Driving Results Creating Value with Mark Doughty - OrgDev Episode 47

Where is the real value created in your organisation? Is it a specific team, a critical process, or perhaps a unique capability that sets you apart? And just as importantly, how does the organisation make money, generate surplus, or deliver value to its clients—whoever they may be? Understanding these drivers is the key to focusing your efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact.  This is the holy grail for HR and OD. To help us unpack this and explore how to identify and leverage these value points, we’re joined by Mark Doughty.

💼 About our Guest
Mark Doughty

Connect with Mark here:
  / marktdoughty 

Mark Doughty is a seasoned Director of Learning & Organisation Development, celebrated for blending seminal research with critical business insights to drive impactful organisational transformation. With a career spanning diverse industries and top-tier, multicultural global companies, Mark is commercially sharp, operationally astute, and adept at curating "best in class" innovative, award-winning solutions.

Renowned for spearheading programs in High-Performing Teams, Strategic Account Management, and Executive Development, Mark has consistently delivered initiatives that future-proof key strategic capabilities while achieving significant business improvements, including multimillion-pound outcomes.

Academically distinguished with an M.Ed. and M.A., and a proud member of the Worshipful Company of Management Consultants, Mark brings a deep understanding of leadership, strategy, and organisational culture to the table.

Mark is on a mission to redefine leadership excellence in a rapidly evolving world. Despite leadership development being a $30 billion industry—predicted to more than double by 2032—the lack of tangible leadership impact is stark. Outdated models and misaligned approaches have left many businesses struggling to connect with their people, resulting in widespread disengagement, stress, and lost value.

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Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so have you ever stopped to ask where does the real value in this organization come from is it a specific team a critical process or perhaps a unique capability that sets you apart and just as importantly how does the organization generate revenue or generate Surplus or deliver value to its clients so understanding these drivers is the key to focusing your efforts whether have the greatest impact but how do you measure the success of your interventions this really is the Holy
(00:29) Grail for HR and for OD and also for leaders as well so to help us unpack this and explore how to identify and leverage these value points we're joined by the brilliant Mark Dy he describes himself as an oily rag Hands-On OD professional which we love um and that's very much a pragmatic with a screwdriver and spanner approach Mark has been an OD professional for over 30 years and he's had a privilege of working with some of the world's best known Global Brands such as sabes Motorola Dell Deutsche
(00:58) Bank and many more Mark's OD work is practical focusing on learning by doing being curious and creating the hypothesis in the moment naturally all of his professional experience is underpinned by brilliant academic experience as well so he's got a masters in adult learning and an MA in HR strategy from greenage University and he's also been a keynote speaker at the Oxford Union Mark interestingly left KPMG early this year to embark on a new career and he's researching the impact of leadership and writing a book on
(01:26) kindness in leadership which sounds fascinating Mark lives in Cambridge with his partner Emma and their two children Alfie and Arthur has a curious black lab Lenny six ducks and two very odd chickens which we we can't leave that unas can we well there's a story to tell you in just those final few bits right so yeah thank you brilliant well welcome thank you so much for joining us Mark we really appreciate it thank [Music] you well it's lovely to have you with us mark thank you for joining us so just to
(02:02) kick us off just tell us a bit more about your journey to kind of where you are now kind of your your journey into organization development how did how did you find it you know I left school uh very young I joined the Royal Navy uh 10 days after my 16th birthday and went into the big bad world of the royal Navy in the spirit of I grew up in a village in shopia and within a few days of being in the Royal Navy started to understand the impact uh and the role I have in organization even at a very small level working in a team and the need to
(02:34) collaborate and just how leaders affected team morale Etc and and as you do I tried to make a go of it um I even sort of at one stage was going to be back class and perhaps even was going to be kicked out of the Navy uh but somehow I survived that and and and went on and progressed my career to some extent but after after a year I was homesick and left so to FasTrack that story I then joined sabis and I started to at a very base level fill the shelves at saintss get to know retailing in that way and progress my career within within sses as
(03:08) the retailer itself and then was asked to join the training team and that's when things took off for me so in the spirit of working within uh an environment where the at the time the business was growing we were building teams we're opening new stores I was exposed to a whole host of different activities around leadership development team development and and that's when I got the book and so that subsequently my career has grown I've been fortunate of as as Garen has said to work in some you
