How Booktopia adapted to industry disruption

As a manager for two decades in the book industry, John Purcell has led people through extraordinary change.

As an author, John Purcell is capable of amazing feats of imagination. But away from writing fiction, he’s been heading up Booktopia’s marketing and buying teams, and is now Director of Books, helping the online retailer become one of the fastest growing companies in Australia. In the past nine years, annual revenue has swelled from $4m to $114m (with a compound annual growth rate of 35% per annum). This year, Booktopia won the People’s Choice award at the national finals of the Telstra Business Awards, as well as the NSW Business of the Year award.

Starting small

“When I joined Booktopia, most of the staff were doing customer service and order fulfilment,” he recalls. At that time, Booktopia was a small operation. “A bell would ring every day and all of us – including the CEO – would go down to the garage and help load a single Australia Post van with books. They gave us three minutes in their schedule, so all of us would rush out there.”

Since those early days Booktopia’s personnel has multiplied from 25 to almost 200; and Purcell now runs a team of six people including a content team, merchandisers and buyers. But that culture of “rolling up your sleeves” has remained constant, he says.

Their culture has been guided by a very clear and simple business strategy, says Purcell. “Our CEO Tony Nash is single-minded about growth. He’s always been prepared to reinvest in the business so that when we needed a warehouse, or shelving, or automation, the resources were available.”

Beneath that overriding growth objective, managers are given the scope to develop their areas of the business. “There’s no micromanagement,” says Purcell. “We have a lot of ownership of our particular areas and that makes us feel that we are part of the business. I think that’s one reason our staff retention has been so high.”

Growing pains

Booktopia’s growth has been remarkable by any standards. It is the only company to be listed in the annual BRW Fast 100 eight of the last nine years. In September it was named in the Australian Financial Review Top 500 Private Companies. But growing at such a pace does present challenges for managers, Purcell admits:

“There’s never a stable environment when you’re growing so fast. We had a very fluid decision-making process and the danger was that teams could get overloaded and some projects perhaps wouldn’t achieve return on investment.”

To overcome this, Booktopia’s leadership team had to introduce more formal processes, explains Purcell. “For our growth to be sustainable, we had to develop our own corporate structure from within. What helped us was attracting people who had been in corporate environments. Every new person we hired brought knowledge and we would alter things accordingly.”

Alarm bells

Booktopia’s growth is all the more impressive when you consider the rollercoaster that Australia’s wider publishing industry has been riding. A decade ago mobile technology began seizing consumers’ attention and refused to let go. In 2011, high street bookstores Borders and Angus & Robertson closed their doors forever. All up, close to 200 bookshops closed around this time and the Australian book market fell by 20%.

Catherine Milne, Head of Fiction at publisher HarperCollins, recalls this time with a shudder: “They were dark days. Bookshops were closing, TV was suddenly accessible on mobile screens, social media was swallowing up people’s time and the Australian dollar was so high that – briefly – it became cheaper to buy books from overseas.”

Milne, who is publishing Purcell’s new novel, The Girl on the Page, says Booktopia helped the industry fight back. “It changed the retail landscape. After the closure of so many rural and regional bookstores, Booktopia was able to service all those Australians who can’t easily travel to a bookshop – not to mention many more who simply like the speed and convenience of online shopping.”

Question everything

As leader in an industry undergoing so much change, Purcell encourages his colleagues to stay up to date. “There are new products born every month from publishing presses. If you want to keep up, reading the right newsletters and social media is vital.

Reflecting on her own experience of leading through change, Milne recalls: “During rapid change you’ve really got to question everything; question your processes, question your methods. You have to ask yourself if what you did previously is still working today – and then be prepared to change when it’s not.”

“Our CEO James Kellow is incredibly good at setting very concrete goals for us that we can reach and then celebrating when we reach them. I think that’s the best way – to really focus on the things that you can influence, the things you can change, the things you can create.”

Kellow is one of the two leaders in publishing who Purcell admires most: “James and also Louise Sherwin-Stark [CEO at Hachette Australia] have made very strong and clever push to make sure they are publishing Australian stories,” he says. “In the past 10 years, it’s become clear that Australians are reading Australians, which is extraordinary because for most of our history we looked towards overseas literature.”

Separating fact from fiction

Purcell points out that neither of these leaders inspired ‘Julia’, one of the more memorable characters in his new novel, who is a terrible leader.

“Julia is the publishing director of my fictional publishing house and she’s a terrible leader because she’s all management and no product knowledge. She thinks only of the bottom line so her ability to inspire people in the business is nil, because she has absolutely no relationship with the books. All she sees is the numbers in the end.”

So how did Purcell’s real-life publisher feel when she read this? “There were times when I winced,” laughs Milne. “I thought ‘Is that the perception people have of publishing?’ Like any industry, there are certainly managers who prioritise profit above all else, but they are few and far between in publishing. In truth, you can only be a good publisher if you put the interests of the book and the reader first and if you invest the time that a book needs to get it right.

“I’m hoping that the mere fact I’m publishing The Girl on the Page is a counterpoint to the Julias of this world!”


By Andy McLean, Editorial Director of Leadership Matters.

*The full version of this article was published in the December 2018 edition of Leadership Matters.

The state of digital transformation in Australia

By Mark Cameron FIML

Increased interest in “digital business transformation” within the global business community has been meteoric over the last couple of years. A quick search in Google Trends confirms that. Why is this so, and what does it mean for businesses in Australia?

