Culture That Lasts in an Evolving Industry

Jon Clifton:
[0:08] Today on Leading with Strengths, I'm with David Tudehope, the co-founder and CEO of Macquarie Technology Group, a leading provider of telecommunications, cloud, and data center services in Australia. David is renowned for his strategic vision and dedication to exceptional customer service, making Macquarie Technology a key player in the industry. We'll delve into his entrepreneurial journey, what makes him so competitive, and what leadership means to him.

David, I think one of the most famous stories about Macquarie is your customer journey. Can you talk a little bit about how that started and also what inspired it?

David Tudehope:
[0:43] Well, our company purpose is around making a difference in markets that are underserved and overcharged. We operate in markets that are around the world notorious for customer service, infamous you might say. Telecom, which is around the world very poor levels of customer service, but also markets like cloud, which are inherently self-service. So in those markets, the opportunity to make a difference in customer service is significant. And that's where we've really built our business on that purpose and to zig where others zag and to try and do things the opposite of the rest of the industry. I think the challenge that we had, Jon, for a long time was we couldn't measure it. We tried, of course. We did what everyone did for a long time. We did customer surveys, but really, the challenge we had was we needed one number to be able to measure ourselves to.

Jon Clifton:
[1:32] But talk about it, because the first time that you did the customer surveys, you saw one score. You kept doing it for a couple of years. The score didn't really change. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

David Tudehope:
[1:45] Yeah, look, the way it started was that we did what's quite commonly occurs where we did these customer surveys. We were in the B2B market and every six months we would do a survey. It grew over time. It came like 50 questions by the end. And we read that famous Harvard Business Review article called The Ultimate Question. And it was all based around the idea of Net Promoter Score. I remember reading and thinking, this is, at last, we can measure our company purpose. And I brought it back to the marketing team who led our customer insights and said, look, This is what we should be doing. And here's the proof points. And they said, look, we're going to stand open. We're adding it to our survey, it's 51 questions. I said, but this is the ultimate question. They go, no, it's more complicated that you don't understand.

And I let it go because we've all been trained as executives to empower people and you've got to rely on domain expertise. And we did that for a couple of years, 51 questions, and nothing improved. And I think the challenge we had was that for us, if you ask 51 questions, you get 51 answers. And the problem with 51 answers is that going into that, whatever your view as to customer experience is, you find the answers that supports you. And when you go into that sort of environment, there are so many questions and so many answers that everybody finds what they're looking for in terms of confirmation of their view. But in truth, no one finds anything.

Jon Clifton:
[3:20] But what did you do to start changing the score? Because for many years, it was, as you mentioned, flat. What did you do culturally to change it?

David Tudehope:
[3:28] I did culturally what we've all been told not to do, which is I disempowered the marketing team and said, look, I know I shouldn't be doing this, but we are getting rid of the survey and we're going to embrace this. We have to have one way to measure it. It's like with a sporting team. You can't have multiple measures of success. Ultimately, did you win the game or not? Did you win the season or not? You can measure rebound percentages. You can measure assists. You can measure free throw percentages. But ultimately, the team needs to rally around, are we winning the games and are we winning seasons? And so too for us with customer experience. We need to measure that we can all rally around. And not until we let go of that, that could I, as a leader, bring the team the level of focus needed to actually self-improve and make this a better experience for our customers.

Jon Clifton:
[4:16] You have Competition and Achiever in your top two strengths.

David Tudehope:
[4:20] Yeah, guilty as charged.

Jon Clifton:
[4:21] Can you talk a little bit about the first results that you saw and how that impacted you personally?

David Tudehope:
[4:27] Yeah. Look, I think for someone with Competition and Achiever, the idea of a scoreboard you actually welcome, you don't feel uncomfortable with. And having a single number actually is a meaningful score. And because business and government, in most organizations, they're team sports, you do need something to, some goal and some ideally numerical goal, which is not so common in business, but when you find one outside of the normal profitability measures in the world of customer experience, this is a beautiful thing. And being able to measure our company purpose meant that we could rally the team and you get true teamwork, and people started thinking about what mattered and what didn't matter.

Jon Clifton:
[5:09] Talk more about what do you do within training? What do you do within your values in order to drive the customer metric? Because there's so many other metrics you could be focused on solely as well. It could be profit. It could be revenue growth. Why customer, and how do you get that number changed?

