Being a Digital Leader - the Good, Bad AND Ugly of Digital Transformation
Join us as we dive deep into the world of digital transformation with real-life stories of breakthroughs and challenges from the front lines. In each episode, we'll sit down with industry experts, AND Digital consultants, and other influential figures in the technology space to hear about their personal experiences of leading digital transformation initiatives.
We'll explore what worked, what didn't, and the lessons learned along the way.
Being a Digital Leader - the Good, Bad AND Ugly of Digital Transformation
Transforming Utilities with Kes Juskowiak - Transformation Director at Scottish Water
Host: Simon Holden
Guest: Kes Juskowiak, Transformation Director, Scottish Water
Ever wondered how you can transform from a scientist to a leading digital innovator?
Join us for an engaging conversation with Kes Juskovac, a Transformation Director at Scottish Water. Kes recounts his journey from science to leading groundbreaking digital transformations.
You'll learn about Kes's early work on public health issues, his pivotal role in managing Scotland’s drought responses, and how these experiences have shaped his leadership style.
Kes’s emphasis on teamwork, innovation, and empowerment offers invaluable lessons for aspiring leaders.
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Welcome to our podcast being a Digital Leader the good, the bad and ugly of digital transformation. On today's podcast, we are thrilled to welcome Kez Juskovac, a Distinguished Transformation Director at Scottish Water. Kez joins us sharing his inspiring journey into the world of technology and his prolific career at Scottish Water, where he's risen from a scientist in 2003 to his current role as Director of Transformation. Welcome to the podcast, kez. Before we jump in, please introduce yourself and your role.
Speaker 2:Welcome, simon. Thank you, my name is Kez Yuskoviak. Well done, getting the pronunciation correct. I've been with Scottish Watch since 2003. As you've said, I started at the bottom. My first job was cleaning glassware as a scientist in the labs and I've had many roles through the business now as director of transformation, cleaning glasses, cleaning glasses, cleaning glassware A bit like this.
Speaker 1:Okay, test tubes.
Speaker 2:Test tubes.
Speaker 1:yeah, okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:So I'd love to talk to about your, your career journey, uh, but I'm conscious that after 20 plus years with scottish water, that's quite a yeah that's quite a piece, so perhaps you could share maybe three highlights from your, from your journey yeah, it seems strange to be 20 years um in scottish water now, but, um, it's really formed three distinct parts for me, so the question of splitting into three is useful. The first six or seven years of mine was spent in scientific services within the laboratories where I worked on our cryptosporidium analysis a real public health risk issue. That was my background at university. Came in and worked in the labs issue, and that was my background at university. Came in and worked in the labs um spent a great amount of time learning how to work in teams, understanding what lean productivity was, looking after public health, lots of language that I probably understand better now but was doing in practice in the labs at the time.
Speaker 2:Um, I got my first foray into initial steps of leadership at that point as well. I really learned a lot about things that work and don't work in leadership, particularly in a very confined space the labs. You're all working in small rooms, very busy production lines, so there's lots of people issues that come up at that time. So, working through that, I learned a lot about myself as a leader.
Speaker 2:What was important to me and not the second stage, which I see as the kind of most formative was I moved out of the scientific services and into our kind of core operations period and particularly in water operations, and in that I had my eyes open to the business and I understood better what our job was about. So when you turn on that tap and the water's there and it comes out consistently great tasting water all the time, and what I was exposed to was just a team of people that were really passionate about delivering water and doing the services and being better every day, and it really resonated with me and I was hugely proud to be able to walk around a number of our assets, some of which opened by Queen Victoria, which we still maintain and operate to these days, obviously bringing them up to modern standards, but you have that legacy.
Speaker 2:That's there and it really connected with me, um, at a time where I was probably going through a difficult career transition should I leave scottish water? Should I not? Should I do something else and I found something that really was strongly valuable to me at that time and that's where I kind of spent the last um 10 plus years on my career, rising up through various roles. Um, I would say the most important highlight of my career that enabled my step to my current role, though um was while in, while in the operations role, um in 2018 and 2021, we had some incredibly difficult drought periods hard to believe in scotland, particularly in a day like today, it doesn't seem to have stopped raining all year, um, but 2018 it barely rained for three months, um, and customer demand was going up and up and up, and we've seen a number of sites going into drought?