Following the GFC in 2008 the term “digital transformation” was hardly discussed or understood. Ten years down the track it seems organisations, large or small, public or private, are focusing on their approach to digital transformation as part of their core strategy.

The conversations with our clients have shifted from “what is digital transformation and should we do it?” to “how do we transform?” and critically “how do we do it and not stuff it up?”.

What is digital business transformation?

“When a snake sheds its skin it changes; when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, it transforms.” – SAP Business Transformation Journal

The key question to get right is this: Are you looking to increase performance or are you truly transforming?

Remember this analogy as we see a number of organisations getting caught in the trap of speeding up delivery and results as opposed to inventing for the future. Speed is important but without a meaningful destination, it can accelerate irrelevance.

Let’s tackle a common point of confusion. What does “digital” even mean anymore? It means many things to different people. It can mean the digitisation of marketing activity, or the implementation of new technologies. Both are technically correct, but significant opportunities exist outside these definitions.

In 1995, Clay Christensen and Joe Bower published their famous HBR article Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave. “Disruption” has become shorthand for almost anything to do with change. This is wrong.

Disruption is about dramatic shifts in delivery models, experiences and expectations. Technology plays a critical role, but it is only an enabler. It allows for the rapid emergence of new models that upend industries and set new customer standards. The recent news of the collapse of Sears in the USA shows the true impact of disruption.

Rabbit in the headlights?

A study by The Global Centre for Digital Business Transformation found that 69 per cent of respondents see the need to adapt their business models to respond to the changing environment. Despite this awareness, only 55 per cent said that digital disruption was a board-level concern, and only 25 per cent had active plans to tackle the disruption head-on.

While digital transformation interest and activity has increased, there is still a gap in business leaders’ understanding of how rapidly the environment is changing. They see future change as linear and manageable.

It reminds me of a quote from Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in 1998 in which he stated, “By 2005 or so, it will become clear that Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.” Looking back now it is easy to scoff, but it shows that even the smartest people misunderstand the pace and scale of technological change and how it will impact the world.

Until executives create a true vision for transformation, the organisations they helm are vulnerable to disruption. A business with a better model, that offers better experiences, and new standards of service, will eat their lunch. When it happens, it can happen fast. Leaders run the risk of being caught out like a rabbit in the headlights, aware of the threat but unable to move, waiting for the impact.

Phases of digital transformation in Australia

Leaving disruption to one side, definitions of “digital” and “digital business transformation” help to progress our thinking. For the purpose of this article, let’s define “digital” as the convergence of multiple technology innovations enabled by connectivity. And we’ll define digital business transformation as organisational change using digital technologies and business models to improve performance.

These definitions will help to show that there have been three main phases in digital business transformation following the GFC.

Phase One: A reaction to the global economic crisis. A cost-out exercise where technology was employed to lower operational costs through introducing automation and reducing reliance on human capital.

Phase Two: The media landscape became increasingly digital and fragmented, and tried and trusted methods of acquiring customers and building brands became less effective. In an effort to connect with an increasingly “online” customer, marketing budgets increasingly orientated to technology, focused on data collection, marketing automation and technical capabilities.

Phase Three: Today, cross-sector consumer expectations are high and rising. Many products and services don’t enjoy the stability they once did. Through technology, businesses are searching for new sources of revenue.

Let’s apply this to Telstra.

Phase One: Immediately following the start of the GFC Telstra invested heavily in automation and cost cutting technologies.

Phase Two: When David Thodey took the CEO role in 2009 he focused the whole organisation on the customer, even using Net Promoter Score, as a key KPI.

Phase Three: More recently the current CEO, Andy Penn, is transforming Telstra from “a telco to a tech-co”, essentially moving revenue from their traditional space of connectivity of fixed line, mobile and data to new technology based products and services. This is obviously a monumental task for a company the size of Telstra, but a shift that needs to happen.

Telstra is far from the only company that has gone through, or is going through, these phases. This activity, in varying stages of maturity, is being carried out across the market.

Avoid sleepwalking into irrelevance

Taking action in the face of potential disruptive threats is demanding. While there is no silver bullet, and no substitute for great strategy and leadership, human-centred design methods complemented by the right technology choices are effective tools to fend off disruptive forces.

Here is a basic approach to drive digital business transformation:

Map your current state: Many businesses are unaware what their overarching customer experience is, or how the systems and capabilities work to support that experience. This is unsurprising. Businesses scale organically and focus on requirements incrementally. But this lack of clarity makes it very difficult to design a future state.

Mapping business capabilities and IT systems combined with mapping customer journeys provides clarity. The business then knows how the organisation works, where efficiencies may exist, and where customer experiences can improve to create a competitive advantage.

Design your future state: The best-performing companies don’t start designing a future-state focused on technology. They start with experience. Using service design techniques, led by experienced practitioners, start with the customer and design the target state that transforms your business.

This includes focusing on what it takes to deliver. Begin with your most important asset – your people. Understanding how employees will support your target future state, and supporting them in their experience makes the difference between good and great.

Map process improvements and revise your technology architecture to provide a supporting technology roadmap. This approach ensures your people, processes and technology are designed comprehensively and cohesively.

Communicate a clear roadmap: Leadership should take artefacts developed in the design process and use them to communicate clearly with the organisation. This will help create the context for change, which most of the organisation is aware of and agree with.

Next, be transparent about the projects, expectations and spend. This will allow people to understand how their job impacts the process and provide them with an opportunity to contribute positively.