David Tudehope:
[5:25] For us, there's a few key principles that made all the difference. One was transparency. And like with Q12, we were completely transparent with NPS. It sounds so obvious, but so rarely done. It's not something for a management dashboard. It's something we share with the individuals, because we work very hard on sample rates to make that meaningful, with teams on flat screen TVs throughout the offices, and throughout the whole company. So you can see by product, by geography, by team, what the customer experience is. And that harnesses two very powerful emotions. It harnesses, of course, personal pride. If most people want to do a good job at work every day, and peer group pressure for those that for some reason aren't in that space. And those two measures we've found are incredibly empowering and incredibly motivating for people around customer experience. And the final thing we did, which I think is also so obvious but so rarely done, is the fast feedback loop. The idea of calling someone within 24 hours of their giving a survey, and that we call every one of our B2B customers to give a score within 24 hours with a one-up supervisor. And that feedback on why they gave the score is what creates the insights that allows us to improve.

Jon Clifton:
[6:45] How often do you spend time with customers?

David Tudehope:
[6:47] It's one of my favorite parts of my role. In truth, though, while I love doing it, I get all the insights that I often need to adapt to the business. In truth, though, you can never see enough customers know how often you do it. And that's where NPS is so powerful because it becomes not just a compass from which we make decisions by, which is certainly true for us, but also a real-time compass. Like you have that immediacy of customer experience that you can make those usually small changes but sometimes larger changes by that is so important for success.

Jon Clifton:
[7:21] When you first did NPS, what did the scores like? And kind of thinking through the lens of your strengths, how were you able to accept what the scores were and say, not that you're going to reject what the actual metric is, but to adopt it and say, we're going to get better at this?

David Tudehope:
[7:35] It's something I see quite often is that people adopt net promoter score and then the numbers don't improve and then they start adding things to it and then they eventually change it and it's the score that's the issue it's a bit like in sport it's people say oh it was the umpire it was the crowd it was it was the video replay rules the truth is that there's an incredible power of sticking to me maybe it talks to my Deliberative strength in that having made the effort to pick the right way, the right measure of customer experience, frankly in the same way we chose Q12, having made that choice. Sticking with it and focusing on what the team can do better rather than debating the scoring methodology is where you get the results and the improvement.

Jon Clifton:
[8:21] But when you think about your journey through engagement, one of the things that you were aspiring to was improving engagement so that it would also improve the customer experience. Can you talk about that nexus and what you did to drive both?

David Tudehope:
[8:34] Look, it's a bit of a virtuous circle, I believe. On one hand, they become self-reinforcing. On one hand, if your staff are more engaged, they're more likely to give great customer experience and be more resilient when there's challenges. But equally in our experience, when you've got positive customer interactions, it's more likely to also drive better staff engagement because they're not talking to unhappy customers every second phone call. They're talking to unhappy customers every 50th phone call. So the two tend to be self-reinforcing. Of course, they can be the opposite as well. So I think that piece about happy customers stay, buy more, and refer their friends, which is so obvious, so true, of course, as in the employee world, if engaged staff, more likely to stay, more likely to refer their friends to join the business, more likely to use discretionary effort.

Jon Clifton:
[9:27] Now, you have gone through strengths yourself. Your executive team has those every single employee. Can you talk a little bit about how strengths started with you and then what it looked like to roll it out through the organization?

David Tudehope:
[9:40] Look, my personal journey was probably representative of the whole business, which was you tend to start with your own strengths. It's always interesting, most people talk about themselves. Then you sort of move to, well, which strengths do I have in common with other people? You tend to see it as a positive, and then your Gallup coach points out actually you need to be complementary, and the best teams actually have complementary skills, and you cross that bridge. But then I think the interesting part was for me going deeper behind the headline and going, that's brilliant, but how can I now actually improve in what I do? How can I reinforce the strengths and make those something that I am more effective because I'm aware of them? But equally, where strengths are different, and I'll give you a great example for my personal thing. I'm, for me, I love Individualization, so this whole strength thing is like a good day out for me. But the other piece of it is I'm Deliberative and I love Context. And there were people on our management team that were Activators. And thank goodness for Activators because they actually like embrace change, and they're really talented in that space, but it really explained to me this tension I'd seen for some years between they just want to kind of get it and do it, and it was obvious what needed to be done. And I was like, well, let's just pause for a moment and work out, have we done this before? Did it work last time? Have we learned from the past? Are we just going to go do the same error twice? What is the problem we're trying to solve, and what are the different options to get there?

