Marketing in the Madness

Driving a High Performance Culture with E.ON Next’s Head of Digital, Abdul Khaled #41

• Street Agency • Episode 41

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Would you hire a “Chief Happiness Officer”? 🤔

Someone dedicated to looking after the happiness of your team?

Abdul Khaled is looking for one to join challenger brand, E.ON Next.

As the Head of Digital; Customer Experience and Digital Products, Abdul believes that to deliver the highest possible level of service and product for customers, and drive a customer centric experience, you have to start with your people. 👥

In this episode of Marketing in the Madness, Abdul joins Katie Street to reveal his 5 key principles for driving a high performance culture. 

From attracting rockstar talent, to recruiting top performers who challenge your current team, to driving ambition and diversity - this episode is jam-packed with advice on how to create a culture of excellence. 

In this episode you’ll discover: 

🚀How a shift towards customer-centric, digital-first strategies can catapult your business to new heights.
 
👥Strategies for creating a culture that promotes continuous improvement and excellence.
 
🖌Tactics for building trust within teams and fostering a psychologically safe environment for creative problem-solving.
 
🔗Prioritising cultural fit and personal connections in the hiring process to build a cohesive team.

💡Leadership skills for setting ambitious goals, leading by example and providing tactical guidance.

Abdul Khaled: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abdul-khaled-digital/

Connect with Katie Street:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/katiestreet/
https://www.instagram.com/streetmate/

Follow Street Agency:
https://street.agency/
https://www.instagram.com/street.agency/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/streetagency/


