#1 Lance Uggla: The Power of Incremental Leadership

In the inaugural episode of Stratospheric Leaders, Georgie sits down with Lance Uggla, visionary leader, entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Markit. This is a company that started with a handful of employees in a barn in St Albans and grew into a $44 billion global leader in critical information, analytics, and solutions. Through strategic acquisitions and a transformative merger with IHS, Markit became a powerhouse, culminating in one of the largest M&A deals in history with S&P Global.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

The Leader’s Mindset: Why measuring what matters is the foundation of great leadership.

Attention to Detail: How leaders like Steve Jobs inspired Lance to stay close to the work at all levels.

Incrementalism in Business: The power of continuous small improvements to create industry-changing outcomes.

People-First Leadership: Why hiring, mentoring, and culture-building are the true differentiators of success.

Work Ethic & Manners Matter: The often-overlooked leadership qualities that make a lasting impact.

Balancing Work & Life: The importance of setting boundaries and creating long-term sustainability.

MEMORABLE QUOTES:

"Measure it, and it will improve."

"Attention to detail isn’t a choice—it’s what separates good leaders from great ones." 

"You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, just making something 1% better is what creates a market leader."   

A masterclass in entrepreneurial excellence!

If you want to learn more practical lessons and real-world leadership insights from remarkable founder CEOs, you can order Georgie's book Stratospheric CEOs out now.

Show Links

Website - https://www.georgiedickins.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiedickins

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgieDickins-q7x

Transcript

0:00

I'm doing the gate post all the status are needed. The podcast would I get to have inside conversations with exploring leaders and data. Every episode had with wisdom inside will not flex. The self that simply don't need you with this call. If you want to elevate your game and most importantly, elevate those who attributed this updates for you. I was delighted to welcome Lund O'Clack to transparent leaders. If you know FinTech, you will know Lunt. He is the founder and CEO of Market. And this is a company that went from a handful of employees working out of a bonus in Aubert and through strategic acquisitions and a transformative manager with NIHS, it grew into a $44 billion global panel hand, culminating in one of the largest MA deals in history with SP Global. Now, as co-founder and CEO of Beyond Net Zero, Lunt is driving climate strategy under the private equity fund General Atlantic. Beyond the headlines and titles, LANT is a fault of nature. A zero entrepreneur, defined by his relentless drive, infectious energy, and deep humility. And what truly sets of a pump? His dynamism. And the world of Lunt so does Lund, constantly raising the bum and pushing the edges. People are just following him as they want to be on his rocket ship. And as one of his team shared with me, you never bet against Lund. I had the privilege of profiling Lunds in my books, transferring CEOs, and every conversation with him left me energized, up leveled, inspired, dreaming bigger. This episode is no exception. Packed to the brim with insight and inspiration. Enjoy. So Lund, I am delighted for you to be here today to be part of my podcast series on stratospheric leaders. Over the last four years, we've got to know each other really well. You've been an incredible contributor to the book I've written on stratospheric CEOs, which profiles founder CEOs in financial technology that have created multi-billion dollar businesses. So I'm already privy to the insights, the lessons that are learnings that are going to emerge today. And I always like to start by giving a sense of who is the person when they're not in the seat they sit in. So I'm going to ask you if we were to Google search you, what is one thing that we would not find out about you? Well, you probably wouldn't find out that I wanted to play uh the flute and be in a high school marching band. Uh that definitely wouldn't be on there. And I and I actually don't think I know anybody that has a child that's in a high school marching band. So it's kind of funny. But uh I did play the uh the flute as my chosen instrument in high school. And uh I was quite proud of that, but I never took it uh too far. Is that one you're gonna revisit? Uh a passion or hobby? Actually, with four kids and seven grandchildren, I've had the opportunity two or three times where a child and now grandchildren come home with their first recorder or their uh or their first flute, and uh it gives me an opportunity to pick it back up and realize that memories are long and I can still remember the uh the notes, uh, the you know, the bass notes uh that uh you would play on on the instrument. And and so to move on from there, uh I you have been an extraordinary leader uh over the last you know over the decades, and I'm sure there are many qualities that have shaped your success. And across history, we've seen many leaders who've transformed and shaped reshaped the world in dramatically different ways. And I've taken seven leaders from across history, and I'm gonna ask you who do you identify with most and why? Like who most represents your leadership style? So the the seven that I've um that I've uh chosen are Einstein, Churchill, Steve Jobs, Caligula, Genghis Khan, Logan Roy from Succession, and Maximus Decimus, the Gladiator. Wow. Well, the final one has a new movie coming out soon. So uh that's interesting. But um no, if I, you know, first first thought first thought as you give me that list is Steve Jobs. And not for his character, because I think I would be polar opposite to how um he deals with people, how he um leads his teams, I think would be quite different than me. But it's his attention to detail. I I think that this quality in leadership is one of the most important things that you're in the weeds, you know what's going on, uh, whether it's with customers, with technology, with product, with marketing, with PR, with the board, with your investors, with your newest recruits. Um, you need to know what's going on. And Steve Jobs impressed me with attention to detail. And I did have a chance to meet him uh in the early 90s. Uh, I was looking at technology in a trading room uh in a Canadian bank. And the big, big thing was something called small talk, which was this early object-oriented programming. And Steve Jobs came along with this little cube that he had in hand, and he puts it on the table and he started to talk about next step and how it could transform the processing and speed of calculations in this object-oriented way. And uh I was just so impressed, not with how good the product looked, because all his products looked good, but the detail that he had and the knowledge that he had about what the product could do. Fantastic. And uh, so he would be the one I would choose on that list. And out of interest, with you, you know, you mentioned attention to detail there. Is that something you've learned to get good at? Or do you think that's inherently part of who you are? Well, the most overused word I've heard uh in the last decade, because I don't know what it was called when I was a child, uh, but today they call it OCD. They'll even say, you're so OCD. Um and so um I do think that there are some characteristics that are, you know, within ourselves that show themselves in leadership situations. And attention to detail, a lot of time uh can be tied to an anxiety, I'm sure. Uh, but um I just think as I developed as a leader, the more time I spent understanding what we were doing, what we're doing with