Rod Bulmer, Co-Founder, Hedgehog Strategy

In this episode Engage CEO Phil Wedgwood talks to Rod Bulmer, formerly an investor in Engage, an executive in retail banking, and now co-founder of Hedgehog Strategy.

They discuss why Rod invested in Engage, why he thinks engagement is so important for businesses, and how the pandemic affected organisations' relationships with their employees.

Transcript

00;00;01;02 - 00;00;05;01
Narrator
Welcome to Engaged in Conversation, the podcast from Engage Solutions Group.

00;00;06;18 - 00;00;30;29
Phil Wedgwood
Rod, thanks for coming in today. Great to see you again. Welcome to our studio. I think this is going to be a really interesting one for our audience to hear because you've got quite a unique view and background to our company, Engage Solutions Group. When we first met, you were the CEO of Co-op Consumer Services. And you'd already invested in the company welcome.

00;00;30;29 - 00;00;35;01
Phil Wedgwood
And would you like to give us a bit of a backdrop on that going back those years?

00;00;35;01 - 00;01;06;15
Rod Bulmer
Yes. So my background, as you know, was in retail banking. I was managing director retailer Santander moved to co-op bank savings or not for the being part of the whole crisis with the co-op Learnt alot became interim CEO there. That's relevant to the engagement stuff to talk about in a minute. And then deputy CEO there. And then went to co-op group ran the whole of co-op consumer services in that period, I did also invest and become a non-executive advisor to engage.

00;01;07;07 - 00;01;26;20
Rod Bulmer
And then over the last three years or so have been building a portfolio, some investments, some non investments advisory and for the last 12 months have co-founded and Run Hedgehog which is a sort of consulting advisory coaching business. So quite a varied career. But you're right, maybe three or four years involvement with engaged solutions.

00;01;27;07 - 00;01;44;18
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, it's been great working with you and having you there for advice in the background and I think we've even done a few client visits together over the years, haven't we? So going back to those early days, what was it that attracted you to want to put your name to an organization like, like ours?

00;01;44;26 - 00;02;05;11
Rod Bulmer
Well, I always say so in my career. I actually think that the key when you're a CEO is about getting really clear on what it is you want to achieve, what your strategy we would frame that in different ways, whether you call it vision, ambition doesn't really matter. You need to get clear and then be clear about what you're going to do.

00;02;05;11 - 00;02;28;03
Rod Bulmer
But in actual fact, the thing I think that differentiates whether you're ultimately successful or not is whether you're able to communicate that through your colleagues. You might call it staff, but I would call it colleagues, and to get all your colleagues pull it in the right direction and equally hard you have, how have you interpreted that into a set of customer propositions that customers want to buy and engage in?

00;02;28;03 - 00;02;47;08
Rod Bulmer
And so throughout my whole career, I used to laugh at myself. I never thought actually I was that clever or that good at that much, but actually I was pretty good at really driving, you know, what I felt was critical and the most critical thing, which was engaging colleagues behind what you were trying to achieve, making them clear making them want to give their best.

00;02;47;08 - 00;03;06;23
Rod Bulmer
And then from the customer perspective, thinking about what does that mean in terms of the customer proposition, it was those two things that I felt was critical. And obviously when engage presents as an opportunity itself, it was exactly where my beliefs were, and that was the reason for for investment. Sure, we'll come onto it in a minute. But principally that was the reason for my investment.

00;03;08;13 - 00;03;17;23
Phil Wedgwood
And do you think that the challenges you did you presumably you experience those challenges at the co-op when you were there? Because that's a very large, complex group of companies, isn't it?

00;03;17;29 - 00;03;40;09
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. I mean, my view is, look, I grew up in business in the nineties. That's where I learnt my trade. And then, you know, 2000 onwards is when I became senior, if you like. Yeah. And in truth, in those days, you know, the model was a lot more simplistic. You know, you had classic hierarchy of managements and it was about how you communicated through the management line.

00;03;40;09 - 00;04;10;04
Rod Bulmer
I always had a model that said everyone should face the customer and so the most important person in the organization was the person who ultimately faced the customer directly. And the job of everybody else was providing the platform for the people who face the customer to do the very, very best of the company. And ultimately that was invert in the pyramid of how businesses work because you think of the CEO and the top, I used to think now the CEO sits at the base providing the platform against which the teams deliver.

00;04;10;27 - 00;04;36;21
Rod Bulmer
And in truth, as the digitization of the world has occurred and indeed, you know, life as the more modern generation comes through where that's the norm, those models are no longer quite as simplistic so lots of businesses have taken lots of layers out. So there's not quite the same ability to communicate through the layers. The reality is the world is democratized so if you want to find out about any business, you can Google it.