(03:35) know big and large organizations collectively through that time and I think like many of your other guests um you know sometimes we label it OD other times we call it leadership development other times we call it Learning and Development I think I've probably fluctuated through all of those but for me there is something about the work that we do which in many ways can uh transform organizations it can transform teams and for me that's where that's the place to to play and and I would say it's a learned process over 30 years
(04:05) it's and I've fallen into it and grown into it over time and I'd like to think I'm still learning now because it's it's never a day goes by without I've I've actually either learned something new or someone's given me some great tips and advice and how would you define organization development what does it look like for you at a very base level I would say OD is about understanding how the firm creates value and makes money so that would always be my compass bearing how is the firm or the company
(04:33) uh creating value with its clients with its customers I'm probably stealing a quote in terms of you know Simon syic and says that we know we're all in the people business and most organizations now are in that people business and people buy from people they trust uh and if we follow the process throughout then uh for me I'm very process driven I'm six green belt Six Sigma 2 so I'm always looking at how value is created in the organization so for me OD is around that piece are we creating value are we
(05:02) making a difference and ultimately are we driving some form of commercial impact on the business and it's something that doesn't often get talked about explicitly is it does it in the kind of OD field what what do you think it is why why is it so not talked about or unexplored you know I don't know and I think partly you know I'd be very candid with you you know some of the models and some of the Frameworks that people talk about and some of your guests that talk about I I can almost say almost always after the T The Talk
(05:28) itself I've gone into watch a TED talk or watch about or learn about the particular model that's been discussed just for me because I'm not necessar fully aware of it but in terms of then the application of those models I'm always asking so well so what and I think that's where there's this disconnect because some of the Frameworks and some of the models are very in my experience clear and they make sense but it's actually that translation from that sort of theory into the practice and actually then at
(05:56) the end of the day uh making a difference to the to the business and that's where I think is the disconnect and what was the role of like starting your career in in this domain in s for example because that's an organization that has huge turnover but very thin margins doesn't it so yes what role has that played in sort of shaping that approach to making sure that things do have a revenue perspective or an output perspective well even at a very base level uh and and this for those uh people who know me well I always tell
(06:25) this story because that's has a links back to to my Navy days so believe it or not when I first joined the firm and I was stacking the shelves I was taught how to put rice on a shelf so there was a certain way I could do it and if anybody's been through the retailing experience before certainly in SS's days uh you were told what sort of instrument you could use to open the box how to put the Box on the trolley in order to open it and then when you open the the Box itself and you got the rice out you had
(06:51) to Pat it you had to put it on the shelf and you had to get everything in the line to some people that's takes is a very long winded process compared to say our comp at the time who would just pile it high and stack it cheap you know sorry um was it pile it high and sell it cheap whereas for me even today if I go into a Sab stall I'll have a visible reaction to how the rice is stacked because it's still with me and it was in those early days too that I you know the p anal you know sort of analogy came out
(07:19) in terms of um 20% of saby's core products like milk cheese bread drove 80% of the revenue and H knowing that all of a sudden just was like a a flip of a switch for me because when you start to make some decisions certainly when you're working on the shop floor is a very Junior employee at the time if I was having to make some decisions in terms of dressing forward say the eggs or the butter or the milk or the cheese or the bread compared to say other parts of the store I would dress those forward first because it's the impact of those
(07:50) stores because that part of the store that creates the revenue and that just stayed with me throughout it's always been something for me to look at understanding the Nuance part of how an organization makes money and understanding it not to the extent that I'm an economist or some form of expert but just I just get the basics right or at least I have some sense of the basics so that I could have some purposeful conversations with some of the leaders that I then work with which is fascinating isn't it interestingly Danny
(08:17) you did some time at SS Danny Danny I did Mark and I talked about this on Dan the a talent that no one else knows you can weigh cheese just by looking at it she knows what it weighs which is quite my time on the deli coun seems oh Del oh yes could we can go back yeah I mean I think it's you know part of the the challenge we have again and we may go off at a different tangent with this but you know organizations are very complex and if we try and make sense of them and I know in the past with other guests
(08:48) you've talked about the system and I get the system yet at the same time this that this is oily rag pragmatist in me that says okay well let's just find a navigate a way through this and just try and find what works or where does it make a difference and where do we start to make attraction with some of the stuff because that's when it works that's because of the relationships are built with the the line or the leaders and you can start to have a conversation and see the things changing you know a