So I think they saw me as frustrating. I saw them as a little bit trigger happy. But when we understood one another, we're like, right, so just give me what I need, a little bit of context, a little bit of some optionality, and then we make a good choice. And then you guys go and activate it, like love Activators. And once we understood where we were both coming from, So it became a far more effective management team. And you realize that those strengths are entirely complementary.

Jon Clifton:
[11:56] Certainly, that's not the first time that Deliberative and Activator have clashed. It's obviously not going to be the last. What advice would you have for somebody who faced similar challenges, where there's a group of individuals that want to move quickly on something, there's another group of individuals that's saying, hold on a second, let's think through this, let's use Deliberative. What advice would you have for them to minimize the amount of tension?

David Tudehope:
[12:19] I think awareness is the starting point. And then I think it's about creating an environment outside of particular issues to talk through how that might, what the needs might look like at both parties. And the one thing I think with the Gallup organization we've done exceptionally well is making sure that strengths wasn't simply a one-off when you join an activity, but rather us something that we lived throughout the full journey of an employee and we refreshed in the team environment. And as new members joined the team, we incorporated them in the team grid and we spent time understanding how they would be different as well. And I think when you've got awareness, then that's a huge part of the starting point. And then using, of course, the common language and words that aren't emotive, which strengths gives us fantastic words, means that that common language, get together with awareness, means you can have really constructive conversations about building teams together.

Jon Clifton:
[13:21] But how about how you intentionally aim them? Let's take, for example, customer. Are there specific examples on how either you, someone on your team, an executive, aim their strengths at improving a customer situation?

David Tudehope:
[13:35] Yeah, look, I think one of the pieces for us that has been really impactful, both in the world of customer experience and the world of developing and growing people, is the power of storytelling. Now I think as humans, we're kind of hardwired, our chipsets are hardwired to storytelling. We've spent centuries sitting around campfires telling stories to one another. And I think the more we can package it up as stories, rather than specific performance type conversations, the more people are open to it. And with customer experience, we have a very active program of telling internally great customer stories, but having someone help people bring out those stories and tell them in a way that's kind of interesting and like even campfire stories need to be interesting to be remembered. So telling them in a compelling way is super important. Equally with strengths, how can we bring to life stories of how strengths have interplayed to create great results? And then, you know, in a constructive way, how they haven't interplayed to create great results, how strengths have sometimes caused frustrations between team members. And I think it's that piece around storytelling is where the richness is at.

Jon Clifton:
[14:56] You have Harmony number six. And it's interesting because you also have Competition, number one, Achiever, number two. How do those interplay?

David Tudehope:
[15:05] It's interesting. Our business model today, I think probably suits my strengths, which is, it's a model called Free Within Boundaries, and we brought this to life in a recent book that was written about us by Joseph Marcelli called Customer Magic. It's a model around how we create not just empowered business units, that's pretty common in business, with leaders and management teams who see it as their own business, but also how we actually spell out the opposite of what most people do in business. Rather than talking to these, you're fully empowered, and I'll let you know when you're not. We did the opposite. We said, here is where you are not empowered. Here is where these are central functions as a listed company that are important to us, and everything else is yours. So it's kind of the inverse. It was kind of setting the boundaries, and we've only picked like 10 things, and then the other, everything else you'll encounter in the journey of your business, this is for you to work out and we trust you. And Harmony plays into that in the sense that you're not actually caught up too often anymore in working out challenges between business units because they're kind of so empowered to their own thing. And when you do bring business units together, you focus them on things that actually really matter.

As we've just been speaking about, we have one measure of staff engagement, not a few. We have one measure of customer experience, not multiple. We have one measure of profitability and the internal management accounting, not variations of based on prior employers. So I think having the measurement clear means you can play the game. And I think humans respond really well to that. And yes, from time to time, it thinks, well, why can't we change a rule here or there? But most of the time, they just get in and have some fun.

Jon Clifton:
[17:08] When you think of the Q12, what's the hardest item that you had to move? Expectations, best friend at work? Which one?

David Tudehope:
[17:16] Look, I think the best friend at work one is the one that I think people have the most challenge with.

Jon Clifton:
[17:22] Why do you think that is?