00;04;37;02 - 00;05;10;03
Rod Bulmer
You can go on Glassdoor and find out what it's like to be an employee there. You can go into LinkedIn and find out what the CEO is. You can search images and see if Rod's got kids. So, yeah, no longer can you control. The world is completely and utterly democratize and you know that digitization has done that, but it doesn't remove the underlying principle, which is if you get clear on what you want to achieve, success is predominantly determined by how well you engage your colleagues and how well you engage your customers and once you engage in your model.

00;05;10;03 - 00;05;15;20
Rod Bulmer
So my view is digitization changes to how it doesn't change the need or indeed the what you need to do.

00;05;16;20 - 00;05;38;19
Phil Wedgwood
I agree. And we talked many times about the cultural nuances or shifts that need to happen to embrace some of these more modern ways of working. Haven't we in that traditional Top-Down communication that you touched on is very much you know, we certainly seen it in the COVID transition, haven't we, where the power is coming from. The staff, they're saying we want to now work in these ways.

00;05;39;00 - 00;05;46;13
Phil Wedgwood
And what I suppose we talked about many years ago was providing a mechanism to give the staff a voice so they can feed back up.

00;05;46;25 - 00;06;12;10
Rod Bulmer
Yeah, I mean I, I wrote an article and I still laugh at it. Now, you know, when I started, not even when I started, you had an annual employee survey, so let's follow that. Once a year you fill in a set of pre-set questions. Yet by the time the people who did the questionnaire got all the answers together, collated it, presented it through the management line, it's probably three or four months out of date.

00;06;12;24 - 00;06;39;07
Rod Bulmer
And then you end up with a high level set of actions that, to be honest and the vast majority of people pay little attention to, you can trust that too. Now, if I launch a product tomorrow, I can find out from customers what they thought of that product. Tomorrow, I can find out from colleagues what they thought of the product and how it's position today, tomorrow, within the next hour, within half, the world's a completely different place.

00;06;39;16 - 00;06;49;06
Rod Bulmer
Nonetheless, it's still the same principle, which is the more you engage people, customers or colleagues communities, the better you're able to deliver a more positive outcome.

00;06;49;21 - 00;07;16;02
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, I agree. And I think for me, employee engagement started off as a survey, as a score from an annual. And I think all of the C250 50 still do it. But there's a huge growing trend over the years to make it much more intuitive, much more immediate pulse surveys and the like. And I suppose our vision was always if everyone's using the technology, you can kind of have a heartbeat of that in the organization.

00;07;16;02 - 00;07;21;17
Phil Wedgwood
You, you can figure out whether the organization is engaged with it, with itself almost.

00;07;21;25 - 00;07;42;01
Rod Bulmer
Yeah, I mean I completely agree. And also I think that, you know, the reality is the majority of people now have grown up with technology, so they don't come into work and so part of that, a paper based annual survey, is the right thing. They're used to working, living, breathing with a democratized world. That is technology orientated. And therefore work should be no different.

00;07;42;10 - 00;08;00;27
Rod Bulmer
Work should be exactly the same. It's about how you engage in that way. So, you know, look, you asked me about COVID, I think early COVID massively accelerated, but the trends were already there. Absolutely. Already. They're all COVID still. These make some of these trends more mainstream. But fundamentally the trends are already there.

00;08;01;27 - 00;08;23;10
Phil Wedgwood
They are. And so things like giving everybody in the organization a voice where the where and not just the voice but a voice that will be listened to and arguably reported back to, because that's important. When we talk about the our feedback pillar, it's got to be a cycle. You know, it can't just be one way, right, because it doesn't work.

00;08;23;19 - 00;08;30;07
Phil Wedgwood
What's your view on that and how challenging in an organization as large and as complex as the co-op is that concept?

00;08;30;16 - 00;08;56;07
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. So I used to use it to use a sort of phrase or a way of thinking about it, which is you've got spectators, you've got commentators, or you've got players. And the more people in your organization who are players, the more successful you're going to come. So Spectator is someone who sits and watches, doesn't say much, doesn't try and improve, it just flows through life.

00;08;56;26 - 00;09;19;16
Rod Bulmer
Commentators, they're not playing but they'll tell you, Oh, you don't want to do it. La la wouldn't have done it like that. A coffee machine, guys, you want to tell you the problems, but the players, the people who are on it. Yeah, on a feeding back and seeking to improve the reality, if you think of the inverted pyramid is you can't force people to be players like a comedian can't tell you the funny the tell a joke.

00;09;20;01 - 00;10;01;20
Rod Bulmer
The job of any business is to set the framework against which people want to be. Players want to give of their best and want to act in the right way. Now, the slight risk is when you get terrorism and terrorists, the people who play, they have an objective to create problem, not create improvement. My personal view, yeah, is that as a management CEO, managing director, whatever you are, you have to actively encourage engagement, but you have to be seen to encourage it in a way that's driving improvement, occasionally telling people we can't make that improvement for this reason, but ultimately democratizing, allowing people to move on okay.