And of course, communicate the successes. However, be careful of getting addicted to “quick wins” at the expense of the long-term strategy. Constant short-term activity is where organisations can execute a lot of change, but no real transformation.

Communication through major change programmes is critical. When you think you have communicated too much, you are probably pretty close to the right cadence.

Develop new ways of working

Developing and articulating a vision and strategy is one thing, delivering on them is another. All too often businesses allow the delivery of new products or services to become engineering led, which loses focus on the customer problem the initiative was set out to solve.

Human-centered design techniques can, and should, be employed all the way to delivery. Constantly testing and refining features and functions with the intended customer base ensures that internal assumptions about the customer are always being tested. Every idea is a hypothesis that should be validated or discarded.

This approach allows your organisation to begin to build a strategic design practice that puts the customer at the heart of any initiative. It reduces risk and cost of delivery.

Grab the opportunity

Organisations have learned, sometimes in very painful ways, that for digital transformations to be effective the human aspect needs to be at the very center. Yes, automation and machine learning will change the future of the job market, but it is humans, be they customers, staff or a wider set of stakeholders, that will always determine the ultimate success of these innovations and investments.

So, employ the skills and techniques necessary to design the future you want for your organisation. Design your organisation for what it will need to be tomorrow. Design for humans.

Innovator: Karen Hayes transforming a trusted brand

By Lachlan Colquhoun

Karen Hayes FIML had decades of experience as a senior manager in business technology consulting when she realised that she wasn’t “bouncing out of bed every morning” to get to work.

After time working in Europe and Canada, she found herself back in Melbourne and sitting on a number of boards of not-for-profit organisations when the realisation struck: she was enjoying the not-for-profit world more than the commercial world where she had made her career.

She she set her sights on the much-coveted role of CEO at Guide Dogs Victoria. Having secured the position, she knew that the organisation needed to change.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme was about to begin and with it a new model of “self-directed” care, where people with disabilities would be the ones making choices on which services they use.

At the time, the philanthropic model was changing and this had major implications for an organisation that receives only 8 per cent of its funding from government.

“The days of corporates writing big cheques, handing them over and then just ticking their corporate social responsibility box are well and truly over,” says Hayes.

The vision was to move to a more sustainable model where Guide Dogs Victoria could maintain all the values that made it so beloved, but at the same time move towards being able to fund itself.

“It was about respecting the fact that the organisation had 60 years of great history, but also putting measures in place to make sure it survived and prospered 60 years and more into the future,” Hayes says.

Many of the staff, for example, had been at Guide Dogs Victoria for 40 years and the average tenure was 13 years. Hayes had come from an industry where the average stay was 11 months.

“I needed to respect the history, but not allow the history to hold us back,” she says.

Part of the reinvention was around communicating the fact that Guide Dogs does more than train and deliver the iconic guide dogs themselves.

Guide dogs are only around 30 per cent of what the organisation does, with the majority of the balance being in providing other services to the sight impaired. There are 250,000 people with low vision issues in Victoria, but most do not have guide dogs.

“We introduced a strategic plan, and that is about us being first choice as an employer, as a services provider, for people looking for an organisation to support with philanthropy and also for volunteers,” says Hayes.

“We are redeveloping our campus in Kew with the objective of diversifying our revenue stream with a vet clinic, a doggie day care centre, a dog friendly café, all of which will be revenue generating.

“We are going to build a low vision clinic and an educational auditorium, and introduce a level of predictability and sustainability in our financial model that has not existed previously.”

This is all in addition to the ‘Dialogue in the Dark’ experience in Melbourne Docklands, where people are led through an environment in total darkness and have to rely on other senses to interact.

Around 15,000 members of the public have been through the experience, which also employs a team of 20 blind people
as guides.

All these changes go right down through the organisation. All employees have balanced scorecards and KPIs that flow from the strategic plan and which are measured every year.

“When I came here I could see that this was an organisation full of individuals with very strong values,” says Hayes. “Now I feel we are also a values-based organisation with a plan everyone understands, so we are all moving in the right direction together.”

Could Appreciative Inquiry Be Your Next Solution?

Who would’ve thought that you could solve inefficiencies and problems by not looking at the inefficiencies or problems? It is an unusual concept, but Appreciative Inquiry (AI) takes problem solving in an innovative direction. According to this problem solving technique, paying attention to the problems will only amplify them; whereas, focusing on the positives will elicit the best solution. In addition to this, AI has been proven to produce other significant benefits for organisations, such as: enhancing collaboration, encouraging creativity, empowering individuals and avoiding stereotypical solutions. So, how can your organisation solve problems using AI?

There are four steps to undertaking a successful AI process, these are: Discover, Dream, Design and Deliver. When organisations want to undergo an AI process, they are encouraged to invite a group of stakeholders along to a planning workshop that works through these four phases.

Discover

The Discover phase of an AI process seeks to understand the current situation. This is one of the hardest phases for people to get their heads around as our minds naturally shift towards the current situational issues. However, instead of looking at the current issues, the Discover phase requires us to appreciate the best of what is and what has been. To discover this, participants are asked a series of questions that get them thinking about some of the key strengths of a current situation. Examples of questions that are commonly used during this phase are:

  • What do you like most about…?
  • What makes this memorable…?
  • Why do you like…?
  • What would make you choose this over something else…?

