Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Operations Room, a podcast for CEOs.

I am Brandon Bensinger joined by my lovely co as Bethany Iris.

How are things going?

Bethany Hey, I'm back to being lovely.

I always notice which way the intro is.

Things are okay.

I am not the Christmas spirit.

Do you have a Christmas tree up yet?

Yes, we have a Christmas tree.

So I'm allergic to actual Christmas trees.

So whatever pine trees or what have you.

So we can actually add them, which is a boon, to be honest, because then I have to deal with a buying one, be dealing with all the pine needles everywhere and so on.

So we have a fake tree, the same tree that goes up every year.

We actually just got our I don't know what you call it.

They give it like this massive bundle of all the crafts that the kids have done over the past three months.

So it is a huge batch of stuff.

We always wonder what to do with these things, right?

Like, this thing.

So you have to pass through it, you know, what are the golden nugget?

So you want to save and then the rest of it you have to obviously put through recycling.

But you have to gently put it through.

Are you to suddenly put it through and nobody can discover, but yet they will never remember it again.

So as long as you do it without getting caught, it's absolutely fine.

It just isn't feeling Christmasy here.

I don't quite know what I'm taking time off work, so I feel like I'm yeah, I'm just in this limbo of work is really, really, really busy.

And yet the sun came up at 730 in the morning.

It goes down before four.

My whole body wants to cuckoo.

And yet work is like the busiest period of the year.

I always find this really difficult and we still have about four deals to sign that are going to happen some time between now and the 31st, which again means that you can't entirely breathe out.

And they're big enterprise deals.

They have been in close plans since October with everybody saying we want to close before Christmas.

Everybody going 100%.

We're going to close before Christmas.

And then it just slips and then it just seems a little bit more.

And this little list, the 31st.

That's a lot of pressure.

Yeah.

And then something I want to talk to you about, Brandon, was our strategy days.

We've done strategy in October and we've done strategy in January.

And this year, maybe because I joined middle of September, we've ended up pushing the strategy date back to January again.

So not only was there board meetings, budget planning, end of year wrap up, I also spent a lot of yesterday thinking through our strategy day and format and pre reads and questions to cover for when we come back.

When do you do your strategy days and how do you do your strategy days or what way do you think works the best?

I would say that I feel like the December team week, I think to me is the right time generally to do the stuff because you want a time period where clearly there is time and space to reflect on what has happened.

I mean, I think this whole reflection on how is the year gone?

What does it look like?

How is it felt to us?

What results have we seen or not seen?

And the learning's taken away from that very clearly is kind of like a December mojo thing, I would say.

Your vibe in the stuffing, not a vibe you're going to get in January where it's like, go, go, go.

The second piece is the culture part of it, which is I always used to call this strategy day or strategy days or strategy week or whatever.

And at some point somebody was telling me like, Look, Brenton, every day is Strategy Day.

Every day you should be thinking in the back of your head around What are we doing?

And it puts a lot of pressure on the week itself as well to like somehow deliver some transformative new strategy or better strategy or whatever you want to call it, I guess.

So we ended up calling it Team week, and Team Week is reflective of the team itself, the reflection on the year and the team thinking about the year ahead of us.

It's interesting.

I like that.

I agree in the strategy is every day and also so the new way that we're meeting as an exact team is we meet twice a week.

And at first I was like, my God, that's a lot of meetings.

But actually it works really well because we have two maximum one hour meetings a week and I say maximum because sometimes we're done in 35 minutes and other times we take the full hour and the first meeting of the week, we do our AWB R so Weekly business review and so the we are has.

Forecast pipeline escudos cash collected, which is mostly like a help needed if somebody you know isn't.

We need to escalate that somebody is not paying, that they're ignoring us or whatever.

We have one of those the other week.

I don't know if I should be sharing this or not, but I'm not sharing names.

We have one of the other week.

We just wasn't paying, wasn't paying.

And there's escalated to me and I was prepared for this really tough conversation.

And I just said, so basically, let me explain how we see it anyway, okay, I guess we have to pay.

And then he paid.

It's like this conversation I've ever had.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that was amazing.

Sometimes you just have to ask.

I was like pushing back to junior people and I guess maybe just having a senior person do it.

I honestly have no idea.

Or we had to explained it well.

Explain the invoice in a different way.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Pretty much.

That was.

I was just like, This is what you're paid, this is what you need to pay.

And he went, okay, So we talked about like cash collection, monthly active users or I guess weekly active users of a couple of different products, that kind of stuff.

And so we, we run through it.

Sometimes there's a conversation, sometimes there's not much of a conversation at all.

So it can be anything from ten minutes to half an hour depending on if something's surfaced.

And then we bring up whatever other topics we need.

And then we have a second meeting on a Thursday where it is whatever topics we need to cover as a group.

But that will often, if there aren't any, just like base stuff, will just become discussions over a topic that somebody is thinking about.

And so we have like these kind of like micro strategy chats.