00;10;02;11 - 00;10;18;15
Phil Wedgwood
That makes sense. What do you say in terms of the biggest challenges and opportunities now in this sort of post COVID transition that we're arguably still in? What do you think some of the biggest challenges are around that whole engagement piece for for companies these days?

00;10;19;26 - 00;10;46;02
Rod Bulmer
So question. So, I mean, I think there's a COVID specific set of issues, you know, and there's a million papers and how COVID has changed the way of the world. And ultimately, I think the whole world is learning about that. You know, if you're a CEO managing in a COVID world, it's a very different world. And the managing before, you know, how often you know yourself are the engage team in four days a week working from home Friday or then a couple of days a week.

00;10;46;02 - 00;11;10;14
Rod Bulmer
And so it creates different challenges and it's also accelerated trends. So I think, you know, in my day, the norm was people would work in the office four or five days a week. They'd be in early and they leave late. I laugh at myself now, but there's no doubt you associated commitments, often with hours work and time committed.

00;11;10;14 - 00;11;33;03
Rod Bulmer
And, you know, you know, you think to yourself there's some some, you know, in effect a little bit outdated views. So there's lots of things of change. The truth is, though, it comes back to the what the what is the objective of anyone running a business is are we clear on what we're trying to achieve? Are we able to communicate that in a way that's engaging?

00;11;33;04 - 00;12;00;07
Rod Bulmer
Have we got mechanisms, feedback loops ongoing that allows our team to engage in it and improve it? And is it understood by all stakeholders, the key of which is our customers? And nothing's really changed on that. It's just the context within which you operate. So, look, if you're running a business and you want to engage your central team, it's probably a little bit more challenging to do that face to face than it was before COVID.

00;12;00;16 - 00;12;17;20
Rod Bulmer
But it's still needed. And therefore you need to embrace different tools, techniques. Yeah, there's probably a bigger disconnect than there was, you know, four years ago between people facing the customer and people in a central office. Because if you're facing a customer in a store, you're in five days a week you can't do that from home.

00;12;17;27 - 00;12;18;12
Phil Wedgwood
No, you can.

00;12;18;12 - 00;12;37;24
Rod Bulmer
If you're in a central office, you may be. So of course there's changes, but it comes back to what's the what's the what is are we clear where we're going? Is it a compelling strategy? Have we understood by everyone who works? Do they have a right to engage and discuss it and improve it and do our customers understand it and buy into it?

00;12;37;24 - 00;12;40;06
Rod Bulmer
And that remains the what is just the how the changes.

00;12;40;16 - 00;13;02;03
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, it does. And I think even that, though, is was one of the challenges that led to the creation of engage, because it was actually that just that mechanism, and especially in a retail environment, some of our earliest clients were large retailers and they literally were struggling to make that that sort of touchpoint with the people to say, this is what we're about, this is what we're trying to achieve.

00;13;02;17 - 00;13;08;06
Phil Wedgwood
So we gave them that, didn't we? We gave them the mechanism and that's really kind of probably where it started yet.

00;13;08;08 - 00;13;34;03
Rod Bulmer
It's interesting. So it's funny. I think Engaged was doing stuff in the early days that they hadn't really fully understood why it was working in a strange way. So, you know, from my perspective, communities of interest and bringing them together is what engagement solutions are about. Yeah. And so of course, colleagues who work for an organization have a community of interest.

00;13;34;03 - 00;13;53;06
Rod Bulmer
They all work for the same organized action. The better the organization performs on the whole, the better the call will be rewarded, remunerated feel good about themselves. So that's but so to have customers, you know, but it's also true of many other things you know I know you cycle Strava is a community of interest, right? Why does it work?

00;13;53;19 - 00;14;21;20
Rod Bulmer
Because the community itself creates the value aren't so fundamentally the principle of engagement is around like minded or like orientated and how you improve and provide tools systems whatever to increase the engagement in its early days engage actually you know when I first invested it did employee stuff and it was but it also did some of the stuff motor dealers and they had a couple of custom wraps and it didn't.

00;14;21;29 - 00;14;33;08
Rod Bulmer
Well, actually, great example, if you bought a BMW you in the past, it's interesting because you probably buy them. And so they were on to it but perhaps hadn't have the haven't refined their thinking to the extent they have today.

00;14;34;10 - 00;14;56;25
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, I'd agree with that. And I think the the concept of engagement is hugely interesting because we worked together, didn't we, on, on coming up with the five pillars because one of the things that we wanted to do very early on was define what engagement was. Yeah. Really the fundamentals of it because it's one of these things that a lot of people talk about, but very few people could really simply articulate what it was.

00;14;57;19 - 00;15;07;21
Phil Wedgwood
Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because I think that was a really interesting tipping point because once we framed that, then yeah, so important because we built everything then on that.

00;15;08;01 - 00;15;37;23
Rod Bulmer
Yeah, it probably goes back to doing stuff without being clear. Why? Yeah. So you almost reminded me of that stuff. So it's interested. The debate we had initially was is engagement the success in itself or is engagement the thing you need to achieve to enable the success you want to get? And we actually concluded the latter that what you do is you drive engagement because it's only with engagement that you can ultimately drive commercial success.