Speaker 2:um that we hadn't seen before. And I was asked by the current leader at that time to lead our response across the whole of Scotland and join up across the area. So I was asked by the current leader at that time to lead our response across the whole of Scotland and join up across the area. So I was leading the east what was known as the east area at that time. I had to connect up with the other three regions and manage our drought response plans. What came forward at that time was really innovative thinking from our people rising to the challenge, breaking down boundaries, doing things that we just thought we couldn't do before in terms of connecting new water supplies, overland pipes, just different ways of working. But I really learned at that time how important it was to listen to our people, to harvest ideas from them and empower them and make them make them deliverable.
Speaker 2:And then, when that came on to 2021, drought, which was slightly different in terms of its geography, but just as difficult and what I saw was a was a capability growing in our maturity of leadership and able to respond to these.
Speaker 2:So our planning was better, our ambition was higher, our capability was faster in terms of delivering these, and all of those things helped me understand the transition from a kind of doer fixing fixing the issues myself to helping and enabling others to do that as well. Um, so I I truly believe that without those two drought periods, I wouldn't be in the role that I'm in, because they pushed my boundaries as a leader at the time and when I look back on them, I didn't enjoy them that much, but I'm incredibly thankful for the learning that I went through in terms of what I learned from other people around the country and what I learned myself as a leader as well, and it's really able to kind of lift my game. So they were do three things really enjoyed scientific services, opening up my eyes into operations, and then significant strategic leadership across the business to to enable um us to get through a difficult period. That would be my three oh, fascinating.
Speaker 1:I I have got lots of follow-up questions, but I'll get told off if I don't bring it back to digital transformation, so I will maybe ask them later. So when we think about digital transformation maybe unfairly one doesn't necessarily think of it in terms of a water company. What does digital transformation mean at Scottish Water?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it can be easy not to think of us as a digital company, but, to put it in context, we have 30,000 miles of water networks, 30,000 miles of sewer networks, hundreds of treatment works, thousands of wastewater treatment works every one of those digitally connected, every one of those sending information into the centre about how they're performing, what issues they've got and whether we need to respond. We then have 5 million customers who connect with us either through websites facebook, twitter, um, all the kind of social media channels or the phone, and that creates tasks and jobs for people to go out and do so. We are a digitally driven business, both from our assets and our customers, and the real value comes when you can bring both of those insights together, and that's one of the challenges that we have going forward. So it may not look like we're a digitally driven business, but absolutely we are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, and it's a very tangible thing that you do in terms of the real world impact. Can you tell us a bit more about the award-winning work on the scottish water ncsd?
Speaker 2:yeah. So ncsd stands for non-complex service delivery, and what this is is um high volume, low cost repairs on many of our assets. So all that information that we talked about tells us that we've had a problem a pump's went down, a dosing kits went down. Something's broken. It needs to be fixed. The normal process is that we will try and go out um and any an e&m electrical maintenance person will try and fix that themselves. Um, if they can't fix that, they then need to buy a new bit of kit.
Speaker 2:Um, the process before was quite convoluted, and so if you want to spend money, you obviously need to buy a new bit of kit. The process before was quite convoluted, and so if you want to spend money, you obviously need to then ask your line manager, who then, depending on the value of that, then asks their line manager and so on and so forth, to the point where it can take months for us to agree to something to then spend, which often is a no brainer the person on site. So if you're operating the site, simon, you know how that operates. If you need to have two bits of kit to support service and one of them's down, well, you should get that replaced. You shouldn't have to jump through all these hoops. So the ncsd process was designed to be like amazon. I need a new bit of kit, I'm just pressing it. It'll be auto-approved, based on.
Speaker 2:Well, we know that we need two pumps. You need a new pump, so it just gets sort of approved. So what we've done is taken the time to respond down from an average of about six months. Some would be approved in weeks. Some would take up to a year depending on how complex they were. So we've taken that down to about a week.
Speaker 2:But, more importantly, taking 40,000 hours out of the decision-making time that either you were spent filling in forms, going and asking to get this money approved and then waiting for that to come back. And lastly, but not to be overlooked, is the service risk aspect. So if you were waiting months for approval during that time period, the asset was running at risk. So you may have a duty standby set up, um. So if one fails it flips over onto the other. If you run only run on one pump, um, when one fails, you run at a risk of a service, either water quality or environmental issue, um. So not only is it speeded up decision making, reduced cost and time it's also improved um our service outputs to our customers as well.
