Organisational Fitness = Hyper Growth, Andy Bryars Director Customer Success at Okta

Hear how Andy Bryars, Director of Customer Success at Okta is partnering with the Amplified Group to invest in his teams future, his team was already in a good place but Andy recognised as a leader that you cant take fitness of any kind for granted, especially when you are going through hyper-growth as an organisation.

Read more about Andy's approach to Organisational Fitness 

Learn more about the Five Behaviors of a Team methodology here: Meet #fivebehaviors 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:10

Welcome to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group, the podcast for tech industry leaders and aspiring leaders focusing on extraordinary teams. I say this every time, but of course, we're still virtual. I'm at home in Bucks. Ricky's in deepest, darkest Oxfordshire, Shah's over in the Netherlands. Shar, do you want to lead us in and tell us what we're going to cover in today's episode?

Sia 0:28

So the topic today is having the courage to prepare for scale in a hyper-growth company. I'm going to introduce Andy Bryars, but before I do, I want to just say how I personally know Andy. So I met Andy probably two years ago now. I am privileged to be part of a global mentoring program where they match executives to uh mentees. I love doing it. It's one of my favourite things to do. And I was introduced to Andy through that program. And we had such a great chemistry from the start, I think. And I know that Andy would be fantastic on this podcast, not only because of his experiences with understanding how to bring teams together and how important that is for working in a hyper-growth company. You know, that that's basically where he started with our coaching is how can I galvanize my team and how can I be a better leader? So I'm thrilled to have Andy on here today, and I know this is going to be a great podcast. So, Andy, with that, perhaps you could just give us a little bit of potted history, fairly high level, about um your career.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

Yeah, thanks. Yeah, really excited to be involved in this. So I I actually uh did a generalist degree in politics back, uh graduated back in 1992. I guess I was lucky enough back then that we didn't have to specialise. And I had no idea what I wanted to do in my career, although I did enjoy talking to people, and I sort of fancied uh a delve into the sales, but a lot of my friends wanted to be doctors, lawyers, accountants. So I ended up getting a role at Specialist Computer Center, SCC, and it was the first role they took on as a sales support. It was a really good grounding for my future career. Um, I ended up managing complex multi-million pound contracts, and this is where I learned a lot of my account management skills, which I'll come back to in terms of what I do now. And then I joined a small consultancy organization called SciSec, and I learned so much here. Um I got involved in specializing in IT security and in particular uh identity assurance, and we were um agnostic organization providing consultancy services. At that time, it's interesting because I always wanted to work closer to the source of for the vendor. But I think looking back, I had eight years there, and I did a lot of, I wore a lot of different hats. Um, and I think a lot of my skills that I developed as a manager are practiced here. Um it's only looking back around that. From there, I did actually go to work for an identity access management vendor called Carrion, um, which subsequently got acquired by Core Security. But while I was competing uh with other vendors in that space, uh I kept bumping into Okta. Um and I was lucky enough to join Okta when it was pre-IPO. Uh it floated in 2017, uh, actually was in Unicorn. So when it hit the stock market, it was valued over a billion dollars. Um, and it specialized in identity as a service, and that was six years ago. Uh, so that's a brief history of uh yeah, sort of where I started and what I'm doing at the minute.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Pretty cool journey. Brilliant. Look forward to getting into a bit more detail. So, Vicky, do you want to give us a bit of background as to why we've asked Andy to join us and talk about uh preparing for the future and scaling up companies really, really quickly.