00;15;37;23 - 00;15;57;22
Rod Bulmer
And there's loads of reports written and you can look at it that say the more engagement you have of your customers, of your colleagues, the greater the commercial success. So then we step back and said, Okay, what are the pillars of engagement? Not true in every organization, not all of them matter everywhere, but what are the things that matter?

00;15;57;22 - 00;16;25;13
Rod Bulmer
And of course, we then surveyed some of the best leaders we work with. We spoke to some real important practitioners, not just your practitioners, but commercial guys, and said, What are the things that need to be in place where if you have them in place, lightly, results in good engagement? Not for certain. Yeah. You know, you look, if you've got a bit of a decade of a CEO, it's tough to overcome that because people see through that, but let's assume those things are in place.

00;16;26;04 - 00;16;50;09
Rod Bulmer
What are the cornerstone things that if you get right, all likely to result in a much greater chance of high engagement, which in itself drives a better outcome? And then we spend quite a lot of time. We remember the ex Hey Geordie from Co-op helped us and we built you know, principally what are those engagement, you know, pillars look like if you like to create the foundation.

00;16;50;09 - 00;16;56;02
Rod Bulmer
So, you know, you've developed it massively since then. Blueprints actually that was the idea and I still believe that now.

00;16;56;02 - 00;17;31;21
Phil Wedgwood
Oh, massively. And we've, it underpins everything that we do really. I mean it's, it's almost like our Bible the five pillars of engagement because we always go back to that and it's hugely useful and it's an IP that's actually hugely valuable for us to differentiate what we do in so many different respects. It really is. So I think one of the things we talked about was in giving people a voice in being bold enough to go to the boardroom, that was one of the things and say that really that the engagement conversations should at least be if not owned in the boardroom.

00;17;31;21 - 00;17;58;05
Phil Wedgwood
And we often find that it is at least be acknowledged that that is their right. And one of the things we do is obviously give a mechanism to carry the messages the recognition, all the things that we do. And I remember having a conversation about, well, in companies that's mostly there anyway. Because if they're not using a platform like ours, that is the engagement platform for the company.

00;17;58;05 - 00;18;16;09
Phil Wedgwood
So all the comms go through that and the like, they're probably using WhatsApp and they say, we know back then, three years ago now, it's not as much of a thing. But I remember three or four years ago you'd go to an H.R. director and they'd be nervous about Oh, so we're going to give it all to all the staff that they can talk with each other.

00;18;16;09 - 00;18;37;02
Phil Wedgwood
And, and, you know, it was actually quite a big thing. And yet you knew at the time that will they be doing that on WhatsApp anyway? Right. So you either have the the sort of the boldness as an organization to wrap your hands around it and say, we're going to we know it's going on, we'd rather know about it and foster it than know.

00;18;37;11 - 00;18;41;20
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, I remember having some conversation with you about that. Do you remember those?

00;18;42;23 - 00;19;02;10
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. I don't even think it's WhatsApp. So, look, you know, when I first started my career and I was more junior you go to these conferences, right? Yeah. Okay. And you go to these events. The truth is you wouldn't really say what you thought there it was ten at night when you'd had a few pints and you chat with around you, but that's when you'd say so.

00;19;02;11 - 00;19;18;24
Rod Bulmer
So this has not always been the case, right? It's just technology enables it to be much more real time much more efficient. You post something, you know, you look, you know, you see it today, don't you? On holiday, you post something, someone can give you a view that used to be when you came back and you got the photos developed in boots.

00;19;18;24 - 00;19;42;10
Rod Bulmer
But still the same thing yeah. And so all those technologies don't as accelerate and I would argue, democratize, make everyone more able to play more. However, if you go back to the point, the point is that and I think I think I won't name the business book, but there was actually a motor dealer we were engaging with and is very interested because they were very much of the opinion.

00;19;42;10 - 00;20;03;08
Rod Bulmer
We don't want to embrace them. Yeah. Because we don't want to encourage people when in truth, I suspect they now realize unless you embrace it, you get left behind. Right. So the question is how you embrace it, right? And so that problem of, of not embracing or choosing to push back is ultimately people will vote with the faith.

00;20;03;08 - 00;20;21;29
Rod Bulmer
They don't want to work for organizations that don't listen. They don't want to work for organizations where they don't have some freedom the question is how you embrace it. And that goes back to be clear. Be clear in your strategy. Be clear on what your expectations are. You culture your values, your DNA. Be clear on how you behave.

00;20;21;29 - 00;20;43;20
Rod Bulmer
I always remember someone saying to me years ago, Rod, your choice isn't whether you're a role model. Your choice is how you do it, right, because you are the CEO. So when you walk in, people are expecting you to role models, which you are your only choice is how you go about doing it. Right. And so ultimately, that just continually plays through.