If you want high performance, you've got to show high performance and you've got to invest in high performance. So you've got to set the bar high. Once you start getting close to that bar, you've got to then set a new bar because high performance should always be evolving. There are five key principles that you've got for driving this high performance culture. What's the first thing that you need to deploy in order to make sure that your staff are performing as they should do? You're only as good as the people that you have. If you get the wrong people in, it's a domino effect. But even if they're not the best in their game, if they've got the right attitude to work towards it, you'd rather have that person. You don't want to echo chamber. Of course, you don't want everyone thinking the same, moving the same, but they all know where they want to get and they can challenge each other along the way. So if you have that culture of excellence and everyone's striving to be the best that they can be, then you trust them even if you disagree with them. In order for your team to perform, you've got to have the right culture. And I'll be talking about AI or the technologies that power all of this, or the marketing tactics and the innovations that they're, you know, deploying. But the reality is, if you don't have that high performance culture, none of the rest of it works. Hi, guys, and welcome to Marketing the Madness. If you're joining us for the first time, I'm going to introduce myself because I never usually do that. So my name is Katie Street. I'm the host of this podcast, the founder of Street Agency. And, I don't know, I'd like to think of myself as a bit of a marketing expert, but also someone that loves to support females and empower us to. I guess we'll develop a better workspace that's fairer, that's got gender equality and all those lovely things. So that's what I'm all about. But today, it's not all about me. I've got my fantastic well, nearly as of next week client. I'm from Eon Abdul Abdullah. I'm going to get you to introduce yourself because you're going to do a much better job than I am. Yeah, well. Thank you. So, my name is Abdul Kelly. I am currently the head of digital and customer experience at your next, been there for about three years now. building up a new digital team and then really trying to drive forward an industry leading customer experience agenda. before that, spent quite a few years at Cisco. So looking after, quite a few sort of global operations from this is a global team and then moving more into managing an image team. which is nice. so going from Cisco, which is a global organisation, to Eon, which is a global brand, but I'm working for your next, which is a start up. So quite a varied sort of background. there just in recent times. But even before that, a lot of sort of brands within product design engineering, so quite varied multi-discipline background. I love that. I mean, you have just the best attitude, I think, to business out of anyone I've spoken to for a long, long time, which is exactly what we're going to be talking about today. It's going to be about the culture that, I guess ignites growth. I often talk about marketing growth on this podcast, but in order, yeah, you're running a digital team. In order for your team to perform, you've got to have the right culture. And I mean, especially at a company like your next, which I guess is the like you say, it's the start up part of Eon. You've got to have that culture embedded and it's got to be maybe slightly different, but maybe there's a lot. Eon can learn from, from his baby brother or sister. so tell me about well, let's start with Eon next. How does your next differ for people that don't know the difference between Eon and your next? Because this is helpful for me as well. Tell me about the difference between Eon, and Eon Next. So Eon Next is a UK brand. it's just over three years old now. And the idea behind your next was could we set up a challenger brand in the UK to kind of change the way that people view energy? because if we've been honest energy, not the most exciting space in the world. but it's very important. Like, we all need it and it's, it's traditionally been a low interest category, but obviously during the energy crisis it became high interest category, but probably for the wrong reasons. so I think we were kind of foreshadowing that there was a situation where we need to be more proactive, more transparent, more customer centric, more digital first. and it just happened that the energy crisis happened very quickly after we launched, which meant that we had to accelerate that agenda. And I think the idea is, if you're working in an organisation that has already set, impression for the audience for many, many years, such as some of the big six firms have, it's very difficult to be able to then suddenly navigate and provide a different alternative message for your brand. and so the idea was, could we set up a completely new brand new board, a new direction, to be able to bring something fresh to the to the, customer base. It and there was always debates about, you know, should it, should it still have the name Eon or should it be something completely different? But what we have to, you know, we have to be careful about. Eon itself has built a good brand. It has good credibility behind it. And I think in a space such as energy, where, especially during, last few years, we saw a lot of energy companies going bust and other business, you know, having something completely new into the market is also a little bit difficult for customers to buy into. And trust, you know, is this and is this company going to be here for the long run. So we're taking the best of what Eon has to offer, which is the brand and the credibility and this and the security and the scalability. and giving it a different sort of touch with the, with the new brand and being more edgy, more out there, more risky. and it's all driven by the culture because you can only achieve all of those things if you've got the right culture internally. So it's challenging sort of mindsets, challenging traditional ways of working, and seeing can we bring a different value and an ethos into the mix to be really customer centric, digital first, and bring something fresh and new to the market. Which is super exciting, and you've been there since day dot to help form this? Yeah. No, I mean, I pretty much yeah, I joined a little