So we're working through and untangling something on a very regular basis, and that seems to be working well and not having it be as structured.

So generally I think you're on to something here because I found a similar strand eventually, and it took me a while to realize what was happening and why it was happening, but very similar thing, which is we had a structured leadership meeting which was 90 minutes, which eventually turned into a two hour block once a week that we would have a two hour block would be half kind of like our stuff.

So the key KPIs of the business, making sure that we're on that, tracking that and accountable to that and looking at the gaps, why they were happening and kind of assigning out kind of outcomes and next steps to solve issues.

And then the second half, that meeting was kind of a cross-functional problem that we were having where we had pre reads coming into those meetings to discuss a particular topic that was well set up or structured in the sense of here's the pre read, here's what the issue is, here's a bunch of the thoughts behind it.

Now collectively, let's get together and have a structured conversation as to how to get to know, cover a set of next steps that can put this problem to bed so we never see it again effectively.

So we would do this and it kind of worked and it was kind of okay.

And at some point I think the SEO founder kicked off a different thing almost in a way, like essentially getting together for coffee.

And it wasn't the entire leadership team, it was just the C-suite.

And at that point there was four of us having this coffee and completely unstructured, throwing out thoughts and having ideas.

And the power of that conversation ultimately, I think was better than our structured meeting in terms of the thoughts were having that were much more organic, much more creative, much more riffing.

I would say there's a different feel to having a discussion where you're kind of bouncing off each other, where it's not geared up as like this thing of like, okay, we have a pre read and it's a big conversation everyone's ready for.

I there's a bit of like defensive posturing and all that other stuff that comes with structured meetings ultimately for us and ultimately for the company.

That's where we passed it down to eventually, which is, okay, let's do our WB hours and let's have this coffee chat and open up to the rest of leadership as well.

I'll have this kind of like wider discussion or that that is more unstructured.

So I think eventually we found a router, a route to kind of what you're doing.

And what we've also done to have this slightly more structured conversations is we do a MVR once a month.

And how that works is we have a set of ready made slides or, you know, like areas that we look at.

It's like basically similar to what we share with the board.

So financial performance forecast, pipeline skills, actuals again, and then the kind of the equivalent you can see where my my spike is.

I like that's looking at where's the money and are we getting more money?

But then we have similar ones for for product and people in engineering and then we try and keep that to like maximum 30 slides so that it's really all that actually matters and it's pretty standard.

So because it's like I think people forget that it's creating slides is not only onerous on the person creating them, but it's onerous on the person who has to read them.

And so it's down to the person creating them to make sure that they're sharing the most important information rather than all the information.

And so it's actually hard to keep it limited to what we need.

People tend to sneak in a little bit more and then the feedback is it's gotten to getting too long and it's hurting my brain and then like strip stuff out again.

And then we have in certain areas where we're working through harder problems, bits of analysis.

And so anyhow, I read the whole deck ahead of time and then think about the themes, the topics we need to resolve and my analysis on it.

And so then the agenda basically changes every month.

We do like a very quick run through of how's everybody's what do we need to know about everybody's area?

And then we cover one, two, three topics in detail and I'll work through the data and what other people have said and the analysis that they've shared come up with a framing.

And then we work it through.

And so that's almost like we're dealing in a way, again, with some of the strategy stuff monthly.

And then for this monthly review, it's again with the leadership team and the slide creation of who's creating that is each the functional leaders doing their pieces and then passing that together or how does that happen?

So some of it is like a large chunk of it is.

And because it's the same stuff that we're sending to the board.

And then there'll be the functional leaders will have maybe a little bit extra.

That isn't stuff that goes to the board like monthly user active users is not something that the board is caring about.

I think that's a fantastic idea because you're doing two things quite usefully actually, which is every single month you're on a pathway to the quarters review with the board in very similar format.

So you are as a leadership team being accountable and tracking to the progression of the company in the same kind of progression that the board is going to want to see at the end of the quarter.

So by the time you get to the end of that quarter, you have to do nothing special at that point because you've been tracking this month to month up until that point, which is great.

The second bit of the strategic analysis on a monthly basis, there has to be some place, the organization where that occurs because it's not going to happen in your weekly sessions and it has to happen somewhere.

And then it becomes a question of do you do it monthly or do you do a quarterly?

In my previous company we did it more on a quarterly basis.

However, we also had another meeting that was happening, which is every cross-functional OKR team where leadership was involved in those OKR teams as well.

We would basically have the OKR teams come together and basically present their progress for the month.

So we had four cross-functional teams and therefore we had four kind of monthly reviews on our progress.

And maybe that's a slightly different thing that we're talking about, but it's another batch of meetings that are tracking the progress of the company.

In this case, it's on the what you define as the most important things in the business to progress on.

So I'm not sure what you make of that.

It's just really interesting.

This is how every business runs.

And I'm not even convinced that what we're doing is perfect.

You know, I don't think there is such a thing as perfect.

I mean, it sounds reasonable to me.