00;20;43;20 - 00;21;02;13
Rod Bulmer
And so my perspective, you have no choice but to embrace it. The choices how you embrace it, how you act upon it, how you do, you know. And it doesn't require whistleblowing policies. It does. They're just protectionism. Yeah. The truth is how you embrace it and how people believe that you're embracing it in order to move the business forward.

00;21;03;11 - 00;21;13;17
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah. What fascinates me, though, is the number of organizations that are still nervous about embracing that does fascinate.

00;21;13;17 - 00;21;17;13
Rod Bulmer
So does it fascinate you or surprise you?

00;21;17;23 - 00;21;39;08
Phil Wedgwood
I think both in some respects, because there's there is a real nervousness about it and it comes from various pockets in the organization. But I think it's almost the feeling that if the company doesn't involve itself in it and be seen to be providing a mechanism for it, then they can turn a blind eye. Yeah. Yeah. And it could be anything could be bullying.

00;21;39;15 - 00;22;00;27
Phil Wedgwood
And it's almost this weird narrative that, oh, well, if if Billy bullies Suzanne on WhatsApp, well, that's okay because that's that's on WhatsApp. That's got nothing to do with us, even though they're both employees. Yeah. I mean, I think from an employment aspect of I'd imagine reasonably clear where that would sit. But do you know, to me it's still I think was a bit bizarre.

00;22;00;27 - 00;22;08;20
Phil Wedgwood
It does fascinate me that that conversation in this day and age. Yeah. That that thinking still quite old school.

00;22;09;01 - 00;22;34;12
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. Yeah, I, I just think different organizations go through change curves at different paces. They have different requirements, different demands. The truth is you can't really hold back. So you could delay inevitable. But ultimately, that's the world we now live in. And so if you don't think people are saying those things, they are, you know, on your phone.

00;22;34;12 - 00;22;56;08
Rod Bulmer
I'm sure you've got WhatsApp groups that are business related, WhatsApp groups that are entirely related, WhatsApp groups that are social, and that's the way of the world. And so ultimately I go back to it's how you choose to embrace it. Obviously, different organizations will have different cultures, different ways of being different, but ultimately you can't not embrace it.

00;22;56;08 - 00;23;25;09
Rod Bulmer
You just have to conclude what is the way you want to embrace it. I was lucky in the co-op, I think, you know, you no apologies anyone from the co-op listening, but I think the co-op hit an existential crisis that made it look at how it operated. And in looking at how it operates, it was forced to face into things of which this was one part and arguably therefore could go from behind the pack, not just into the pack, but ahead of the pocket.

00;23;25;10 - 00;23;42;20
Rod Bulmer
You know, I work for some pretty progressive people who said, no, no, no, you've got to listen to your members. You've got to listen to your customers. You've got to listen to your colleagues who, by the way, often the same person I work for you a shop with. Yeah. And I own some policies through my membership. So don't think they're all different groups.

00;23;43;01 - 00;24;03;06
Rod Bulmer
They're all want the one person who can play in multiple engagement groups. And so I think, you know, I was lucky maybe that to see that embrace because the co-op hits a crisis to which you had no choice but to react am one of the reactions was to recognize they completely lost touch with their colleagues on their members.

00;24;03;06 - 00;24;06;08
Rod Bulmer
Right. The very DNA of the business completely lost touch with.

00;24;07;12 - 00;24;15;03
Phil Wedgwood
That's really interesting. And do you think organizations like that are continuing to be progressive in how they tackle these things?

00;24;16;19 - 00;24;41;18
Rod Bulmer
Uh oh, that's good. So co-op specifically, you know, obviously I play a close eye sort of in my heart. I believe in a model that I think they work incredibly hard to to drive their engagement. And ultimately that's their differentiator. Yeah. So they've their members are engaged and the members want to work with them. And so, yes, they do.

00;24;41;18 - 00;25;03;19
Rod Bulmer
But interestingly, I think everyone is focused on it. Yeah. But of course, it's hard to make a judgment how successful or not it is. Yeah. Without being under the bonnet of it. So I'll probably reserve judgment that organizations we work with in head shock have been very focused on it. But maybe that's linked to why we work with them rather.

00;25;03;19 - 00;25;04;20
Phil Wedgwood
Than be.

00;25;04;20 - 00;25;05;28
Rod Bulmer
True everywhere. And. Sure.

00;25;07;09 - 00;25;26;29
Phil Wedgwood
And I mean, I was going to say, talk me through that transition that you made from CEO of the co-op group, which is huge achievement in its own right, a really big role to have to then working with small organizations of different shapes and sizes. I think you've been involved in a good handful now. Have. Yeah. And now you've set up on your own.

00;25;27;14 - 00;25;33;15
Phil Wedgwood
What are the some of the things that have taken you personally on that journey and continue to fascinate you now? Yeah.