By responding to these questions, common themes and words start to appear. These are the themes that the rest of the AI process seeks to capitalise on…

Dream

The second phase of an AI process is the Dream phase. The Dream phase encourages imagination and creativity from participants by allowing them to brainstorm an ideal situation. When crafting an ideal situation in their minds, participants are encouraged to think about what it involves, what it looks like and what strengths it capitalises on. To make the most out of this phase, it is usually conducted individually at first before ideas are shared and strengthened in a group.

Design

The third phase of the AI process is when participants start to translate radical ideas into reasonable solutions. As a group, participants take bits and pieces from the dream phase to design an ideal solution. Practicality questions are answered during this phase when proposing what resources, skills, training, money, knowledge and commitment is required to translate the dream into reality.

Deliver

The final phase is the Deliver phase. This phase is where participants commit to the solution and set out a plan to achieve it. Typically, this stage involves the formulation of a proposal plan or implementation timeline.

And that’s it! A small workshop with four steps that could lead to innovative solutions for your organisation. Could AI be the solution to your next organisational problem?

How to present and build culture and your competitive advantage

Everywhere you look these days there’s some kind of change on the horizon. Companies are restructuring, offshoring and battling to stay ever present in consumers’ minds to stay ahead.

The result? Battle scars that get left on teams and team members, that if not fixed, continue to eat away at your company’s culture, productivity and profits.

More and more clients and departments are waking up to the fact that a company’s performance is driven by an engaged team and culture. As Gallup states on their website: “A strong culture makes employees want to perform better and makes customers want to spread the word about you.”

But building a strong culture isn’t easy. It doesn’t mean having ping-pong tables and bean bags. It does mean making sure that everyone in the company is aligned and eager to work towards the same values and vision.

The best way to do this is to focus on how you communicate internally, whether you are a manager, leader, a CEO, or an executive.

Everyone in your company needs to feel part of the equation. They need to be clear on how their role fits into the puzzle and fulfils a greater purpose. This needs to be more than words on the wall, on posters or coffee cups.

Often, it’s up to management to communicate and motivate teams towards a new vision or higher purpose through a presentation at a town-hall style meeting. This is usually supported through crowded and boring slides full of flashy org charts, mission statements and goals that do anything but leave your team feeling energised.

If you look at the majority of presentations, the content is presenter centric. The speaker talks about how good they are, shows off all the data they have, and how much growth the organisation is undergoing.

This kind of approach instantly alienates our audience. They are left thinking, but what about me? Why is that important? How will my world be affected as a result? In a nutshell, why should they care?

Thanks to the digital world we live in, our audiences’ needs and demands are constantly changing, which is what makes communicating so hard! In general, people want a more personalised approach, a more intelligent approach, and that is why it’s crucial to put your audience and their needs first.

Your presentation is your opportunity as a speaker to connect with your audience and create a united front. This only happens when you write, design and deliver a message in your presentation that puts your audience first and includes these 3 vital things:

  1. Being honest

    We need to remember we are connecting with our teams and employees, human to human. Unfortunately, we often think that as leaders we need to be different and that can translate to being cold and insincere.Instead, just be honest. Start with the reality of the situation – what is the situation right now, how are people feeling and what challenges is everyone facing? Don’t hide any bad news. Lying or covering up the truth only makes things worse. But make sure you move to the solutions and positives, show the future opportunity that everyone can be a part of.
  1. Sharing common ground
    You need to create common ground with your audience, to really address their key concerns and show them that you understand where they are coming from. The best way to do this is by sharing stories that show emotion, that show you understand where they are at and what they are faced with, perhaps because you’ve been in a similar situation before.
  1. Putting your audience’s needs first

    Do your homework and actually research the people in the room – why are they there? What challenges are they facing? How can you help them?

Resist the temptation to just read from slides and talk profit. Help your audience to feel that you are equally invested in the same outcome, whether that is company success, profitability, or future job security. Show a weaker side and your audience will really feel like you are all part of the same journey.

 

Learning to communicate well internally is your key to communicating well externally. After all, your greatest advocates are those people working with you, alongside you, every day, always.

 

Emma Bannister is passionate about presenting big, bold and beautiful ideas.

She is the founder and CEO of Presentation Studio, APAC’s largest presentation communication & training agency, Microsoft MVP, and author of the book ‘Visual Thinking: How to transform the way you think, communicate and influence with presentations.’ Emma will be speaking at IML’s Sydney TEL Talk: Enhancing Innovation and Creativity – How to make an impact.  

https://linkedin.com/in/emmabpresents

https://www.presentationstudio.com/

Sharing their vision is the way that leaders create the future

Written by Charles Horvath MIML, Professional Mentor and Decision-Making Facilitator

 

As a business mentor, I am passionate about succeeding.

We know and understand the principles for sound management and for succeeding. The rebranding of the Australian Institute of Management to Institute of Managers and Leaders (IML) is an excellent example of a successful undertaking. The right thinking took place at the right time and with the right execution, IML and its members are on the path to a successful future.

 

The August 2017 issue of Institute’s magazine, Leadership Matters, gave a very good description of Chief Executive, David Pich, went about the process of rebranding IML.

 

However, the fundamental reason for the success of the rebranding was only touched on coincidentally. The fundamental reason for the success of the rebranding was that someone had a vision of what IML would look like in the future. They shared that vision and a sufficient number of people bought into that vision for it to prevail.

 

A cursory review of management and leadership writings indicates that many characteristics are ascribed to successful managers and leaders, such as good planning, ability to communicate, selecting the right people to fill roles, to name a few. The one characteristic that is mentioned only in passing is that of a vision.