Speaker 1:Big change for us fantastic big change. There's some annual savings as well. Is that commercially sensitive or are you able to share that?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, no, we are. We are saving them around five million pounds a year. Um, just that's in time amazing time that people have been spent in that process and very impressive, given how scottish water is funded. All that money gets reinvested into additional value for our customers brilliant.
Speaker 1:What a story. Thank you, kez. So how has the industry um and its approach to digital changed over the past two decades from your perspective? What's that meant for you?
Speaker 2:yeah, so I I mean it's um, it's like a different world, um, and it's hard to when. You see. It's a bit like your kids when they grow up next to you. You don't notice it, um, until someone comes in and says, oh, you've grown so much, uh, today, so you often don't notice it when you're, when you're right next to it every day, um, but when you take a moment to reflect on what it used to look like 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:So when I started in the labs, as I said, we used to have hundreds of water quality failures every year, hundreds and hundreds. We're now down to handfuls of these. Our water quality is within the best in Europe. Not only has it been inotland. Is it great tasting the soft water is beautiful in scotland for a taste, but it's obviously of the highest standards as well from a public health perspective.
Speaker 2:It's come on immensely our investment and our assets to both digitally connect them to understand how they're performing 24 hours a day. We can only be there seven, eight hours. The other 16, we require our digital systems, our control centers, to operate and monitor them during the night. So that's come on hugely A capability that didn't exist 20 years ago for us to be able to do that. So service excellence has risen.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's changed massively is just people's expectations, so customers expectations, um. So not only have we had to up our game digitally about our assets, our customers have changed over that 20 year time period as well. How they expect to be treated as a customer, yeah, how they expect to interact. So communication through various social media channels, um, the information that we push out to them and they and they can receive and in the last bit, um, I always try and talk in threes is that the uh, I think the biggest step forward that we are that we've seen um which continues to grow, is analytics and data-led decision-making. So 20 years ago, decisions were based on who knew the best and who showed.
Speaker 2:It allows this yeah now we have a wealth of data and information which helps us make the best informed decisions for our customers now and, importantly, make sure that's generationally fair to our customers in the future. So how do we spread the the burden of decisions now and then into the future? So how are our assets performing? How are we going to maintain them? How can we maximize the performance of them? And then, at which point do we need to change them? Do we need a? You know? Do we need to change our old, banged up car to buy a new car, and when's the right time to do that? So data-led decision-making is really helping that, and the emergence of machine learning and AI is only going to push that further.
Speaker 1:I think I understood what you meant by generationally fair, but could you just expand on that? That's fascinating.
Speaker 2:So Scottish Water is funded by our customers. They pay that through their bills just now and it's important that we consider that what customers pay just now is fair for the services that they get, but also fair that we're not um deferring choices, difficult choices, so that in the future, future customers end up paying for those decisions. So we've tried to make it fair across generations. Is that so, as climate change challenges come upon us? Is that we don't just wait and wait and wait kick it down the can.
Speaker 2:Kick the can down the road. Kick the can down the road is a term that's used, yeah, so we're trying to make it fair, and that's one of the advantages we have of being a public utility is we can make some of those decisions in line with our framework.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. Thank you, Kez. All right, let's see if you can do this one in threes. How do you start a transformation journey? What are the building blocks? You need to have in place to make transformation a success. Yeah, yeah, you don't have to do it in three.
Speaker 2:I'll try my best. Um, we need um. So the first thing, straight off the block, is you need a compelling why, why? Why transform um so generally? People will want to get better every day.
Speaker 2:But to lead a transformation which takes something different is you've got to have a compelling reason why Scottish Water is on its third transformation. First one, driven by 20 years ago, we needed to reduce cost. We were ranked as the worst performing water company and highest cost in the UK, so we were set the challenge simply to be better. Yeah, so our first transformation was predominantly about reducing cost. Our second transformation was more complex and that we we wanted to improve service and but we understood that improving service there would also be a benefit to customers. So if we had less bursts, there'd be less things for us to fix. If we had better performing assets, there'd be less reactive issues for us. So that was a service led transformation. And the third one, which we're into just now, has an additional layer of complexity and that is our ambition to get to beyond net zero by 2040, five years ahead of the scottish government ambitions and 10 years ahead of the uk. So when you're trying to do three things at once reduce costs, improve service and do net zero. That's the compelling case for us is how do we manage those complexities and how do we work with our people to unlock them. And we can't do that by doing the same things that we've done historically. So you need a compelling why, whatever, whatever the case is, and you need to keep that simple and you need to engage with your people how you do that.