Vic 4:04

Thanks, Sam. I am so delighted that Andy's on the podcast today because we're going to talk about a topic that is really at the heart of what we do at the Amplified Group. And I've used the word heart deliberately because we're going to talk about the health and fitness and not of individuals but actually of teams. When we first set up the Amplified Group, we learned a lot about organizational health. And McKinsey has the organizational health index, OHI. But for us, when we think of health, we don't think of energy or speed or dynamism. And actually, if you look at the difference between health and fitness, then health is defined as a state of complete mental, physical, and social well-being. But fitness is the ability to meet the demands of the environment. And that really resonated with us because, well, you know, we've talked about the pace of change before, and particularly in the tech industry, you've got to be able to adapt and change as an organization if you're going to continue to experience the hyper growth or take advantage of new opportunities, and actually to combat that inevitable bump in the road that's going to come at some point, and you need to be able to keep up the momentum and the energy because all too often, as companies grow, inertia creeps in, and then the productivity gains of hiring new talent is lost. And we've seen this time and again in tech companies that go through IPO and grow and scale, and then things start to slow down. And so when we first started working with Andy's team, it's really, really important to know that it was a healthy team already. But what we've done is we've focused on the team's fitness and we've been able to put the entire team into training and so that they are agile and able to adapt to change, and so that this becomes muscle memory within the team, and so that they can keep that great shape that they're in and continue to enjoy long-term success. You know, and it's all very good me talking about the theory here. So I'm just delighted that Andy's going to be able to share what we've been working on together.

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Great. Thanks, Vicki. Um, so Andy, let's start with Okta. I mean, I know Okta from my days at SoftCat, you know, I I guess um you were maybe a bit of an up and comer in the UK space and certainly making some significant progress. But it'd be good to get a bit more background on the organization, if you don't mind.

SPEAKER_03 6:33

Yeah, absolutely, Sam. So um we're headquartered in San Francisco. Uh, as I say, we've been going 11 years now, uh, and we've got presence, strong presence in America, as you'd expect, but we're growing in uh APAC and AMIA. And my responsibility is for that AMIA region. Uh, so it covers a classic approach of uh building a hub in UK and Ireland to start off with. Uh, we've got presence in France, Germany, Netherlands, uh, Nordics, and we're reaching out, we've got significant opportunities in the Middle East and Africa as well. Um, we're one of the fastest growing tech companies, um, and at the minute our growth is nearing 45% year on year, which is a phenomenal um you know, growth pattern. I've never worked at an organization that is growing so fast, even the current climate.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

Uh especially for a uh you know a pretty well-established organization now, isn't it? You know, you expect that kind of growth in full-on startup mode, but you guys have been around a while now.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

Yeah, and one of the one of the challenges we've got, and Charles Race, our worldwide president, talks about this, but um we set up the Amir operation seven years ago, uh, and I've personally been on board six years, so it's really good to see the changes and the growth. But one of the challenges is how do we get the international business uh growing at a faster rate than the US business? Um, so that is one of the key focuses as we move into our next financial year, which that's uh February next year. Um, so yeah, you're exactly right, Sam. That is uh it's interesting to see that. Um my boss, Bob Burke, he was he's the VP of what we call customer first. So that's anything post-sales. And I run the customer success team, and we'll we'll probably loop back and go into a bit more detail on that. But he was a customer in the US. Um, he's he's actually got an Italian wife. He got he got the role as the first customer success manager in Okta in in the US, and then he relocated to build the customer first team in Amir. So we've sort of got a part of the original Okta DNA in Amir, and Bob's been phenomenal at building out that customer first team, and that covers everything post-sale. So effectively in a SaaS company, that's really important because that number grows larger and not larger every year. Um, my responsibilities in customer success and that of my team is really to drive adoption, make sure that customers are using what they've bought. That's our primary task. Uh, secondly, if we get that right, the customers should renew. So that means we're reducing churn. Um, and really the way we do that is we act as a trusted advisor to the customer. We are looking for what we call cross-sell and upsell, but only when it's right and appropriate, and only when it's adding value to that customer. Um, and in terms of how we operate, a bit like a spider's web. So we like to see ourselves in the middle. We're the ones that coordinate the resources, uh, try and untangle the politics, both internally and externally, and really focus on what makes that customer successful. Um, so um, you know, we're going to talk about cultural fit, um, but sometimes I've got to remind my team who they work for. And what I mean by that is I'll get team members who are really passionate about the customer. And uh, you know, it's my job to make sure we're representing what's right for Okta as well. Um, but in a in a software as a service organization, customer success and our role is is really important. And we're really lucky at Okta that uh we talk about things coming top down, but um Todd McKinnon, our founder, and Freddie Carest, our co-founder, they basically um sort of made their reputation and name at Salesforce. And that was the first large CRM that was a SaaS organization, and they really embedded the uh the importance of customer success, and that DNA is in our culture now. So we have got um uh our own profit and loss, and we report directly into the board. So, you know, love our customers and making sure that is core to our values is is really important to Okta and to our team as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:02

I love that customers, customer first thing, and actually you know, really embedding it in the organization by having a VP of customer first. I've never heard that before, but that's a a really cool concept. Just make sure everybody's everybody understands how important it is.