bit after. But in terms of the digital spaces, really just driven that agenda from, from the beginning of our digital adventure, really. So what does that mean in practice as a business? What are you doing culturally to drive that kind of growth mindset and break away and do things a bit differently? So I think that's the message that we sent outwardly is customer centricity. So that's our North Star. That's where we want to be. That's where we want to work backwards from, really trying to be customer first. and I think that's really important in this space where energy companies, naturally for customers is always greedy, you know, they're not in it for us to end it for them. And that's that's the traditional stereotype. So to be able to break away from that is to be really customer first, really customer centric, provide customers with the value that they need and the experiences that they need. And knowing naturally, if you if you prioritise that all of the other things that you should actually care about as a responsible business will fall into place. But prioritise the customer first. so that's the North Star, approach and that's, that's where the culture is built on. but what I believe in terms of how you can execute that is you have to be good at the job. So if you want to create great experiences, great products or deliver great services, you have to be good at what you do. customers demand excellence, otherwise they'll go somewhere else. So in in order to deliver that excellence, you need to have a culture. And this is what we emphasis quite a bit. Is high performance right. How can you get people in your organisation, individuals within the business, to be operating at the highest possible level in order for you as a business, to then produce the highest level, of service product experience and ultimately then drive that customer centric, experience for the customer. So it's sort of that's the North Star customer centricity. But the vehicle that takes you there is high performance. And that's the culture that we've really doubled down on. It's weird, isn't it? Because often I'll be interviewing people and I'll be talking about AI or the technologies that power all of this, or the marketing tactics and the innovations that they're, you know, deploying. But the reality is, if you don't have that high performance culture, none of the rest of it works. Yeah. Yeah. Just it's so obvious. Yeah, it's so basic. But you have to be good at what you do. Yeah. And I think sometimes high performance as it is should be the norm. But it can get conflated sometimes with toxicity and high pressure environment and intensity which are all red flags in a lot of organisation. but if you're not modelling it and presenting it in the right way, you can shy away from it and then come across as not valuing high performance. And that's a disservice to your customers, but also a disservice to the individuals, because as an individual working for any organisation, you want to be the best version of yourself. You want to be continuously improving and challenging yourself. and the only way you can do that is having that focus of of performance and saying, we want to make sure that you get to the highest level of performance that you can for yourself, first and foremost. And if we can invest in you as an individual, naturally, the products and services that we produce as an organisation will be the best in the market, and that's the only way that the customers are going to be coming back to you. Yeah, 100%. I mean, it's not good. I'm going to say this wrong. Rocket science is not the right way, right? It's not rocket science. You know, it's. Not rocket science. But we forget. We focus too much on the tactical things that we deploy rather than the internal culture. So I know for a fact that you guys are doing this. I mean, one, you're just a lovely person. So as as you can all see, I'm sure. But there are five key principles that you've got for driving this high performance culture, which we're going to dig into today. Can you I mean, I do have them all on my phone. So if we need to I can't go there, but I'm sure you probably know them off by heart. Can you give me the number one thing? So let's start at the beginning. What's the first thing that you need to deploy in order to make sure that your staff are, you know, performing as they should do? And it's just that the staff. So talent. Yes. So you're only as good as the people that you have. So what can you do as an organisation to find the best talent in the market that's right for you? And B how do you then facilitate the talent that you already have in your organisation to be able to get up to that level that you need them to be and continuously make sure that they are improving and reaching that level. So talent is a big one. and that's a difficult one to crack because if you get the wrong people in, it's a domino effect, right? It will influence the decisions that they make. if they are then managers that then go and hire other people, it's just a knock on effect. it also creates, an environment where some of your players will lower their level naturally, if you've got too many B players, if you flip it around and you've got a team of eight players in, you chuck a B player in there, naturally they will come up to that level. So it has a knock on effect. But it's difficult. It's really, really difficult. And I think what happens with a lot of organisations and this is the mistake that I've been through is, oh, you've got your day job to do. So how much time can you reinvest in recruitment and finding the right talent? Not a lot in many cases because you I. Struggle with that. Yeah. You've still got a day job to do. Yeah. So you end up compromising in many cases. You find either the process hasn't been that great and you've kind of find someone on a surface level that looks good, fits the model, and you bought the mean and then later on found out, actually they're not the right fit or you're making compromise decisions, especially if you're doing a massive recruitment drive, as I did, where you have to hire a lot of people in a short amount of time. And I think there's two ways that we've managed to overcome it. number one is being able to go and get short term talent in to fill a gap to alleviate some of the pressures. And then you can actually go and spend some time on finding the right talent. Now that's expensive. Not a of companies want to take