 

The foremost characteristic of a leader is to have a vision that captures the imagination. Nelson Mandela had a compelling vision. He shared it. People bought into it. South Africa is now free of apartheid.

 

Whilst a person becomes a leader for a number of reasons, the most important reason is having a vision and sharing it. David Pich is an excellent example of an effective leader. He had a vision for the Institute that was clear, compelling, comprehensive, soundly reasoned, supported by research and well presented to the target audience whose support was a key factor in the rebranding. People bought into it and the transformation to the IML took place.

 

The Institute is now a body of professional managers and leaders. This is great for its Members because they now have a new and an exciting credential with which to present themselves. However, at a bigger picture level, I would like to consider how our society as Australians will be affected by our newly qualified professionals.

 

The reason for focusing on vision as an important attribute of leaders is because leaders create the future. They do this by having a vision and sharing it with others. Leaders know how to bring the future into existence. So the question is, as a leader, “What is your vision for yourself, for others, and who are you sharing your vision with?”

 

Given that functioning with vision is an endemic and intrinsic part of our nature, we function with is subconsciously. My purpose in having broached the topic is to make conscious use if it.

 

Charles Horvath, B.Bus. (ACC.); FCPA; MIML.

Professional Mentor and Decision-Making Facilitator

Change With A Capital C: What Works?

We should all expect to go through upheavals during our working lives, which is all the more reason to become competent at dealing with it. By Professor Danny Samson FIML

 

 

Organisational change is hard and often unsuccessful because even seasoned managers can fall prone to underestimating organisational inertia. We often insufficiently attend to the concerns employees have about change, principally what will happen to them. Yet in these highly turbulent times, surely change management should be a core capability of every competent leader and every organisation that wants to sustain its survival and prosperity. So, what works and what are the pitfalls?

When change is radical, being “Big C” change as against incremental in nature, then the stakes and the risks are commensurately higher. By radical or Big C change, we refer to large transformations or makeovers, whether they are of culture, structure, size, technology, location, product range, distribution channel or any other core element of an organisation.

With radical change in particular, it’s critical to have a strong and compelling vision that motivates and justifies the change. Otherwise, when the going gets tough (and it will), the doubters will emerge and get a strong voice.

The next step is communicate comprehensively the necessity of such a change. Deal openly with the naysayers, and get quickly into the implementation phase. This brings us to the crucial and proven element of successful implementation of major change: create a solid project plan and drive it with tough, hard accountabilities expected from all participants. The project plan is the guiding ‘change map’ that overcomes the chaos that would otherwise result.

Otherwise we’re asking for chaos through ‘ad hockery’. If difficult decisions need to be implemented, such as downsizing and redundancies, then these need to be anticipated as part of the plan, and implemented in a thoroughly professional and precise manner. All employees will want to know their future, so the sooner this can be resolved, the better.

Successful change management is planned and executed in a fast and decisive manner so that the organisation can settle and stabilise.

This approach works much better than the “death by a thousand cuts” approach of multiple incremental steps in an attempt to get to the same end point. I saw this major contrast in New Zealand when both their Post and Telecom businesses were going through major restructuring and downsizing, with one doing a radical change process and the other announcing a five-year downsizing process.

NZ Post was successful in doing it fast and hard, then rebuilding its systems and culture, introducing new technology and renewing almost every aspect of its operations and service levels.

 

“It’s critical to have a strong and compelling vision that motivates and justifies the change.” – Professor Danny Samson

 

 

Similarly, when I served on the board of the TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, we chose to implement new e-business technologies, even though it meant that many jobs would change and some would disappear in our pursuit of higher levels of productivity and client service.

Perhaps the hardest thing to change in an organisation is people’s behaviour and culture. As a young engineer (many years ago) working at ICI in Sydney, I was amazed at the negativity of the industrial culture, and the gulf in attitude between managers and the workforce, along with the many insipid managerial attempts to chip away incrementally at the unproductive culture there.

Finally, with necessity being the mother of invention, the need for radical change was realised. A new site manager was brought in to overcome the deeply resistant and negative situation that had built up over decades. He brought sincere, yet firm, intentions, restructuring the workplace arrangements very substantially, enduring personal threats from militant resistors.

When the going got tough during a six-week strike he even had to deal with second thoughts from head office, which was ready to buckle on some of the core issues. He showed a huge amount of personal courage to see through the changes and implement the visionary plan to bring the company out of the industrial dark ages.

Executing radical change needs a vision and a plan, and the ability to demonstrate and communicate benefits of change to the business the. But tying it all together is the leadership team with the determination — let’s call it the stiff backbone — to see the journey through.

 

What Millennial Companies Get Right

 

Every generation brings with it a unique perspective and experience – otherwise why would people keep coming up with names to describe them? So what can business owners or potential startup founders from other generations learn from millennials? By Carolin Lenehan

 

MONICA Wulff is a statistician, a startup founder, and a Gen Y millennial. But once you strip the labels away, she’s a young Australian businesswoman receiving kudos and recognition around the world for her work developing a reliable statistical base of knowledge about Australian startup founders and the enabling environment they need to sustain them.

As CEO and co-founder of Startup Muster – Australia’s most comprehensive survey into this burgeoning growth sector – Monica’s views on what can be done to help new startup businesses grow and prosper are both insightful and innovative.