Basically, I haven't done it.

It comes down to the culture of the business.

And I suspect that what the meetings are and when they're held is less important than how effective the meetings are.

And it's almost like, how do you get to the point of efficacy rather than copying somebody else's schedule.

This is where the culture of the company and the particular trappings of the company comes in, because we had a very good, healthy culture around accountability for the doctors.

There was the teams that drove the process.

I would say, behind doing this.

Cross-functional monthly reviews are progress check ins.

And they put in a good, clear effort to ensure they could articulate that in terms of where the initiatives were at, where the results were at, what the month had looked like, what the next month ahead would look like.

And those sessions, from a efficacy standpoint, I thought were really super valuable and very, very useful.

Previously, I have spent a tremendous amount of time tracking activity, like agreeing actions and making sure people do actions and a high level accountability around action.

And what I've started doing this time around is not really focusing on the action at all.

It may be because it's the exact team and a lot of the doers are not in that meeting, but it's around surfacing areas where we need to have the hard conversations.

And it's basically the problem keeps arising because we don't make the decision or we don't have the conversation or we talk around something and then kind of feel like we have a resolution and because, okay, but if you look back and reflect, we have no resolution.

And what I'm really doing is focusing on let's resolve something or let's realize we can't resolve it because we need more information.

Let's go and find the information and then reopen.

The conversations have been very clear on whether or not.

We have resolution and that seems to be a real unlock way more than an action tracker.

I think sometimes when you have these conversations, various things happen in people's heads, right?

Where they're like, I kind of buy into this, but I kind of don't.

Or more often than I kind of buy into this, but I kind of don't care.

So therefore, in earnest, I'm not really going to try to solve this problem.

And what ends up happening is that that problem will come back into the leadership meeting in a mutated form at some point down the road.

And you're kind of looking at it again.

You're like, why is this happening?

This gets to the culture of the leadership team and the facilitator that's helping make it happen, which is sussing out at the end of that meeting probably the beginning, to be honest, which is like, how much do we care about this?

Like do we honestly, the people that we're talking like we all have a thousand things to do.

Is this an important problem that we should talk about now?

Is it urgent enough?

Is it pervasive enough?

And if it is, let's talk it through.

Let's come to an agreement on it and let's get it done.

Basically, that it's not.

Look at this again.

I think because we're all good communicators, it can feel like you've made a decision or you've kind of gone around and you've had a chat here and had a chat there and and you've had like a complete conversation and it feels like you've made a decision.

And then if you take a step back, you realize like no decision has been made.

We've all just aired our views and agreed with each other's views or disagreed with each other's views.

But there's not been something after that.

We've discussed around the topic.

I feel as though most of my career has been this experience.

Like it's not unique to peak where we can have this really robust conversation and actually nothing has been decided and somehow we haven't noticed it.

But it gets back to like the initially five steps in those meetings, right?

Once you've like mined for your disagreement, you've been able to air everything.

You've co-created a shared understanding of the problem and you're driving towards buy in.

And then the next step after that is like, I think, reflection back to the group saying, okay, here's what I think we've decided or what the outcome is.

Do we actually do we agree to that?

Like that second half of the meeting is probably the critical piece to to drive it to a conclusion.

I think previously in my career, it's kind of like a tension only like there's so much to it.

This is an obvious conversation.

We've resolved it done, whereas really we haven't resolved it at all.

And I'm focusing much more on that now.

All right.

We've got part two in our series, which is what are the gaps in the SEO toolkit?

We have a lovely returning guest, Stephanie Knowles, and she is the founder of the SEO roundtable and the former CEO of Mind Candy.

So this episode really is digging into the shadow side of the SEO strengths.

And Davinia had talked about four strengths of the SEO that are human archetypes.

And I wanted to go through each of the four with you.

So the first one that she'd spoken about was the caregiver SEO.

And this is a person that focuses on creating a supportive and nurturing environment within the organization.

And the weakness of their.

The shadow side is over protection and excessive leniency, avoiding tough decisions, trying to preserve harmony, becoming overly involved in day to day issues, preventing scalability and strategic focus.

So without weakness in play and for that kind of caregiving SEO, what would be some tips to that person to mitigate that weakness?

I think it's about four factors.

Taking and also the difference between being nice and being kind and looking at your behavior.

And so if you're somebody who does not like being disagreeable, disagree ability is another one of these psychological things.

And yet another one of these tests, so agreeable and disagreeable is like whether or not you mind being a bit of a contrarian or causing some discomfort within an organization.

And so if you are somebody who really does not like being disagreeable, really likes harmony, it is difficult to have those hard conversations and is easy to be a bit avoidant in those situations and easy to think about being nice and having probably been praised as a child about being nice.

And isn't that a strength of yours?

And nice particularly, I think for women.

You know, being nice is one of those things that we're supposed to be, but that is not the same as being kind.

And I think it's much more important to be kind than it is to be nice.