00;25;33;27 - 00;25;56;19
Rod Bulmer
So CEO of Consumer Services, the group Steve Morals would have me if I claim to be CEO of the group. So I've run Consumer Services work for Richard Penicuik, and then Steve and you know, they've done a fantastic job. What do I think? So you know what I've learned, you're very protected. That's a very senior level in those organizations.

00;25;56;19 - 00;26;34;13
Rod Bulmer
So protective because you've got brilliant people around you, lots of people around you, and they are hugely skilled, hugely talented. And in actual fact, there's a high level of protection from the coalface, obviously awesomely responsible ultimately, because you make the big decisions that the level of protectionism is huge without realizing it, never realize it when you do until you step out So what I've realized in a, you know, migrated into portfolio, some non exact exact businesses is you're far more exposed, you know, so so ultimately there's much less protection around you.

00;26;34;13 - 00;26;56;25
Rod Bulmer
There's therefore, by definition, you know, if things aren't going well, there's no one else to look at. You look at yourself and that's being quite a significant transition. And what I've also learned on the positive side is working with these Scaleups businesses is the world and the type of person coming through is different than came through in my generation.

00;26;56;25 - 00;27;15;25
Rod Bulmer
And so, you know, I feel I've learned more from some of the CEOs I've worked with the maybe they're learning from me. You know, the truth is these guys are coming through and you think, you know, the way they work and how they've grown up. So it's been a brilliant learning curve. And it's all the same thing still applies, right?

00;27;15;25 - 00;27;41;15
Rod Bulmer
Whether you're running a digital marketplace for events in the UK, or your launch in, you know, the, you know, the most significant later life plan in business remotely or your role in, you know, the yellow yellow pages on events or your role in one of the big insurers, the same principle still applies. Is you strategy clear or you engage in the people who work for you that might not always be directly work for you.

00;27;41;15 - 00;27;55;01
Rod Bulmer
That could be associate suppliers or you engage in your network and do customers buy into it and are they engaged in what you want to offer? So to kind of go back to the what does it massively change but the how looks very different in these organizations.

00;27;56;04 - 00;28;07;29
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, it does. And do you think that the importance of digital is going to be continually a bigger and bigger thing as part of that transition?

00;28;09;06 - 00;28;30;26
Rod Bulmer
Yeah, so I'm not, you know, I, I wouldn't profess to be a digital expert. I've worked with some people who I think are, you know, the guy I worked with in Cocoa, Mike Bracken, once said to me, he said, Rod, there isn't a digital revolution about to happen. There's a digital revolution that has happened. Yeah. The world isn't going digital.

00;28;31;07 - 00;28;48;26
Rod Bulmer
Yeah, it is digital. Yeah. So the only question then is how you embrace it and how you make the best of it. And, you know, I think COVID has accelerated that. But I always remember when my told me that, you know, and that's just the way of the world. Whatever industry you read is completely different than it was now.

00;28;48;26 - 00;29;07;29
Rod Bulmer
You know, ten years ago, would you ever dreamt of using online estate agents who you never met? Probably not. Yeah. Ten years ago, you know, you might, I guess, bank branches or as you said, to the extent they have, probably not. Right. Would you have seen the doctor, you know, online and thought that was okay? Probably not. Right.

00;29;07;29 - 00;29;27;02
Rod Bulmer
So the world is digital is just a question of how you embrace it as it relates to engagement. Then my opinion is digital allows you to democratize it in a way that you never could before. And, you know, go back to the annual survey. Look, ultimately you can survey people as frequently as you want. You can analyze results as frequently as you want.

00;29;27;02 - 00;29;43;19
Rod Bulmer
You can run all sorts of data centric stuff to tell you, you know, frankly, what are the driving mechanics of it? So the question then is what's your appetite to embrace that and what do you do with it that matters? Yeah, you're no longer restricted by, you know, the difficulties in getting the information in.

00;29;44;10 - 00;30;11;04
Phil Wedgwood
I that say I agree. And I think that's the thing that's hugely exciting. And we've seen huge growth in the last 18 months. Obviously, COVID has accelerated many things, hasn't it? But my take on it, most boardrooms driving digital as a as a thing, sort of digital transformation is been hugely driven, probably something that would have happened in five months or five years has happened in five weeks, literally almost contents to that sort of a level.

00;30;11;14 - 00;30;30;08
Phil Wedgwood
And so for us it's been great because we've we've we've benefited from that, but also that where awareness around, as you said, we're already there. You know, if it's not our digital at all, your staff will be using something else, whether you know about it or not. Well, that's a different conversation. But you've got to start with the fact that it's already out there.

00;30;30;09 - 00;30;39;28
Phil Wedgwood
It's already happening, right? I'll choose an appropriate mechanism to communicate. So yeah, if you give me one that's drilled into the organization, that's hugely more effective.

