Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number
Joanne Lockwood: of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging, and generally making the world a better
Joanne Lockwood: place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the
Joanne Lockwood: future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@changehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co
Joanne Lockwood: dot uk. You'll be able to catch up with all of the previous shows on
Joanne Lockwood: ITunes, Spotify, at the usual places. So
Joanne Lockwood: plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's
Joanne Lockwood: get going. Today is episode 46,
Joanne Lockwood: with the title Stretching Imaginations to
Joanne Lockwood: Achieve What's Possible. And I have the absolute honor and
Joanne Lockwood: privilege to be joined by Marcus Cauchi. Marcus
Joanne Lockwood: describes himself as someone who challenges idiocy
Joanne Lockwood: and attachment to traditional ways of doing things.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Marcus to describe his superpower, he said it's
Joanne Lockwood: being able to ask shitty and uncomfortable questions.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, Marcus. Welcome to the show. Hi, Jo.
Marcus Cauchi: Thanks for having me. My pleasure. Been looking
Joanne Lockwood: forward to this for some time. So, Marcus, we were talking
Joanne Lockwood: just now before we started about stretching imaginations to achieve
Joanne Lockwood: what's possible. What do you mean by that?
Marcus Cauchi: There's a lovely quote from Mark Twain that your eyes won't see when
Marcus Cauchi: your imagination is out of focus. And
Marcus Cauchi: I see an awful lot of attachment to this is the way
Marcus Cauchi: we've always done it. People
Marcus Cauchi: holding on to received wisdom, which is anything
Marcus Cauchi: but wise. There's a lovely story.
Marcus Cauchi: Whether it's true or not doesn't really matter. Never let the truth get in. We
Marcus Cauchi: have a good story. In the 19 seventies, there was a captain
Marcus Cauchi: who was commissioned to observe and,
Marcus Cauchi: do a time and motion study on artillery firing.
Marcus Cauchi: And he was watching these gunners load these guns,
Marcus Cauchi: and, after they, carried the shell and, put it in the back
Marcus Cauchi: of the breach, and closed it, 1 of them would turn
Marcus Cauchi: around, stand to attention facing Lockwood, and
Marcus Cauchi: the other 1 would march 8 paces, turn around, stand to attention with his
Marcus Cauchi: right hand behind his back and hold up his left arm.
Marcus Cauchi: And he couldn't understand why they were doing this.
Marcus Cauchi: And the the 1, who walked backwards would nod and then the other
Marcus Cauchi: 1 would fire the gun. Anyway, long story short,
Marcus Cauchi: he asked them why and said, well, no idea. That's the way we were trained
Marcus Cauchi: to train, trained to fire the guns. And that's why, we fire the
Marcus Cauchi: guns in this man's army set Who trained you? The gunnery sergeant.
Marcus Cauchi: So off they went off, you went to the gunnery sergeant Gunny. Why do you
Marcus Cauchi: teach them to do it this way? That's the way I was trained to train
Marcus Cauchi: them, sir. That's the way we train them in this man's army, sir. That's the
Marcus Cauchi: way we fire the guns in this man's army, sir. So after,
Marcus Cauchi: you know, a couple of weeks of observing this behavior, he couldn't
Marcus Cauchi: fathom for the any any reason why they would do this. And he
Marcus Cauchi: was in the pub outside the barracks in Lark Hill.
Marcus Cauchi: And, this old codger came in who had been in world
Marcus Cauchi: war 1 as a gunner and said, have you got any idea
Marcus Cauchi: why they do this? And so, Oh yeah, they're holding the horses. Now they haven't
Marcus Cauchi: had horse drawn artillery for 50 years. And,
Marcus Cauchi: my question is always, why are you holding the horses?
Marcus Cauchi: If you want better answers, you have to ask better questions.
Marcus Cauchi: And self reflection is something that almost never
Marcus Cauchi: happens because people are so busy and fixated
Marcus Cauchi: on doing things the way they've always done them. They don't question. I
Marcus Cauchi: reckon any important process needs to be reviewed every 3
Marcus Cauchi: months. Why why did we start doing it this way?
Marcus Cauchi: Why are we still doing it? Does it serve us? Does it serve our
Marcus Cauchi: customers? Does it serve our people? And if it doesn't, is there
Marcus Cauchi: a better way? And if so, what is it?
Marcus Cauchi: And, you know, I'd if we bring this into the context of,
Marcus Cauchi: diversity, equity and inclusion,
Marcus Cauchi: why is it we recruit people of a certain type.
Marcus Cauchi: Most of my work is around sales. And if you listen to the tonality
Marcus Cauchi: of, a salesperson, are they
Marcus Cauchi: somebody who is heavily motivated by
Marcus Cauchi: scale, self interest and scarcity or dog eat
Marcus Cauchi: dog, because that means that they're probably a taker.
Marcus Cauchi: If they are heavily focused on self interest
Marcus Cauchi: and abundance, they're really more interested
Marcus Cauchi: in keeping what they've got.
Marcus Cauchi: If they are somebody who is focused on
Marcus Cauchi: delivering universal value, but also scarcity, They're
Marcus Cauchi: probably someone who's very much about control.
Marcus Cauchi: And if they're abundance, thinkers and
Marcus Cauchi: they have universal value, as key drivers,
Marcus Cauchi: then they're very much focused on service. So I
Marcus Cauchi: want people who want to serve. I don't want
Marcus Cauchi: to people who are, people who are interested in the status
Marcus Cauchi: quo, who are selfishly self orientated,
Marcus Cauchi: or who are trying to, operate in a command and
Marcus Cauchi: control structure. That's not how reality works. We operate
Marcus Cauchi: in complex systems against wicked problems,
Marcus Cauchi: and wicked problems require you to
Marcus Cauchi: understand that the first solution will probably fail, and
Marcus Cauchi: you've got to gather data. Stakeholders
Marcus Cauchi: differ. The rules change as you play, and there is no
Marcus Cauchi: perfect answer, only imperfect options. And so
Marcus Cauchi: that's the world that I play in.
Joanne Lockwood: Brilliant. I mean, there's a there's a couple of lovely quotes in there, and I
Joanne Lockwood: think let go of the horses. I think that's that's brilliant. We
Joanne Lockwood: gotta we gotta analyze the real
Joanne Lockwood: history behind some of the ways we do things, and you're you're
Joanne Lockwood: so right. I I see so many examples of the commander control mentality.
Joanne Lockwood: If I can't see you, I can't trust you. That the whole
Joanne Lockwood: struggle that people have working flexibly, agilely,
Joanne Lockwood: remotely really breaks down that command and control
Joanne Lockwood: because many of our leaders have been trained or they've
Joanne Lockwood: evolved in this controlled way, haven't they? And
Joanne Lockwood: they wanna see the people. They wanna manage the people.
Joanne Lockwood: They haven't learned to evolve their style so that
Joanne Lockwood: they can empower the people that are working for them.
Marcus Cauchi: And that's key. In order to earn trust, you have to give
Marcus Cauchi: trust. And in order to have
Marcus Cauchi: control, you have to relinquish control. You hire great
Marcus Cauchi: people. I mean, Steve jobs is, famously quoted, for what's you
Marcus Cauchi: know, saying something along the lines of what's the point of hiring brilliant people if
Marcus Cauchi: you're gonna try and stop them from being brilliant, by controlling them?
Marcus Cauchi: You need to create an environment where they can thrive. And
Marcus Cauchi: I see this, I mean, diversity is a topic that
Marcus Cauchi: most organizations pay lip service to,
Marcus Cauchi: because they say we're an equal opportunities employer, and they
Marcus Cauchi: put a tick in the box. And they hire for difference, and they fire for
Marcus Cauchi: not fitting in. They make it impossible for people
Marcus Cauchi: of difference, to fit in. We're all freaks. We're
Marcus Cauchi: all different. We're all broken. And what we need to do is
Marcus Cauchi: find people whose imperfections fit neatly with our
Marcus Cauchi: imperfections so that we can become better. And there
Marcus Cauchi: there's a wonderful experiment of a picture of a tiger in the grass.