that approach because finding temporary talent is expensive. But you've got to think long term. because hiring the wrong people has such an expensive knock on effect. I just don't think you can afford to do that. No, it's much better to go and get temporary talent in, you know, invest up front a little bit for the long term success of the business, to alleviate some of that pressure. And those are low risks because most likely they can come in and do a job. They might not be the best fit, but it's just getting things moving to give you the the necessary time and effort that you need to then go and find the tenant. So if you've got that, if you've got sort of bums in seats to kind of give you a little bit of, time and a little bit pressure, you then need a kickass recruitment partner because that's where I've had the biggest success. and that can be either external or internal. And I've had both, I've worked with and recruiters have a bad rep. Yes, they do the way even worse. An estate agent. Yes. so I don't want to add more fuel to that fire, but if you don't find the right partner to work with, they're just going to flog you whatever they can, right? Yeah. you need to have someone that. And that word partner is so, so key. You need to have someone that understands you, that works with you, that that knows what you're looking for and is able to filter out some of that talent pool so that you're more efficient in how you approach, your recruitment. it's almost like you have it thinking of it. And I have this. I'm very lucky. We have someone amazing shout out to Heidi, friend who's our kind of she's more of a holistic hate HR person from score HR, but you know, she'll step in and help. She understands our values. She's helped us create those values, and she'll step in and help in those interview processes. And she knows the cultural fit of the right person for street based on our values. And she knows me. We've worked together for many, many a year, but that is for me. I, I have to have that because we're really small business and without that support, we just wouldn't we wouldn't get anywhere when it comes to recruitment. So I do think, yes, they have had a bad rep, but think of them and you can see them of what I do. Philly's getting better. I don't get as many crappy outreach messages from recruiters, and actually the positioning of a lot of them is more as a holistic H.R. Recruiter that's going to be able to help you do lots of different things when it comes to, you know, building the right talent and get them finding you the right, the right people. So shout out to Heidi. Yeah, I'm going to give a shout out to Connor Hayden, who's my external recruiter I've used for many, many years. Amazing. So always good to know this is what we like. We want the tips. These guys are listening. He helped me build multiple teams at William James. Concise and so good shout out there. And then what I've done in my current role is then hired an internal recruiter because we had to go on a massive recruitment drive. So I've again will give a shout out to Mike Joe, who's famous amongst the E on streets now because he's hired more than 25 people for me in two years. Wow. And he's an internal recruit. So the difference with external internal is he works with me in my team. He's in the office. He's there day in, day out. If you walk in to our offices, you wouldn't know who's a recruiter and who's the talent in the team because he's embedded himself within the team. He's there. He goes to all our socials and he's he's hired everyone. So yeah, it's everyone's best mate. It's it's Mike's babies is what we call it. But he understands the culture. He lives and breathes what we do on an everyday basis. He knows how I operate and how I work upfront, impersonal, not over a one phone call, a briefing call it and that's it. He's never see me again. And what that allows us to do is build that culture of like minded individuals, because that culture is so, so important. Do they have the right chemistry? Do they have the right fit? because you don't want someone to come in that's going to disrupt the whole applecart, no matter how talented they are. I'm going to steal something from, Simon Sinek or watch a presentation of his, which is amazing when he replayed some of the things that the Navy Seals do when they have this sort of quadrant of, trust and performance and so high performance, high performance, low performance, high trust, low trust. Right. Your typical consultant, quadrant and what the Navy Seals do, they would always go and hire a middle performer that had high trust over a high performance, that had low trust. Right. And obviously, trust in this instance can mean quite a few things. But it's not about getting the most talented person that can then sometimes be a bit of a jerk and then upset the whole culture. It's about getting someone that has the right attitude with, you know, they have to have a necessary level of skill set that can mean that they can contribute in that value. But even if they're not the best in their game, if they've got the right attitude to work towards it, you'd rather have that person than someone, that doesn't have that. So we really prioritise that. And what Mike does is he'll be the, just screening people based on the culture and the set of beliefs that he knows that I want, and he knows that the team won. And what has resulted in, honestly, a team that we've built where I've never seen this, but they're genuinely friends, right. and I know a lot of people will say this, that they have this in their teams and that's great. But I genuinely see these. They enjoy coming to work when we have two strikes in London, which is quite common. yeah. They'll come the following week that we've missed each other. Oh, miss commented this this is amazing. and you know this as well, that going on holiday next week, right? Yeah. a whole group of them. Amazing. I mean, I hope they come back in one piece, but that's the level of trust and camaraderie and chemistry that they've built. And it's people of like minded thoughts. They've got the same ambition, the same vision, but also a diversity in terms of, approaches, which means that they can still challenge each other because you don't want to echo chamber. Of course, you don't want everyone thinking the same and moving the same, but they all know where they want to get to. and they can challenge each other along the way. And that trust that's