Speaker 2:The second building block has got to be about leadership. Um, how do they lean into that? Um, there's four and a half thousand people in scottish water. There's no way that I can understand and make it relevant to each person what transformation means to them. You need an engaged leader to translate and communicate that to their people. So they need to buy into their initial why. Make it relevant to their team, engage with them so that you can build a transformation that means something to them. So that would be the second part, and and the third part is just simple mechanisms. So do you have the right people, do you have the skills, do you have the funding building blocks of just kind of doing the basics? Well, yeah, um, transformation is a different set of skills from running a water treatment works, from doing an investment plan, to to doing your finances, to fixing it. So you need the right skills, capabilities, resources, both people and funding, to be able to do that. So that would be my three compelling why engage, leadership and doing the basics well.
Speaker 1:Mechanisms nailed it. Just think that you talked about leadership. It's the second one how do your personal values shape your role and how you lead through transformation?
Speaker 2:yeah, um. So I think that leadership's a um is something that you probably learn over time about what it means to you. Um. So there are. There are things that really matter a lot to me. Um. One is you've got to work hard. If anyone asks me what the most important thing is, you've got you gotta work hard. And and that can sound like a flippant answer you've got to work hard. Um, um. But what that really means to me is you've got to work hard, even when, when you're doing something you don't enjoy yeah um, and you've got to have the discipline to
Speaker 2:do things when you're not enjoying it and and and really kind of work hard, um. It's my belief, through various things, that hard work beats talent every day, um, and so you need to. You need to put the effort in, um, whether that's, uh, getting out the door today or coming to do this podcast. You've got to do the prep and you've got to lean into that. Second thing is family. I come from a huge family. I've got over 20 cousins, wow. Yeah, I've just come from a large family and, at the time, maybe didn't realize the benefits that that brought to me and helped me be more rounded as an individual individual, helped me push me into things that I didn't want to do, but it's really important to me that you look after your family and that you make time for them, and you know I'll be honest, I've not always got that right. Yeah, I'd still don't get it right, but I'm probably more conscious about that now than.
Speaker 2:I was when I was younger. And then the third thing is just honesty and truth, so that you have the courage to be honest, which can sometimes not be easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, uh, so sometimes you have to say things that you don't want to say because it can be uncomfortable, or you have to give an uncomfortable conversation or truth with with someone, um, but yeah, you should do that no matter, no matter what the circumstances.
Speaker 2:so that would be the, that would be my, my values that are really important to me, and when I struggle is when someone pushes against one of those values yeah, yeah so if I think they're not working hard or that they are being unfair against my family or they're being disingenuous, yeah, it kind of gets my, gets my back up yeah, no, I don't you can argue with any of those.
Speaker 1:They're very powerful, very important. When you talk about hard work beats talent and how that kind of relates in some other parts of your life yeah, is cycling one of those things and was it, would that be a kind of a?
Speaker 2:yeah, it is. Yeah, I could do a whole hour podcast on on cycling.
Speaker 1:Give us a bit, so you actually told me so you've got some, you, you've. You've been pretty impressive in your cycling career, haven't you?
Speaker 2:well, I am. So I mean it's important to go go back to the beginning. Why did I start cycling? Um, it's not a it's not a hugely um proud moment, but um. So I've got two younger brothers that were, but were reasonably close in age, um, and we all used to run, we were all runners, okay, um, we're a sporting family.
Speaker 2:Um, it became quite apparent that both my younger brothers were better than me this is not a good situation and I was having problems with my Achilles and I just wasn't, you know, just wasn't as talented at running as my, as both my brothers were.