Marcus Cauchi: And most people will say that they see the
Marcus Cauchi: tiger, or if they're more from the Oriental,
Marcus Cauchi: environment, they'll talk about the jungle, with a
Marcus Cauchi: tiger. But unless you get both
Marcus Cauchi: and you get to see the whole perspective, then
Marcus Cauchi: you miss out. And so you end up being very blinkered.
Marcus Cauchi: And, that means that you, diminish your creativity
Marcus Cauchi: in tackling difficult problems. At the moment, I'm on a
Marcus Cauchi: mission. I have 5 big, great big, hairy
Marcus Cauchi: assed audacious goals. 1 is to take 8 companies to a
Marcus Cauchi: $1, 000, 000, 000 profitable revenue without the wheels and
Marcus Cauchi: wings coming off with customers for life and to become
Marcus Cauchi: destination employers. So people are queuing up because they
Marcus Cauchi: love to come to work here. The second is
Marcus Cauchi: to, rip the legs out from the entire marketing
Marcus Cauchi: and advertising industry, which is a monstrous con.
Marcus Cauchi: There are 4.3 quadrillion, digital adverts served
Marcus Cauchi: up every year that get 1 or 0 clicks, and Google and
Marcus Cauchi: Facebook make $265, 000, 000, 000 on the gullibility
Marcus Cauchi: and idiocy of their, their customers. The venture
Marcus Cauchi: capital and private equity market is utterly broken and corrupt, and it's
Marcus Cauchi: creating a bubble, within technology where people are
Marcus Cauchi: fixated on revenue growth, new logo acquisition, and
Marcus Cauchi: a fictional pipeline because that allows them to fiddle, their
Marcus Cauchi: notional value instead of creating strong fundamentally,
Marcus Cauchi: well built businesses with people who love coming to work,
Marcus Cauchi: give massive discretionary effort that are led by fantastic
Marcus Cauchi: leaders who get twice as much out of,
Marcus Cauchi: their employees through discretionary effort and giving them
Marcus Cauchi: trust than people who try and command and control who get half as
Marcus Cauchi: much as they possibly could. So there's a 400%,
Marcus Cauchi: differential. The 4th is making sales a force for
Marcus Cauchi: good. There were 2 studies that came out at the end of 2020. 1 from
Marcus Cauchi: Gartner that said 33% of business to business
Marcus Cauchi: buyers want a 100% seller free buying experience,
Marcus Cauchi: and that's a damning indictment of our industry or our
Marcus Cauchi: profession. And another study
Marcus Cauchi: from LinkedIn that said 67% of buyers
Marcus Cauchi: consider sales and salespeople to be morally bankrupt. And I can't
Marcus Cauchi: disagree. I'm amazed it's only it's only 67%,
Marcus Cauchi: because the values, and the behavior,
Marcus Cauchi: that, permeate from investors through leadership,
Marcus Cauchi: through management, through to salespeople that then put the
Marcus Cauchi: customer at the end of a long chain of, abuse and make them a
Marcus Cauchi: forgotten afterthought, make that inevitable.
Marcus Cauchi: And then the 5th is to look at the sales training environment,
Marcus Cauchi: and work out why that isn't working and fix it
Marcus Cauchi: because people should really want to learn. They
Marcus Cauchi: should want to get better. Instead you
Marcus Cauchi: have 3 groups of people. You've got a tiny fraction who want to
Marcus Cauchi: learn. You've got a bunch who are entitled and they expect,
Marcus Cauchi: their company to serve them up training. And then you have
Marcus Cauchi: most others who just wanna be left alone and to get
Marcus Cauchi: on with it and survive on their basic salary, and they may take home
Marcus Cauchi: commissions 4 or 8 months in the year. And all of
Marcus Cauchi: that is broken. Now when you tie them all together and you look at the
Marcus Cauchi: problems with, culture, investors,
Marcus Cauchi: compensation, measurement, recruitment, and hiring
Marcus Cauchi: onboarding training, their perception of the
Marcus Cauchi: customer, the customer cannot possibly feel
Marcus Cauchi: safe. And so the central theme around
Marcus Cauchi: all of this is creating buyer safety. I
Marcus Cauchi: fundamentally believe every buyer deserves to be safe whenever they
Marcus Cauchi: are dealing with a salesperson or a vendor organization.
Marcus Cauchi: And 99 times out of a 100, I believe that they cannot
Marcus Cauchi: feel safe, which is why you create this adversarial
Marcus Cauchi: relationship between vendor empire. And that doesn't serve
Marcus Cauchi: anyone. And so I'm looking at all of these things
Marcus Cauchi: as a complex system. And in the same way that if you
Marcus Cauchi: take a digital, an SLR camera, you got
Marcus Cauchi: film speed, the ISO number, You got the aperture, and you got the
Marcus Cauchi: shutter speed. If you change any 1 of those without adjusting
Marcus Cauchi: at least 1 of the other 2, then the picture gets distorted.
Marcus Cauchi: Now companies are way more sophisticated than
Marcus Cauchi: that. You've got all these different moving parts,
Marcus Cauchi: working often against 1 another
Marcus Cauchi: because you've got a culture that is command and control,
Marcus Cauchi: encourages internal competition, and that drives
Marcus Cauchi: blame, excuses, avoidance behavior, and
Marcus Cauchi: everyone playing cover your ass. And none of that is
Marcus Cauchi: good for anybody. All it does, it serves a tiny handful,
Marcus Cauchi: I lie, a tiny handful of people, who benefit from
Marcus Cauchi: the status quo. And my view is that the
Marcus Cauchi: status quo needs to be rocked.
Joanne Lockwood: I agree completely. And I think when you look at I
Joanne Lockwood: mean, picking up on something you just said there, the the concept, this black
Joanne Lockwood: box thinking that the Matthew Syed, book and quote
Joanne Lockwood: that where you empower your people. You you you
Joanne Lockwood: put the decision making closer to the point of
Joanne Lockwood: contact rather than having to refer back. You get better outcomes as the
Joanne Lockwood: airlines found. And as we still see the
Joanne Lockwood: challenge in organizations such as the NHS, where they have this very
Joanne Lockwood: much command and control structure, Everyone is ass covering. Everyone's
Joanne Lockwood: worried about litigation. Everyone's worried about making mistakes. Nobody's prepared to
Joanne Lockwood: be open. Okay. I'm generalizing their apology to anyone from the NHS.
Joanne Lockwood: Let's feel us that way. But from an outsider's perspective, we we do end up
Joanne Lockwood: couching a lot of this
Joanne Lockwood: based in in the protection of of
Joanne Lockwood: stopping people failing, if you like. Whereas and I think you you I picked
Joanne Lockwood: up what you said earlier. It's about failing quickly, learning. Okay.