David Tudehope:
[17:23] Oh, I think they sometimes interpret it at first instance to be it's their best friend ever sometimes as opposed to a best friend. They go, well, my best friend is my college roommate, not the person I work with. They're a good friend, but I'm the best best friend. I think once you put the extra, put the A in front of best, I think everyone's like, oh, okay, that little A there, right, okay, so it's a best friend. Yeah, sure, there's someone I work with that's definitely a best friend.

Jon Clifton:
[17:52] What was your reaction when you first saw that item?

David Tudehope:
[17:54] I think I read it correctly the first time, but I think you can easily jump over it and define it more narrowly.

Jon Clifton:
[18:00] I mean more the adoption in a workplace culture. Did you feel like that was something natural or did you feel like that was something that didn't belong in a workplace?

David Tudehope:
[18:08] No, I thought it was natural. And maybe it's because I'm one of the co-founders of the business with my brother Aiden. And we've got lots of long-serving staff that have been with us a big part of this journey who've really got to know their families and they've got to know one another really well. It seemed to me maybe more natural than businesses that had been brought together by acquisition where they frankly don't know one another.

Jon Clifton:
[18:34] You and your brother started the company together. You know his top five strengths. He knows your top five strengths. How did those blend together? Was there anything that when he took strengths, he has Self-assurance in his top five? Was there anything that surprised you?

David Tudehope:
[18:48] No. But I think the power of Gallup is it obviously puts some structure to that conversation. And I'd say even if you look more broad, not just Aidan, but I've got an executive team who mostly have been with me for more than 10 years. No doubt the, I know the dream within boundaries models have been key to that. But all their strengths are very different. And I think Gallup really helped us to understand that we'd always observed that, just like, geez, it's hardly kind of the same species here. They're kind of such, such different perspectives on things. But I think with Gallup, you realize that was actually an incredible strength. It wasn't just an observation. And while we've got, as is often very common, executive teams, we have Achiever in common. But beyond some of the obvious ones like Achiever, we were so different on strengths. So you combine the strengths piece with just the personal staff piece and you go, this six-person executive team? You are very different to one another, and in strengths terms, you're also very different to one another. But actually, that's the secret of your success because, you know, you have an environment where you can only challenge one another, but you challenge one another from very different perspectives. And I think it really helped us understand why it actually created good business benefits as opposed to being an observation.

Jon Clifton:
[20:20] Was there one strength of the 34 that you had on somebody from your team that they have and you go, I didn't quite know that that theme existed. But now that I do, I need I needed it more than ever throughout my career.

David Tudehope:
[20:33] To myself?

Jon Clifton:
[20:37] Let me let me reframe it. When you look at your top five, is there something not in your top five that somebody has on your executive team that now with your awareness, you say, thank goodness they have that strength. I lean on them for that every single day.

David Tudehope:
[20:50] Yeah, look, I think we're in the tech sector. In the tech sector, things change. Things change a lot. And the tech sector is full of some roosters who become feather dusters. And for our business, we're here 30 years later because we've adapted as the industry has changed. And part of that is identifying new trends. It can be quite, in a way, quite disappointing because you finally get good at something and then the technology changes and you've got to kind of let go of what you've finally mastered. But one of the strengths I think when he talks to that is Learner. My brother Aidan, as well as one of the other executives has Learner in their top five. They just seek out new things and just find it fascinating. Another two executives have it in their second five. That's so important in a business that's changing really quickly, that sort of insatiable desire to learn about things that are new that may or may not be relevant, but you don't really know until you have a look at them.

Jon Clifton:
[21:57] You said the entire team has Achiever in common. Yes. Achievers know how to get things done. At the same time, you know, those of us with Achiever, sometimes we can get buried in email. We get sort of an emotional hit of, you know, doing tasks that may not be huge tasks, small tasks. And that can kind of make the entire day go by. How do you make sure that the team focuses on getting the right things done?

David Tudehope:
[22:21] Yeah, look, I think that is always a challenge for myself as well. It's so easy, I'm sure you find too, Jon, to fill your day up with like back-to-back appointments. I'd say one of the, we all learned something from COVID, good and bad. One of the good things that I'd read about before COVID, In fact, I brought it back from my summer holidays, this article in HBR about the importance of making time to prioritize and to drop out those recurring meetings that fill your diary, the weekly, quarterly catch-ups. And I kind of read it and thought, that's really good. I should definitely do that. Then COVID hit. And it kind of happened for me. Someone emptied my diary. All those one-on-ones vanished.

Jon Clifton:
[23:08] How many would you have had at that time?