SPEAKER_03 11:19

Yeah, it's it's interesting. We we interview a lot of candidates because we're growing so fast, and it's not all organizations that look at customer success in this way. It's sort of a bolt-on to sales, it's often not a chargeable service. In Okta, uh, we realize the value and it is a chargeable service, but um we we know that um you know it gives returns tenfold to the customer as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:43

It makes sense, it makes sense. You know, if you if you have too much churn, you lose your customers and you lose the organizational value pretty quickly. So the more you can solidify all that stuff, the better. So maybe you could tell us a little bit more about how you came to meet Sean Vicky. What's the story there? How do you get involved with these two?

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Yeah, so one thing uh Ox is very good at is investing in its people. Uh, and I was lucky enough uh for Bob uh to recommend me to what we called a top talent program. Um, and this was back in I want to say 2018. Um and uh and effectively this is where I got connected through the Everwise program, which is the mentoring program talked about earlier. It was an invaluable to me because especially since I was starting my career in what I'm calling formal management, and I actually started, I guess the point of reference, I started as an individual contributor in that team, and then I stepped up to manager. Um, so through that everwise program, I was able just for somebody outside of Okta uh to sort of have some thinking space. Uh and Shan's very good at asking me difficult questions that I probably wouldn't ask myself. Um, and it was a sounding board as well. I'm quite structured in our work, and I quite like tangible frameworks or assets, as I call them, that I can apply to everyday tasks. Actually, one of the things I found challenging in this in the first few sessions is it was also meant to be about personal development as me as a manager. And I spent 85% of the time talking about the team and developing the team because I wanted to make it uh practical. Um, and it was through this process that um the Amplify group introduced me to uh Patrick, and we're gonna come on and talk about how we've been using the five disventions of the team and some of the disc assessments we've been doing as well.

Sia 13:44

Thanks, Andy. And one of the first things we had to do, which I always do with the people that are mentors, is build trust. And we had this trust continuum, as I called it, you know, where do we feel on trust? And I think we already in the first session we were up to about six, but we very, very quickly got up to 10. It actually quickly turned into what Andy was going to be able to do when he developed himself to pass that on to his team. So it was eventually about your team and how you developed that. And when I decided at that point that you liked Patrick Lencioni and the five behaviours and things I was talking about, which were natural for me to talk about because we were we moved on to teamwork, it was at that point when you asked me to help you with that that I said I felt that was a conflict of interest in the way that you know we had a personal relationship. And so I handed the baton over to Vicky, who has been doing an amazing job working with your team. And I'm sure we're gonna uh go on and talk about that in lots of detail. But it it was the fact that, you know, we talked earlier about the uh the word courage, but it was the fact that you had the courage to recognize that you want to develop yourself first, so that you could then hand that over to developing your team. So uh all kudos to you and I had a great time doing it. And in fact, it's turned full circle because I did one year with you, and um, when the program came back around again, uh they kindly asked me to come back in and mentor you again, and now we're doing something very different and uh and enjoying it all over again.