a customer, what we're doing with a new product, what does the marketing look like? What does the final uh PR look like? How do the people feel? Are they working too hard? That's all detail. So um I think it's really important. And I think it is there are some natural uh characteristics and behaviors of individuals that are detailed oriented. I'm sure if I was a brain surgeon or an astronaut, you have to be quite detail-oriented. But I think in business for leadership, it's a great quality and one that you can develop. You don't have to be born with it. And and you you you mentioned something there, and it reminded me of our conversations where you said I measure everything. And I've always loved the quote: what gets measured improves. Can you give people a sense of um what you measure? Because it was it, there's such attention to some of the smallest things that that are important. Yeah, it might be one of my most uh annoying uh leadership traits for my team is that I really want uh to measure. And um, you know, you know, the um to get to a great result, there's so many inputs needed to produce the great result. And that the great result can be a sale, completion of a product, completion of a testing run, um, uh introduction of a new training program, whatever you're doing. Uh, there's a whole bunch of things that I would call inputs. And when you measure those inputs and you keep them in the front, you know, lens of what you're looking at, the front of the lens you're looking at, you actually become aware of where you may not be doing enough. So I like to measure, you know, number of customer calls I'm willing to make, number of customer visits, um, number of um days spent with sales teams on the road. Those are all things that are inputs to getting sales done. Yeah. And so when you measure them, you realize sometimes that, geez, I just went a quarter and I did half what I did on the customer inputs as I did the previous quarter. And you should know that you're letting yourself and your team down. And so I think that follows through with everything. If you're introducing a um a recruitment program at a university and I send all the associates to the university, that's one input. If I send the associates that went to the university, that's a different input. If I sent the executives that went to the university, another input. If I send the CEO and a diversified team to the university, that's another input. If you measure them, you are going to get better candidates, hands down. And it works like that in everything. So the challenge is getting back to the detail and organization and measurement. And I really think it is the number one trait of successful um operations, client process, um release of technology, new product development, uh culture and atmosphere of a firm. Measure it and it'll get done better. And I think uh Jeff Bezos is somebody that uh I understand at Amazon the attention to detail and measurement of the Amazon product positioning and um its you know, pace of activity and the vitality of the pipeline was something that was front and center at management uh teams and uh meetings. And I feel the same way. I feel it's very important. There's a saying that what you put your attention on expands. And I think there's something there for me about what you pay attention to is is matter, you know, it matters. It's that's what really under ultimately drives the outputs of an organization. 100%. Yeah. The more, the more you create focus on the activities that you want to reward and encourage the better. And I actually think the the reports are a much nicer way for a team to see the results of the measurement than to have to have a meeting and say, oh, you're not doing enough of A, B, or C. I rather just produce a weekly report that includes myself with the activities we should be doing, and then measure those. And um, you know, if I've got three reds, put my hand up, I'll sort those out next week. And that's that's important. So it's, I don't like the word name and shame, but a report is basically doing that activity, which is it's exposing the important activities of the firm and then allowing uh exposure to the completion of them. And that there's one thing that comes up for me listening to you there around you said the word focus. And I think focus is critical, especially on the entrepreneurial journey. How do you keep the main thing the main thing so as not to overwhelm your executive team so as not to be distracted by shiny objects? I like to break things down into smaller, manageable numbers. Uh, so again, uh detail of what are we actually working on? Um and you know, you you completed uh your book, Stratospheric CEOs. I'm sure you've got ideas for 10 books. But at some point, you got to choose three things and do them all well. And if you're not capable of three things, choose two things. And if you're not capable of two things, choose one thing. I think everybody's capable of managing processes and outcomes of two or three things. Um, and as a team, of course, you can delegate and share, you know, share the responsibility. Uh, but um, focus to me comes down to not doing too much. And uh that's something that you also, you know, hopefully learn early that doing a lot uh sometimes uh leads to mediocre results. Yeah, and it dilutes attention. 