David Tudehope:
[23:10] I don't know. I just filled the whole ... I was a very busy man. My diary was full of not just important meetings, but catch-ups, lots of catch-ups, and it was good. You kept your tabs on the business and you stayed in touch with people. There were some good things, too. But some of those meetings had long surpassed their purpose, or maybe it was built around onboarding a new senior manager, and two years later, we're still doing meetings together. It's nice to do, but then COVID came and they all got sort of emptied out of my calendar. And then coming out of COVID, I thought, right, well, somehow I managed to do all those one-on-ones during COVID. Maybe I don't need to bring them back and just really prioritize it. I think we've really zoomed in on the importance of not just quality meetings, but the necessity of even having the meeting in the first place, and working out when to turn meetings off as well as turn meetings on. And that, I think, talks to Achiever and the fact that Achievers can end up with a long list of to-dos, and actually some of them are good ideas and well-intentioned. But maybe they don't matter.

Jon Clifton:
[24:25] Sometimes I have this hypothesis that there might even be an Achiever paradox where Achievers take more and more on and try to get more and more done when, in some respects they actually frustrate the system because it might be something else that someone else should be working on. Do you have that frustration ever? And if so, how do you work through your team to get through it?

David Tudehope:
[24:45] Yeah, I think part of it has existed because we are this frame within boundaries model. As we talk about in Customer Magic, the book, you've got to be quite deliberate about what you do from the center because we have a small federal government, big state government model and big business unit model. And in that context, what you do with central office is super important. Q12 was super important. Strength is super important, customer experience measurement, super important. A lot of other ideas, not so important. They're just really good ideas. And I think knowing what not to do is as important as what to do. So it becomes a lot easier, I think, in our business model, because you've really got to pause and think, am I really moving the business forward? Am I really making the boat go faster? Or am I just making everybody really busy?

Jon Clifton:
[25:43] You mentioned the speed of change that takes place in your industry, one of the things that frustrates organizations is going through change. How do you aim your strengths? How does your team aim their strengths at leading the organization through change?

David Tudehope:
[25:58] Yeah, I probably could ask you that question too, Jon. Yeah, because obviously now you're the CEO. I'd be interested to see your own questions to that question. But I think part of it is really in our sector working out not what are the tech trends because they're usually very obvious, but which are the ones that are relevant to our customers and our business and making choices. And then when you make a mistake, which we all do in our business too, it's adapting really quickly and admitting you've picked the wrong technology and getting back onto the right one before you get run over. So I think that is a huge part of it. I don't know, Jon, in your business, what sort of changes are you looking for?

Jon Clifton:
[26:40] Well, I think to your point, I think one of the things that, one of the strengths that I lean on, I couldn't believe you said it, which is Learner. Not with myself, because I don't have it top 10, but that of others. Because their insatiable desire to consume new information helps better inform us on where to go. And then, yeah, change is hard. And one of the single most important things about change is, are you communicating it? Are you communicating it a lot? But sometimes, you know, you and I both have Context high, where you have to repeat the message over and over again. And it's okay, because we have a strength to do that. It can be annoying to our colleagues, but at least we're all on the same... On the same page so I think to lead through change you've got to coordinate and coordination happens through good communication so yeah.

David Tudehope:
[27:28] Yeah I think as a leader too you think well I've told them once I've told them twice, but good right?

Jon Clifton:
[27:33] Well it's like a book right you know when they say that you read a book and you consume you read the entire thing but you forget 70% of what it is that you would consume so I think it's probably true and maybe corporate communication one, some read it, they probably forget more than 70%. I wouldn't blame them.

David Tudehope:
[27:50] Yeah, I think the other interesting thing is that I know you do a lot of public speaking as I do, Jon. You do these great speeches, you put effort into them, everyone tells you good in the day, you ask for recall like a month later and they remember like a couple of points. It's like, but there was like 30 minutes of points and you remember like two of them. And what I'm always counselled on is, David, it's about how you make people feel as much as what you say. And that, I think, was probably one of my great learnings in the world of communicating change.

Jon Clifton:
[28:24] You had talked earlier about transparency. You know, one of the risks with transparency, like when you're making your Q12 scores, your customer scores, public is if they go down. When that risk is present or if that actually takes place, how does that impact your leadership or what are your thoughts on that?