And so if you don't have the difficult conversations, if you don't hold people to account, if you don't give feedback so that they can do better, you end up enticing them to the point too, that you then have to fire them.

And it's a total surprise.

And actually the much kinder thing is to give people the ability to change along the way for the organization to develop along the way.

So number two, the Sage SEO.

So this is the strategist and the analyst leveraging data and knowledge drive operational efficiency and growth.

And the weakness of the sage SEO is analysis by paralysis and detachment.

Detachment in the sense of going through intellectual exercises and thinking through great strategies and ways to be effective in the business.

But when it comes to actually getting buy in from individuals and getting the heart and soul of business to move in a direction, there's that detachment piece where they're not quite not particularly strong at that.

I thought Sage could be part of me, but my idea of a sage was more like the wise man, because why not be gendered here?

Sitting on the mountaintop that everybody goes to for sage bits of advice.

And I feel as though I'm that one rather than the analysis paralysis.

And what I think my weakness is, if we use my definition of the sage is I'll have a certain amount of fixed mindset because it's like my wisdom and only my wisdom.

Rather than being flexible that there could be other wisdom.

And also because a lot of my self esteem is wrapped up in knowing things and being the one who has seen it before, it can be hard for me to step away from what I decide is the right thing.

And it's not just intellectually hard.

It's emotionally hard.

And so for me, that would be what it is, is like growth mindset has got me where I am and maintaining a growth mindset.

Even when you think that you are the wisest person is the challenge and the shadow side for me.

And then there's also maybe this is another part of the sage element is when you have another sage, join the exec team.

I get myself freaked out because I'm like, my role here is being.

I'm the sage.

I think it is interesting because part of me is like, we need more experience.

I love having you at New Voice Media.

We had loads of experience around the table.

I was at least experienced.

I was playing a different role.

I really valued everybody else's experience around the table.

But when I am the one with the most experience in the room and that has become my self worth, and then you have somebody else coming in who's like, No, I know more that one.

Like even just talking about it, I can feel the tension in my stomach of like, what's my role if this isn't my role anymore?

And so it's just the the physical response I'm having talking about it right now.

One, I'm feeling very vulnerable.

And two, it's clearly something I need to work through because my whole body is in flight mode over the idea of somebody taking my place.

Massive shadow side raising its head at the moment.

The third one is the hero solo.

So this is the action oriented, driving the organization toward ambitious goals by overcoming challenges and inspiring resilience.

That sounds totally amazing.

That's you bias for action.

So the weakness here of that one is overextension and burnout over committing to ambitious goals, leading to unrealistic expectations for themselves and their teams, taking on too much personally, undermining delegation and team empowerment that.

Is so 100% me that it's just feel like you're taking on too much, you know, burnout.

And I think there's also so there's a hero and then there's it's tied up with the fact that you're able to do a lot of things and so you end up taking on all these other roles.

I can remember that.

You know, that's another element.

Charlene talked about it.

Didn't she like the ability to be big and small and the glue that sticks it all together?

Yeah, this is 100% me.

And a lesson I have to learn over and over again is not to push the team too hard, not to make them cry out of exhaustion and burnout.

Because if I can do it, the whole team can do it.

Not to make my self burnout, which I think has been I'm not burnt out, but the theme of the last few episodes has been it's dark and cold and miserable and I don't want to do anymore.

So, you know, but I really like Rejoint for four months, so I don't refusing to use the word burnout here.

Again, if I'm being really vulnerable and open today on all of this is I have, instead of acknowledging the dark side, just decided to embrace that.

This is what I want to do.

And it's fun.

So tucking away the dark side into a little box.

Yeah, totally.

I'm just like, This is 100% how I want to live life.

I want to live life to the fullest.

There is no dark side.

Let's just go.

And so maybe another thing I need to explore and maybe open up that box.

And I think there's also there are definitely ways to be more balanced.

Like if I look at instead of the fact that I'm doing too much and might possibly be burnt out is within a business context driving the team too hard.

Or sometimes I'll have a vision and I'll share the vision and then people take me literally.

And then it sounds like an impossible thing to achieve and they don't really understand how to get started.

Whereas I'm like, No, no, no.

I can't even think of an example I wish I could, which would make it better.

But like, I don't mean we need a crystal palace, I just need a box with some windows and we'll get to the Crystal Palace.

But let's do the box with windows first.

And I was like, because sometimes I'll have a vision in mind and it just gets everybody tangled up.

And then they go in like, way over Architect What I'm talking about, as I've learned to try and break down the vision into very small, achievable steps.

But sometimes I don't do that.

And then the other one is because I have this ideal that we're working towards and I have quite a high standards, particularly for like slides and clarity of thought that often I demand 100% and forget the 8020 rule.

And so I am trying to introduce more of an 8020 rule for myself and everyone else of like, what is the 20% that's going to make the biggest difference and not do the 100% like and which is a big departure because I'm not even saying like, let's do 80%.

I'm saying let's do 20%, which is hard for me to get around because I want it to be perfect.