Joanne Lockwood: If you've got your if you've got your fingers deep into someone's brain, you don't
Joanne Lockwood: want to fail quickly there. But if you're doing other tasks, you've got to
Joanne Lockwood: learn and and I've had this discussion with people in the past where I
Joanne Lockwood: said we've got to fail quickly. And and all these
Joanne Lockwood: NLP practitioners start giving me all this rubbish about. It's not about failing. It's about
Joanne Lockwood: learning. I said, no. You learn through failure. You learn through making
Joanne Lockwood: mistakes. You learn through Absolutely. Trying. And
Joanne Lockwood: we could you can change the language, you can put all this soft stuff in
Joanne Lockwood: there. No one's no one's a loser. Everyone's a winner in their own
Joanne Lockwood: right. But really, what you got to do is you got to learn that you
Joanne Lockwood: don't always succeed, and learn how to deal with that. And learn from
Joanne Lockwood: that. I think what's happened
Marcus Cauchi: is we've become afraid, to have
Marcus Cauchi: conflict. And
Marcus Cauchi: we're, we're afraid of all conflict. Whereas constructive
Marcus Cauchi: conflict is fantastically useful. We
Marcus Cauchi: tread on eggshells. I've done a series of conversations,
Marcus Cauchi: around, d and I. And what's
Marcus Cauchi: really interested me is when you have a grown up conversation with people who
Marcus Cauchi: are wildly different, I I've spoken to you. I've
Marcus Cauchi: spoken to Ricky Arundel. I've, had,
Marcus Cauchi: Dave McQueen on. I've had Rod Jefferson on,
Marcus Cauchi: and, you know, a variety of people who
Marcus Cauchi: have a very different perspective to me. What I'm looking
Marcus Cauchi: for is the common ground. And this is where I
Marcus Cauchi: think people misunderstand the concept of win
Marcus Cauchi: win. Win win is difficult
Marcus Cauchi: because it's about finding a win for everybody
Marcus Cauchi: without compromise. And the problem is that win win is
Marcus Cauchi: often about capitulation. We give stuff away in the hope
Marcus Cauchi: that they may give us the business or whatever. It's
Marcus Cauchi: bloody hard work. Leadership management are
Marcus Cauchi: bloody hard work. They require you, to put
Marcus Cauchi: yourself in harm's way, to be vulnerable. And the
Marcus Cauchi: root cause the the root origin of the word vulnerable comes from
Marcus Cauchi: the Latin will never able to. And it means to put yourself in
Marcus Cauchi: a position where you may get wounded or hurt and do it anyway.
Marcus Cauchi: It's an act of courage. It's also
Marcus Cauchi: requires you to come with an open mind. And this is where
Marcus Cauchi: there is a massive difference between the majority who
Marcus Cauchi: operate playing a finite game, where the objective
Marcus Cauchi: is to get to the end of the game, having won
Marcus Cauchi: or not lost. And that's taking a bigger piece of a
Marcus Cauchi: shrinking pie. And I see this all the time and it drives
Marcus Cauchi: scarcity, mindset. It's
Marcus Cauchi: very self, selfish. It means that
Marcus Cauchi: you become very protective. You're a detractor. You're cynical.
Marcus Cauchi: You snipe. You're focused on keeping what you've
Marcus Cauchi: got. It creates mistrust.
Marcus Cauchi: Whereas an infinite game player, their objective is to keep the
Marcus Cauchi: game going and make the pie bigger. So everyone can
Marcus Cauchi: have a bigger slice. It means that you need to learn how
Marcus Cauchi: to accept others for who they are without judgment.
Marcus Cauchi: It means that you have to, embrace the difference.
Marcus Cauchi: I did, a really interesting interview with a lady called
Marcus Cauchi: Cora John, Warren, who, heads up
Marcus Cauchi: the sales team for, a company called Rare Recruitment,
Marcus Cauchi: and they place black candidates in law
Marcus Cauchi: firms, hedge funds, accountancy firms, and
Marcus Cauchi: management consultancies. And the frustration
Marcus Cauchi: of placing these brilliant minds in places where they cannot
Marcus Cauchi: fit in, and they, they end up leaving. So you've
Marcus Cauchi: spent a fortune ticking a box being woke.
Marcus Cauchi: Diversity is not about, ticking a
Marcus Cauchi: box. Diversity is about pooling incredible talent
Marcus Cauchi: and having different perspectives, different races,
Marcus Cauchi: genders, sexual orientations, different religions,
Marcus Cauchi: politics, socioeconomic backgrounds so that you can
Marcus Cauchi: come up with a much better solution. And, my
Marcus Cauchi: experience has been fueled over the last 2 years,
Marcus Cauchi: by running my own podcast. I think we're up to a episode 330.
Marcus Cauchi: I've had access to 4 and a half 1000 years
Marcus Cauchi: of collective experience on that podcast. Now
Marcus Cauchi: I cannot even begin to tell you how that
Marcus Cauchi: has shifted my ability to conceive of new solutions.
Marcus Cauchi: That 2 years ago, when I first started it, there wasn't a hope in
Marcus Cauchi: hell. I I knock out 2 to 3 episodes a week because it's
Marcus Cauchi: become an addiction. You know, the the learning that I
Marcus Cauchi: get and the fact that my thinking has been challenged so consistently,
Marcus Cauchi: and we fight and we disagree, who cares? I don't mind fighting.
Marcus Cauchi: I don't mind being wrong. You've got to leave your ego at the door
Marcus Cauchi: and you've got to stop your attachment. 1 of my mentors,
Marcus Cauchi: Mark Galston, who wrote what the, a book that if you're part of
Marcus Cauchi: the species, you have to read it. It's called just listen
Marcus Cauchi: by Mark Galston. And he's become a mentor of mine, a good
Marcus Cauchi: friend. And he's come up with a wonderful phrase that he taught me, which
Marcus Cauchi: was let go or be dragged. The
Marcus Cauchi: Buddha said that attachment is the root to all
Marcus Cauchi: misery. You need to let go of your attachment.
Marcus Cauchi: If you don't, then it will end up grinding you
Marcus Cauchi: down. You will start judging others. There
Marcus Cauchi: is a fabulous model that describes every broken, dysfunctional,
Marcus Cauchi: screwed up relationship you can or will ever have on 3 points of a
Marcus Cauchi: triangle. It's called the drama triangle. And if you imagine an
Marcus Cauchi: equilateral triangle on its sharp point, and at the
Marcus Cauchi: bottom, you have the victim voice, top left, the
Marcus Cauchi: persecutor, and top right, the, the rescuer.
Marcus Cauchi: The victim's voice sounds like it's so unfair.
Marcus Cauchi: Why me? It's always happens. And their favorite byline
Marcus Cauchi: is save me, help me.
Marcus Cauchi: Okay. The persecutor comes with a jabby index
Marcus Cauchi: phone, pronoun, sorry. Jabby index finger and the pronoun
Marcus Cauchi: you in capital letters, shone up in lights with
Marcus Cauchi: Joanne exclamation mark at the end. You piece of shit.
Marcus Cauchi: You always. You never. You're such a. And it diminishes you
Marcus Cauchi: at an identity level who you are. And the most
Marcus Cauchi: divisive, interestingly enough, is the rescuer.
Marcus Cauchi: Rescuing is helping without boundaries or permission.
Marcus Cauchi: Rescuers tend to end up as micromanagers. They suffer from upward
Marcus Cauchi: delegation and create learned helplessness. Persecutors
Marcus Cauchi: drive out any form of entrepreneurialism, free thinking.
Marcus Cauchi: They, they eliminate risk taking because people don't put their head above the
Marcus Cauchi: parapet and victims love a pity party.
Marcus Cauchi: There's nothing they enjoy more than, sharing their wounds,
Marcus Cauchi: and comparing how bad their wounds are. Rescuers
Marcus Cauchi: also tend to be molly coddling and permissive and ego
Marcus Cauchi: thrives on drama. So anytime you hear anyone take
Marcus Cauchi: any 1 of those 3 positions, you've now got attachment
Marcus Cauchi: through the ego. Now my favorite philosopher, Bruce
Marcus Cauchi: Lee, was asked what's the best way to avoid a punch. And he said, be
Marcus Cauchi: somewhere else. It's bloody awesome advice. You
Marcus Cauchi: only have to move your head to the side that's somewhere else,
Marcus Cauchi: but be somewhere else. And that is the winner's triangle.
Marcus Cauchi: So instead of being a victim, you're vulnerable. Instead
Marcus Cauchi: of being a persecutor, you're assertive. And instead of
Marcus Cauchi: being a, a rescuer,
Marcus Cauchi: you're nurturing an empathic. Now this triangle
Marcus Cauchi: is on its flat base, so it's very stable.
Marcus Cauchi: The drama triangle is on its point, so it's very unstable.
Marcus Cauchi: And in fact what tends to happen in the drama triangle is
Marcus Cauchi: people just swap positions. It's so unfair.