100%. And in our conversations, you shared um a wonderful you talked about your leadership style, you talked about being an incrementalist. Um and I wondered if you could share a little bit more about what that means to you and how that plays out in uh how that's played out in your career. Well, I I think a lot of things that I did in my career was following the footsteps of somebody else, right? So you get a new job and somebody did that job before you for the last five years. They were a trader, they're trading mortgage-backed securities. That was my first job. What can I do to outperform in this new role? It's not rip up the role and say it's not there anymore. It's actually improving on that role. And a lot of things are foundational and need to be there. But the incrementally, the incremental things that you can do to make something even better is really, really relevant. And so what I tried to do at first of all in the financial markets with market, subsequently with IHS markets, so we extended into automotive and energy and maritime and many other information services and technology, was to take um, if I was creating a new product, how do we incrementally develop that product or marketplace uh to be a little bit better than what's already there? So if there was prices uh being um uh processed daily, why not do a midday price? If there was twice a day prices, let's look at can we create hourly pricing? Is there enough information to turn to real-time prices, live prices? And um, you know, is it possible to create benchmarks that close in Asia, Europe, and North America? And these are all things that um uh I could do to be just incrementally better than the established players. And the established players were big. They were Bloomberg, they were Thomson Reuters, they were big stock exchanges, they were brokers. And um they had been doing it how they'd always been doing it, um, providing transparency to the prices that were executed and potentially the closing prices that they had on their, you know, their own desks. And I looked at ways of how could I improve that? And um, sometimes the improvement is an idea incrementally, sometimes it's incrementally improving the technology, the processing, might be incrementally improving the marketing. Uh, so instead of just uh, you know, word of mouth, start to attend conferences. If you want to do more than conferences, how about a newsletter? If you want to do more than a newsletter, how about uh, you know, uh, you know, a podcast nowadays uh or something else? How about write a book? Uh so you know the fact is, is I I think everything can be incrementally improved. Uh, those are a couple of examples that you know just describe what I think about when I think about incrementalism, but it really is small, um, manageable and measurable changes that make something even better. Yeah. Because most of the things that I improved were not broken. Right. So when I when you look at something, it's even like if I'm looking at uh doing a performance review, it's not about what somebody's doing wrong. It's about the analysis of what they do and how can I incrementally make them even better. And it's a way different way of, you know, leading. Um well, it's to me, it's leading from the cup half full versus half empty. And when I think about that incrementalism that you talked about, it is the small shifts that lead to the big swings, isn't it? It's it, and I think often people want to move to the big straight away, but it's those, and it's doing things with consistency. That's the word that came up with me, and intentionality and being deliberate. Right. Like within IHS Market, we had a brand called Carfax, which is very large. And it it was producing vehicle history reports for you know tens of millions of uh cars across the United States. And um uh this team throughout the you know seven or so years that we were uh involved together went from, you know, starting off with vehicle history reports, extend that into uh the used car market. So all of a sudden, Carfax was uh uh supporting uh the ads and um uh listings for used cars competing against the likes of Auto Trader, but incrementally using the Carfax. Um uh insurance companies and banks that were either lending money or insuring cars could incrementally benefit from the Carfax. The police who are looking for fraud and vehicles that might have been stolen, where they could track back against the vehicle history report could incrementally use CarFax. Um, CarFax operated uh in uh in uh the Washington area. Um uh could incrementally improve performance by leveraging offices in Windsor, across the, you know, across the border from Detroit in Canada and gain a cost advantage. So all of these things I look at as incremental improvements or product developments or uh market opportunities that can be thought of without trying to boil the ocean and do something brand new. Uh, you know, take what you're doing well and do it even better. I love that. And which is your uh your team always talked about one of your uh mottos, raising the bar. Yeah, I actually I had a watch engraved recently, and they said, What do you want to put on it for your grandchildren? And I said, raise the bar. And I actually I have to give credit to uh one of my earliest uh bosses. Uh we we um we took over uh or took over, he became head of global fixed income and he put in his new management team. I was in my 20s, I was on his management team, and our motto for the new plan for the new team was let's raise the bar. Somebody came to me recently, uh, very successful, um, that had uh worked with me and had uh kind of lived under the raise the bar scenario and asked, so what do you do when you have a team that's so high performing and you're so far out in front, but you still want to set the 2025 plan? And I said, I've I've got the perfect answer for you because the following year, after raise the bar, that same team set the new new budget, the new vision, and it was widen the gap. And I love that. I love that. That's a good one. I love and and you talk about people, and and it very much came up through our conversations that you are an incredible human leader. And when you think about your um your own leadership, you know, product led, people-led, customer-led, which do you I mean, I think I'm gonna guess, but I'd love for you to share, you know, what you know, which one speaks to you? 100% people, you know, when you hire great people and um lead great people towards a common goal, you end up having great customer relationships, building great products, and um ultimately um the the product, if it's a technology or information service, the customer relationships, the uh the motivation, the team, the culture, to me, it all comes down to if I didn't hire great people and motivate great people, I wouldn't have any of the other things. And so it really, to me, people, people first. And okay, so and you just said they're hire great people. So how do you how do you know who good people are? When you like, what do you look for? Like, what is your hiring? Yeah, look like. Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, it's a good question because I don't think you always get it right. And I'm very much a person that wants to trust in the leadership to develop great people as much as find somebody that's great. Right. So if I'm hiring in the mid-part of the firm or the senior levels of the firm, you can look to people's track records. But when you're hiring somebody, you know, in their 20s, how do you know? So to me, it's um a whole mixture of things. It's do they feel hungry? Um, are they do they uh portray a good work ethic? Do they do they present themselves well with you know great manners and respect? Uh do they um do they show that they've got you know both IQ and EQ in terms of the uh what you see in the meeting, or if you run independent testing, which is never never a bad idea and you know, uh interview process. And um so I I think that um a lot of the things that I look for are not necessarily the math equation, the ability to model a deal, um, the ability to um, you know, uh have the quickest answer. Those are those are things that, you know, um I think across the people we're interviewing, they have good degrees, they've got through university, they've um they've achieved a reasonable result. I then want to see all those soft things around them. And and then I'm willing to take a bet on people and and a bet on my team that they can develop really great individuals. Um, a lot of firms, you know, will will find that the way they get great people they feel is is higher from you know the best universities in the world. Well, the competition in the best universities is very, very high. Um, and not every firm can recruit from those universities. For me, I kind of had the view that we should broaden our scope and our vision and identify the diamonds in the rough. And what really comes for me there is yes, it's about competence, it's about capability, but there's a cultural fit piece there. And you talked about work ethic, you talked about the soft skills. In our conversations, I remember asking you if you could write a book of your own, what would it be? And it was like execution matters or manners matter. And I was really drawn to the piece about manners because you you've spoken about that um at length in our conversation. And can you share a little bit around why that's important to you and how does it show up in people? Yeah, I I actually think that, you know, if you if you if you walked into the a room, you can always divide the room by by manners 50-50. You know, there's always 50% of the people in the room that just have um, you know, a really nice way with people. And um, that can come through the handshake, the smile, how they, the attention they pay, their listening skills. There's a whole bunch of things that I think are good manners, right? Holding a door open, uh, allowing people to sit down first, uh, you know, um, you know, wait till everybody's at the table before you start eating. There's there's all these little things you learn through life. Um, but it's amazing how you don't always see them in action. And because those people aren't as aware, they're not making themselves uh fully aware of their surroundings and um how they can um positively use their personality and manners to uh gain an advantage. And business is about gaining an advantage, it's about creating great products, but there are a lot of great products. We have choice. It's about hiring great people, but great people can work in many places. Uh, it's about um, you know, uh innovation, and innovation can happen in a lot of a lot of different ways. But when you have people that have really positive energy and positive skills, it actually motivates such a you know, to me, a higher result. And uh it will impact a sale, it will impact a hire, it will impact um, you know, the motivation of a team to work hard to the finish line, because those those those uh those skills are ones that uh are motivational. Think of think of the opposite, somebody yelling at you every day, somebody that you know um shows up late to meetings, somebody that um you know uh serves themselves before everybody else uh or doesn't serve the rest of the people at all, um, doesn't acknowledge anybody else uh you know for their you know simple things, knows it's their birthday, doesn't acknowledge it. You know, it's little little things. And so that person, if I have to look at it, do I want to work for a rude person or a person that's well-mannered? I want to work for the well-mannered. Do I want to work for a lazy person or a hardworking person? I want to work for the hardworking person. Do I want to work for the boring person or the interesting person? I want to work for the interesting person. And so, therefore, those free skills in life, work ethic, manners, and uh developing your knowledge of what goes on around you are very important to great leaders. And I always recommend early in your career that you you develop those skill sets and perfect them because not everybody starts with them, but you can everybody can have those. Doesn't matter where you come from, what language you speak as a first language, what university you went to, where you're born, you have an opportunity to have those three things. And sometimes some people have to work harder at them than others and harder at different parts of them. There's three things there that you have to do. And so, you know, if you're born with a family that's got great manners, you know, I'm quite lucky because if you're Canadian, everyone thinks you're nice to start. And generally Canadians are nice, but guess what? So are Kiwis, and uh, you know, so are you know people I meet in Japan, so are people, you know, that I meet in Colombia. So there's many nationalities