been built between them means that they can openly and candidly challenge each other. The result, which I think is fantastic. So talent and then making sure you don't don't just bring the right talent in, but create the environment for that talent to succeed in and thrive in is so, so crucial. I love that you're making me really think about our recruitment process there because it's so true. You know, one thing that, I mean, where we probably have as many structural rules around it, which I'm thinking I may introduce with Heidi, that is, you know, I always recruit based on my gut feel of the person and how they'll fit into the team, rather than just their skills. So it's so important because how you say you can have the most amazing, skilled, driven person. But if attitude really they don't fit in with your team and they're going to rub people up the wrong way, the whole thing. For the most. Part. And it's and I've seen it happen, you know, when I've been employed and even when I've, you know, made the wrong decision recruiting someone. So having a process that enables you to spot that and, yeah, we've done things like Myers-Briggs tests in our recruitment process so that we can say, I mean, the only problem and I don't know if you've got an answer for this that I potentially say is like attracts like, right? So I and we did this. We actually did the whole Myers-Briggs of colours, you know, insights stuff. after we'd recruited and I had accidentally recruited everyone in my leadership team exactly the same as me, and then all of the campaign managers, delivery people were all executives. So we literally I can't remember how many different profile types there are, but we had two different types. And I think there was one other lady who was different and that was it, like literally out of like 14 or something of us at the time. There was we were all there were two groups. Yeah, four of us, one way ten and maybe one other slightly different. Yeah. So how do you. Because of course you want diversity, right? Because you need that. So how do you know if you've got the answer to this. How do you make sure that you don't recruit, you know, mini versions of yourself? Well, I think this is where if you've made the mistakes. Yes. Right. It's only a learning for the rest of us. So thank you for yeah mistakes. Yeah. Because that's been something we were conscious of. So what we do is we try and find a set of principles that we, we, we definitely want to make sure we have that are alike. Right. and they're more sort of cultural value, specific. But then you have and this is where we consciously because we know that people have made these mistakes and I've made these mistakes before and said, you don't want to create an echo chamber. So you do go and try and find people that are different, to the usual set of people that you have something that they can bring something different to different to the table. maybe that they can challenge your thoughts. I love people that can challenge me. and I think, you know, maybe we can talk about this now. So the other sort of real valued, driven concept that we have that then contributes towards trust and creating that environment is disagreeing. Commit. Oh, I like this. So this is, starting from Jeff Bezos. Yeah. Amazon. and the idea is rather than arguing and debating and going back and forth and falling out with people and not making a decision, you have enough trust in the people around you to say you're hired for a reason. And it goes back to performance. If you have that culture of excellence and everyone's striving to be the best that they can. Be, yeah. Then you trust them. Even if they if you disagree with them and you have to have some mechanism in place to allow that decision to then come to come to life, which I'll get to in a minute. But it's the idea that we can have healthy decisions or healthy disagreements, but we just trust in an in each other to say we'll go with you. And then you have your test to learn approach, because rather than debating the merits and the pros and cons of this decision. So I finally just go and test and learn. And that's going back to your earlier question around what's the difference between the Onex and traditional companies? It's it's the flat structure. It's the Start-Up mentality is the ability to go and test an idea tomorrow that you have today, and not having to go through a business case and budget approvals and all of that, go and test an idea. So rather than, say a company A where they probably spend about 3 or 4 weeks of debating and then going to an escalation meeting and another board meeting, and then still not made a decision in that same period, we can say, right, that's nobody's idea, but sounds, sounds promising. Like, you know, you're here for a reason. Let's go and test it. Test it with real customers. Get some data, validate or invalidate idea. You're moving at speed. So that then removes all the toxicity around the politics of work where, you know, I have an idea, but I don't really agree with it. I want to put my views forward, remove all of that, and you say, look, we're here as one team. We're working towards one mission. We're going to have challenging ideas because we want that is the only way you can really push that bar of excellence is if you're challenging the thoughts. but disagreeing. Commit to testing that. I love that disagreeing. C'mere, I love it. I'm taking that one now. I am gonna get my phone out because you know, why not? And I want to make sure I cover every point. Now, we may have covered some of this already. The next point talent was the first one. Yeah. The next point I've got is trust. Yeah. Which we've kind of covered. But should we delve a bit deeper? Yeah. Yeah. So I think, sometimes building trust within teams is it takes time. and sometimes you can be tactical around it. So the things I mentioned around disagreeing, it almost takes the trust away because by default you're there knowing two things. Number one, everyone around me is of excellence. And, you know, we're striving towards the best that we can so that almost by default, you're walking to environment and obviously we've we've got good success and good results to kind of prove that's anybody new coming in knows. Right. We're we're walking into the all stars essentially. Right. so by default there's already a level of trust there. And in that the whole approach of test and learn and disagreeing, commit then