Speaker 2:So my dad suggested to me oh, why don't you try cycling? So, just by total coincidence, came across it when I, so I started cycling when I was 12 or um and found a sport that I hugely enjoyed. Um, it's, uh, something where, uh again, hard work beats beats most talent. So you've got to put the effort in, you've got to put the training in, um, and you've got to be able to want to do the things that you don't want to do. So no one wants to cycle up a really difficult hill, but you've got to be able to want to do the things that you don't want to do, so no one wants to cycle up a really difficult hill but you've got to train to get to go up that hill, um, so so, yeah, when I was younger, I represented scotland, um I I raced with bradley wiggins, I mean I think that's in loosest of terms.
Speaker 2:Um, there's an interesting story there, because this is before facebook and everything like that. You didn't know who anyone was, um, so we went down to england for a race, um, and in the first lap I was off the front with a group of four, one of which was brother wiggins I didn't know who he was at the time.
Speaker 2:Um, and we went over the top of the hill and there's some points at the top of the hill, and then I eased back to go back into the group yep, because I thought I was still 50 miles to go and then this guy just kept going. He's cracked on and we never seen him again. And I got to the end of the race and I says who was that guy? Um, I've never seen him again. Did he win the race? Because I finished, yeah, 20th or so, and they were like, oh yeah, that's bradley wiggins, he's the track superstar. Up and coming traps.
Speaker 2:Track superstar wow and uh, yeah, so we. That's very impressive. You can tell he was a different generational talent, um unbelievable as a cyclist. So I raced with him. I wouldn't say I raced against him you were in the race.
Speaker 1:You were in the race, I was in the race. That was more than most of us. That was right. I'm going to bring us back to digital, otherwise I'm going to get my wrist slapped. So, as this is the good, the bad and the ugly of digital transformation, maybe you could share a success with us from your experience of leading transformation, a point where you had to goed an idea entirely just because it wasn't working um.
Speaker 2:So I I think we've talked about a great success, which is the ncsd. I was involved in the initiation of that as a probably an end user at the time. In my previous roles it was a frustration for me that my teams were having to wait so long to be involved, um, to to reduce risk, to service um, so that that that's that's a kind of a big success for us and kind of award winning recently as, as has been said, um. But there are other simpler uh transformations the capability of our icc, our control center that we have now. So that was grown in 2009-10.
Speaker 2:And I was heavily involved in the building of that.
Speaker 2:What it is we want as a capability, how we're going to make sure we look after our assets, how we're going to protect service and how we're going to reduce costs.
Speaker 2:And it was really driven from the heart by the people who understood, understood the assets and could then make informed choices. So what worked really well with that was an approach kind of called hothousing, where you would bring everyone into the room, you would put the brown paper up on the walls and you'd work through right, tell us what's not working and what's not, and what is working and how can we try and iron out those issues? So I think when you build a transformation focus led by the people resolving their issues to then improve service, it always works really well. Yeah, um, if you can bring those two things together uh, a compelling business benefit and a benefit to those who are, who are involved in it. Um, so building a kibu valar icc um, almost 14 years ago now was was a real legacy that we have and we continue to develop that um ones that have not gone so well.
Speaker 2:There's a list, as you can expect, with with digital projects and I think more than others.
Speaker 2:Uh, they fail, um, and it's a. We're not really comfortable with that as a culture. Um, so how can we be more comfortable in failing fast or learning fast whatever the right terminology is? Um, well, I think the biggest one that we've had, or the biggest one that kind of sticks in my mind, is bringing digital capability to our treatment teams. So 10 years ago, every task was written on a bit of paper, it was all kept in a site diary, and we have no visibility of what's been done, whether it's been done consistently. But more importantly is that the insights which are captured on those bits of paper are still on those bits of paper.
Speaker 2:So yes, they don't get shared and you don't see trends over time, you don't see how assets are changing.
Speaker 2:So, as well as we have digital information coming in all the time, the operators on site take a number of other readings and checks and balances, and so, if you can combine those together, um, so I'm trying to think how long ago it was maybe eight, nine years ago we thought we're going to digitize our, our schedules, bring us up to the modern world. Um, what didn't work well with that was that, um, we brought everyone into the room, put all the brown sheets of paper up, and it became a monster. It became, oh, if we could only do this and we could add this on, and if we could do that, um, and so, all of a sudden, we, we were trying to create a kind of um, swiss army knife, rather than just something really simple, which was can we just simply replicate what's on paper onto a tablet or something else? But we wanted it to do all this and that, so it became a monster, and every time you would go back to our digital partners to say can you add this capability? It added more.