Marcus Cauchi: You always do this. You're always picking on me. You
Marcus Cauchi: don't understand. I'm doing my best. Yeah. And
Marcus Cauchi: people, go around it. In fact, I'm not very proud of
Marcus Cauchi: this. I have to be honest, but it was a good object lesson. I remember
Marcus Cauchi: having a fight with my wife without involving her. So,
Marcus Cauchi: 1 Friday, she said to me, I'm gonna decorate the living room
Marcus Cauchi: tomorrow. And so I in my family, DIY stands
Marcus Cauchi: for don't involve yourself. So, I've
Marcus Cauchi: very smartly gave her a kiss, went to sleep. Now 11:36
Marcus Cauchi: the following day, having watched, the cookery
Marcus Cauchi: programs, I thought, Jo. I wonder if she wants help. So I went
Marcus Cauchi: downstairs and I said, sweetheart, do you want help?
Marcus Cauchi: And she said, only if you want to. Now in my
Marcus Cauchi: world, only if you want to meant get your
Marcus Cauchi: bucket and brushes and pull your weight. So I went to the garage, I
Marcus Cauchi: got my bucket and brushes and this cloud formed over my head,
Marcus Cauchi: Lightning, thunder, hail, and,
Marcus Cauchi: I can't believe she's roped me into bloody thing. I
Marcus Cauchi: hate I think DIY had a long
Marcus Cauchi: week. Anyway, went into the living room and started
Marcus Cauchi: tearing off little bits of wallpaper.
Marcus Cauchi: And after about 8 to 9 minutes, she just looked across and said, sweetheart, are
Marcus Cauchi: you okay? You don't really seem fully engaged in this activity.
Marcus Cauchi: And I said, well, you know, straight into victim, you know, I've
Marcus Cauchi: had a hard week. And I said, well, you know, I, I know you had
Marcus Cauchi: a hard week. I haven't seen you at all. And I
Marcus Cauchi: thought it'd be nice to do something together. Now I managed to have
Marcus Cauchi: an entire fight with my wife without her
Marcus Cauchi: even being involved. That's how stupid we are as a species.
Marcus Cauchi: So I look for that stuff. It's
Marcus Cauchi: everywhere. You look at the things that we, we consider to
Marcus Cauchi: be entertainment, dramas, soap operas,
Marcus Cauchi: reality TV, the news. The news is all about
Marcus Cauchi: watching other people's misery. So we can say, thank God that's not me or
Marcus Cauchi: mine. That is very
Joanne Lockwood: true. And I've had conversation with journalists and publishers and editors,
Joanne Lockwood: And there has to be a human tragedy in
Joanne Lockwood: there somewhere for it to be newsworthy. Person gets up in the
Joanne Lockwood: morning, has a great day, comes home, has dinner, goes to bed
Joanne Lockwood: is not newsworthy, which is the majority of what we do. People want to be
Joanne Lockwood: taken out of that mundane reality
Joanne Lockwood: and shocked and all into something else on there. And that's what sells.
Marcus Cauchi: There there's a, theory in
Marcus Cauchi: transactional analysis called okay. Not okay. And
Marcus Cauchi: the basic premise around the human condition is this, for
Marcus Cauchi: me to feel okay, I need to find someone more not
Marcus Cauchi: okay than me. And just think about
Marcus Cauchi: how divisive that is if we're both,
Marcus Cauchi: okay, we can get stuff done. So again, a lot of the
Marcus Cauchi: work that I do is about creating, finding the common
Marcus Cauchi: ground, finding what we both want and then
Marcus Cauchi: working on collaborating. And sometimes we have
Marcus Cauchi: to make compromises here or there, but by and large, if
Marcus Cauchi: we bother to listen and listening is the transfer of meaning,
Marcus Cauchi: if we show up with the right intent, we
Marcus Cauchi: can do some amazing things. As a species, we
Marcus Cauchi: have accomplished enormous things, but the reality is
Marcus Cauchi: that's probably 0.0003 percent of
Marcus Cauchi: our population throughout the entire history of humanity has made those
Marcus Cauchi: fabulous strides. But I love it
Marcus Cauchi: when you get teams of what appear to be quite average
Marcus Cauchi: people and you give them trust. You
Marcus Cauchi: empower them, you, ensure that they have a
Marcus Cauchi: voice, and you set them on a problem.
Marcus Cauchi: And the leader only intervenes
Marcus Cauchi: when they are truly stuck. And then they give the
Marcus Cauchi: pen back the moment they have enough information to carry on on their
Marcus Cauchi: own. And there is a wonderful book called multipliers
Marcus Cauchi: by Liz Wiseman. Again, a must must read.
Marcus Cauchi: If you haven't read that yet and you're in management or
Marcus Cauchi: it is a must along with just listen. I
Marcus Cauchi: mean, the the fact that so few people,
Marcus Cauchi: have learned to love learning is
Marcus Cauchi: a damning indictment of our school system. I
Marcus Cauchi: still remember I I'm going back to when I was 15, there was doctor.
Marcus Cauchi: McLaughlin, and it was our general studies Jo
Marcus Cauchi: level, which is dating me badly.
Marcus Cauchi: And we had to do a summit. It was assault. There was assault
Marcus Cauchi: negotiations of a nuclear disarmament. And we
Marcus Cauchi: played the Russians and the Americans and all of this kind of stuff. I still
Marcus Cauchi: remember that class with incredible vivid joy,
Marcus Cauchi: because we were given free reign to think for ourselves, to
Marcus Cauchi: feed off 1 another's ideas, and to come up
Marcus Cauchi: with solutions. And, actually, we came up with some pretty decent ones,
Marcus Cauchi: you know, for 15 year olds, with our limited scope,
Marcus Cauchi: because what we were looking for there was the common ground.
Marcus Cauchi: We weren't turning up, defending our empire or,
Marcus Cauchi: defending our dogma. And, you know,
Marcus Cauchi: I, I think far, far too little attention
Marcus Cauchi: is focused on, diversity, equity and inclusion,
Marcus Cauchi: Not a fan of equality. I am a fan of equity. It needs to
Marcus Cauchi: be fair. The equality piece, I think, is a distraction.
Marcus Cauchi: What I think is really important is that we,
Marcus Cauchi: draw the best out of people
Marcus Cauchi: discretionary effort.
Joanne Lockwood: You think it's a distraction. Because I hear this all the time where
Joanne Lockwood: people say, oh, it's equity. It's not equality. Is this is this
Joanne Lockwood: a distraction that we we end up people just trying to be clever?
Joanne Lockwood: You could you could say equality is around giving people
Joanne Lockwood: equity as well. Or are we just or people just trying to be clever by
Joanne Lockwood: going, actually, no, it's not equality, it's equity we need, or do you think there
Joanne Lockwood: is a real distinction? I think there is a real distinction.
Marcus Cauchi: I don't think the world is equal. I don't think the world is fair, but
Marcus Cauchi: we can make it fairer. There there is a massive
Marcus Cauchi: disparity in wealth, power, education,
Marcus Cauchi: and so on. And maybe I'm miss misunderstanding
Marcus Cauchi: the interpretation of the meaning. But I I
Marcus Cauchi: really, believe that what we should be doing is creating a
Marcus Cauchi: fair environment where, we have a chance to play to
Marcus Cauchi: our greatest strengths, and we work with people whose strengths
Marcus Cauchi: make our weaknesses irrelevant. That
Marcus Cauchi: is a fabulous kind of environment. I I've set up,
Marcus Cauchi: a global community, called Salesforce for good,
Marcus Cauchi: with a view to collecting the most difficult problems,
Marcus Cauchi: asking the gnarliest shittiest questions that everyone is avoiding,
Marcus Cauchi: and coming up with solutions and making those solutions freely
Marcus Cauchi: available for any member of the community forever.