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Yeah, it's it's interesting how it how it played out, and um, you know, to give you an idea of uh the growth, I think when we first spoke, I had three members of the team, four, and now I've got 16. Um so it's growing phenomenally. It's really important that we continue to invest in our people and support the team. Um, and as I said, I quite like being structured. So for me, following some of the things in the five dispensions of a team gave us that grounding and that foundation that we could continue to work on our team health, as we should call it. Um, so I think the five dispensions was a really good way um of baselining where we were. Uh, and in particular, and it again it was the Amplified group that gave me this idea that we wanted to assess everybody, um, and we chose the disk framework in order to do that. And it gave us a really good common foundation that we could engage with our team members and understand how they wanted information to be delivered or received, and what types of people they were, and how we could best communicate with them. So it's almost like a self-awareness of how we could better like work with our counterparts. So everybody knew now coming into the team as a disk assessment. We share that and it's very top of mind in trying to incorporate it into our daily routine and work. Um, so as we've moved forward from doing that baseline of uh of the five dysfunctions, and and Vicky stepped in to do a two-day workshop at the end of 2019. Can't believe that's now 12 months uh uh from where we are today. Um, what we did is we agreed on a number of core areas that as a team we thought was the most significant to help us scale in the future. Um, and we've been working through that through 2020 in uh interesting period with the pandemic, but it's really helped us unify and focus on what's important. Um because I benefited so much from the person and mentoring from Sha, um, I really wanted some of my um leaders in my team, such as Tony, Jamie, and Frank, to benefit from what I'd done. And what we've done is we've worked with the Amplified group to get Vicky to step up to mentor those. Uh, and I'm finding the the benefits of that are invaluable because of the output that we now get in and the sort of core focus we got within the team.

Sia 18:09

Yeah, and Andy, let me just jump in there to, you know, for the people that are listening, just to kind of explain that what we we call this a process, this methodology a process. So the process is starting with a personality profile like disk, the disk assessment holds up that mirror and tells you who you are and how you can adapt your personality potentially to other members of your team. And the five behaviours is just based on five very simple principles. So we always start with trust, then we look at once you have trust within the team, you are able to have open, robust conflict, productive conflict. And after that point, then you are able to think about how we can as a team commit to areas of project or programs or whatever it might be. How can we then hold each other accountable, which is the fourth, and then how can we then together have collective results? And by building on that foundation of trust, as you journey, you know, started your journey on the five behaviors with your team, you actually then can start to build up to having those collective results. So that's really what the principles are. And I thought I'd just drop it in there before um we carry on because it's important that maybe people don't know anything about the five dysfunctions and Patrick Lencioni. But that's the model that we build our framework on, but it's not necessarily what we follow letter by letter. It's not cookie cutter. So what we did with your team is we come in and we say, okay, this team in particular needs to be focusing on maybe mentoring a couple of members of your team. So you working with Vicky, and I know Vicki will go on and talk about this, had realized that that would be the best place to focus. So that was part of the programme we did with you, layered on top of the five dysfunctions workshop that we did with the entire team. So uh just wanted to place that. So, Sam, I know you had a quick uh question for Andy around that as well.

SPEAKER_02 20:16

Yeah, Andy, I just wanted to know where you know why it became apparent that it was important to you as a manager to benchmark the team against some sort of method. I mean, in particular the five Bs.

SPEAKER_03 20:29

Yeah, good question, Sam. So, I mean, when I took on that role as a manager and I've never been a formal manager before, you'd think you're doing an AK job, but um, that's your good feel. And as I say, I'm quite structured. So as soon as I start to understand um sort of the significance of what the five dysfunctions would give us, it give us an independent baseline. Um, and actually give us a North Star or sort of guiding reference that all the team could understand and look towards. And, you know, cultural fit to going through that process is now our number one priority. When you start with such a small team, what's passionate about customer success, it's really concentrated. So one of the challenges we all add is the more people you add to that, in you know, there's a thought process that you might dilute that. Uh, and as uh Vicky and Share have said in their previous experiences, when you're in a hyper-growth company, maintaining that culture has got to be your number one priority. I think the five dysfunctions gives us this. I was really pleasantly surprised when Vicky showed me the initial results that when we looked at the uh the trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and results, that triangle, um, we were fairly healthy, but that just meant that uh we needed to continue to invest in this. Um, it's a bit like going to the gym. If you don't go that frequently, you're gonna lose some of your muscles. So we Always keeping this top of mind. I actually have in my team my own sort of vision of a triangle, and it's more to do with how we turn up for work. So at the base of the triangle, what takes most of our time, it's our core responsibilities. But the reason we come to work is to collaborate and you know interact with our colleagues and our customers. So that middle bit's the collaboration. But what I'm really driving as well, and I think the five dysfunctions provides this framework, is I'm driving the team to individually contribute. And this is the top of the triangle, what we call reinusable assets or individual contributions, because this builds their individual brand within the business, but it also builds our team brand within the organization. So that's sort of the ethos everybody's got. And whilst we grow in a diverse team, like my job is to extract the great talent we got within that team, but also to empower them. And this sort of gave us a framework, not just me, but gave the team a framework that we could uh sort of lobby around.