that kind of exude positive energy. And so I like that. But if you don't, um you can still develop it. Um, you know, if there's many uh regions in the world that, you know, develop, you know, super work ethic, but the ones where it might be less can improve. And then being interesting is all about reading and paying attention, and and that's available to us all. We're surrounded with podcasts and television series and news channels and books and audibles and you name it. So there's no reason not to know what's going on in the world. Yeah, and I've written several things down here, which but it's it's the little things that the big things that really struck me. And these are free skills, they're accessible to every everyone. No one has to go to business school or outlay loads of money on learning these. These are accessible if you do them with intentionality. And the other piece I wrote down there is the what and how of leadership. The what is, you know, the what we do of being a leader, but the how we come across, there's that emotional contagion impact. And it has the ability to have that ripple of impact out into the organization, into the teams just by your being, that motivational, that positivity, that eye contact, the handshake that you mentioned. Definitely. No, if we if we focus on those behavioral aspects that all of us can do, the result is infinitely better. Yeah. And you you said the word smile earlier, uh, it and and I read a quote recently that said winners are grinners and winners are winners. And I really like that because if winners are grinners, people who smile, uh, I think we're in the business of people. And ultimately, to your point, is you know, it's a very competitive marketplace. People want to do business with people they like and they trust. And I think if you're smiling with sincerity and that you bring that warmth, that it can it can cultivate trust and that connection a little bit quicker. Definitely. And if you look at some of the the greatest uh leaders, um not all, but many exude that uh that positive energy. And um, you know, my view is is it's uh it's easy to have. So it it to me it's it's kind of base foundation leadership. It doesn't it doesn't need to be um left out, it shouldn't be left out. It's it's kind of foundation activities. Yeah, I I I a hundred percent agree with you there. And and and one thing uh that you share with me that and I'm a I'm a I I think I I still like to write thank you cards, you know, if I go out for dinner to somebody's, I still put pen to paper. And I remember in a panel we did, you said you always carry thank you cards in your bag. And that really struck me because the importance of a few words can motivate, transform. I mean, it there's such power there. And I wondered if you could share a little bit about that, because it really stuck with me. Yeah, two things that uh I think sending a card is um it's become rare. So therefore, when you get one, it differentiates. Whereas I think if we went back to the 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, high performers probably sent cards all the time. Yeah. And I think early in my career in the 80s, you know, when I was made a director, I think I was 29, I was made a director of a Canadian, you know, investment firm. And all the other directors sent me handwritten notes. I still have them on the on their own letterhead with the company logo. That was something of becoming a director. You got your own letterhead, you got a slightly different embossed card with the logo embossed, and uh, you know, it there was just pride in achieving. And uh the notes that you got uh, you know, were all handwritten. If I think today, you know, um, if you achieve something, it gets put up on LinkedIn or uh Twitter or Instagram or somewhere, and you get a bunch of comments from people that might see it, but it doesn't feel quite as um intimate as a letter. So I I do like to send some cards. I I I don't think I send as many as I should. Um I do um I have a I use a British app called Thortful. I don't know if you know it. T-H O R T F-U-L. It's good all over the world. I think it's a British app. And it's kind of like Moonpig, the um, you know, the the one to uh create uh cards. And I actually find that if I'm on a plane and I create one card on Thortful, I then create 10. And I I like it because you can be it has you know a cheeky section, uh romantic section, uh four kids, four friends, for promotion, for baby. And I end up sending 10, 10 cards. And I have to tell you that I get so I a lot of joy out of it doing it. But the most is when you have a friend in New Zealand, you know, sends you a WhatsApp back of the card on their shelf and it's arrived there, and you go, okay, that was worth it all in its own. Yeah. And so um uh I've I've done more now. I'm using technology to do my cards. Uh, but uh I do uh I still have a couple when I see great cards, I usually they're landscapes or something. I like to pick them up. Recently I was on Vancouver Island and I I grabbed a bunch of indigenous uh uh um uh uh postcards that were showing, you know, different, you know, uh carvings, uh totem poles, different indigenous art, and they're they're fantastic. And you know, having those there, they remind me, oh, I gotta write that. Who's gonna get that uh wonderful carving uh postcard? And to your point, they leave such an imprint with people, and it's not a huge amount of time it takes, but the the result of that, and and and I love what you said there, how do you differentiate yourself? And that's people want you know, that level of connection, it I think it it so bolsters the relationship. Yeah, no, any, you know, connection takes multiple forms. Again, if I really wanted to be great, uh to me, what great would be, and and let's just take it for you know, if if you really thought about it, maybe there's 50 really relevant people in your lives. I don't know, there might be more, but just say it was 50, because 50 is manageable, you know, it's you know, one and a half months of days. And uh you