Marcus Cauchi: And they have equal access to that. And how they choose to
Marcus Cauchi: implement it is up to them, but there won't be
Marcus Cauchi: equality. There'll be differences in their ability to implement,
Marcus Cauchi: in their thought process, in their
Marcus Cauchi: willingness to submit, to,
Marcus Cauchi: giving up control. And some people
Marcus Cauchi: will turn up and just steal it because they can. And I'm cool with
Marcus Cauchi: that because God knows they need to improve their
Marcus Cauchi: chance. And to succeed. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I agree. And I just sometimes get caught up
Joanne Lockwood: or frustrated with the deck chair on the Titanic Brigade,
Joanne Lockwood: where we start off by saying, is it DNI? Is it EDNI?
Joanne Lockwood: Is it Debbie? Is it Equity or is it Equality?
Joanne Lockwood: We spend a lot of time to decide
Joanne Lockwood: that diversity, equity or equality, belonging and inclusion.
Joanne Lockwood: So people are all trying to cram these acronyms in. And
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes I think, well, we're just rearranging the deck chairs here. We're not
Joanne Lockwood: really tackling the issues. We're trying to work out what my
Joanne Lockwood: title is, what my job is, and it's very inward and
Joanne Lockwood: and we're not actually going out and solving the problem. We're trying to
Joanne Lockwood: define our own place in the world by being a a culture officer or
Joanne Lockwood: DNI officer or whatever we wanna call ourselves?
Marcus Cauchi: I I I've not had a lot of exposure to, those
Marcus Cauchi: sorts of role functions. But what what I am
Marcus Cauchi: conscious of is as over the last 30 years,
Marcus Cauchi: the political narrative has been very cleverly and very
Marcus Cauchi: subtly hijacked by the far right. And
Marcus Cauchi: you've got these large super packs run by the Koch brothers
Marcus Cauchi: and the DeVos' and, the European,
Marcus Cauchi: research group and whatever. And they've shifted
Marcus Cauchi: the narrative and the left
Marcus Cauchi: has taken the bait. And so they've created,
Marcus Cauchi: they've, they've pulled away from the middle ground.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm a diehard wishy washy
Marcus Cauchi: liberal. I I believe that everybody
Marcus Cauchi: has the right, to thrive. I have
Marcus Cauchi: the, a belief that, we have a responsibility
Marcus Cauchi: to contribute, not just take out.
Marcus Cauchi: I believe that we should help our fellow man. Now I
Marcus Cauchi: started out, interestingly enough, I've gone the other way. So I'm obviously following,
Marcus Cauchi: the the the wrong process based on the old
Marcus Cauchi: adage that, you know, if you're, you you
Marcus Cauchi: start out being a socialist and you, as you grow wiser, you
Marcus Cauchi: become more conservative. I don't believe that. I
Marcus Cauchi: think we should find ways to include as many
Marcus Cauchi: people as possible, and give people,
Marcus Cauchi: a forum and the conditions so that they can
Marcus Cauchi: thrive. They can do their best work, and
Marcus Cauchi: revel in the difference, but the right has shifted that
Marcus Cauchi: narrative. So, people like you,
Marcus Cauchi: people of color, people of,
Marcus Cauchi: different political views are seen as them
Marcus Cauchi: And there's other.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. Now, I have friends
Marcus Cauchi: who hold those views, but I welcome having them
Marcus Cauchi: in my network. And I don't exclude them
Marcus Cauchi: because I fundamentally believe that if I do, then I live in an echo
Marcus Cauchi: chamber equally. I've got friends who are rapidly the other end of the
Marcus Cauchi: spectrum. And unless I listened
Marcus Cauchi: to both sides, I'm never ever going
Marcus Cauchi: to actually get the full picture. And this is where,
Marcus Cauchi: I've seen our politics shift, our terrible,
Marcus Cauchi: phenomenally bad leadership, in politics,
Marcus Cauchi: has gone awry. And we now have,
Marcus Cauchi: a handful and it's not like this is new.
Marcus Cauchi: We have a handful of super rich, super powerful people
Marcus Cauchi: who really do control the narrative. They control,
Marcus Cauchi: the flow of cash and capital. And
Marcus Cauchi: that worries me seriously worries me,
Marcus Cauchi: because it's unforgiving, it's lacks compassion
Marcus Cauchi: and it's selfish. And the thing that made
Marcus Cauchi: us thrive as a species is our ability to
Marcus Cauchi: collaborate it's to pass on that wisdom,
Marcus Cauchi: through the generations. But I look at what's happened to
Marcus Cauchi: education. Yeah. My my children have just gone through,
Marcus Cauchi: secondary educational. They're just in the latter stages.
Marcus Cauchi: And what worries me is the lack of
Marcus Cauchi: scope, the lack of breadth. You know,
Marcus Cauchi: since the 19 eighties, education has moved
Marcus Cauchi: towards, back to, creating fodder
Marcus Cauchi: for the, the, the workforce.
Marcus Cauchi: And, so things like music,
Marcus Cauchi: art had been marginalized and diminished.
Marcus Cauchi: You know, the school that my daughters, were at,
Marcus Cauchi: they stopped running German. I mean, why would we stop
Marcus Cauchi: learning a language of our close neighbors? That's
Marcus Cauchi: horrific. Yeah. And it just baffles me that,
Marcus Cauchi: we, we hire in our own image often only
Marcus Cauchi: weaker. We,
Marcus Cauchi: you know, we might hire people of different color or gender
Marcus Cauchi: orientation, but if they all read PPE Oxford,
Marcus Cauchi: that's not a diverse team. If they all ended up
Marcus Cauchi: becoming LLBs and getting a law degree, that's not
Marcus Cauchi: diversity. And, I
Marcus Cauchi: I despair when I look at companies because I, I go into
Marcus Cauchi: companies and I, it's almost impossible for me not to find
Marcus Cauchi: 400% growth inside of 2 hours.
Marcus Cauchi: It's and it's really not that difficult when you stop them asking
Marcus Cauchi: stupid questions and you asked really basic
Marcus Cauchi: uncomfortable questions, then it opens
Marcus Cauchi: up a wealth of potential. Now these are companies that are struggling
Marcus Cauchi: to make 4% growth or 12% growth. And 2
Marcus Cauchi: hours in I've found 400% that you can find probably within 7 months,
Marcus Cauchi: But then they don't believe it because they're still holding the
Marcus Cauchi: horses. It's that attachment. And that's So how can we
Joanne Lockwood: create a culture where the
Joanne Lockwood: center ground conversations are not dismissed
Joanne Lockwood: as woke, or politically correct.
Joanne Lockwood: We're allowing people to have their own identity. Because at the moment, we're
Joanne Lockwood: pushing people to the edges, aren't we? As you say, the far left, the far
Joanne Lockwood: right, whatever that may mean, the extremist views. The
Joanne Lockwood: Brexit remain was a classic debate. There was no way anyone could have a
Joanne Lockwood: discussion around the middle ground, the facts that
Joanne Lockwood: was erased. You're either for or you're against.
Joanne Lockwood: And we were virgin on that with vaccinations
Joanne Lockwood: and mask wearing, where you could see that polarization occurring.
Joanne Lockwood: But fortunately, there's enough center Joanne discussions here where
Joanne Lockwood: information came out, facts came out, and people
Joanne Lockwood: were were allowed to have those conversations so that most
Joanne Lockwood: people move to the center rather than being really, really polarized on it. So how
Joanne Lockwood: do we create that business? You say most, but it's
Marcus Cauchi: only a small majority. You know, we, we still have 40%
Marcus Cauchi: of the population here and in the US around vaccinated and probably won't
Marcus Cauchi: be. And I was 25,
Joanne Lockwood: isn't it? Is it? Of adults. Okay. Well 80%
Joanne Lockwood: roughly of of of 1 and 70 have had 2,
Joanne Lockwood: haven't they? Right. Okay. But that's still a very
Marcus Cauchi: large, minority. I, I was speaking to,
Marcus Cauchi: 1 of my collaborators this morning and,
Marcus Cauchi: a really good friend of his was a very successful
Marcus Cauchi: entrepreneur. And he recently died from COVID
Marcus Cauchi: wouldn't have a vaccine. Wouldn't wear a mask, thought it was just a
Marcus Cauchi: massive hoax. And you know what, what
Marcus Cauchi: a waste, because we didn't
Marcus Cauchi: learn how to find the common ground. And I think
Marcus Cauchi: this is where we need to teach
Marcus Cauchi: at a management level and that's a leadership level, what
Marcus Cauchi: it really means to lead and what it really means to manage.