David Tudehope:
[28:44] Yeah, this is one of the ones that we do, and it's so obvious in many ways. Be transparent, right? Like peer pressure, personal pride, we're good to go. I think in a lot of organizations, of course, it starts with the CEO, but it also starts with the company culture. Does the culture of the business support a bit of humility? Does it support people having internal measures that are going in one direction that are not just visible to their executive or their CEO, but actually visible to all their peers in other businesses and similar roles. And a lot of businesses don't support that culture. Happily we do. Many others do. I know your business does too, Jon. That's not so common.

Jon Clifton:
[29:31] But when you say supports the culture, you know, there are a lot of employees that go, no, they don't. That's just, they just say those things. How do you make it authentic?

David Tudehope:
[29:41] I think part of it in making authentic is creating a safe place where people can share this. In some ways, you say, well, how, David, you've got customer experience scores displayed throughout the whole office. I mean, I think we talk about in the Customer Magic book that how that transparency is quite uncertainly. When your score is going down, all your peers are kind of looking, you know, like, is everything okay in your product line or in your geo? Have you seen which way the numbers are going? And equally with Q12, we're completely transparent. So the question is, are your peers kind of supportively asking what's happening? Or kind of, most of the time they don't say to you, it's kind of a body language thing. Or they kind of sort of see it as some sort of an irredeemable problem. And that's where I think the culture piece is super important. Is it constructive or not?

Jon Clifton:
[30:37] What are your strengths inspires you to listen?

David Tudehope:
[30:41] I think Individualization. Like, it's extraordinary. Both my head of people in culture, Rachel and I, and I know you too, Jon, we just actually find people really interesting. And we actually enjoy talking about their strengths, and it's like a really good day out. And I think that's what kind of—I'm as much interested as the person and how they think as I am solving the problem of the day or the month.

Jon Clifton:
[31:09] In speaking to your colleagues, your employees, where has your listening, your Individualization taken you where you changed something big because of what somebody told you?

David Tudehope:
[31:21] Lots of places, particularly in my business, being a tech sector, I mean, there's always so much you don't know. No matter how much time you put into a topic, there's so many more aspects to it now. You can say, well, your number nine strength is Input, so you can't help yourself, Dave, and there may be some truth to that. But I think as a result of that, you do, as time goes on, become more alive to the fact that you can gather more data. You can spend as much time on a particular topic as you want, but ultimately, it's all about having talented people around you who have the company's interests at heart, the customer's interests at heart, and can really form good judgments. And that is a huge part of, I think, our success is focusing on the talent and the people rather than just processes and trying to second guess every potentiality.

Jon Clifton:
[32:17] David, you have Individualization and Context. It almost couldn't be more perfect that you also love reading biographies. Can you talk about some of the biographies that you've read and how it's influenced your leadership over the years?

David Tudehope:
[32:31] It's interesting. You're right, it talks about my Individualization and Context. I didn't know that until Gallup pointed that out to me. But I think I get different insights to different points in my career. I don't read books more than once very often, but when I do, it's interesting how you get different insights based on where you are in your own professional career. Yes, they're typically around leadership, but frankly, it's also adapting to change. And the books I really enjoy are ones where leaders have adapted to change in ways that were unconventional.

Part of our success in business has been the challenger, the one that takes on the monopolist that's overcharging and underserving. So inherently, we are looking to do things differently, to zig or other zag, as we talk about in the book. And as a result of that, we probably have a bias to thinking about things in a way that maybe other leaders have in the past. One of my favorite examples is the leader of modern Turkey, Kamata Turk, who reimagined a country out of the ashes of World War I, secularized Turkey, completely reset the role of the militaries from the government, the role of women in society, education. It's just extraordinary transformation. And even imagine there'd be a country called Turkey, which wouldn't have been possible before the first war. So extraordinary man. And a bit like George Washington at the end of his political career, stepped down and just passed over the baton as president.

Not only in George Washington's time, was of course extraordinary, but even in the 1930s, the idea that an autocrat would, after centuries of rule by sultans, would just walk away and hand over power and a constitutional democracy would continue, was in the Middle East extraordinary. And I think that reimagining of modern Turkey is, for me, I thought was extraordinary. And I found a lot of inspiration from not just his leadership, but the way he adapted to the chaos and ashes of 1918 Turkey.

Jon Clifton:
[35:02] But you emphasized walking away. What would the takeaway be with that?