But actually it's very true.

So number four is the last one.

This is the magician.

Whoa!

This is the person that envisions and executes transformative strategies to make the company a leader in innovation.

So this kind of sounds like your what you just talked about.

Actually, I think a little bit.

Yeah.

I think Okay, so I've these two and these are my archetypes.

Yeah.

What's the shadow side on this one?

So the shadow side is idealism and lack of grounding way.

I just talked about that.

I like what my Crystal Palace said.

How were you going to get there?

Yeah, actually, I think that you're exactly right.

So let me let let me read the two details here, though, see if this resonates.

So overhauling systems or processes too frequently, causing disruption and confusion and neglecting routine operations or details that sustain the business.

I think we've talked about this before, this idea of there being three archetypes of the way people think.

This is come from a friend who worked at Bridgewater and this is why Bridgewater have structured their business.

There are operators who deal with the day to day and the firefighting and the turning of the handle.

And then you have the architects who build out.

The vision and the operational strategy, and they're thinking from six months to 18, two years out.

And then you have the strategists who are like two, three years to ten years out.

What's the big vision?

Where are we going?

And the chessboard that I can't even see.

And it's around creating a team that has all of those attributes.

And so I'm very much the architect, and I can be the perfect architect and forget about the day to day stuff.

So I make sure that I hire in people who love the day to day.

And then I make sure I partner with somebody who has that massive vision rather than trying to be all things at all times.

I'm never going to love grinding away on the same information over and over again.

So what?

Do we park it here and get on to our conversation with Stephanie Knowles for part two.

And the shadow side of our strengths.

The ones that tend to come up quite a lot are caregiver apps.

Sage The Wisdom Heroes.

So Sage caregiver hero, which I think is like the Challenger bravely and magician, which is the transforming one, which you can again you can understand because a lot of CEOs end up being change and transformation leaders.

So the magician who sort of does things as if by magic, often in the background, people don't see it and then things come to fruition.

We all have a shadow side, like a union, shadow side to ourselves.

And I watched Inside Out too, with one of my teenage sons, my younger teenage son, yesterday.

And the entire lesson was about accepting the entirety of who we are, the good with the bad, the shadow self with the light self.

I just love inside out like the first one.

The second one maybe wasn't as compelling a story, but it was an absolutely amazing lesson to learn and one that I think any teenager capable of doing that is amazing.

I think it's great that 45 to be able to embrace any of my dark side openly.

And so I just thought I'd be interested davinia to highlight areas that are like tend to be fundamental weaknesses of, of CEOs or the dark side to what we view as our strengths.

Because it's a cliche, but it's true that every strength comes with a weakness.

And I have a feeling that it relates a lot to servant leadership, which is difficult, isn't it?

Because servant leadership, in one way I feel like is a blessing and a curse, which is so if you are in service of others all the time, which CEOs generally tend to be what I find in upcoming CEOs when I'm coaching them particularly, is to use John Geary's phrase, there's something about teaching them to be propositional or inviting them to be propositional, which is that they sometimes struggle to have the confidence and ego sometimes because they're incredibly humble, usually personalities, to be really forthright and have a solid opinion, which I think can be enormously challenging.

When you look at some of these gaps, for example, the external spokesperson piece, but that's also sometimes at board level, as we were talking about last time.

And sometimes I think it can be because you're expected to be in service often, and there's something about how you then frame that in your own mind as to whether therefore you're allowed to have your own opinion about where the business is going, how it's being run, the strategy, all of these other things versus accepting what you're given in terms of I get given a strategy and then I have to execute against it.

I think about like the role of a c O and that relationship with a CEO versus a relationship with the rest of the business.

And how much is servant leadership for the rest of the business versus almost like a de facto servant leadership for the CEO?

And how do you have a challenging relationship with your CEO that's also effective?

I mean, maybe it's just my own thing, but I seem to be I'm better at being disagreeable, stating my position, having a proposition throughout the rest of the business.

And it's the relationship with the CEO that I can often find more challenging where I have either it's blatantly wrong and I will say something or it makes enough sense that I'll just go and execute and kind of like not be bothered to think I don't know what that archetype is.

The lazy archetype like that lazy thinking archetype.

Does that make sense?

Does that is that something you've ever dealt with?

100%?

And I think that this back to this sort of being propositional thing doesn't always have to be because you don't have the confidence.

It could also be because you're following what you have been instructed to do and to all intents purposes feels like it's not a hill you want to dial and say, off you go, until you realize actually in practice that that doesn't necessarily work the way that anyone had thought it would.

But, you know, that's what came into my head as well, the relationship with the CEO, because I also find that in lots of instances when I'm working with CEOs, when I'm working with CEOs, and back to sort of the first episode we ever did, this thing about relationship is huge, right?

As in when I'm doing chemistry work with CEOs who I want to work with that one of the first questions I ask is, how's the relationship with the CEO?