Marcus Cauchi: Most managers are glorified supervisors,
Marcus Cauchi: and they beat you with a stick. They beat you with a carrot,
Marcus Cauchi: and they're command and control freaks.
Marcus Cauchi: And with, Jonathan Farrington,
Marcus Cauchi: who's a very well respected player, in the
Marcus Cauchi: sales, arena, and he's the, editor for top sales
Marcus Cauchi: world magazine. He did a study for the
Marcus Cauchi: SRC, which is a research center.
Marcus Cauchi: And he found that 94% of managers were not fit
Marcus Cauchi: for purpose. Now, honestly, I'm
Marcus Cauchi: amazed the number is that low. However, let's give them the
Marcus Cauchi: benefit of the doubt. What most managers spend their
Marcus Cauchi: time is on the supervisory piece. What most
Marcus Cauchi: what managers should be doing. I have 5 things on the job description
Marcus Cauchi: for a great manager, hire the best people
Marcus Cauchi: That doesn't mean hire the best people within our own ethnic group or
Marcus Cauchi: within our, our own orientation. It means
Marcus Cauchi: hire the best people from the entire marketplace.
Marcus Cauchi: Get the best out of them. That means we need to understand
Marcus Cauchi: what their drivers, what their motivations are. We need to
Marcus Cauchi: on pre onboard them, onboard them, coach them, train
Marcus Cauchi: them. But coaching almost never happens. In the same study,
Marcus Cauchi: they identified that 76% of managers think they
Marcus Cauchi: give coaching, but only 17% of their people believe they receive
Marcus Cauchi: it. Now that's a huge disparity.
Joanne Lockwood: Is that because often managers think coaching is telling?
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. It's not telling. Because coaching is asking questions, isn't it? And people aren't
Joanne Lockwood: good at asking questions. They wanna share their view or their
Joanne Lockwood: knowledge. There there is definitely an element of that,
Marcus Cauchi: but very often they turn up and they become the hero closer.
Marcus Cauchi: Joe, let me show you how a real sell salesperson does it.
Marcus Cauchi: And they puff up their chest and they diminish the, the salesperson. They undermine
Marcus Cauchi: them. So hire the best people, get the best out
Marcus Cauchi: of them, make sure they have the tools and resources they need to do
Marcus Cauchi: their best work every day. That doesn't mean being seduced
Marcus Cauchi: by the technology spaghetti and shiny object syndrome,
Marcus Cauchi: buying lots of tech. What's the minimum level of technology you need to do
Marcus Cauchi: your best work? What are the systems and processes you need
Marcus Cauchi: to underpin what you do so that you're free to
Marcus Cauchi: do your best work and focus on the stuff that matters the most?
Marcus Cauchi: The 4th 1 is to act as, the point
Marcus Cauchi: guard. Your job is to protect them from acts
Marcus Cauchi: of idiocy from your senior leadership and yourself, and
Marcus Cauchi: help them clear roadblocks that they can't clear on their own.
Marcus Cauchi: And the 5th 5th is to give them a voice. It's to
Marcus Cauchi: manage inclusively. Now if every
Marcus Cauchi: manager's job description was started with those 5 points
Marcus Cauchi: and they were measured, compensated, and rewarded for
Marcus Cauchi: it, then the emphasis would be away from training
Marcus Cauchi: to learning. The emphasis would be away from
Marcus Cauchi: telling to coaching. You would allow people to
Marcus Cauchi: fail fast, fail early, fail often,
Marcus Cauchi: and you don't punish failure, which again, your
Marcus Cauchi: persecutor managers do. What you do is you
Marcus Cauchi: punish hiding it. You keep a failure
Marcus Cauchi: log. Everybody writes their failures in the failure log. And
Marcus Cauchi: on a regular basis, you work out, well, right, how do we fix that and
Marcus Cauchi: stop it from happening again? But that just doesn't happen
Marcus Cauchi: in most organizations. Why? Because of ego and attachment
Marcus Cauchi: holding on to what they thought made them successful. And you
Marcus Cauchi: only have to look at the demise of Blockbuster and Nokia,
Marcus Cauchi: and the rise of Or Asia Group. You name
Joanne Lockwood: it. Where wherever you look, it's the more often than not yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: We were driving, off to the Joust, at
Marcus Cauchi: Lockwood yesterday, and we drove past, a defunct
Marcus Cauchi: Debenham store. And my wife was bemoaning the fact that Debenhams
Marcus Cauchi: had, closed down. And I said
Marcus Cauchi: stupid leadership. Inevitably, it comes down to
Marcus Cauchi: crap leadership doing really stupid things and holding
Marcus Cauchi: the horses. That it's not like Debenhams couldn't have
Marcus Cauchi: survived. It didn't because their leaders were
Marcus Cauchi: myopic. Well, they made decisions 10,
Joanne Lockwood: 15, 20 years ago that put them in a vulnerable position in terms
Joanne Lockwood: of their overexposure. Some of the big organizations, they sold off all
Joanne Lockwood: their property assets and became tenants. So they had no capital. They had
Joanne Lockwood: no way of leveraging any assets of the business when they needed money.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think a short term shareholder
Joanne Lockwood: gain was not. Yeah. I but I'd even challenge that
Marcus Cauchi: because there are plenty of organizations that have no assets and no
Marcus Cauchi: property, but they still Joanne to thrive.
Marcus Cauchi: So again, yes, that was a contributory factor.
Marcus Cauchi: But how about actually listening to your customers? Marks and Spencer
Marcus Cauchi: is another great 1. If you go into Marks and Spencer's, their range
Marcus Cauchi: is always boring as hell. The only thing that's really propping that
Marcus Cauchi: business up is their food, because there are few people who are diehard
Marcus Cauchi: loyalists, but, as a shop,
Marcus Cauchi: III won't shop there because of a terrible experience. I had
Marcus Cauchi: picking up a Christmas Turkey, well, 18 years
Marcus Cauchi: ago. That stuck with me, because I just thought,
Marcus Cauchi: yeah, if you treat me like that, you can stuff it. There's no
Marcus Cauchi: way you're getting another penny out of me.
Joanne Lockwood: We're coming out of cope. So this is what we're we're middle of August. People
Joanne Lockwood: are starting to feel more relaxed about themselves.
Joanne Lockwood: And you see these conflicting messages, I watch on telly that we've got
Joanne Lockwood: government ministers, you've got property developers, all
Joanne Lockwood: spelling the the virtues of going back to the office and how it's essential.
Joanne Lockwood: We all go back to the office to create this great workforce,
Joanne Lockwood: which is going against, well, most of the people I speak
Joanne Lockwood: to in terms of the feeling that they they want this
Joanne Lockwood: agile workforce. They want to they want to have the choice of whether they
Joanne Lockwood: work in an office, at home, work flexibly.
Joanne Lockwood: But the command and control is dragging them
Joanne Lockwood: back. But the excuse I keep hearing is how
Joanne Lockwood: do we create environments where people can learn on the job? How
Joanne Lockwood: can we have these water cooler conversations
Joanne Lockwood: that people so valuably need in order to to
Joanne Lockwood: grow and come up with ideas? And I say, well,
Joanne Lockwood: yes, but there has to be more than 1 solution. The
Joanne Lockwood: solution cannot be go to the office. There has to be
Joanne Lockwood: another solution says, don't go to the office and do it differently.