Vic 23:07

So so Andy, the the thing that I love about working with your team was as you say, you were in really good shape to start with. When we first did that baselining exercise, the team was in a good place, but you recognized that as you grow and the business and the market opportunity expands, and you've got more and more demands on the team, then you need to be able to keep that health and fitness that you've got within the team already. And you recognize that actually you can't just take it for granted. And I think many organizations get so focused on the growth and on the number that they don't take care of actually the thing that helped is going to help them get there. And that's why it's been it's been so brilliant to work with the team. And I think where you've got to with uh, you know, the conversations that I'm having with the team now, it's all about team and it's all about them supporting each other and looking about what else they can do. And I, you know, I've got another conversation coming up that I'm really looking forward to this week, where one of the team that I'm working with is actually he draws his plan, he's that that motivated that the the the page just comes alive with ideas, and I think you you've said that it's those ideas are really feeding the energy of the team now.

SPEAKER_03 24:34

Yeah, and I'm smiling, Vicky, because every I know that when my team's had a chat with you, because they come back with loads of ideas, loads of great ideas. But what's really interesting as well is I'm seeing the confidence grow because they're not only sharing their ideas, they're owning it, they're driving the execution of these. Um, and yeah, I'll come on and talk about a few of those examples. But I think to me, what's really important is how we measure this and how we hold ourselves accountable. So, so Vicky, in particular, you give us a really good uh concept of this uh monthly survey. And we agreed in that workshop at the end of 2019 some of the values that we thought was important to us. And so these values are things like uh are we making time to review what's working or what's not? Um, have we always got somebody playing devil's advocate uh to prevent group thinking in a meeting? Um do we continue to point out one another's contributions? Do we share our vulnerabilities and ask for help? Are we considering our disc styles? Um, and how are we actively supporting each other by giving feedback? And every month um Vicky collates this scorecard. Um, and we've been doing this now for the last six months, and it's really interesting, but it keeps it top of mind and it it makes this uh something that is is is you we use every day. And then when you let that in with the disk assessments that everybody's getting, so every time you've got a new member, we we have a bit of a guessing game on where they are in the in the disk profile, and by lucky chance, we've probably got everybody in that disc in the different segments, which is uh yeah, just just by chance that. But that's interesting.