(09:14) good example um I think Danny we mentioned this when we first met um but it and and this came out of as a result of I read a book called Freakonomics so up until that period of time I was a bit naive around all this and then I read the book Freakonomics and I was just like oh my God really and then all of a sudden I'm starting to look at things in a totally different perspective and when I was at Motorola the team and I came across a stat that 23% of the sales team generated 78% of the revenue and our market share at the time was 3% and
(09:43) nocus was 21% so we had a hypothesis which said well it's going to be all men you know these These 23% are going to be all men selling our latest phones in our biggest markets with our biggest clients and not one of those were right and then when we did some more analysis we found out that actually the top salese were actually people who had fallen into a sales role apart from one there's always you know one but in the majority those people who were the high performance in that 23 to 78% example had fallen into a
(10:16) sales career within the last five years so we then had conversations with the talent team which said we're fishing in the wrong pool for our high performers because if we're going after the traditional salespeople that's not where to need we need to find them so we then did some more analysis looking at those High performing sales people then came up with a quoti around well let's do a little bit of a quiz and a questionnaire around what it means to identify this type of talent we then got to a point
(10:44) whereby we could say with some certainty in fact with a about a 0.8 guarantee that if anybody fitting this questionnaire in scored over 145 High them because they'd be successful and that then just changes the game dramatically because all of a sudden you're looking at it end to end you know you're bringing in people and you're starting to change the game in terms of the how the market shifted three years later you know Motorola had a market share up to 19% and I'm not saying that particular work contributed to all of
(11:16) that he didn't but the understanding of how between support that and play it in and then drive capability as a result changed the game in some of the conversations we were having but that came from just an observation and trying to understand the business rather than trying to sell in a great Change Model well there's number of things that stand out from that but two things that sort to really resonate is number one is the importance of doing the research and doing data and the challenging our natural assumptions isn't it and taking
(11:43) the time to do that because we do have we make so many assumptions daily don't we about things and and the second thing is that it is difficult for organization development activities to fully account for its impact because there are so many mitigating factors aren't there you know you can put a brilliant sales process or put the right sales people but if the product sucks then it will struggle won't it but you can see it as a significant contributing factor to it can't you absolutely and and but but
(12:09) sometimes and um you know there the phrase I use with the teams I've sort of worked with and managed before is a phrase around understand the value and and what I mean by that is find where the firm creates value understand it and and get a sense of it because where there's value there's opportunity and and for me value doesn't just come from what you sell you can have risk value you can have opportunity value you can have lost value you know those value can be expressed in different terms so just
(12:36) get to understand it you don't have to be an expert in it but just to get to understand it and and to to hopefully enrich that based on your your observation when I was at Dell there was a request that they wanted to um so if you can imagine at Dell it was an ERA when they were selling they probably still do but at the time they were selling computers um through through a telephone call and and on the screen itself there will be a a countdown clock for the sales rep to sell that computer to the customer and I forget the exact
(13:09) time but I think it was about 45 minutes the the the sales rep had and over a period of time the computer would then say Okay Garen you now need to move to ask him this question so that you can sell the computer and some of the stats then came out was saying that look there's a group of people here that at the end of that are getting 10 out of 10 in their customer service service and we want all our people to be like those who were getting 10 out of 10 so can we come up with a development program that would
(13:36) Train everybody to get 10 out of 10 customer service but because I'd read fre economics I was thinking yeah but why are they getting 10 out of 10 so we started to look at it in a different way and then we started to listen into the calls and then we started to distinguish the fact well there wasn't any real difference apart right at the end because as that clock is clicking the agents would say I'll tell you what Garen if get this computer today I'll throw in a mouse map I'll throw in and
(14:03) I'll throw in a computer pad and Gary might say well I don't know I need to go he said Gar I tell you what we'll do we'll do the M the bag and we'll throw in a bit of X or Y whatever that may be and then the deal would be done now the reality is that in order for that deal to be done that sales rep had just given away maybe four or five dollars worth of business naturally when that customer goes then through to the customer service line to end the call and to rate the the quality of the call almost