 

Do it with Passion

“We haven’t had the hard times faced by previous generations. We haven’t had to grit our teeth and say I’m just going to do this job, even though I hate it. For us it’s, ‘I’m going to follow my passion, I’m going to follow my purpose, I’m going to work somewhere or on something that is unique to me, and from that, I will be able to make an income and a living’,” Wulff says.

For Monica, this was easy – she loved statistics, then she fell in love with the startup world. Startup Muster is the marriage of the two and she has no problem putting every ounce of her being into making it work.

If you’re going to go through the hard slog of a startup life then you need to be doing something that you’re passionate about.

“One of the first things new startups are told is to find your story,” Monica says. “You’ve got to have a problem that you’re solving. Unless you’re dedicated and in love with the idea, you’re not going to succeed and you won’t be believeable [to investors, customers etc].”

Monica Wulff: co-founder and CEO of Startup Muster.

 

Get comfortable putting yourself out there: behave like a digital native

Living, eating and breathing your product and your brand 24/7 is essential – you never know where your next opportunity or investor might come from.

Millennials have an edge from growing up curating their personal brand on social media – with positive and negative personal consequences.

‘Go social’ with your business, but do it with purpose and integrity. Every post, every photograph, every event you report in from, all need to be carefully curated to leave an imprint of who you are, what you stand for and what you are achieving. The story you are telling through blogs, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter and WeChat all need to evoke aspirational feelings in your customers and clients – particularly if you are targeting millennials!

 

It’s not Entitled. It’s Entrepreneurial.

In her 2017 book, The Millennial Myth, Crystal Kadakia seeks to redefine the labels into business strategies that harness the millennial mindset:
“It’s not lazy, it’s productivity redefined.
It’s not entitled, it’s entrepreneurial.
It’s not hand-holding, it’s agility.
It’s not disloyal, it’s seeking purpose.
It’s not authority issues, it’s respect redefined.”

 

She has described millennials as enabled by the internet, enabled by STEM, and driven by YOLO (You Only Live Once).

Millennials like Crystal and Monica were at university during the Global Financial Crisis, and the recession that followed. Their generation will be the first to be less well-off than their parents.

“What came out of it was the mindset that there’s no such thing anymore as a golden handshake after 40 years with one company… We are working to have more ownership of our future. I’ve got a mission, and some would describe that as ‘entitled’,” Monica said.

 

AND REMEMBER . . . DON’T FEAR FAILURE

Tackle your new business with passion, drive and integrity. Nurture its public image, curate it carefully. Don’t fear criticism, use it to hone your product and build your defences. If you do fail, learn from it and wear it as a notch on your belt. Soon it will be the new black.

 

Waste Not, Want Not

 

Why toilet paper market disruptor ‘Who Gives a Crap’ is on a roll.
BY GLENN CULLEN

 

With a company name of Who Gives a Crap (WGAC), it would initially seem incongruous that the first lesson many of its staff will learn is one of perseverance. A self-proclaimed market disruptor of the toilet paper industry – which donates 50 per cent of its profits to improve sanitation in third world countries – the business only really got legs because one of its co-owners refused to get up off his seat.

Founded by Simon Griffiths, Danny Alexander and Jehan Ratnatunga in 2012, WGAC needed to raise $50,000 in pre-orders to start production of its toilet paper range. Griffiths (pictured) came up with the idea of sitting on a toilet in the warehouse and not getting up until they met the target, all the while filming an ad and livestreaming his, ahem, movements. There were scenes reminiscent of Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon and some numb buttocks but 50 hours later the mark was met and Who Gives a Crap got wings.

“The idea that you can sit on a toilet for more than two days and start a business through sheer belligerence says a lot about the company,” explains Phil King, head of production and sourcing.

Five years on and WGAC has moved millions of toilet rolls, donated about $500,000 to its charity partners and employs 28 people in an operation that’s expanded into the United States, Philippines and now England.

The gist of the operation is this: WAGC sources its forest-friendly toilet paper, tissues and paper towels and has them manufactured in China. They’re shipped to Australia and distributed to seven warehouses around the country, ordered almost entirely online and then sent direct to the consumer. Most employees work in the ‘customer happiness’ department, that is sorting out orders and ensuring people get their product.

“On the inside, we look and operate like many start-ups,” King says.

“We’re really de-centralised; there is no office and while we do have hubs like the Inspire 9 work space in Melbourne where a few of us gather, most of the team work remotely. We have customers, team members and warehouses across three different countries and that makes communication really important.”

To wit: this year marked the first time the full team actually all met in person.

Smart use of technology has thus become key to operations. WGAC uses platforms such as Slack (group messaging), Trello (project management) and Zendesk (customer service).

“We have some structured, standard meetings, but we are [the corporate structure] very flat and, typically, people take a lot of ownership for their piece and get their heads down. We’ve gotten really good at being succinct in our communication with each other. Our days aren’t bloated with internal meetings because they just don’t work.”

The hybrid model of splitting profits with donations is core to the operation, with Griffiths maintaining that if there wasn’t the prospect of financial return for some of WGAC’s early backers they may have struggled to get the level of interest they did. King also feels pure not-for profit ventures can get more political.

“In the NGO world there are multiple stakeholders in terms of your philanthropists and I suspect that takes more time, takes you away from what your core vision is,” he says.

For the staff it is also a vital plank — they can earn a wage, take shares in the company and contribute to an organisation that is making a difference.

 

“Employees want companies that give them a reason to get out of bed to feel that they are doing something positive,” King says.