wanted a measurement of something to say that these people are relevant to me, and I want to respect that relevance. So it might be an old boss, might be a school teacher that you occasionally you know are in touch with, or a university professor, might be a colleague that moved uh on to another company, could be your grandmother, your mother, your your your mom's sister, who's was great when you're young, but you never have any time to get that far down into the family tree anymore. Um, if you put those 50 names on a piece of paper and all you said is text, email, card, telephone call, visit. Five things, you want to do at least one of those things with the 50 by the end of the year. And you just did that on your desk and started ticking off. Now, to me, what I would do is I'd say, I want to have three interactions because the easy thing to do is to create an update email and send it to all 50, and then at least you've connected. But to tell you the truth, that sounds to some people, you know, when you get that uh family update in a card, a holiday card, and somebody's taken the time to write a letter, but they just photocopied it and put in every card, and you just kind of go, oh God, another long family letter. But the fact is, a lot better than what I give people, right? So don't you can say it's uh, you know, wow, they didn't write me a handwritten one. But the fact is, is they took the time to think about their year to update you and they think that you're a close enough friend or know you're a close enough friend that you're gonna read it and that it that the content matters. So my view is is again, connectivity is measurable. Right now, we have a campaign in our fund where I'm working with one of my colleagues, and we have a top 50 um potential investors. I call it the vitality of the pipeline. What's the vitality of the activities that we have in order to achieve success in investment? And my view is it's updates, it's reporting, it's calls, it's visits, it's a whole bunch of things that have to happen by many people uh over a period of time. You don't measure it, you won't get there. 90% of teams in the world just tell each other what they're doing. How are you doing, Georgie? Did you see um you know ABC Corp uh when you were in London last week? Yeah, yeah, I saw them. Did you put it into the uh CRM? Oh, yeah, it's in there. Right? Which is different is we have a top 50 report. And it as I'm looking down, I go, last interaction against the top 50. Wow, 30 of our top 50 have not had an interaction from any of us at this table for the last 30 days. How can they be top 50? Maybe they're not top 50. Maybe we should move move them off the top 50 list. No, no, they're the most important. I go, well, if they're most important, it's it's not good enough. So again, we we go back to where we started from, which is measurement and connectivity and the vitality of measure of um the connectivity is what drives the great result. And I think vitality is another great leadership word because it it reflects, you know, how much new revenue are you creating each year from your own team's innovation? So the innovation and new products is it 3% of revenue, 5% of revenue, 10% of revenue forward in three years' times come comes from products we created internally. I measured all of that. If you go back to IHS market public uh discussions, you'll hear vitality was a key word, and we measured it and we shared it with our board. So if you measure it, you have to be willing to share it. And and and what really strikes me is that intentionality, being deliberate, and also having the analytical framework that you shared, it doesn't seem complex. It seems it it's it's it's simple and done well, but it's about having a framework and everyone being aligned with that framework. Yeah, yeah. Most most things in life are simple. We're not astronauts, we're not landing on the moon, right? We're not doing a complex brain surgery, right? Those are comp those are complexities, right? We're not running the logistics technology for FedEx. Those are complex, yeah, also measurable. But what what you generally do in leadership is build great products, hire great people, service great customers. Right? I add um technology and efficiency. If I'm gonna look at five things I want to measure, it's around customers and people, product technology, which is front of the curve, and efficiency, which is costs. I don't like calling them costs. I prefer efficiencies. And those five things are all very measurable. And most CEOs, when I ask them, they got lots of reports, and then they go to KPIs, is where they go to our OKRs, there's all sorts of things. I go, let's not make it so complex. What do we need to do and measure to ensure that we have just this overwhelming success? And that's what I want to know. And and I that word overwhelming, I want to pull the thread on that because it it's very easy in today's world uh for leaders where there are so many demands to live in the world of overwhelm because things are coming at you thick and fast, you're having to make decisions. So my I suppose my question there is, is there an off-switch for leaders? And if there is, what do you hit it with? Well, I I think if you're a great leader, you've learned how to manage your time. So you don't have to really turn off. It's just that you have to dedicate time to other things in your life as well to create balance so that you're not um, you know, you're not uh uh ever in a position of regret that you're not doing, you know, I didn't do enough with my family, I didn't do enough with my friends, um, I'm doing 80% of my life is my work. And all of my my family, my friends, and my work all want more than 50% of my time. So I'm only achieving in the work bucket. That to me is failure uh in terms of organization. Um I I think you have to you have to develop as a leader um the ability to stay balanced. Um, you know, you need to stay, you know, fit and healthy, you need to um spend time with friends independent of your work colleagues. Um, you need to spend