Vic 26:23

Yeah, I think it's a I think it's a good point that you don't hire on disk and you don't use disk as part of the hiring process, but what you're doing is you're using it afterwards to help understand and do that team map so that you can see where where everybody else is around the disk. Because I think disc for me, I like it because it's not just about the individual, it's about the team, and you can see where everybody else is on the team, and then you can understand each other's approaches and and accommodate that. So that's that's where the magic comes in. And I think your your team has experienced that first hand, haven't they? And what we're trying to get to is with this dashboard that you've just been talking about, is making this muscle memory. So we will get to the point where you don't need me to do this dashboard anymore because it's just ingrained into the team in such a way that when you bring the new people on and when you do your um mentoring program that I'm sure we're going to come on to, that it's the way you work as a team.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Yeah, and I think to me, we we laid the foundations now, and the fruits of our success are now coming in that senior members of the team are now taking the bat and to get the best results from the team as well. It's not coming from me, it's coming from everybody. Uh, and we are developing new talent and we coach an existing talent. Um, and you know, in our team, I guess the average age for Okta is quite old. We're all in our a lot of us are in our 40s, and uh, I guess at this age, we're getting we get more um value um and sort of recognition by helping other people in their careers. Uh, and I think we got uh the roles we do, we got a great way to build, we call it sort of a coaching academy, but like a football academy where we can take people and we can develop their careers uh based on what we do. So to bring that to life a bit and to give you some ideas of Vicky, based on your mentoring in the team, some ideas of what we're doing, we have put together a formal coaching program where the more senior people in the team are helping develop the uh the up-and-coming talent within the team. We're also looking at a model for feedback. Um, and Vicky's uh given us a deficit model uh which basically uh describe evidence, feeling, implication, contribution, intent, so that we got a consistent way that we can provide uh feedback to our teams. Um, and then I'm also seeing a huge uptake in what I'm calling headquarter initiatives, where we're working with different teams like data and analytics, where we're redefining the global role of customer success within Okta, um, and how we're better aligned to work with the large world's largest organizations. So, all these initiatives are being led by HQ, but my team now has had the confidence to step up and start really driving changes in Okta. Um, it's a bit like I called it the if you've ever seen uh The Sorcerer's Apprentice by Walt Disney. Um it's a it's a bit like a good version of that, where um it's carrying the buckets of water multiple times, is all our team now is carrying their own buckets of water, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 29:54

Looking at teams, talk to us about hiring and retaining talent. Obviously, as you grow, uh that's important from my experience as soft cat, getting the right people on the bus is mega important from the point of view of delivering excellent customer service. I imagine you had a similar uh similar sort of experience.

SPEAKER_03 30:15

Yeah, uh yeah, it's a really good question, Sam. And um, I'm smiling again because uh coming from a sales background, I don't think you really had the right um aptitude to actually interview people because I end up selling to them and why Okta, so such a cool place to work.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Um I could see that I used to do the same thing. You know, uh I kind of felt actually that you know that an interview is a two-way street. You are also hoping that you convince the person that you're interviewing to join you, assuming that you you want them want them to join you. And I, you know, I found myself doing exactly the same thing at SoftCat, you know, evangelizing how how great a place it is, um, in the hope that that these people would join us and become part of our crazy bunch.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

Yeah, yeah, you're exactly right. And um and and recruitment is our number one priority. Uh it's uh top of mind for our team, and it it takes a lot of time, but based on our growth plans for 2021, uh, yeah, we are constantly interviewing, building pipeline. We've got a pretty robust process. Uh it's time consuming for everybody on the team, and it's quite democratic as well. So we are working to refine that and sort of make it more efficient. Um the sort of essential criteria that we look for in candidates is that cultural fit. So, what we mean by that is they've got to be transparent, open, willingness to listen, active participation, and a team first approach. And out of everything, so you know, the other things we're looking at is we call it being enterprise ready, but to have the experience that we can put them in front of a very large customer without them knowing anything about Okta and to be able to hold their ground. Um, obviously, their customer success or service management background is important, their technical knowledge is important. Um, but that essential criteria being uh basically, you know, somebody who's able to have a conversation with an administrator all the way through to C level is the types of individual that we're looking for. Um, and to your point, Sam, is we want this interview process to be a good experience for both parties. Uh, because we are representing Octay, if they're not successful, we want them to be, you know, still have had a good experience. Uh, so we are to that point streamlining and moving towards more competency-based skills matrix, which you could argue we should have been there already. Um, my my argument is um I'd rather be cautious because it's expensive if you get it wrong. Um, and I am proud to say that um we are um at the minute uh 16 strong, and uh in the last six years nobody's left that team. Um, so yeah, that's uh that's a really acid test. So yeah, um, and I think we got a good plan to make sure we develop the talent within that team or within the organization to that point.