Let's talk about that for a bit, because generally speaking, if it's bad, it's just not going to work, right?

And also, then I question whether coaching was a good idea because it's like if we're going to just spend all of our time talking about your relationship with your family because it's dysfunctional, then I don't think this is a good idea.

That's not to say that all of these relationships are rosy, remembering that most of those relationships, quasi relationships, are on some form of spectrum.

I think more often than not, when you.

You hear about CEOs looking for CEOs, one of the first things they say is partner, including sparring partner.

Right.

So somebody I can bounce ideas off, somebody who can tell me when they think I've gone a bit sort of off piste somewhere.

And again, back to sort of the hero or the challenger.

How do you do that whilst having a good relationship with them?

And in a way that's more as I really like the phrase trusted advisor so that they see that you can in some ways sometimes give your opinion, sometimes to the coach and ask questions and be curious.

All of that then within that relationship, but not always agreeing with them.

And sometimes that's okay too is I don't necessarily agree with what, you know, the direction you're taking here.

Some say that I won't do it.

I'll do as I am bid, but I'm not entirely sold at this point.

We'll see.

So those are not my challenges.

My challenge is taking the time to have an opinion because I think there's just so much going on.

And also, I love change and I love doing things and I kind of like, what's the worst that could happen?

We can always back out.

So I'm like, That sounds like fun.

I'll go for it.

And I don't always have that circuit breaker of actually let me have a bit more of the five.

The analysts.

Let me think this through because I'm like, That's not fun.

Let's just go and I can, you know, like completely pivot on our product and sell something brand new that we know nothing about because, like, that sounds like really an interesting project.

And so for me, it's taking the time to actually decide whether or not it's a good idea and then being the sparring partner.

So I really only do that when it's like just hits me between the eyes.

That is like a really bad idea.

So, but anything short of a really bad idea, I'm game.

And I suppose it's one of those characteristics of buys for action, which is a good quality for the most part.

But I think to your point out of any I think this trusted advisor I think is absolutely spot on, which is you won't have a relationship with the co founder where there is inherent trust.

They lean on you for thoughts and you're in that position where they're whatever they're coming up with, they feel comfortable to bounce those ideas off of you and it gives you an opportunity at that point to provide thoughts back to them in kind of an innocuous way in terms of what your view is on that particular issue or maybe a broader set of issues or what have you.

But if you're in that space as the trusted advisor, that is a key and wonderful place to be.

And I think this archetype around the Sage, I think it dovetails directly into it, which is that sage quality very much is exactly this, which is you're the trusted advisor to the CEO or you're the trusted advisor to the leadership team or the trusted advisor across the business.

That to me is like a senior CMO that really is demonstrated to the organization.

This person that backstops everything in a very sensible, rational, helpful way.

So this thing around, lots of senior CEOs that I work with have done some form of coaching qualification and they're not necessarily going to go off and be coaches, lots of them.

They can stay as CEOs because that's what they love.

However, that is because it's a skill that they really want to employ in the business, not just with the people that work with them, but with the CEO as well.

So I think that's super interesting is how you then how you develop some of this skill set.

Bethany had a question for you because I have a feeling there's a shadow in here, which is I bump into this quite a lot with CEOs.

The shadow sometimes is that they're actually ruminates and it might not be you, but it's kind of an interesting one.

As we talk about the shadow side, they're much better when they take things away and think about them and then come back again versus, you know, you get lots of CEOs who kind of really think on their feet and can sort of hear something, data, etc.

Just something spits something back out again.

It's entirely reasonable, rational.

Whereas lots of CEOs, again, they like to ingest information, get other data points, so corral everything together and figure out themselves and then come back again.

And also, they then need to give themselves the time to do that, right?

Brandon's definitely ruminating, like in terms of working together on the podcast.

Brandon prepares.

He has questions, he thinks about the intro.

He finds themes that would kill me.

I just rock up and whatever happens, happens.

I think you're the opposite of the ruminate.

Ah, I think you are the bias for action in real time.

And I think that quality I don't see that a lot of people and I think this is probably one of the reasons or the prime reason why I've been massively successful.

I would say.

Yeah, so we've discovered somebody else's shadow side on that one.

I do like gathering information, but I don't overly gather and I actually prefer gathering information from conversations with people than through data analysis or sitting with a spreadsheet for a long time.

I love building a spreadsheet.

One of my favorite things like if I have to do a spreadsheet, I save it to the end as my dessert, my special treat,.

When I'm also remove data, which.

Brandon you can probably tell because I also have a preparer.

I hear things and then I'm like it.

Go back, check that.

And I kind of get.

Go away and talk to people and have a look at things or reads and stuff, then come back again.

Which was always interesting for me because then in board situations I'm very quiet because I'm sort of taking it and trying to figure out what do I actually think?

And as I said, lots of CEOs that I've worked with are also ruminates and trying to see that not as that it doesn't have to necessarily be a weakness or gaffe.