(14:31) always they're going to be thinking from you know I've got a good deal there not I've got the computer but I got a few things free as well so they rate it 10 out of 10 but the reality is we were only making 133% on a on a on a computer so if I'm giving $4 doar away you know that all of a sudden I'm I'm actually hitting the margin so the conversion so the the you know the sort of Oddity of it all is actually 10 out of 10 for Dell wasn't good for business because actually a sales rep maybe scoring about
(14:59) or nine out of 10 was good for business because they weren't giving anything away which is really interesting because I think it's you know it's that that law of unintended consequences isn't it it's you you you believe that the metric would delect but we get that kind of unexpected Behavior because people would actually particularly in a metric driven people will try and game the system won't they because they want to hit their quota I was going to ask a real practical question so we talk about
(15:20) people really understanding where the value is created in organizations what would you say to somebody as an OD practitioner just joined a new organization how do they go about doing that what steps should they take to really understand where the values created in MO I would say in most cases organ you know we I'm making an assumption you know most organizations are either creating a product or creating a solution and there's a sales process behind them so if nothing else either look at the the product
(15:44) development process or look at the sales process as a key part so for example um uh you know the team and I Riz at KPMG um and we want you to understand the sales process within very complex you know deals so you know you here there were a number of different metrics but what we wanted to try and get a sense of well which metrics told potentially a different story or a story that we could get around our heads around from an RD perspective and the one uh sort of metric we settled on was this thing called velocity now what
(16:19) velocity does is it measures uh that from that initial call to that initial bill and the average velocity was 113 days so that's the average but the reality is that there were some people Beyond 113 days and there were some people before 113 days so then we said okay well let's go and find out who are these people who are below 113 and learn what they do and observe and ask questions and work and that really is hopefully Danny how we you know my advice is just go and ask questions knock on the door be curious you don't
(16:52) necessarily have to be the expert in fact I'd like to think you know I'm rarely am the expert with some of the work that we've done but what we do do is to be curious enough not to be irritating but curious enough to say have you ever thought of what if what if we did this and because you built that relationship there's almost Goodwill in that they'll say okay yeah well go away come back and let me know and that's what I've I've always tried to do is to be that Cur turn that Curiosity into an
(17:21) opportunity because I'm trying to understand where the value is created in the film curiosity is one of those words that gets banded around a lot in our profession it's like what genuine does that mean I love like Cur curious without being annoying because these are busy people aren't they and I really like what you're saying there in terms of you don't have to be the expert your your objectivity is enough in itself isn't it and things just become what they become we add another step to the process or
(17:46) someone else did that with a different kind of logic beforeand and it just becomes often a bloated process and so just you holding a space and asking questions like that often help them come to their own realization this could be done better couldn't it brilliant and and absolutely and again if I go back to the KP KPMG example um and you know I've got to thank the the the team that worked with me at KPMG and particularly somebody called Graham who did a lot of the work in the space at the time you know my background coming into KPMG two
(18:16) years ago I'd just been off for five years as a stay-home dad so here I am going into an organization looking you know we're supporting six and a half thousand Consultants who were driving major Transformations one of that you know in that early period of me joining the Fir and working with gram as we were trying to size what we were going to do you know the OD sort of thinking in my head was around well just at be curious and ask some questions and at the time I had the opportunity at a very brief moment uh to ask the leader of the
(18:43) business um what does it mean to be a KPMG consultant because I don't know what it means and I I went a little bit further by saying look if we were all at a particular hotel and there's a group of consultants in the room my bet is you would be able to tell a bane consultant or a kiny consultant you you would know who they are and you would know and and straight away as I've said that to you you'll probably thinking yeah because You' think about their behavioral traits and what they are they are because
(19:08) that's what we the default to so what's a KPMG consultant stand for how do we know what KPMG does and and what that does it feel like to the client got a long story short um greme and I we did some work and we we started to ask some questions and we you know poke the bear with the stickers you do and of all the you know here's KPMG you know massive organization Heritage 100 odd years but we we were able to drill it down to two things that made the difference KPMG consultant your ability to build empathy
(19:39) and your ability to collaborate so when you're working with the client as they were as they would be you know some of our KPMG Consultants would go on clients and there' be work with clients there'd be two 300 people on the in the team at the time with the client the ability to build empathy and to lean into the client and to work with that client as if the problem was yours then the ability behind the scenes to collaborate was the winning that's what kept us going back into Revenue with the clients