Vic 33:24

I was just gonna say, I think that's an absolute testament to your leadership though, Andy. The conversations that I have with your team and how much they appreciate the way you lead the team. You lead by example, including now, I'm pleased to say, not sending emails late at night and not sending emails at the weekend.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah, and I do think we're really lucky at Okta that we're well supported. So not only are they supporting the Amplify group program within my team, uh, we got continuous development with what we call an individual development plan or an IDP. So that could be a combination of hands-on support, it's formal training courses from our learning and development team. We've actually got a tool called Udemy, and it gives you anything from how to install a Windows server if you wanted to know that, to play a guitar, it's amazing doing yoga, so it doesn't have to be academic. Um, and so we build up uh individual development plans to make sure that we're taking the every individual and we're developing them in where they want to go, not just where we think they should go within that. Um and that's really important that and we review that quarterly in a formal um sort of setting.

Sia 34:41

Yeah, I just have to say that when um when we did this second round of mentoring, Andy, together, and um, and I won't go into what your goals are specifically, but one of them is to think about you know what you personally want to do now and develop. And we weren't, we didn't have to look very far because Okta is, you know, talking about an amazing organization, they really represent what we call a high trust culture organization. They understand and value and invest in the people. And we just had to look to that system and say, okay, you want to improve your presentation skills or you want to have some speech coaching, whatever it was, we found it there. We looked at it together, and I was amazed the breadth of uh things that the L and D team, your L and D team have put into that system. So all kudos to them. Um, you know, that there's no that that's probably why you are retaining the people you're retaining because they don't need to look further to develop themselves. It's uh it's a great organization. Um I'm always um continuously impressed with with what they do there. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

So Andy, do you think you've got there? Can you stop all this or have you still got work to do?

SPEAKER_03 35:57

I wish I I wish I could say that, Samba.

SPEAKER_02 36:01

Wouldn't it be lovely?

SPEAKER_03 36:03

You know what? I think we're just beginning. I I honestly believe that. Um there's so much more to do, there's always room for improvement. Um, and I think we got very high expectations, as we should do as a team. Um, you know, this year's been difficult with the pandemic. We've been incredibly lucky. The types of solutions we deliver has actually probably assisted us because we help people work remotely, you know, from any any place, anywhere, anytime. So, you know, it's not impacted our business, but we are very mindful of what this pandemic's done to other sectors and other organizations. Um, so our expectations are high, and we've had to balance like the personal challenges because you know, eight out of the 16 people in my team have young children. So they've had to handle childcare, they might have workspace issues that you know you don't not everybody's lucky enough to have their own office at home. So there has been those challenges, and actually, our nature of our role, we're we're quite um people oriented. So we like meeting people, we like to engage, and that's different over Zoom, especially when you sign in new customers up. So we have found it that bit challenging, but there's so much more to do. Um, and on that point, what we're doing every year, we have um globally these visions, methods, and targets, so which come down from top, and then each department have their own. So we will be working in January on those to give us that real focus for next financial year. And we're also going to work with Vicky to re-baseline our five dysfunctions and the pyramid of trust um so that we can see where we are and what we need to do moving forward. And the other thing I want to do is I want to work with uh the Amplify group to see what other people in the team we can invest in on their personal mentoring. Because uh going back to the uh the the Disney approach I mentioned, the sources apprentice, the more we can get carrying buckets of water, the more it makes uh you know valuable for everybody in the team.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Makes sense, thank you. So, would you give us your three key takeaways on best ways to invest in the future of your team, if you don't mind, please?

SPEAKER_03 38:26

I'll I'll try and keep it to three, Sam. So, first one. Well, if we end up with four, I ain't complaining. No, they always say talking threes, people remember them. So the first one, uh, invest in your team rewards a tenfold in return. Uh, and empowering your team is really, really satisfying. It's interesting because I struggled with this at the beginning because I was sort of overprotective. I wanted to lead by example because I'd done that personally before. But as you grow, that's not possible. And I really got more satisfaction out of seeing my team take ownership and empowering them and what they deliver. So that's the first thing. Invest in your team and you'll get the rewards. The second one is gain consensus on those priorities that you want to achieve on as a team. Once you've got that consensus, you can execute on them. So you need everybody, you need to bring everybody along on that journey. And Disc has taught us that we need to communicate possibly in different ways to different team members to make sure that message is landing. So make sure that as a team, everybody's pulling in the same direction. And it's a big, a big focus of mine. I've always been like this. I I don't like going into a meeting and not having some outcome or action. So talking for the sake of it. So what we're keen on doing is bite-sized chunks, incremental progress to make sure that we're delivering things consistently. And I think that's that's better for your personal health in that you're you're continuing to make progress. And then lastly, and really importantly, uh, and this is why I said at the beginning, we're just starting our journey, never take the team health for granted. It's something what you continually need to reinvest in and continue to work on every day.