 

“Everyone has a common bond around why they are here, yet it’s rarely spoken of. We all enjoy toilet humour, but really the given is that we all enjoy being part of something bigger than ourselves.”

While King maintains that mix can provide a best-of-both-worlds scenario, giving money away is not always as easy as it sounds and often comes with an extra level of scrutiny.

Griffiths discovered this first hand with the Shebeen Bar in Melbourne, an establishment he ran where profits from the exotic lagers and wines were slated to fund overseas aid projects.

But because it didn’t make cash profits for three years and was ultimately shut down, largely through complications arising from regulatory issues, there was no scope to fund anything. It resulted in some media barbs but Griffiths was unrepentant, saying he would do it all again.

WGAC appears to have no such woes with their key beneficiary, Water Aid, delighted with the amount of money that is now being raised for them.

“I think that there is extra responsibility in being a social enterprise, because so many consumers place their faith in us and will us to succeed on their behalf,” King offers. “But the positive energy around that is the best of that world, not the worst.”

 

The disruptors

Who Gives a Crap is in good company in shaking up its field, joining the likes of Uber, Airbnb and Deliveroo in changing the industry paradigm. Here’s a few other market disruptors you may not have heard of:

Quid: Big Data is everything these days and Quid is making waves in the information platform sphere with its Internet scouring tools to create trend maps that tell its customers what is getting media traction.

Shoes of Prey: An Australian company that allows you to design your own shoes at a sensible price while guaranteeing their fit. Carrie Bradshaw would be proud.

Space X: Rockets to Mars are not just a Hollywood fantasy for Space X, the aerospace disruptor that aims to get people to the red planet in the coming decades. Started by Elon Musk, founder of electric car company Tesla.

Temple & Webster: Taking on IKEA and department chains may sound foolhardy but Temple & Webster has found quite the niche with its subscription-based homeware offerings.

Social Intelligence: A human resources company that uses next-level social media scanning to determine whether there are any red flags attached to that would-be employee.

 

 

Did you know . . .

  • 2.4 billion people across the world don’t have access to a toilet.
  • More people have a mobile phone than a toilet.
  • WGAC boasts that its production method has saved 47,968 trees and 101,170,933 litres of water, while 8060 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions have been avoided.
  • Almost 900 children under five die every day due to lack of adequate toilets and diseases associated with poor sanitation.
  • There are no inks, dyes or scents in WGAC products and they’re ‘tree free’, whereas more than 98 per cent of toilet rolls sold in Australia are made from virgin fibres (non recycled and typically from trees).
  • Since 1990, nearly a third of the current global population has gained access to an improved sanitation facility (that’s 2.1 billion people).
  • A World Health Organization study in 2012 calculated that for every $1 invested in sanitation, there was an economic return of $5.50 in lower health costs, more productivity and fewer premature deaths.

 

The Leadership Road Less Travelled

 

With a new name comes a new resolve for the Institute of Managers and Leaders to treat leadership more holistically, as seen in our latest book, Leadership Matters: 7 Skills of Very Successful Leaders

By David Pich

 

As you can probably imagine, over the past two years as chief executive of the Institute of Managers and Leaders (formerly the Australian Institute of Management), I’ve heard an awful lot about leadership. I’ve also been asked a lot about it and I’ve read a lot about it. I’ve spoken to the Institute’s members – and lots of other managers and leaders – about leadership. That’s an awful lot of conversations about leadership. And so there should be: leadership matters.

After all of these conversations and discussion about leadership, there’s little doubt in my mind that it’s best defined as being a unique blend of inspiration and perspiration. But a rarely acknowledged issue is that the vast majority of today’s thinking around the topic of leadership is focused on leadership > from the inspiration perspective. While undoubtedly important, this perspective is what I think we all might agree is the ‘sexy stuff’ of the leadership debate.

Today we’re living in a post-psychology world. We’re surrounded by – and the debate about leadership is dominated by – soundbites and memes and by reality TV. These days every person and their dog (or indeed their cat) has a blog, a LinkedIn profile, an Instagram account, a Pinterest page and a Twitter feed about leadership.

We’re bombarded with images and quotes telling us that leaders  must be resilient, authentic, brave and emotionally intelligent. We’re reminded that leaders must listen, reflect, sympathise, empathise and every other form of ‘ise’ you can think of.

All of this is what I like to call the LGS stuff – or the leadership guilt stuff.

It’s the stuff that makes us as leaders feel inadequate. Of course, it’s the stuff that sells coaching sessions, self-help courses and lots and lots of books, and let’s face it, keeps people like Tony Robbins in business!

It’s all absolutely true of course. A leader does need to be resilient, authentic, brave, emotionally intelligent and all the other things. There is absolutely no doubt that all the leadership guilt stuff is important in making in good leader become a great leader. It’s true there are personal attributes that leaders must develop and hone to improve their leadership. And it’s absolutely true that myriad books, coaching options and indeed Tony Robbins-inspired courses can – and do – assist.

And it was this observation that led to the Institute’s first book on leadership for a number of years.

Leadership Matters: 7 Skills of Very Successful Leaders tackles the real work of leadership. It looks at the nitty gritty, the tough stuff. It’s about the leadership grunt rather than the leadership guilt.

So, why did we decide to take the leadership road less travelled with our first book under the newly named Institute?

The answer lies at the heart of the rebrand of the Institute. The newly named Institute will focus on setting the standard of management and leadership competence and striving to see this standard accepted nationally. At the heart of this will be a focus on the things that managers and leaders actually do to mark themselves as great managers and leaders. This focus, by definition, is about the perspiration of leadership.