(20:06) that's what made us stand out and slightly different because we were able to do something very human in the human process that made the difference and once you know that you know you know Graham and and the team myself we then created a program we got that program accredited to charted Institute of Management Consulting we were the first Professional Services firm ever to do that and on the back of that work you know Graeme then did some great work around we could actually prove as a result of some of the the the teaching
(20:36) that we did how we could rescue deals and how we could win more money as a result so you know and that you took the best part of 18 months to do so again in this case that particular Nuance piece of work is at the start around asking what does it mean to be a KPMG consultant took 18 months to materialize in terms of an end result oh I've got so many questions on what you just said there okay so so two things so what one thing is you know it sounds like you're doing something that so many organizations
(21:07) miss out isn't it so we have our our lofty strategy with all of our objectives uh which has very little how in there uh often quite ambiguous we have our business plan with our list of things to do we don't really un have a representation of what is reality in there like what is what do we what's the form and two we've got the two mastered but we don't organizations often don't look at the capabilities so what are the specific capabilities that are going to help us deliver that number what is it
(21:37) that l &d or OD or whatever it is or HR can do to actually make sure that're able bringing that talent in with that capability and if not we can upgrade it ourselves and learn of the KPMG way to do why do you think that is because what you've done is quite remarkable isn't it at the time we probably didn't think it was remarkable um because you just again you know we're following that sort of hopefully that sort of what we would see logic is understand how the business makes money understand where we make the
(22:04) biggest impact try and understand what the Nuance is how do we create value so those questions are constantly coming out and building that relationship with the business ultimately and I think this goes back to perhaps something I said earlier I don't doubt there are potentially other models or other ways of of of tackling the same problem perhaps to equal good effect and there may well be things that we could enhance in based on the work I've just described but the opportunity and that may be the reason you know for that disconnect that
(22:33) you've described but for me there's always another sort of a final piece to this model that we we're talking about today is that does it work does it work so you know we I hear about these great models and this organization design work etc but yet I saw a stat the other day that and it's been apparently the same for the last 20 years 70 to 80% of organizational chain programs fail okay so when are we going to get it right then so for me I'm always trying to flip it to the other side which says let's
(23:02) just go have a go let's see learn from doing see see how it works and um and as a result of doing that we can then start to you know learn in the in the moment learn in the flow because we're learning too we have an hypothesis but we want to test it and then when we test it we refined it and we refined it I mean in the end we put a thousand people through the program in know year um from nothing to a thousand so you know that's some scale too because not only were we able to prove the process but we were able to
(23:33) prove the concept and then we knew that when we were sending colleagues back into the environment they were able to add real value to the client too it was a you know it was a reinforcing reinforcing Loop to the process yes so the second question then was how did you get permission or give yourself permission to say right I'm going to do this 18month project and I'm G to go away and I'm going to figure out the secret source of this like and particularly with KPM like consulty organizations your time is very precious
(23:59) you have utilization rates and all sorts of metrics that are measuring your your productivity and again sometimes people can see that as a barrier to to do a task like this that doesn't have an immediate dividend does it no it doesn't and I think again In fairness to the process you know when I came into KPMG and I don't mind admitting and I've say it many time I had imposter syndrome you because i' been off for five years and here I was two to three months into a role with you know the top four never
(24:27) worked in Professional Services before and um didn't I wasn't I didn't I didn't see myself as a consultant I probably had been an internal consultant through my career but didn't know it and as you rightly point out you know that they are leaning into assignments with clients which with with which are massive massive pieces of work I suppose the the the the the flow of my thinking as with with the rest of the team was to build a relationship with the business start to understand who creates the value again
(24:59) that same language who creates the value who are the personalities who can we build Ally ships with who can we get to know and who can we start to ask curious questions with who would either be supportive of or say yeah that's a good point but we did that five years ago you need to go and talk to those people and actually that's what happened many a time we found actually that there were one or two groups certainly postco who had gone off and done their own thing uh who know F of their own because there