allows you to trust people with almost, a warranty. I love that because you're not blindly trusting. You're kind of half committing somewhat, knowing that the data will prove or, you know, invalidate the assumptions. Right? So it's almost easier to kind of half commit to then see it play out and then you got more opportunities to trust people in the future. So that's more tactical. But strategically what we try and do is we really want to understand the person behind the role. And that's a strong emphasis that I have, because when you start understanding and connecting with people on a human level and you know who they are and the reasons why they make certain decisions and how they operate, it's much easier to build that connection with them and understand them on a human level, and then to be able to to build that trust and with them. If you just see them as an analyst or an engineer, sometimes it's difficult to get past that. So again, going back to the recruitment process, my first question in any interview is, Katie, tell me, tell me who Katie is. The person don't want to know about your career. Tell me who you are as a person. I want to know you. What makes you tick? What me and what what? What's your pet peeves? What you life journey been so far? and when we introduce people into the teams I want to hired, I again ask them to introduce themselves as the person and then we have an initiation, which is which always catches people off guard because it's usually we have sort of our team huddles remotely just to get everyone together on a Monday morning. No one likes coming to the office on a Monday and and what we say is the initiation is welcome to the team, Katie. Obviously introduce yourself in terms of who you are. Now. Pick something from your vicinity that has some sort of meaning, or holds a memory, or talks to us a little bit about who you are and your personality. That already breaks the ice. So it's not. Hi, I'm so-and-so and I'm an analyst and I do this. No, no, it's I'm the person. Here's who I am. Let me share something that tells you a little bit about my character and personality. And then we talk about what you do. Yeah. So now when I meet you in the corridors, I know who you are as an individual first before I know what your role is. And I think that helps, really to break that ice first and foremost, make it more personal, make it more human. but really forces us to build those relationships. And then I can probably move on and, and talk to you about a little bit about our de facto chief happiness officer. Oh, I like this. Yeah. So this is, I have a role for Chief happiness officer that's probably not quite there yet, but we've got some someone in the team that almost takes that role on. so we're above near enough 50 people right now. So it's it's a big team and there's a lot of individuals and there's a lot of things to kind of take care of. and the more and more the team grows, the more separation it gets from me. and I always want to stay close, but it's not practically possible to stay close. so I almost got someone in the team to fulfil this role, primarily to look after the happiness of the team and to show the team that we're investing in their happiness. So anything that they need discussing or that's on their mind at work or outside of work, you know, they've got someone there to go to, because they're not always comfortable to come to their manager or someone above their manager. sometimes you have a situation where you think my issue is too small to bother the manager. but it's not. And I want to show that any issue or any problem that you have, there's someone there that's a little bit that you might feel a little bit more comfortable having that conversation with, and then she's able to identify things in the team, anything that we need to kind of take care of or address, because sometimes a lot of these things don't come to light. So when you're able to kind of see it, feel it, and, attack those issues proactively, you kind of can put some of the fires out before they become fires. so all of this is kind of building towards that psychological safety, that kind of support mechanisms around the team, a to build trust is all between each other, but also to build touch between leadership and the people on the ground, which I think is so, so important. Such a fantastic approach. I mean, like you say it, it makes total sense when you think about it, but often, especially small businesses, you know, I don't do all these things. I know how important it is and I want to be able to do it all. But it's so fantastic to hear the amazing things you're doing. I think that support mechanism is hugely important, and there's lots of different ways you can deploy that, but you're setting a fantastic example up to it's amazing. So that was point three I think, wasn't it. Support mechanisms. Yes. Can you can probably remember the like I'm going to keep checking my phone anyway. So the fourth one that I have, is leadership. Is that right. Hang on. No that's the mindset. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. so yeah. Mindset finding a way, making a way and a first principles thinking approach. Tell me about that. And so it's all kind of evolutionary, right. So you find the right people, you build that sort of environment around them. Make sure that sort of trust that's built as a core principle between everyone in the organisation, and you put the different mechanisms in place to facilitate that. then it's down to the individual. So if you want to achieve high levels of performance, you've got to have the right mindset. and so these are the things that we look for when we sort of hiring people. But also there's some principles that I put in place to help them. So finding a way. Making a way is a principle that I'm a big fan of. It is a mindset. It's sort of creative problem solving. It's the attitude of, I'm going to find a way out of this, or I'm going to make a way. and I'll share a story with you, which I love. and I sort of use it to kind of bring this to life a little bit. Is the mission lens story. So Mitchell and Thais, as you familiar with, see big organisation right now in the 1900s, they had a massive problem. And the problem was people were not buying enough tires because people were not driving enough or frequently enough. so what do you do in that situation? You've got a big profit problem because you're making quality tires that are not getting