David Tudehope:
[35:07] I think the takeaway from that is that people recognizing that there is a place where you've done incredibly well, or maybe you've tried everything you can and done the best you can. But maybe there's time for someone new to do things differently and to challenge the norms. And I think in all our roles, there is time, whether it be a project or a business case or a business unit, where you go, I have given this everything. I'm proud of what I've achieved. There's always more to do. And it's not just I'm ready for a new challenge. That's natural. But actually, it's actually ready for someone else to make their own mark.

Jon Clifton:
[35:48] When you and your leadership team put in Q12 throughout the entire organization, encouraged your managers to improve it, did you immediately see business results?

David Tudehope:
[35:58] From the time that we adopted it, no, not immediately, but from the time we adopted it through today, there's probably been two stories. Initially, it was the scoreboard, and it was the starting point. We combined it with strengths, so the two started almost the same time, so a few months apart. It was the combination of strengths and Q12. But then the passage of one year, two year, that we started to build that flywheel momentum. And yes, there were some times where we thought it moved for some teams, but not for others. And of course, there was always the question, maybe it's the scoreboard is somehow unfair for the nature of what this team does. But we stuck with it. And I think the consistency of measure with the combination of both strengths And, of course, a very deliberate focus from management is really where the Q12 dial started to move. Once we created some movement, like change management, some early wins, recognizing managers who had embraced it for their teams, making it less about what the center's going to do and more about what immediate managers are going to do or executives are going to do for their business unit, that's where we saw the strong results coming through.

Jon Clifton:
[37:18] What were the biggest results? Was it retention?

David Tudehope:
[37:20] Well we're a listed company so we get measured daily on the value we're creating or not so it's very very immediate. From the time we adopted Q12 and strengths to today we've had a 425% improvement in the share price so it's I guess a very tangible measure. We've also had lots of other measures but I think ultimately our shareholders would say that's the one that counts.

Jon Clifton:
[37:48] How about with respect to mental health? There are a lot of executives now that are talking about mental health at work. They're concerned about mental health crises in their countries, around the world. Our research suggests that places where there are thriving workplaces, there are better psychosocial outcomes. Did you see any outcomes like that? Or what are you facing today?

David Tudehope:
[38:12] Yeah, I think part of it is creating an environment where, yes, people can grow and succeed, but also creating an environment where humans can mesh with other humans. Some of us, of course, like human contact more than others, but ultimately we are social animals, just different degrees. I think we saw some real challenges during COVID when people spent so much time at home. I think it was a little bit like in high school when you're unwell and you get to stay at home for a day, watching TV. And then as you get better, you sort of say to your parents, can I have one more day? And they say yes. And by the end of day two or day three, you're starting to get a bit titchy and you're actually looking forward to going back to school. After all those years of wishing you were at home, you suddenly kind of wish you were back at school. And I think it's the same thing at work. As much as we all like the idea of being at home and having a bit more of a personal life balance and getting a couple of things done and the convenience of the coffee machine kind of arm's length away, not only do you drink way too much coffee, and not only do you have some really nice sort of self-time, but you do also lose that, the sociability piece of actually getting to building a connection with your fellow workmates. And we saw significant improvement when we came back to the office. We do it three days a week, and I believe in the three set days.

Jon Clifton:
[39:40] Is it a rule, or is it?

David Tudehope:
[39:42] It's a rule.

Jon Clifton:
[39:42] It's a rule.

David Tudehope:
[39:44] Now, I know some people disagree. They say, what about flexibility? We've taken the view that, what is the point of coming to the office if half your workmates are on video the entire day, like sitting in your laptop, and then they come in the next day and you're at home and then they watch you on the video? Even I think, as someone who likes people and likes interacting with people, even I think it's a waste of time coming to the office to watch a video call. So we picked three days and we gave people plenty of notice. You can come in more if you'd like. And we found that really helps with not just staff engagement, but mental health as you touched on. And people who might have on a video call or through email or texts might have been a little short in the way they dealt with you, a little unthoughtful, a little unappreciated of your broader circumstances, which maybe you hadn't told them about, but they should have known anyway, because they should have. Um, we've found that really addresses that because you, there's obviously all those human indicators you pick up in person that no matter how many check-ins you do on video or you, you can't pick them up most of the time.

Jon Clifton:
[40:57] When you're making a decision about something like three days a week, how does engagement or strengths factor into your decision analysis to make a decision like that?