(25:24) wasn't something coming from the central team so there was a resource that we could go with and steal shamelessly straight away for like but we invited them into the design process um and then we took a hit you know took a chance by inviting one of two very senior players to come along to a design thinking Workshop that we were doing uh in in the Autumn and we didn't know whether they would turn up or not and they did and um that particular person um was so complimentary of the work that as I say gra was doing and we were doing that we
(25:57) that was the first tick somewhat eight nine eight months into the to the work that we had something pretty unique and then so you just have to be determined and keep going because you know fundamentally there is something there's an opportunity here because this is where value is created this is where you know reoccurring revenue is created so just keep going keep going and you get knock back and you we've tried this before Oh it really good like this four years ago you just keep going keep going and sometimes it's you bounce it off
(26:27) between each other or the team and you you just sometimes I was saying I don't know sometimes I was saying well what do we do next and then eventually you know the Genesis or the it all comes together and you have some you've created something which if I'm honest at the start you didn't know you were going to correct because it's it's it's it's it's morphed into something because you've literally had the oily rag and the spanner and the screwdriver and you've got under the hood and you've just
(26:56) tinkered and played to see how can I get this engine working and there's something really powerful isn't they talking that language of value creation and and kind of recurring revenue and stuff that speaks to the senior leaders and often we'll talk to OD practitioners who are really struggling to get their voice heard in the organization and and feel like they've they they're being listened to we we knew I mean and again I mean I'm I'm mindful this sounds you know sort of world class and and perhaps
(27:20) in some extent you know there's elements to it but where we started off and where we ended up was a was a journey in itself but because we were able then to get it accredited to The chter Institute of Management Consulting we knew then we had even greater created even greater value so we went back to the rate card and said hold on a minute you're you know our competitors are putting people of a similar age or sort of experience and charging out at this rate no our people are better because they've been
(27:47) through a process and they've been certified by the governing body so we'll change the rate card so all of a sudden you you get this commercial overlay even growing even more now because then we could start to move up to uh well what would a Next Level Up Consulting program look like um and then all of a sudden then you are talking to an open door because the organization then says well well well yeah let's do it what do you enjoy most about the work that you do number one would be the the the nature
(28:17) of the relationships uh I have in the business with the leaders I meet and work with for me that has always been sort of Testament to my team and my my work is the the lever that relationship uh both in terms of it the seriousness of it the challenge that we have and the rigor in that challenge but also the bonom me and the friendship and and the enduring relationship when either through different reasons people move on or you know and life takes us in different directions you know even to I mean just as an example I um I reached out to
(28:53) somebody yesterday who I hadn't spoken to for 13 years and it was as if we were back where we we 13 years ago uh because those sort of relationships they they if you work at them um it's what makes the difference because it's again just like any business is you're buying the businesses are buying from people then the business is buying you buying you as a as a human being you know a good friend of mine who is in a picture behind me Frank who passed away many years ago good good friend um he said
(29:22) Mark what you need to remember is you're a human being not a human doing so be more being rather than doing and that stays with me too you know there's an art in being a good kind person in the organization working with the business you just can't turn up and try and be it you've got to work at it and for me relationships in the business are key without that you you you you the the opportunity to influence and change the game is a lot lot harder you have to almost r i used I just said to my team
(29:52) actually we have to be equal to or better than the KPMG consultant in the way we inform and influence them because if if we're not they're not going to buy from us and and the and the acid test of that also and I think KPMG is still the case today they are the biggest Learning and Development providers in Europe so we were we were working with a very Discerning client you know when you're the biggest provider of Learning and Development in Europe you are perhaps a bit choosy about who you're going to
(30:16) work with and the team were very excellent to doing it what's particularly interesting you in the kind of field of organization development at the moment is there anything that's sparking your your interest organizations generally I think seem to be broken they don't seem to be working and why is that if we've had year upon year upon year of organization models expertise whether it be universities uh you know think thought leaders um organizations still seem to be broken to me um and let me put some
(30:49) context behind that if and conservatively if you look at how much money is spent annually on leadership development roughly it's about 35 billion a year and they say it's going to double by 2032 to 70 billion so so part of me is saying where where are all the leaders then we're spending 30 billion a Year where are all the leaders because if I go to Gallup Gallup will tell me that organizations at an 11year alltime low employee engagements at an all-time low at 23% so if we're spending 30 billion we're only getting 23% that