When we talk about being expert, stern or spokesperson, sometimes CEOs then shy away from that because they're like, well, I'm not very this is not my strength versus I feel like I and I'm not one of those people.

I'm like a sufferer.

I'll be like, I can do this.

I will do this.

I just keep throwing myself at it in some kind of form of self-love that I then learned to speak in public because I kept doing it.

But actually it taught me to think more on my feet because if you go into panels and stuff, you're you don't know what you're going to get lost to you and you then have to be a bit more kind of like, right, I've got to sort of have a point of view very quickly.

I've got to say something interesting or at least try to at this point in time so that you help me is like not shying away from public speaking.

I was like, Right, if I get public speaking requests, I'm going to be on panels, definitely Q&A style.

So if a bit more kind of statement was coming.

So I definitely recommend that to.

I could do a panel or a Q&A any day of the week having to do a proper talk.

I hate because I have to think about it.

I have to have topics.

It has to have a flow that gives me all kinds of stress versus a Q&A or a panel.

And I find that I actually end up with better ideas and insights I hadn't come up with yet because I'm speaking off the cuff.

Going back to something that you said that I wanted to get into was that you'll hear something and then you'll store it for later to investigate.

Whereas I hear something and I immediately investigate.

Then why don't you investigate when you first hear it?

I quite often find that there are things stored in my head somewhere that as it bubbles away still in there, it kind of works its way around.

Something will occur to me.

Or I'll think about other examples where I might have seen this before, or I remember an article I once read.

So actually, what happens in my brain, my ruminating brain, is that my brain keeps working on it.

And so I find that then it kind of takes me down an avenue to then kind of go and figure something out, or I'll be like, Who?

Remember that person?

Actually, I kind of chat with them and I sort of come back with a bit more of a fully formed opinion.

So to say that I would these days, I mean, now that I'm a self a bit longer in the tooth, I have a tendency to I'll share an opinion upfront.

However, I'm like, this is an unqualified opinion at this point, but my gut tells me this.

I may go away, sleep on it, have a shower, think about it, and then come back with something slightly different.

But generally speaking, I go away and other things occur to me just when my particular brain works.

And it's not to say when I was operating slightly different, which is that I had, you know, obviously there was still peace time, but there was also quite a lot of war time and that be crisis situations that would bubble up.

And then of course you can't do that.

So like I need to have an opinion right now and I need to get this thing and I would of course go do that.

And then you learn by making mistakes and all of that kind of good stuff.

However, when I have the time, I'd rather take the time because I know my brain works better on something over a period of time.

I'm okay with that.

I'm a remedy to be quite open about it.

I may go When something else may come to me, I'll come back.

So here's a question for the both of you, which is this caregiver role.

So he said most CEOs come from this background or have this archetype within them.

I'm curious if you can tell us more about why that's the case, why there's so many CEOs that are phenomenal caregivers.

I have a feeling that this is to do with that lovely living in the gray peace in organizations, right?

So you end up as a CEO being the person that is a commercial business person who's trying to think, right, what's the business need?

What does it not need at this point in time?

And also being a person who loves and cares for the team, because again, as a caregiver myself, it felt to me when I was in organizations, even the big ones, that people in teams that weren't mine felt like my people.

Like actually the whole company is my team because I sort of work on the whole company.

So I sort of worked across everything.

So I then mentor people in different teams and all that sort of good stuff as well.

But that living in the gray I think is very difficult sometimes for a founder CEO to do.

And what I mean by that is and again, sometimes founder CEOs I think can be a bit more business commercial and a bit cutthroat sometimes about people, honestly, which sometimes they need to be right.

If you want to have a very highly performant organization, you have to be very mindful of performance management, giving people feedback, all of this other stuff.

And I.

Feel like sometimes because also they're the founder in this whole piece around founder week, I mean, where they kind of reveal it and people sort of treat them at a distance because it's like, well, it's the founder, etc., etc..

They may be one step away from people which allows them to have a bit more substantive, objective judgment about them, but sometimes leads them down the path of not really completely understanding or knowing those people as well as they could.

I felt the same way quite often.

Then place the other path that where they do know people incredibly well if they're a caregiver and they do understand who these people are.

So I have a feeling that's where this comes from, that it's sort of a yin and yang.

And again, I'm not saying that founder CEOs own this like they and they're not nice.

Their teams are not saying that at all.

But I think delicate balance between building a highly performing organization and focusing on performance management and how you've gotten the business and who you need and who you don't need and roles you need and all of that.

This kind of good stuff when organizations become too bloated and all that.

But I have a feeling that the CEO sometimes is a foil to that place.

The other side of it.

Yeah, I'm not a caregiver.

Bethany doubles down on that.

The cutthroat.

I think because of I'm an introvert, I can have some very deep relationships with people, but it doesn't sway my opinion or my work relationship with them.

Like even if I have a very deep relationship, know about them.

If they're underperforming, I will tell them if they need to leave the organization, I will have them leave the organization, but it's separate to my relationship with them.

