? The way that we've addressed the business over the last two years during the pandemic, we need to. That needs to be the new normal. We need to really think about what we do, how we spend, how we manage, and I'm pleased that I saw me coming on board looking after technology in the same way has brought some of that thinking into that space. So we are.

Speaker 2: 34:01

I think part of me joining was let's rethink through how we spend and where we spend, because we spend good money on technology. We're an online business. 100% of our members join via the website. That means we're totally dependent on our technology, and when you go into a pure gym, it's mostly unmanned, so all your access methods and all the rest of it come through technology. So I'm lucky in that I'm front and center, but make sure we do that at the right price, so that we can offer gym membership for 19, 20, 21 pounds. That's key. I don't want to ever be one of the reasons why we've had to put prices up. I don't wanna be that person. That's quite the opposite. We're very lucky working in industry where stuff gets cheaper every year.

Speaker 2: 34:44

And we should be able to reflect that.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Yeah, that's great. And if you would indulge us, we're talking about the good, the bad and the ugly, as you've landed at pure gym in your role. What has worked or surprised you? Probably surprised you the most. Have there been any surprises? What have you needed to tweak, and is anything you've just totally got rid of?

Speaker 2: 35:10

I would say that the culture, general culture and also the culture in technology, is probably better than I thought it was gonna be. It's a great team from everybody, from software engineers who are all remote, through to our service function, through to our change function, super culture, real collaboration. You can't rest on that. You need to get it's remote. Especially is very hard. I find that quite a hard thing to do. So really being investing in that and making sure that we keep going with that is important. And then the culture of the business and how supportive it is. It's very patient. We've made some missteps and we've said, hey, do you know what? We need to stop this project or do this differently? And our business has been incredibly understanding, right decision to do will support you. That has delighted me, I mean surprised me. I thought it would be like that, but actually it's delivered, over-delivered on that. On the flip side, I think when I joined we thought we were a software company, so our we probably got carried away in some of our engineering fees.

Speaker 2: 36:16

It's rare to work at a company where the IT is the product. I mean great if you can, and I've been really thoughtful about this recently, most if you want to read about how to do good software engineering. You read books about Spotify and Slack and Zoom and actually most people aren't in those companies. They're in companies where IT is a service and you're it's like the movie business thinking everyone's an actor. No, actually 95% people in that business are not. You're not, and if you're going to read an actor's autobiography you think that's what your life's going to be. You're going to be mistaken. So we have to be careful that software engineers don't end up thinking it's all about me and it's all about software engineering.

Speaker 2: 36:59

They're incredibly important but they are not the business and we were in a position where it was all about waiting for IT to finish stuff before we could open a new thing or do a new thing in the business, and I don't want to be in that position. I want our business to proceed and execute as it needs to be and we are there, always delivering. So we've done a bit of change around that. Again, reconnecting very lucky. We can connect our employees to the business very easily, just reminding people this is what we're here to do and we should be very proud of that. We're a successful British business that has grown now internationally. Those aren't often. We open 40 clubs a year. We open a club every 10 days.

Speaker 2: 37:34

That's an astonishing thing, and to be part of that. That should be something everyone's proud of.

Speaker 1: 37:39

Yeah, absolutely. We'll really appreciate you being open and sharing that with us, and I'm sure we'll have lots of aspiring CIOs listening to us. What would your advice be in terms of their career journey, the steps that they take and how, ultimately, they can best pursue a career that follows the same kind of pathway that you have or lands up in the same place that you've landed?

Speaker 2: 38:10

Yeah, I mean everyone's journey is different. I would say that the key is curiosity. So be curious about the business, your business, other businesses Understand really good examples of how technology is helping, because it might not just be where you are today. It might be very different at the next place and you need to be able to talk eloquently and confidently about how technology can help. I would network highly so I've mentored a few people and one of the things I always say to people is get out there, talk to peers, get out and find friendly CIOs who'll give you a word of advice.

Speaker 2: 38:48

Go to the dinners and the functions you get invited to once in a while because you get a good chance to build a good network, because you never know when you're going to need that piece of advice. You never know when you're going to need something and I would try and be multi-disciplined. It's not to say you can't stay being a project manager or your life. You can't stay being an engineer or your life, but I think it's really helpful if you can see stuff from the other side. I was really lucky early in my career that I started as a developer. I moved into operations, I then moved back into software engineering and then moved back into operations. They're, you know, inevitably and we can talk. I love DevOps and we can talk all about how we do continuous delivery these days, but there's always an edge, an edge between an intention, a healthy tension between engineering and operations there always will be If you've served on both sides, it really helps.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Really helps to make the operations team understand the difficulties the engineers go through, and vice versa. So I think, having some multi-disciplined experience I was lucky enough to do architecture and project management and engineering it's just helpful because you can see things through other people's eyes. I remember a recruiter saying when I was chief architect at EasyJet for a while and I was talking to someone about a role, and this recruiter said to me oh, I've never seen a chief architect become a CIO.

Speaker 1: 40:05

I said really Brilliant. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:07

I said well, okay, I quite like that challenge Watch this yeah just don't ever listen to that. If you've got the ambition to do it and the interest and the curiosity, then it can be done.

Speaker 1: 40:17

I think that's phenomenal advice. Thank you so much for sharing that. Andy and you know us well as and Digital. We all have our and titles, so mind being Dush and Fanatic, because my world is ruled by Heidi, my miniature Red Dushant. What would your and title be?

Speaker 2: 40:38

I'm a massive music fan a sort of frustrated musician, I guess. So I'd probably go for that, probably have a frustrated musician as my and title, because I wish I could play a little bit, but I wish I could play loads better. My actual career started as a music journalist. I wanted to be a music journalist before I fell into IT. So, yeah, I'm always in and around music in some shape or form when I'm not working. So frustrated musician would be my title.

Speaker 1: 41:05

I have to ask what instrument.

Speaker 2: 41:07

I play the piano so very famously. If you ever do a Zoom call with me or a Teams call with me, my keyboard's in the background the first thing people always say oh, did you play that piano? And yeah, that's what I do.

Speaker 1: 41:17

Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. Well, that's everything for this edition of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of digital transformation. Thanks again to our guest Andy. Thanks, it's been an absolute delight to chat and if you have enjoyed this episode, then please do follow or subscribe so you'll be sure to get new episodes, thank you. Thank you, if you've enjoyed this episode, please do remember to follow or subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode to enjoy. And digital is on a mission to help close the world's digital skills gap. One of the ways we're doing this is by helping organizations deliver digital transformation more successfully through upskilling and reskilling.