(31:23) doesn't seem a good return but if I go to AXA AXA will tell me that the UK currently at least has 23 million sick days a year and 70% of those sick days are due to stress at work if I go and take another data point research that came out last week roughly 65% of people in organizations do not feel connected to their people they work with or their manager how does that show up if I then go to the employment tribunal's data the later data showed latest data shows that employment tribunals currently were in
(31:55) roughly about 55,000 and 20 2023 they're now up to about the 990,000 this year and there's another 200,000 in the system whichever way you cut this organizations do not seem to be right um and so for me what keeps me awake at right from an OD perspective is why are we getting it so wrong where where is why is it so that organizations certainly through you know my view are still broken because fundamentally organizations are about people yet we seem to be doing everything but look after the people and there's a great
(32:32) sort of as you may have seen also uh discourse going on this week in terms of hr's role in organizations you know you've probably seen the um you know a number of articles in the new States and then the telegraph being very critical of the role of HR and then I believe Peter cheese has come out today and and given a different view but nevertheless there is this sort of overview which says something doesn't seem to be right and I wish we could find a way way to solve it because the opportunity to make
(33:02) UK PLC a great place to work through a number of different activities I would love to find that you know that's what's that is the opportunity and and I and it's sad that we you know it's sad to the extent that organizations today still feel that there's for me you know just creating a a great place to work is the path of least resistance yet we are seem to be creating organizations which are the opposite is and I don't know why and I'm not the then again that's where I lose that my credibility probably in
(33:33) because of I don't have the knowledge from a psychometric or psychologic perspective about why organizations and why that discourse is there if you look back over your career so far what's what what's the biggest lesson you think you've learned two things be kind to yourself because I think there are times when we've all been in scenarios where we don't know what the answer is or we don't know what where we're going to go and that selft talk can take you down a very difficult path about you're not
(33:58) good enough or you're not capable enough so I would always say hang on to your selfworth and be kind to yourself uh and it will sort itself out so that's one thing I've learned and the second thing which perhaps I've repeated a couple of times today is about the value of relationships get to know the people uh you are a human being and you're working with human beings so go and spread some kindness go and spread some love going you know when was the last time you said I really love working with my team I
(34:26) love working with my manager and I love working work for this company because that's what it works all about so you know go and be a a sort of a disciple of that go and be a proponent of that and and bring some seriousness to it and bring some light-heartedness to it and build relationships and even if it's just in a part of the organization where that happens you know for me you're doing all right you know you're doing okay and how do you invest in your own learning development because I guess
(34:51) obviously at the moment you're you're researching and writing a book like is is that a big source of Learning and Development at the moment what you finding from that process a couple of things for me one I had neglected LinkedIn so when I came out of corporate life in 2017 I came off LinkedIn and then now with the work I'm doing around the book that now has changed dramatically so now I'm engaging with LinkedIn and again it's a community of people sharing their love and sharing their knowledge and their ideas uh and
(35:23) you and I'm not just saying from the UK I mean have I've had connections from all over the world who have reached out and all of a sudden just the power of again collaboration the power of talking and the power of R has really worked and then there's probably a couple of podcast not not not withstanding yours of course um but I do I do like the high performing podcast uh with Jake Humphrey and I also but I don't necessarily have the time for it in the sense that I'm always on to something else but if I'm
(35:50) going for a long walk I think it's Dr chatti and his work and and some of the guests and some of the thing people he interviews so between between LinkedIn on a day-to-day basis either listening to you or the high performing team Dr chaty uh really that's how I cement everything and finally just at a very base level just to understand what's going on in the country each day um I listen to the news agents each day so I don't if you're familiar with that podcast um I just like that it just
(36:17) gives gives that me that political ATT tuness to what's going on are there any particular books that you'd recommend to OD practitioners who wanting to kind of build the knowledge you mentioned I think fre economics economics yeah I mean I think that's certainly one area of um that I would you know I think that book came back came out um well gosh where was it be uh at least 15 years ago or so there's also another book which I love the title uh and it's called why should anybody be led by you you know for me that's just