But I do think that's caregiving and that's my point.

But again, I don't want to offend founder CEOs, but actually I've worked with a lot in a coaching capacity that we didn't.

Yeah, I would give you that.

So actually then as the CEO, when I talk about caregiving, I'm more about that.

But you know, these people, you like them, you're friendly towards them.

You may know a bit about sort of their family and all of this good stuff.

And yet you will also be the person who will give them some feedback because it's kind and it's a gift.

That's when I hear caregiving in CEO world is actually the marriage of the two is not being overly soft is like being empathetic but also holding the candle around being performant.

I think also for me, I don't have a lot of relationships.

And so I guess I was thinking of a caregiver as somebody that has a lot of relationships across the business, maybe because of my introversion or just time.

Like I'll have limited deep relationships and then almost no relationship with everybody else.

And I just go out of my way to have relationships.

Like I feel as though my leadership style for the most part, does not depend on individual relationships, and those just happen because of a byproduct of working with people or something has meant that our paths have crossed in a more meaningful way.

Is there a number of relationships as part of the caregiving element?

If you think about it a slightly different way, some characterized it really nicely for me the other day when they were talking about sometimes dependent on your personality.

You're either somebody who networks for need because you want you want need to do something and therefore you go and sort of create relationships in order to do that, or you do it in of itself, as in these people in front of you and you're curious about them and you want to sort of learn a bit about them and you may never work with them or do something with them because of how far away in the organization they are to you.

It doesn't matter anyway.

You're curious enough that you would go and seek them out and figure out who they are.

And I think that's kind of that's a good characterization because it's like you're more likely, therefore, to engage in social situations for no purpose.

So no sort of work related or task related purpose, you're more likely to be there to be around.

And again, you know, it's interesting because I would say that I'm I'm actually I'm also an introvert and I have a few deep relationships, but I'm also incredibly people curious.

So I love talking to new people, but it takes me a lot of energy to do that if I don't know them.

And it's a learned skill over time.

Similarly, I feel like, you know, if we think about caregiving as having these two sides of this coin, when I was younger in my career, I look younger in my career, I feel like I was very soft indeed.

So I'd more of the empathy side, less of the other side, until I sort of had a bit of a realization of like, this is helping people, but actually giving them feedback, making sure that they're very valid in the organization that they're performing, that it's helping them.

I think what you said, Bethany, is right on point, which is this one too many leadership style, where you have a large organization and you have to project yourself or people understand who you are and get some feeling of empathy or connection or.

Or residents or they understand who Bethany is, and therefore that means something to them.

Thereby, the leadership overlay on top of that becomes much more powerful in a sense.

I think you're very good at this because I think your ability to express vulnerability, openness, compassion, I think your ability to project that on a one to many basis, I almost guarantee you, serves you quite well in terms of creating connections with individuals, even if you don't realize it.

Which happens most of the time.

But I will be more might because there will always be people that see something in me that upsets them because it sees show something in them that they don't like.

And I know that there's a probably a core of 20, 30% who don't get me like me, fear me, have whatever issues with me.

But at this point I just don't care.

Like I should care, but I don't care because I just don't have time for it.

And it's a reflection of something that's going on in their own minds, not on mine.

And I've set out my stall and I am who I am.

And if you don't like me, then don't listen to me.

Don't follow me.

Don't stay at the company.

There's plenty of space for people who do want to.

Should you care?

I don't know.

Maybe I should care, but I don't think they see their light side.

Dark side don't know.

We are wired to try to figure out other people's behavior.

Why are they doing that?

What's going on?

Why are they doing?

And the other and we fundamentally just basically guess all the time.

And also in lots of times, lots of people are not curious enough to ask what's going on for that other person.

Because most times, as you say, Beth, the thing that you are receiving, it's got nothing to do with you.

It's actually all to do with what's happening in their world and how they have that.

Then the narrative they've created around it could be to do with you depending on how you act towards people.

I'm not saying all behavior is acceptable by any means, but quite often it has nothing to do with you.

It's closest to the person.

So if everybody of our listeners can only take one thing away from today's conversation, what is it?

Say I'm taking back to something that we said in the last episode of this that's come up again here, which is, So how do you firstly truly embrace the things that are you say all the things that are you in terms of your skills, but also in terms of your characteristics, personality, that sort of thing.

How do you embrace that and use that and what you do?

But also how do you acknowledge there may be shadows here, some of which you could do something about, some of which you can't and understand them?

Because I think the more self-aware we are about some of these things, the better off will be as to be choice for about what we decide to do.

And if some of the points here have resonated for you in terms of development points and could be some areas that you may want to work on know.

And so take note of things.

And work on with Davinia the SEO coach.

Not that I'm just going to do the plug for you, so if you feel like you need to do some coaching work and any of this has sparked a curiosity, I highly recommend getting in touch with Davinia.

Thank you once again Davinia for joining us on the operations room.

If you like what you hear, please leave a comment or subscribe and we will see you next week.