Speaker 2:It added more cost. It added more connections and convolutions. So one of the really most difficult things was, despite spending quite a significant amount of money, we had to pull the plug on that because it wasn't delivering against what our original aspirations were. The end users weren't engaged in it as a process and it was just continuing to burn money. So we ripped it up. We ripped it up and stopped, um, and we went back to basics it's a brave decision, that isn't it? Well, it's really, it's really really right decision but but brave.
Speaker 2:So yeah, because everyone's um invested a lot of time and effort and it can mean a lot to you personally if you've been involved in that.
Speaker 2:Um, it's really difficult to kind of let that, let that go, um. So, working through with the team to make sure we captured what the best bits of that were and then to repurpose it. So we set it up again, being really specific around, our ambition is simply to replicate the paper schedules, get those digitally. All the other capabilities that will come off the back of that will be, um, in later phases. So what happened in the first attempt was a traditional waterfall approach. Was you get the whole output right at the end?
Speaker 2:yep and if that doesn't work, you've spent all that time and effort before working out whether it delivers. The second approach was to go with an agile methodology and deliver value early.
Speaker 2:So we delivered capability onto a small subset of people, for a few sites, for a few users, and learned from them got the feedback from them and then built that understanding and then scaled it onto more sites, got some more feedback from them, got the feedback from them and then built that understanding and then scaled it onto more sites, got some more feedback from them and then again scaled it.
Speaker 2:So, importantly, we took that agile methodology, which was just emerging as a skill set within Scottish Water at the time, and through that process you engage people all the way and you learn from it and you build something that's of use to the end users, um, and at the same time you can then work in the background to say, well, what were all these additional requirements that people wanted and where's the kind of threshold of what we, what we need there? Um, so that's probably one. That's not what, not what, went well To your last point. So I'm nine months, 10 months, into the role and I came into a transformation program that was running flat out. We had over 100 projects in our program and everyone was really busy.
Speaker 2:If you ask them oh yeah, I'm so busy, I've got so many projects. But one of the difficult conversations I had early on was do we understand business cases, the value proposition, you know? Is it support in one of our three ambitions Great value, service excellence or net zero? If it's not, please stop. Yep, again, that was a difficult conversation. Um, do we have engaged leader? Going back to the other, three things do we do?
Speaker 2:we have to understand what the why is okay, yes, do we have a compelling leadership? No, fine, stop. Um, so a number of them were cut, because if we didn't have a compelling leadership, who then wanted to own the process afterwards? So why? Why invest the time and effort into that? So that that that's been difficult?
Speaker 1:um did the team understand in? The longer in retrospect do people understand the approach you took. I mean, I imagine it was hard at the time, but it was.
Speaker 2:It was difficult, um, because a number of people had spent years culturing and building what they felt was a really valuable project, um, but without the engaged leadership and and in many cases, they didn't even have the basic building blocks in places. You know mechanisms, people, skills, business as usual, transfer. None of those were in place.
Speaker 2:We were going to spend public money yeah for something to fail maybe not now, but in a few months time, when we, when we transferred that over to business as usual. Um, I wouldn't say that's an easy conversation, simon. I think people still have a strong connection to the work that they do, yeah, and for that to be a sense of loss or it can be viewed as personally, as a as an output of their work, but what I'm trying to build is that, well, let's learn from that, let's share the learning across the team, let's adapt and make sure that learning is not just about us looking inwards, but that we also share that with the rest of the business yeah whether it's about engagement mechanisms or processes.
Speaker 2:Thank you because fascinating and obviously a busy time, so I'm gonna move on to kind whether it's about engagement, mechanisms or processes.
Speaker 1:Thank you, kez. Fascinating and obviously a busy time, so I'm going to move on to kind of some of your extracurricular activities. So you're a non-exec director of the Water Regulations Approval Scheme and you're also the area president of the Institute of Water, so can you tell us a bit about those roles, why are you involved and why it's important for you?
Speaker 2:So I'm a past president for the Institute of Water.