Joanne Lockwood: So do you have any thoughts on that?
Marcus Cauchi: Do you have another hour? So, absolutely.
Marcus Cauchi: And again, the, the
Marcus Cauchi: solution that you come up with, the first 1 will
Marcus Cauchi: fail and there is no perfect answer. We are dealing with wicked
Marcus Cauchi: problems here. We're not dealing with linear problems. We're dealing with 3
Marcus Cauchi: 3, 4 dimensional problems, that are complex.
Marcus Cauchi: And the backlash on this is that, I think it was a Gartner
Marcus Cauchi: study said 46% of employees
Marcus Cauchi: in the United States are considering a job change this year.
Marcus Cauchi: Now my mother keeps
Marcus Cauchi: phoning during the most inoperative.
Marcus Cauchi: The, the problem that we have is that,
Marcus Cauchi: so many, organizations are looking to go
Marcus Cauchi: back to what they want, what they had before, at
Marcus Cauchi: a leadership level, but their employees don't want it. In fact, there was a
Marcus Cauchi: and a study in 2020 that said something
Marcus Cauchi: like 97% of employees want
Marcus Cauchi: some form of balance between working from home and working in the
Marcus Cauchi: office. And, as a result,
Marcus Cauchi: there was another survey that came out that said something like 76%
Marcus Cauchi: of CFOs were, rebalancing their
Marcus Cauchi: budgets, in order to facilitate that. And we
Marcus Cauchi: don't need to go back. The, the organizations
Marcus Cauchi: that insist on people going back, I think will suffer from
Marcus Cauchi: a massive talent drain. And when people leave an
Marcus Cauchi: organization, knowledge goes out and that's going to be
Marcus Cauchi: a massive problem for them at which they have not factored in.
Marcus Cauchi: Jo, yes, I think there is a solution, which is to find a
Marcus Cauchi: blended solution that allows people to work collaboratively.
Marcus Cauchi: And the technology is now out there. There's a wonderful man,
Marcus Cauchi: professor Eddie Obeng,
Marcus Cauchi: excuse me, who runs a company called,
Marcus Cauchi: or, Pentacle, business school. And
Marcus Cauchi: he's got a platform called cube, QUBE,
Marcus Cauchi: which allows people to work collaboratively
Marcus Cauchi: at the same time remotely. And he's
Marcus Cauchi: got a 96% success rate of
Marcus Cauchi: driving transformation and change programs to succeed in the
Marcus Cauchi: intended outcome. Now this kind of technology has
Marcus Cauchi: been out there actually for quite a while, but because we've been command and
Marcus Cauchi: control, office based, it's a struggle.
Marcus Cauchi: Done a lot work in the NHS, which again is notoriously
Marcus Cauchi: difficult, to work in, but they're making
Marcus Cauchi: enormous strides. And, again,
Marcus Cauchi: I think we need to really rethink
Marcus Cauchi: the questions that we ask. What is the desired outcome?
Marcus Cauchi: What are we trying to achieve in the end?
Marcus Cauchi: And what is our common purpose? What are the things
Marcus Cauchi: that we share and how can we facilitate that?
Marcus Cauchi: And that's not really being thought about by a lot of leadership because
Marcus Cauchi: they are fixated on how do we get back to the nice stable,
Marcus Cauchi: environment that we knew, know and love that we grew up in.
Marcus Cauchi: But the status quo is your biggest competitor.
Marcus Cauchi: In sales, on average, 60% of buying cycles
Marcus Cauchi: end up with do nothing. That's really your biggest
Marcus Cauchi: competitor. Internally, the status quo I see as
Marcus Cauchi: a toxic, dangerous, thing. Now the
Marcus Cauchi: problem is people believe that human beings don't like change.
Marcus Cauchi: Actually, what they hate is uncertainty.
Marcus Cauchi: So what can we do to find ways to give them certainty,
Marcus Cauchi: to give them clarity, focus, direction, help them
Marcus Cauchi: understand their place, within the, the,
Marcus Cauchi: system and what contribution they can make.
Marcus Cauchi: But how many when was the last time you heard of anyone sat down
Marcus Cauchi: with their manager talking about their career path?
Marcus Cauchi: So I look at, what, 1 of the books I'm writing
Marcus Cauchi: this year is what the sales management apprenticeship, because
Marcus Cauchi: your average sales manager gets tapped on the shoulder and told
Marcus Cauchi: Jo, we've just 5 year idiot boss. You're now the idiot boss.
Marcus Cauchi: Congratulations. And that's your runway. So you don't
Marcus Cauchi: learn how to do the job. They're very different
Marcus Cauchi: jobs. You know, being an individual contributor, I I
Marcus Cauchi: question that as well. Because I think you need to be a collaborative
Marcus Cauchi: contributor to be really powerful and, to
Marcus Cauchi: excel. But to be an individual
Marcus Cauchi: contributor, you gotta focus on, you know, just doing your stuff.
Marcus Cauchi: But to be a manager, you'll you have to have your heart sing by
Marcus Cauchi: helping other people meet their fullest potential. You have
Marcus Cauchi: to love watching other people make more money than you be more successful than
Marcus Cauchi: you, get the accolades, take the credit,
Marcus Cauchi: but almost none of that happens in a traditional operation,
Marcus Cauchi: whether it's commercial or otherwise. I remember years
Marcus Cauchi: back, my brother worked for the Red Cross, and that was
Marcus Cauchi: essentially fueled by a bunch of egos of trustees.
Marcus Cauchi: It it had bugger all to do with the, the recipients. It was all
Marcus Cauchi: about whether someone could get a knighthood, or whether they could get
Marcus Cauchi: invited to a particular garden party. It's crazy
Marcus Cauchi: angers me that, ego, again, it
Marcus Cauchi: keeps coming back to these simple things. So I think what we need to be
Marcus Cauchi: is really much more, aware of,
Marcus Cauchi: who turns up the language patterns
Marcus Cauchi: they use, the history that they come from. We've got to
Marcus Cauchi: invest more in the recruitment process so that we,
Marcus Cauchi: instill in people, about who we are and why
Marcus Cauchi: we do what we do. There, there is a phenomenally
Marcus Cauchi: interesting company, called,
Marcus Cauchi: AKC global. And,
Marcus Cauchi: these guys, work on,
Marcus Cauchi: truly wicked, difficult problems.
Marcus Cauchi: And, what what's really interesting
Marcus Cauchi: is, how they do things
Marcus Cauchi: in their manifesto, we guard the gates preferring to hire
Marcus Cauchi: from those we've gotten to know or get to know before hiring. We're
Marcus Cauchi: constantly teaching each other and learning because knowledge
Marcus Cauchi: builds insights and options. We're not fans of hierarchy
Marcus Cauchi: or titles because age or status doesn't guarantee wisdom or
Marcus Cauchi: creativity. We do incredible work by giving smart,
Marcus Cauchi: talented, and kind people kind people incredible
Marcus Cauchi: freedom and responsibilities. We put our values into practice
Marcus Cauchi: by using them to decide who leads, is rewarded, and is let
Marcus Cauchi: go. And, what's really interesting is these
Marcus Cauchi: guys have been solving global problems with the likes of the
Marcus Cauchi: UN, in the Balkans, in, Rwanda,
Marcus Cauchi: in, Afghanistan, and trying to
Marcus Cauchi: help other people solve problems.
Marcus Cauchi: Nothing is worth doing. That's worth doing is accomplished alone.
Marcus Cauchi: Solutions have to be a vote, not imposed. Our work must build
Marcus Cauchi: social value. For us, there is only the bottom up.
Marcus Cauchi: Name and treat the causes, not the symptoms. Someone else
Marcus Cauchi: can handle the tame stuff. We do good work and then move on.
Marcus Cauchi: And with that kind of philosophy, I absolutely get
Marcus Cauchi: why it's an exciting place to work. I, you know, if I wasn't
Marcus Cauchi: doing what I was doing, I'd be applying in an instant.