00;30;40;14 - 00;31;13;24
Rod Bulmer
I completely agree. I mean, I think societal trends matter over the longer term. COVID has accelerated one or two of those trends. Yeah. So they're not longer term. They're massively accelerated right. And so, you know, I think five years ago we knew some of the trends. You know, people were much more bothered about, you know, the environments and they were much more bothered about what companies perspective of was they were much more bothered about, you know, how people treated colleagues.

00;31;13;24 - 00;31;40;10
Rod Bulmer
And you know, they were much more wanting, you know, for for how you digitally engage what COVID has done is accelerated that. So as you say, you know, what previously would have been a longer term trend that took time to get there. We've jumped to it. You know, it's madness. But this is true. I think two years ago, Zoom was something that a few people use, but most people didn't and most people didn't know about it.

00;31;40;11 - 00;31;43;10
Rod Bulmer
Now my mom does Zoom calls. She's 79.

00;31;43;21 - 00;32;01;01
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, that's the fact. It is amazing. Yeah. I mean, we were lucky enough that we we were in the tech space. So I guess we're in that small group that knew about it. And not only that, but we I mean, we still run out and did run our whole business on it. So our phone system is Zoom. We have Zoom rooms in the in the office.

00;32;01;01 - 00;32;26;00
Phil Wedgwood
We everyone in every member of the team has Zoom. So for us, when it happened, it was almost. Yeah, okay, fine. Business as usual to a degree, right? I mean, it didn't have as big an impact on us as it did was with obviously some sectors hugely impacting. And I think that's the interesting thing, isn't it, is that when we look at something that was quite topical and over the last week or so, something like the four day week has made its resurgence again.

00;32;26;08 - 00;32;39;10
Phil Wedgwood
And I must admit, I mean, I have a view on it, but what what was your take on that or what is your take on something like that? It's almost like a societal trend to, oh, gosh, we were four day week instead of a five day week.

00;32;39;19 - 00;32;39;27
Rod Bulmer
Yeah.

00;32;40;10 - 00;32;44;06
Phil Wedgwood
What's your take on that as a as a subject out of interest.

00;32;44;16 - 00;33;12;07
Rod Bulmer
So so without getting political. Yeah. Which I'm going to avoid at all costs. So, look, I think my generation yeah, you know, baby boomers, whatever you want to call them, we grew up it was incredibly meritocratic. Yeah. So, you know, ultimately, right from full grant assistance, if you were able to go to university through to employers, but it was very driven on how hard you worked Yeah.

00;33;12;08 - 00;33;29;11
Rod Bulmer
In truth, a lot of the time you were trying to evidence how hard you were working when you weren't working as hard as the evidence was, you know, you know, leave your jacket on your seat. So it looked like you were still in the office. They would behave is alive when when we were growing up, you know, and there was a huge amount of reward for success.

00;33;30;07 - 00;33;46;08
Rod Bulmer
I said the world is has moved on a bit, you know, and I think, you know, it's not that it's not meritocratic now, but people want more balance in their life that matters to people. People want to have, you know, a better call. Again, someone says, is there a work life balance or is that just the life balance?

00;33;46;08 - 00;34;08;26
Rod Bulmer
Work is part of life. So it's not like you've got your life and you've got work. No, you've got one life of which work is part of. Yes. So people want a better life balance and you know, they want flexibility. You know, I remember when my second daughter was born, I was in work the day after she was born in London, and my wife was still in hospital in the northwest.

00;34;08;26 - 00;34;24;29
Rod Bulmer
I look back and I regret it. Yeah, but I did it because at the time I thought it was the right thing to be doing. Now I look and think, how could I possibly have thought that that was the right thing to be doing? But the truth is the world and trends have moved on. And so what do I think of the four day week?

00;34;25;09 - 00;34;46;14
Rod Bulmer
I don't actually think it's like the old four day week. I think people are saying there's a life balance and in a modern world, you can achieve that balance in very different ways. Flexibility of work and intraday injury week into a month. What you have to look like when you come to work. So, you know, me and you are both here in the office today in, you know, small, casual.

00;34;46;14 - 00;35;12;01
Rod Bulmer
But I spent 20 years in such ties, you know, because that was the norm. It's, it's, it's the norm less so. And so I just think societal trends have changed and ultimately the job of an employer or a business, small or large, is about having a view of them and then embracing and you know, ultimately the winners are the ones who embrace them best then attract the best talents.

00;35;12;01 - 00;35;38;13
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, that's it. And I agree. And I think for me, when I first heard about it, I thought, gosh, is that ship not already sailed? We know in the postcode world because to me fundamentally it was about business leaders having a view of, okay, we've got to corral output from our teams. Yeah, that that's a given and ultimately as long as the outputs there, then providing people the empowerment of flexibility to achieve the output in a way that suits their work life balance.

00;35;38;16 - 00;35;55;28
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah. You touched on. And so I think with COVID, we've now got that in spades, right? The notion of the notion of, oh yeah, I had to drive into Canary Wharf five days a week or get the train or the tube, whatever, and yeah, it would be great when you do that footfall. Yeah, that's kind of already gone.