In short, you can be the most resilient person it’s possible to be. You can be acutely aware of yourself and in touch with your own emotions and feelings and you can be as bold and brave as the next manager and leader. But this alone won’t guarantee you success in the profession that is management and leadership. Having the ‘right’ personality and behavioural traits will only get you so far. If we’re going to set the standard for management and leadership competence and if we’re going to accompany managers and leaders on their personal leadership journey, we must look at leadership much more holistically.

We must include the hard work, the heavy lifting, the tough stuff. This is exactly what the book does. It tackles the perspiration of leadership. It does this by considering seven of the core skills that contribute to successful leadership. There are others of course. But the seven skills detailed in the book are those skills that, in researching the book, the Institute’s Policy and Research team found were ubiquitous.

The seven skills of very  successful leaders are:  Setting strategy; Defining culture; Leading people; Making decisions; Ethical leadership; Inclusion; Networking.

CHAPTER 1: SETTING STRATEGY

The Institute’s book starts where successful leadership typically begins – with a plan.

Successful leaders have a plan. They have a vision and a direction, and they know where they’re going and why they’re going there.

Successful leaders tend not to wing it. They don’t make a habit of guessing or second guessing. On the contrary, they set out on a path with a relatively clear view of where they’re going and how they intend to get there. Of course, good leaders need to be flexible in the execution of their plan, but they never lose sight of the ultimate objective that lies at the heart of their strategy.

A good example of the power of plan – or a dream – is seen in the leadership of Martin Luther King.

MLK had a dream – he had a vision. He knew what the future could look like. He could see the possibilities.

Of course, as leaders we can only dream of having a mere fraction of the impact MLK had, but to be successful we can perhaps take a little leaf out of his leadership book.

 

CHAPTER 2: DEFINING CULTURE

Successful leaders must focus on getting the environment right so that they – and their team – can deliver the strategy.
Culture is absolutely key, but it’s all too often ignored because it’s too often placed in the too-hard basket. At its heart, culture is about people. It’s about the people we work with and the teams we work in. These people and these teams are all absolutely crucial to the success of a leader.

The culture a leader creates will determine the success of the strategy and ultimately the success of the leader.

This chapter of the book asks leaders to think about their business, their team and, more broadly, their organisation. It asks what the core strategy is and whether the culture is aligned to that strategy. Are the recruitment, reward, recognition and reporting policies and processes aligned to support the strategy? Of course, if the culture doesn’t support the strategy, change will be required.

Institute of Managers and Leaders latest book, Leadership Matters: 7 Skills of Very Successful Leaders.

CHAPTER 3: LEADING PEOPLE

This chapter is possibly the definng chapter of the book. In terms of successful leadership, it’s the BIG ONE, the piece de resistance. There can be no doubt that a leader leads.

In one sense, managing is easy. Managing is about knowing the processes and implementing them. It’s about  dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s. It’s about following the rulebook and ticking the boxes. But leading people is something  else entirely.

Leading – and leadership – is about recognising and celebrating individual differences, motivations, skills and experiences. It’s about balancing the individual, the team, the plan, strategy and the vision. And then working hard to keep the all of these often competing demands in balance while delivering.

CHAPTER 4: MAKING DECISIONS

That leaders make decisions is an obvious statement of fact. But successful leaders make the right decisions and they make those based on sound research and wise counsel.

In this chapter we argue that successful leaders typically understand the decision-making process. They weigh up the options, they narrow things down, they analyse and — of course — they agonise. But after all of this, they make a decision. There is, of course, another thing that successful leaders do when making decisions . . . they consult. This aspect of decision making means they identify those experts they can trust and rely on and then they ask questions and listen to the answers.

CHAPTER 5: ETHICAL LEADERSHIP

In essence, this chapter urges managers and leaders to be ethical. Always.

Effective leadership is based on the principle of leading by example. Successful managers and leaders cast a shadow that others walk in, find comfort in and seek to copy. As such, leaders must set the bar for what’s right and what’s wrong and this bar needs to be set much higher than many of today’s leaders chose to set it.

The role of a leader is to set the standard of behaviour that others look up to. When it comes to ethical behavior, successful leaders must walk the talk.

CHAPTER 6: INCLUSION MATTERS

This chapter argues that successful leaders celebrate, support and encourage diversity and inclusion.

Leaders must look to the future while keeping a sharp eye on the present. And they must recognise the future is likely to be different. Leadership is about recognising this and celebrating this difference – and embracing it. Leaders must prepare now for that future.

Successful leaders are coaches and mentors. They are inclusive. They involve and include people regardless of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability or colour and they operate without prejudice and with an innate sense of fairness.

CHAPTER 7: NETWORKING IS WORKING

This chapter supports a long-held view of the Institute. We believe that successful leaders get out of their offices; they meet people, they network. A successful leader has a significant group of people he or she can turn to, rely on, and be with.

No leader is an island, they must keep up to date and well across the latest thinking, technology developments and people. They need get out there, get known and be seen.

To coin a phrase I personally find really quite dreadful, to be successful in the modern world, leaders do need to put some time into their personal brand. Of course, this doesn’t mean that networking and connecting socially always comes easily to every leader, but leaders recognise the power that comes from of having a finger on the pulse of knowledge and information.

In this way, the Institute believes that successful leaders recognise that networking is working.