worn out and that don't need replacing quick enough. So your, revenue generating stream is, is much wider than you would have liked. and there's a couple of options that you can do. You can make poor quality tires. Right. which is, which is, which isn't great. Or you could hike the prices, right, to clawback some of that revenue. What Mitchell decided to do was understand the core root of the problem, which is people aren't travelling far enough. And the reason why people aren't travelling far enough or frequently enough is because this is pre-internet stage pre Google. they weren't actually aware of all the places to go. So they launched this magazine and they handed out to all of their customers. It's almost like a travel guide, which gave recommendations of restaurants and hotels and hotspots that they could travel to. Right? Conveniently located as far away as possible. Right. and also next at Michelin Garage. So what ended up happening was people were taking these recommendations, finding places to go, obviously driving more, visiting more places. Ties were getting more worn out. Hey presto, you've got a michelin garage nearby. so they were able to solve this problem that they had not compromising anything from their value stream, not burdening the customer with poorer quality or higher prices, but creatively thinking really outside the box and being able to provide an additional value stream for the customer. And if you haven't joined the dots, that Michelin Guide right now is the Michelin star rating that we have in restaurants. Right? I was about to ask you that. Yeah. How did I not know that? I feel so dumb right now. So they've completely generated a whole new value stream, a whole new credibility in a whole new space. But driving and fixing a core problem that they had in their core business. So clever. I'm googling all of this after. I mean, that is just incredible. And again, comes probably from the innovative culture. Yeah. And the, I guess, ability to let their staff and their teams come up with, you know, quite wacky and different ideas and look what it's created. I mean, that's just amazing. So that's what I take for the team. And I say use that to find a way or make you in any situation that you're dealt with. That is amazing, I love it. That's one of my favourite stories. Such a good social clip there. Thank thanks. Have to okay, the last one, which I am very keen on. Yeah. vision and ambition. Yeah. so how do you set that? So I think here's where you got to lead from the front. one of my favourite books is leaders It Lost by Simon Sinek. and if you don't read the book, the title itself is so much value. The ability to sacrifice yourself as a leader for the benefit of the group because you need to lead the way. So if you want high performance, you've got to show high performance and you've got to invest in high performance. and I think that's always so crucial is you've got to set the ambition and you've got to drill it in on a daily basis to say, this is the ambition that we're trying to achieve, which is a high performance culture, high levels of excellence. You've got to set the bar high and you've also the challenge then is once you start getting close to that bar, you've got to then set a new bar, because high performance should always be evolving, because you're sort of striving, working towards a level of excellence. And once you're sort of near there, you've got to go to move the bar. so you as a lead have got to lead from the front in that regard. And that's that's probably the best way to summarise it is that book by Simon Sinek, which is Leaders Eat Last is put yourself out there, roll your sleeves up, get involved, and show people what the levels of excellence required is by you achieving it in everything that you do first and foremost. So everything that we've discussed here would be really pushing the barriers as a leader to say, look, I'm going out of the way to really push the levels here. I want you guys to follow in your own discipline. Yeah. And I think setting that early, right. Like that's something that again, you know, probably we haven't set out enough when we're interviewing people is with, you know, one of my values at Street is about being extra like and that, you know, and I probably represent if there was one word I could describe myself with, yeah, it would be extra. Like I was talking to you about my day to day like I do. I plan too many things. I, you know, I put the extra effort in, I want everything that we deliver to be, you know, the best. So making it really clear when we're recruiting people that that's our vision as a business that is one of our core values. If you're not willing to be extra, don't don't take the interview process any further. I know I'm actually being quite strict about that now because we haven't we hadn't made that clear enough before. And I think that hugely changes who we attract it. We're going to put it in the job ads like it's important because otherwise we attract the wrong people who aren't up for that mission. Yeah. And they shouldn't be. Yeah. They shouldn't be with us because that's it. You where small business if they want to, you know, be in a less pressured environment, then they need to go somewhere else because that's not how we are. And I think the, the follow on from this is that's all easy to say. And I think the bit as, as a leader to lead is then to show them the tactical way of actually achieving it. Yeah. So two more thoughts I'll share with you. first principles thinking. So we want to achieve high levels of excellence and that's the ambition. How do you get there. first principles thinking is breaking everything down into its core fundamental components and working from there. one of the most sort of high performing athletes that I look to is, Novak Djokovic and definitely falls into the camp of more hard work, the natural talent, and really working hard to get the most out of his talent. and I always prefer those because it's it, it's more realistic and achievable for people to say, look, you've obviously got a level of talent there, but then let's, let's put the hard graft seem to actually make the most of the talent that you have. And Djokovic story in terms of how vision can kind of work as a negative. because everyone says set that no star vision and have the ambition to be the best that you can. And so did Djokovic. He was like, I want to be the best in the world. But the