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Brilliant. Thank you. Good summary. I appreciate that. So you best take us into Hero Time.

Sia 40:27

Yes, and I'm so proud because one of the things that Andy and I worked on in our mentoring was how he can be more concise. And he's just done it perfectly. So well done, Andy. So uh yeah, I'm gonna switch it up a little bit this time. So I always talk first about Hero being the brand of the Amplified Group. He's a little stick man, he has a uh a cape because he's the hero, but it's not about him being the hero, but it's about making the client and the client being the hero. Okay, and that's why we created our little stick man hero. That's his name. Um, but in this case, I just want to have a shout out, um, as uh Steve Wright would say, and that's got to be to Andy. So, Andy, as our client, you are definitely our hero. Um the way that you have embraced the five behaviours, the mentoring, the thinking about teamwork continuously, the ability to recognise you need to empower individuals in your team to make that team better, has been just really a delight to watch from a distance because I have been distanced from it because Vicky is doing all the hard work and she's done an amazing job with the team, and I'm very proud of her as well. But you are definitely our hero. Um with that, I just want to ask you then to tell us somebody that maybe you think is your hero, or somebody just that you admire or look up to or have looked up to in the past, or has developed and shaped the great manager and leader that you are today. So um I'll hand it over to you, Andy.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Thank you, Cher. It's a good job. This is a podcast because I'll be blushing on video. Uh uh, yeah, thank you very much for the kind words. Uh so yeah, it's interesting. I've got so many heroes. I mean, first of all, my team are all heroes because this isn't my effort, this is everybody in the team. Um, so that goes without saying. And I love sports. So when I first thought about this, I was thinking, well, you know, cycling. Um, and my one of my heroes when I was younger was Lance Armstrong. I read all his books, what he had when he he beat his cancer treatment. I was devastated when I found out that he'd been cheating the system. And actually in 2018, Garant Thomas was riding to sport Froom in the uh Tour de France, and he was named the foot shut soldier. So he was there supporting Froom. And um throughout the various tactics and things, people that don't follow cycling might not know this, but Garant actually went on and won that. And he wasn't meant to as such, he was there to support the lead cyclist, and he was uh basically a hero. And all the cyclists on all the different teams, because he rode for Sky, went up and congratulated Garant. And uh, you know, that talks about that being a team sport. Um, so I really like that story. Um, and then the other one um was Ian Scott. Ian was my first uh boss at SEC, and when I look back, he always put the team first, and he was always really generous with his time. And I've learned a lot from Ian that I still use today in my career, 30 years on, more or less. Um, so yeah, without doubt, if you're listening, Ian, uh he's definitely my hero.

Sia 44:03

Thanks, Andy. And um yeah, sometimes our heroes let us down, but at the time, Lance probably inspired you to do certain things. So at the time that he was your hero, one of the things that I just want to mention before I hand over to Sam to do our close is we always talk about the show notes. And you you mentioned early on about the team assessment that we do. On the show notes, we're going to put that team assessment as a sample so everybody can see it's a 36-page report. It is so useful to see where the team is in relation to those five different principles that we talk about. So thanks again, Andy. It's been a pleasure, and you've been so concise and so inspiring. And I just want to say thank you again.

SPEAKER_02 44:52

Well, brilliant. Not much more to add to that, really, but thanks, Andy. That was that was great. Really, really interesting. And I think good for our listeners to get some real deep insight into the stuff that Vicky and Sha um and the team can bring. So really, really interesting. Thanks again for listening to Get Amplified from the Amplified Group. Your comments and your subscriptions are, of course, as always, most gratefully received, and we'll see you next time.