David Tudehope:
[41:08] In one way, there's always an apprehension, Jon. There's always an apprehension that, oh, but that will be inflexible. We'll disengage some of the staff. Somebody wants to come in Friday. Someone's come in Thursday. Some don't want to come in Monday. Some do. It's all too hard. Let's just let them choose. But I think at some point, if you take the view that there's a purpose for coming into the office, it's not just because we've got an office lease still, well, then you go, well, I think it was really the key for us was to communicate why it mattered. It might not matter to you at this point in time, but it matters to other people for these reasons. And the truth is it matters to everyone, just some of them are more self-aware. And I know Gallup has reported this, as others have as well, that when you're starting your career, it's really important to be in the workplace, interacting. When you change roles, it's really important. When you join an organization, it's really important. So there's key points in your career transition where Being in person is most critical, and I think sometimes you need to appeal to existing staff that, while it may not be important to you right now, one day you will be that person changing roles, and it will matter to you that your new manager and your new work colleagues are people you've met face-to-face on more than a couple of occasions.

Jon Clifton:
[42:26] You've gone through a journey of engagement, and as you mentioned, you are now a Gallup Workplace award winner, and congratulations on that. If somebody was just starting out on such a journey, what advice would you have for them?

David Tudehope:
[42:41] I think there's a few key elements that we've learned along the way. One was consistency of measure, as in the Q12 measure, doing away with other measures, because frankly, people will look to those if they're not moving the dial on the Q12, and then if they're moving the dial on the Q12, they won't look at the other ones. Everyone just ends up picking their own goals. So it is better to pick one measure of success as we did with the customer experience before that. I think the other piece is the big improvement we've had is without question being combined with strengths. It's about growing people as well as asking how engaged they are in the workplace. That's been a super important part of the combination for us. And we really appreciate your award for strengths, Jon, because I think that award also talks to the fact that it's as much about developing people as it is asking are they fully engaged about their colleagues and those they work with.

Jon Clifton:
[43:38] Let's say that there's an aspiring leader who learns that they have Context in their top five. What advice would you have for them?

David Tudehope:
[43:45] I think it's about explaining to people why it's important to you. So I think the Activators of the world kind of see that as a bit of a speed hump to getting on with what needs to be done. But also it's incredible. It's also a strength you can deploy and it's not just about avoiding past mistakes, which is sort of the obvious piece, but it's also about helping people understand often why you as a leader might be getting involved in something that they feel like is their domain. And by having them explain the context for something, it allows you to kind of say, well, based on our context, I'd like to contribute to our solution here. And there's always that tension where, particularly if you're knowledgeable in a space, and of course you want the business to be successful, you kind of want to lean in there and help a bit. And then you're surprised when people go, wait a minute, I thought this is kind of my area, right? So I think Context is important to you, but also it can be important to others in a way they hadn't appreciated.

Jon Clifton:
[44:43] When you said Individualization is the most interesting, what do you mean by that?

David Tudehope:
[44:48] I think Individualization is more interesting, probably it's almost a bit of a self-fulfilling point, isn't it? Because I'm so interested in people, I'm interested in the topic as well. I think the interesting part is I just find what motivates people, what people find interesting and stimulating, and also demotivates them, such an interesting area. I think the strength journey has been important for me was to recognize that in myself. Rather than just being inherent to the way I approach people, it helped me realize that, actually, David, that's kind of your thing. And probably that's why I enjoy strengths so much as well, because it does create a structured, single language to understand what motivates people, what engages people.

Jon Clifton:
[45:41] You have Achiever, number one. You mentioned it's the most frequent of your exec team. Achievers are arguably one of the groups that's most likely to experience burnout because they can't stop. What do you do to prevent that with yourself and also with your colleagues?

David Tudehope:
[45:56] I think part of it is doing things that you find fun at work. I think there's things you have to do because it's the job. There's things that people seek you out and you have to respond to, but those are things you can choose to do. I love meeting customers. It's fun. I love learning about new technologies and going deep on something that's like AI, that's changing my industry. They're the fun things. I think the key in your role is to find those places which make you happy at work and to create some time for them.

Jon Clifton:
[46:28] David, congratulations again on winning Gallup's Exceptional Workplace Award, and thank you for building a thriving workplace. It means a lot to us here at Gallup. It's just one of our missions to help create or at least fix the world's broken workplace. So thank you for your leadership.

David Tudehope:
[46:42] Thank you, Jon.

Transcript autogenerated using AI.