Joanne Lockwood: Well, absolutely fascinating conversation with
Joanne Lockwood: you. I don't think I've spoken so little in any of the
Joanne Lockwood: podcasts because you've been absolutely enthralling to listen to.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, I came up with the title at the beginning, stretching imaginations
Joanne Lockwood: to achieve what's possible. And I think you
Joanne Lockwood: have certainly stretched my imagination over the last hour.
Joanne Lockwood: And I'm gonna take away a few things here. So let letting go of the
Joanne Lockwood: horses, you know, we have we're prisoners to our own belief
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes and we gotta let go and not believe that the
Joanne Lockwood: way we've always done it is gonna be the way we should always do it
Joanne Lockwood: And re reframe, we adjust our thinking to come up with new solutions.
Joanne Lockwood: And the drama triangle. I love the drama triangle. Well, I don't love it.
Joanne Lockwood: III love the concept, so I'm going to do some
Joanne Lockwood: research on that and because, yeah, I'm very conscious about my own
Joanne Lockwood: use of the word hue and the pointy finger. And
Joanne Lockwood: whenever I feel myself doing it, I I immediately turn the finger around and talk
Joanne Lockwood: about I. And I think sometimes when you're a minority, it's
Joanne Lockwood: very easy to fall into that. The
Marcus Cauchi: important takeaway from that though, Joe, is the winner's triangle. Yeah. The
Marcus Cauchi: winner's triangle means you never get sucked into the fight. People
Marcus Cauchi: cannot play those psychological games with you when you operate from the
Marcus Cauchi: winner's triangle. Yeah. And it's so
Joanne Lockwood: we're so ingrained into the drama triangle, I think, as a
Joanne Lockwood: society, Because there are so many people who are who
Joanne Lockwood: want to be saved. There's the people who want to save the
Joanne Lockwood: victim, then the drama, and then the the pointy finger
Joanne Lockwood: brigade. So I see it all the time, and you're right. It's stepping out of
Joanne Lockwood: that. Do you want a really good action control?
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. A really, a really fabulous exercise to
Marcus Cauchi: raise awareness of your use of the drama triangle.
Marcus Cauchi: There is a Buddhist mantra for happiness, which is never complain
Marcus Cauchi: about anything even to myself. And that means even in thought. So
Marcus Cauchi: you take an index card and you write down the Buddhist mantra for happiness on
Marcus Cauchi: the back, and then you divide the other side into 7 columns.
Marcus Cauchi: And whatever day you started on, that's the first column. And every
Marcus Cauchi: time you whine, moan, bitch, complain, judge,
Marcus Cauchi: grumble. Yeah. Or,
Marcus Cauchi: you find yourself being sucked into, the
Marcus Cauchi: pointy finger, or the victim or anything, you
Marcus Cauchi: just mark a tally. Now the first day I did this was
Marcus Cauchi: a Wednesday and I got 29 points. The second
Marcus Cauchi: day I've got 9 because my awareness level started
Marcus Cauchi: getting heightened and I caught myself before I went down that bad
Marcus Cauchi: route. The 3rd day, Friday, I got
Marcus Cauchi: 3 and I went home and my
Marcus Cauchi: wife and kids both said all said to me, are you okay?
Marcus Cauchi: You know, something seems wrong. So then I grumbled and I had a 4th,
Marcus Cauchi: the next day, 17, the next day, 22, the next
Marcus Cauchi: 5 days, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3. Yeah. The next
Marcus Cauchi: day, 31, the next day, 28.
Marcus Cauchi: Yeah. And I was at home on Saturday and Sunday with the people I meant
Marcus Cauchi: to love. But my level of attachment there is significantly
Marcus Cauchi: higher At work, I could let go. And you do this for about
Marcus Cauchi: 6 or 8 weeks, and you just raise your awareness
Marcus Cauchi: level of when you get sucked into that drama triangle. It's
Marcus Cauchi: incredibly potent. It is literally life changing.
Joanne Lockwood: Because I noticed when I looked at your the bio you filled in
Joanne Lockwood: for the show, you describe yourself as a a curmudgeonly old
Joanne Lockwood: man who holds up the ugly mirror. And the definition
Joanne Lockwood: of curmudgeonly is a bad tempered negative person.
Joanne Lockwood: So you're you're you're using that in a different
Joanne Lockwood: way now. You're using that to empower and own
Joanne Lockwood: that. Yeah.
Marcus Cauchi: III hold the ugly mirror up to myself.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm very tough on myself. And
Marcus Cauchi: I, I stick, I have this huge attachment to all
Marcus Cauchi: the terrible things I've done as a parent, as a husband.
Marcus Cauchi: And it's you know, III have to hold myself
Marcus Cauchi: up, to a higher standard because 1 of the things that I've built
Marcus Cauchi: is this, biosafety model. And 1 of the core
Marcus Cauchi: pillars is rigorous authenticity. You
Marcus Cauchi: if you speak to me, I will always tell you the truth. There'll
Marcus Cauchi: be a little voice inside of me saying I'll go on gild the lily.
Marcus Cauchi: You know, but a pal of
Marcus Cauchi: mine told me, you can't polish a turd, but you can roll it in
Marcus Cauchi: glitter. It's still a turd. And there's an
Marcus Cauchi: awful lot of that around. And I don't believe that you can be partly rigorously
Marcus Cauchi: authentic. You either are or you're not, and there is no middle
Marcus Cauchi: ground on that. And so I have to hold up that ugly Mary, and I'll
Marcus Cauchi: always tell you the truth even when it terrifies me or it could do me
Marcus Cauchi: harm. That's fine.
Joanne Lockwood: Thank you so much. So, Marcus, tell us
Joanne Lockwood: how people can get hold of you. Where's the best place
Joanne Lockwood: to do that? Easiest ways are LinkedIn.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm 1 of 2 Marcus Cauchi. There's another, young
Marcus Cauchi: Marcus Cauchi over in Essex who's a recruiter. I'm the
Marcus Cauchi: grumpy looking old man, with my hands, head in my
Marcus Cauchi: hands, on my profile. You can email
Marcus Cauchi: me. My company email address is marcus@lasthyphenlast.com.
Marcus Cauchi: I'm the_inquista on Twitter, and
Marcus Cauchi: I have a couple of podcasts which you're welcome to, subscribe and listen
Marcus Cauchi: to. 1 is the InQuista podcast, and the other 1 is Skane Ups and
Marcus Cauchi: Hypergrowth, and the Salesforce for Good
Marcus Cauchi: community. Check that out on LinkedIn as well.
Joanne Lockwood: Brilliant. I'll put all of those details in the show notes. And for those
Joanne Lockwood: people who are not, Maltese, how do you
Joanne Lockwood: spell Cauchi?
Marcus Cauchi: CAUCHI. Thank you
Marcus Cauchi: for asking. C-A-U-C-H-I, pronounced Cauchi, as in 'cow' and 'key'.
Joanne Lockwood: Brilliant. I learned that today. Thank you. Well, it's
Joanne Lockwood: been absolutely awesome, and I'm sure all of our listeners
Joanne Lockwood: will take much inspiration from this. Jo my
Joanne Lockwood: last thing today is to thank you, the listener, for tuning
Joanne Lockwood: in, listening in. Please do subscribe to keep updated on
Joanne Lockwood: future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell your friends, tell your colleagues, share the link. I've got a number
Joanne Lockwood: of other exciting guests lined up that I'm sure you'll be inspired by
Joanne Lockwood: over the next few weeks months. And, of course, if you'd like to be a
Joanne Lockwood: guest, please let me know. And as usual, I'd welcome your thoughts, feedback,
Joanne Lockwood: suggestions on how I can improve future shows to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. So finally,
Joanne Lockwood: my name is Joanne Lockwood, and it's been an absolute pleasure to host this
Joanne Lockwood: podcast for you today. Catch you next time.
Marcus Cauchi: Bye.