time with your family, children, grandchildren, you know, mothers, fathers, uh, brothers, sisters. You need to, you need to make time. And all of us go in deficit. I have uh uh a thing on my uh wrist called a whoop, which measures all sorts, it's a mass amount of numbers. And uh one of the things it measures measures is sleep debt. And I woke up this morning and it said, Well done. You've reduced your sleep debt to 35 minutes. Go to bed tonight at 1121 and you can completely eliminate the sleep debt. And I went, Wow, I think I'm gonna do that. Uh so you know, you can um there's a whole bunch of ways to be balanced, but I I think it's um important that you don't become that person that gets overwhelmed by work. Right? Work is a place where there should be you engage. Enjoy being. There's a lot of pleasure in it. You enjoy what you do. You enjoy creating the results. You're dedicated. You're in the detail, but you have to switch off it, you know, a certain amount of your time. I find it really hard to believe in these hundred-hour work week stories. I don't even know how people do it. You know, you think seven days a week, um, you know, and you think 12 hours a day times seven, you go, that's only 84 hours. So, okay, let's go to 13. Oh, that's only 91 hours. Let's go to, you know, 14 hours a day. It's only, you know, 98 hours, whatever it is. And so, you know, the fact is, is I think the 100-hour week, that's just a misnomer. That maybe some analysts uh in uh some roles and in final sprints for things occasionally have to do that. But let's go to the other end. How about 10 hours a day, Monday to Friday? That's 40 hours. Monday to sorry, Monday to Thursday, that's 40 hours, and eight hours on Friday. That's almost a 50 hour week, and maybe a couple hours on the weekend to you know, think about next week, that's 50 hours. To me, that's getting to a nice balance. Because if you think about 50 hours in a week, and you think that if you sleep eight hours a day, you've got 16 hours, 16 hours a day left times seven, right? You've got what's that, a 112 or something. So, you know, you've you've got to do 50 hours a week leaves you a lot of what I would call free time while you're awake to be with family, friends, thinking, reading, sports activities. So I I always lived in the world of if you're gonna work with me, it's not we're not we're not postal workers, we don't have a 35 to 40 hour week, but you also are never gonna be expected to work a hundred hour weeks. This is a 50 to 60 hour week job, which is very manageable, where you can create balance in your life. And I generally believe that's that's possible for all types of roles in the world. Not every role, you know, there's some roles that you know don't allow that. You're you're an actor or an actress and you're producing a movie and you're on the final week of set and you've got to get all the filming done. Maybe they're working 12, 15, 20 hours a day, but they're getting it done. And that's fun too, because you know when you're finished, you've got a week or two off. So it's it balance is very important. And and what really strikes me there is it's everyone's got their own uh set of enablers that and it's fuel for the bigger picture. And that time with family time for exercising, it's not time amount, but it's time invested to enable you to show up at the level that that you want to. And and the final question I have, you you mentioned family then. And I had the great privilege of speaking to your mum and dad. Um, I know your dad has subsequently passed away, sadly, since we had that conversation. And I there was just such joy and delight when they talked about your career arc. And I wondered, what do you think they're most proud of with the impact that you've had in the industry? Well, actually, I I think for you know, probably until I set up the climate fund uh with General Atlantic Beyond Net Zero, you know, a lot of people look at, you know, people that worked in financial markets or technology or information services. Really, they nobody really understood the detail of the creation. Because where I grew up, you know, there wasn't uh you know a lot of industry. It was a lot more agriculture, agricultural, um uh farming, uh fisheries, forestry, you know, more big heavy industries. And um, so what I did was never really well um well uh understood by everybody around me. Uh, they did understand Carfax. So when when IHS and Market merged and Carfax was part of the equation, all of a sudden I had something where if somebody said, What do you do? And I said, Well, do you know Carfax? And of course, everybody knew Carfax. Um, today it's a much better with climate and um being able to have a dialogue around um uh the challenges that we face. Uh, we saw what happened this week in Valencia. You know, climate is doesn't have any borders, it's impacting us all over the place in real severe ways. So um, I think that my mom now and my dad, before he passed, were very interested in uh climate change and how beyond net zero was going to play a role in emissions reduction. So I think they were quite proud of that. Otherwise, I think most of their pride was around philanthropy and giving back. And they were always um individuals that um would take in the needy, would um uh provide uh financial assistance uh to the level they could uh for anybody in need, help other family members, help communities. They they were philanthropic in you know the way that they could be. And so when I sold um uh merged IHS market with SP Global, it created a real event in my life where I was able to do something, you know, more substantive in terms of philanthropy, and that's probably what they're most proud of. Thank you for that. And look, thank you for your time today. As always, I walk away with such insight uh and lessons myself. And so I'm excited for those that listen to take those valuable lessons away with them too. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thank you. And it's always a pleasure to get to talk together. Thank you very much. Thanks, Lance.