pressure and the stress that came with that ambition was starting to derail him. So every time he lost a game, every time he lost the match, the anxiety would creep in. Self-doubt would creep in. not this loss is derailing me from my ambition. And so you're doubling down on yourself. The pressure was getting to you. Your judgement is becoming clouded. So when you take the first principles approach that Djokovic did, which is what I want to be best in the world, what do I need to do? I need to in Grand Slams, what I need to win, what I need to do to win Grand Slams, me to matches, what I need to do to win matches, to win sets, what I need to do to win sets. I need to win each point. And when you sign off tunnel Vision and single in on that first fundamental principle to allow you to then achieve the rest of your goals, in this case, a single point, you have clear focus. You remove the noise, you remove emotional baggage that you might have carried from the previous point, and you just thought a single thought. Clarity of mind, improved decision making because you're just I need to win this point, and if you lose that point, you're able to compartmentalise it into a section in your brain and see what didn't happen. Next point. The next point is the one that's going to get to me, to my goal. and then once you start doing that, then you start unlocking marginal gains, because it's about every percent that I can improve is going to lead me there. and so Djokovic went from outside a 100 in the world to number one in the world within like four years. and his win percentage, a whole movement of my headways during that period is only about 7% improvement across multiple. yes. So it's not a huge improvement overnight, just marginal over a period of time. And I think so that's the that's the tactical real way that you have to approach things with the team is your his ambition. And that's all. Well, you see that in any leadership talk. And everyone was like, that's great. Makes me feel good. But how do I achieve it? And it's putting those things in place to allow them to achieve it. I've got one more relate to that, but no. Go for it. I want to hear you. This is about you, not me. So then. So then the other thing that prevents people is, and this is in the broader topic of emotional intelligence, because when you're in a corporate environment, certain situations and politics and all of that can kind of derail the whole thing. so I have a three step process in terms how to deal with conflict and how to be more emotionally intelligent. One things which is think, evaluate, respond. Right. So you see a situation and the first thing is think, do I need to respond? Is this worth my energy? Do I delegate or do I respond but only go to a certain level and then withdraw the rest of my energy around it? I had, a previous boss who gave me probably the best advice I've ever had. I'll give him a shout. His name is Sandy and from Cisco. And he always tell me, choose your battles. And that's stuck with me through life. Personal, professional and is the ability to stop in that moment. Think. Do I need to deal with this battle? And sometimes as a leader and as a manager, you can't deal with everything and you need to choose and pick your battles, essentially where you provide your your energy and learning to let go. Easier said than done, of course, but that's the first step is think. Choose your battles. Next is evaluate, and the only way you can evaluate situation is if you're able to detach yourself emotionally from that situation, to be able to think objectively. What would be the right response? Because when you're emotionally attached to things subjectively and you can never get that point across to the other person, if you think what the objective response is, no one can argue with it. And that's difficult because you've got to take yourself out of that situation and sometimes say something that might be against what you really believe in. But if you want to get, you know, a conflict resolved or listen to the door or take other people on that journey with you, you've got to think objectively. And then the finer points respond. But respond with the what rather than the why. So rather than why does this happen? Or why has this happened? Or why are you asking me to do this? More about what can we do to solve this? What can we do to make sure this doesn't happen again? What can we do to move forward? So those are kind of a few things that you didn't put in place to say. It's not just setting the ambition and say, we want to get here. It's them putting the things in place and showing the team and putting some of the principles and decision making frameworks in place for them to actually follow suit. And then because they look to you as a leader to, to follow. Right? They don't have all the answers. You don't all have all the answers. The leader, as it is. But can you provide something for them because they look to you for tactical, approaches to certain things. Strategy overdone. Right. You have a lot of people that give you strategy, but then you, the people that you're delivering that strategy to are then left with, okay, that's great, but how do I actually achieve it? So I think it's so important to set the vision, set the ambition, set the strategic direction, but then also show them how it can be done. That I mean, I honestly feel like I've been in a coaching session. You've given me so much to think about, like amazing tactical advice on how to be a bloody fantastic leader. Yeah, or you're supposed to be coaching my team. I don't, I didn't, you know, need me. Obviously. That was amazing. Abdul. Thank you. Now on that we are going to end this podcast now. but if you enjoyed it, well, Abdul and I are now going to do is we're going to stay on for another five, ten minutes and talk about, well, the amazing brief that you've given me, which again, I think really displays your commitment to your team and culture, because we're going to be working on a programme of work and a whole mentorship scheme that is empowering. Well, the women in your team to grow in their careers. So if you're interested to hear more from Abdul, make sure you've subscribed to the podcast. because next week we're going to be talking about how we're going to be working together to empower the females within Eon Next. Well, the next I've, we've branded it. We've read Eon's Eon next next future female. So yeah, come back next week guys.