00;35;55;28 - 00;36;15;05
Phil Wedgwood
That ship sailed and I don't think it's going to come back. So I think it's, it's, it's the same lens of empowerment, driving on output productivity rather than those you say the jacket on the back of the chair. Yeah. I mean, I remember when I started my career in Beattie where a culture where company cars were a massive thing.

00;36;16;02 - 00;36;34;24
Phil Wedgwood
I don't know if it was the same with you in the co-op and we had a structure that when you did 45,000 miles in your car, you got a new car. So this huge focus on everyone driving around for meetings face to face meetings all over the UK with a double benefit of getting a new car quicker. Yeah.

00;36;34;24 - 00;36;51;23
Phil Wedgwood
And when you look back now on that and just think it's unbelievable how that used to happen, you know, that this day and age that would never happen again, you know, you can't ever go back to that. Yeah. And I think that that's the same concept now is that once it's once it happened, you can't go back.

00;36;52;06 - 00;37;15;12
Rod Bulmer
Now. I completely agree. I, I do think one of the things is when you look at the past with today's lens, things look very strange. But they think when you look at today with 20 years on lens, some things today look strange, you know. And so my point is the job of anyone who's trying to engage groups, be that colleagues, be that customers, is to have a sense of what matters.

00;37;15;12 - 00;37;37;18
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. And so therefore be able to position the proposition, the off the colleague proposition that goes that meets those requirements. So, you know, what was the right proposition 20 years ago certainly isn't the right proposition today. No, the job is can you be at the front of that curve and get it right, you know, and so if you take the co-op co-op's original member proposition.

00;37;37;18 - 00;38;04;19
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. You know, the Rochdale pioneers 50 years ago was right for Rochdale pioneers for industry and it did 50 years ago. Is it right now. No. Does the same principle still apply that you can get collective group of people. Yeah. When they work together give a better outcome for themselves and others cos it does. Yeah. And that's, you know, that's the what's the how was got to be relevant today.

00;38;04;19 - 00;38;13;27
Rod Bulmer
You got an app on your thing, you can see you give in, you can pick the charity. Did you know the world completely changed from what it was under 50 years ago if the underlying principles often remain the same.

00;38;14;18 - 00;38;35;20
Phil Wedgwood
It's true. And what's fascinating is that you're absolutely right, what happened 20 years ago is invariably not going to be relevant. But with COVID, what happened 20 months ago. Yeah. Is arguably the same, right? Yeah. No, it's not relevant. And even 20 weeks ago, if we're in pseudo lockdown measures now, it's not rather than either. So it's the pace of transition that's exciting isn't it?

00;38;35;20 - 00;38;45;02
Phil Wedgwood
And for me that's what was great with, with, with our opportunity of using our technology mix to embrace those very quick changes. Yeah. Trends.

00;38;45;11 - 00;38;48;27
Rod Bulmer
Yeah. No, I agree. And you know. COVID's interesting, right? We could talk about forever.

00;38;49;06 - 00;38;49;16
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah.

00;38;50;13 - 00;39;11;04
Rod Bulmer
But if you take the democratized point, people actually now can go on and find stats themselves. Yeah. They can then disbelieve with the stats. Yeah. They've got a view, they can read stats, they can read opinions. They don't have to listen to one opinion. So then how does that play out? Well, lots then about authenticity of message. That's about openness of message.

00;39;11;14 - 00;39;35;20
Rod Bulmer
But when you look at some of the COVID issues, often they're driven by a lack of transparency, a lack of authenticity. I would say that in the modern age, that's not a nice to have a must have if you work somewhere, you expect transparency, authenticity, complete openness. The only time openness is not appropriate when there's a legal or regulatory requirement not to be.

00;39;36;06 - 00;39;45;18
Rod Bulmer
That's the expectation people have. You know, you know, if you get a sandwich and you're the CEO, you queue like everybody else, right?

00;39;45;18 - 00;39;46;06
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah. That's the.

00;39;46;06 - 00;39;46;13
Rod Bulmer
Thats the world we're in

00;39;46;25 - 00;40;07;04
Phil Wedgwood
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. Rod, it's been fascinating to spend some time with you again. Have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed working with you over the years. You've been a great adviser and a counsel for me and the business. So it's been fantastic. And yeah, looking forward to continue working with you. And I think we've lots of exciting things that I'm not ready to talk about right now.

00;40;07;04 - 00;40;11;00
Phil Wedgwood
But watch this space. Yeah, and I look forward to that.

00;40;11;00 - 00;40;11;08
Rod Bulmer
Cheers.

00;40;11;09 - 00;40;12;05
Phil Wedgwood
Well, thank you. Thank you. Take Care

00;40;12;06 - 00;40;23;28
Narrator
Thanks for listening to Engaged in Conversation. It was presented by our CEO, so watch it for more news and updates on Engage, visit our website. Engage listen to Dotcom.