(36:49) like a hot knife through butet because that question alone is a great conversation or coaching convers question to have with a leader you know why should anybody be led by you and then there's the lot of work around smart collaboration and so any any books in that space for me at the moment there's um you know particularly the collaboration nature of of organizations going back to the example I gave with KPMG so any any space around I'm always inquisitive about the breakthroughs in collaboration and what that looks like
(37:18) and from the many experiences that you've gained um one of the the drivers of this podcast is to inspire the next generation of practitioners whether they're internal external whether they're OD whether they're just taking the first steps in it what advice would you give for someone who's just starting out or considering a a career in organization development don't do it and thanks so much for having you on the I I think you've got to be of a certain type and you would probably appreciate this more that you know most
(37:50) days you go into a work where you don't know what the answer is you don't know whether you're going to be loved or hated and also you don't know what the outcome is going be of the work that you do and and therefore your emotions can go through a whole series of ups and downs through the day clearly as you become more experienced that um that changes but to to answer your question more directly I would say that if you've got a Natural Curiosity around how things happen how things work how things
(38:18) come together you if you took if you embarked in a career in organization development you will have the Good Fortune to learn about yourself you'll have the good Fortune to work around about people uh but more importantly the nature of your work I don't think there's any other job in an organization that has more impact and more span of influence across the organization than a role in od other roles tend to be either compartmentalized or leveraged across a certain part of the organization no other job has full sort of impact across
(38:53) the whole organization and that's why you should do it because it will keep you fulfilled for all of your career I don't think we could have articulated that any better it's a really powerful point and a really nice way to end the podcast Mark I want to say a huge thank you I also want to say a huge thank you to the facilities people where I am today for those of you watching on video you'll notice that my surroundings are different I did the cipd people pod today uh they're keeping the building
(39:18) open for me and they haven't kicked me out yet so thank you so I want to say huge thank you you've just brought a really brilliant combination of things that we haven't explored yet in detail so the importance of value creation that there is a commercial s to this you need to have a commercial grip in terms of how you work with organizations but you can combine it with kindness they're not mutually exclusive and they they they come together really well and the ability to equip people with the
(39:43) confidence and the Curiosity without being annoying to actually go in and look under the hood and see what's going on and you know not necessarily be the expert but just by being your objective self you can create immense value that's been it's been brilliant so thank you Danny what are you takeing away from today's conversation yeah i' Echo some of what you already said I love the curious enough not to be irritating but to kind of really get to the heart we want t-shirts don't we that's
(40:07) yeah um the message about being kind to yourself I think is so important for for people working in this space and everybody really building relationship with the business and the values of relationships so and the fact that we're really privileged to do what we do because of the the innate impact it can have and the the interest in the role if people want to follow your work and we follow your work on LinkedIn which is great and obviously your progress in the book and and whatnot as well so what's the best way for people to reach out to
(40:31) you to follow your work to to get in touch like what what would you how would you like them to contact yeah absolutely please reach out to me on LinkedIn or tag me through you know the today's podcast anyway I'd like to think I'm pretty responsive and if people wanted to have a virtual coffee I'm usually you you know obviously in the UK popping into London on a frequent basis these days so happy to meet face to face um and I think like anything sometimes it's just in terms of the conversations we've
(41:02) had today or even the conversations we have on LinkedIn just put a comment just say I really like this or I disagree you know or I have a different view that just keeps my learning Rich because um I don't know everything never have and I guess I never will but I'm I'm just that Curiosity just to get to know as many people as I can who are interested in this space so please reach out brilliant and we'd love you to come back on when you finish the book if that okay we'd love to be opportunity to to read the
(41:30) book so please thank you get it finished we want to read it September next year so I've still got a bit of time we'll pencil that in brilliant well well thank you Mark for helping make the world of business and organizations and the world g a better place thank you so much for your time uh it's been a real joy to have you on if you found this conversation useful if this one of the first times you listen to the podcast we'd love it if you hit the like button and also subscribe to the channel whether you're listening to it on audio
(41:55) or video and please spread the word as well so if you know that anybody that is out in an organization that you think would benefit from understanding more about how to understand the value that's created in an organization please do feel free to share this podcast it can be really valuable in the right hands so thank you again Mark we really appreciate it thank you [Music] he