Speaker 2:Now no longer the president, so I'll start with the RAS, or Water Rigs UK as it's now known. So that's a really important UK-wide body that supports all water companies to make sure that we protect the bylaws, to make sure that people are using the water safely, as it's intended to be used, and not excessive consumption. So plumbers fit things properly, so there's no backflow contamination, they're not connecting toilets to drinking water, these types of things. So we have an obligation for each water company to make sure that that happens. And RAS, which connects, or Water Regs UK&A, which serves as a company which works across all of those to both improve the quality of work that we do but also to lobby and support government in England, wales, northern Ireland and Scotland as well, so I represent Scotland on that.
Speaker 2:It's been a great leadership development for me. I've been on it seven years now and I get the opportunity to work with my peers across other water companies, learn from what they're doing, not only in context of why we sit on that board about, but other things as well. So I remember speaking to each of them about the drought process in 2018. How were they managing the? Drought yeah what were they doing differently? Um so it's been a great opportunity to connect and grow your um uh breadth across the country. Um so I enjoy that?
Speaker 1:Did you mention Wales in that group, or is Wales not part of it?
Speaker 2:So they come under England, do they? Yes, yeah so they're regulated by the DWI, which covers England and Wales. Thank you, northern Ireland's got a separate regulator and Scotland's got a separate regulator, so sorry.
Speaker 1:No, no, no. I just want to make sure I didn't want to leave out Wales.
Speaker 2:No, they're an important voice on that. So Welsh Water sit on part of that group as well and really enjoy working with Welsh Water. Actually, the Institute of Water was again. It's one of those things. A bit like being asked to this podcast was really, do you want to do? You sure you want me to do that? So I was asked to be president.
Speaker 2:This is in pre-COVID times so I would say it's, when you look at previous past presidents, it's a kind of rite of passage if you want to be a senior leader within Scottish Water. It's that you have to serve a period of time as the Institute of Water. And just maybe just a bit of promotion for the Institute of Water. For those that don't know what it is, it's a membership group. It's focused on mentoring, coaching and leadership across the water industry. It has access to seminars, learning and a lot of social events. Actually, social events is a big part of it and that's how many of the connections are made.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I served four years on on that um a year as vice president, two years as president which I'll come back to in a minute and then a year just as a committee lead, um, and then I stepped down, just as I, as I took on my current role, uh, I led the Institute of Water through the Covid period, which is very difficult. Again. Its main premise is around connecting people and bringing them together, particularly socially, and all that was taken away from us during Covid. So we had to pivot and work out how we were going to understand what the service looks like and how we want to engage our members during covid. Um, so we had to. I worked with them to shift a lot of stuff, a lot of our stuff, online. Yeah, we did our seminar online, which was um, which was challenging. Normally it's held just up the road in strathclyde university, very good and but we did it online during covid.
Speaker 2:so all our speakers and just we were in the emergence of working out all the technology at that time. But the Institute of Water is volunteer driven so everyone that's part of that does it off the back of their own goodwill and there are a number of volunteers that are really you know, the hat goes off to them, the amount of time and effort that they spend on that to bring the greater value to the people that work in the water industry Hugely passionate. So I was very proud to be involved in that and I was very proud to be asked first of all oh fantastic.
Speaker 2:You got to be asked first. Yeah, not always a given yeah. And so I served two years. Most people just serve a year. I I am because it was during the covid time. I I agreed to stay on for an extra year. That's very good. Um, I felt it felt prudent to do that very good, oh, fascinating, thank you.
Speaker 1:So if that wasn't enough, then you've also just completed the uh, the scotland monroe challenge on your bike as well, haven't you?
Speaker 2:yeah, we did raising money for water aid water aid. Yeah, so we raised um. We raised over 1500 pounds for water aid.
Speaker 2:Um, so thanks to all who sponsored um and supported us on that. Um, I'd done the water challenge twice now. Uh, once, a number of years ago, and I said I'm never doing that again. Um, I'm not. I don't hugely enjoy walking up mountains. Um, so, flippantly, our um general manager for communications says to me oh, will you put together a team? And I said jokingly, well, if you can find me one that I'll cycle up, I'll do it. Got to be careful what you say. And unfortunately he came back with one. I would say his definition of what's cyclable is a bit different from mine, because it wasn't actually entirely cycle. I probably had to walk about a mile, okay, and push the bike up. But yeah, we pulled together a team of mountain bikers.
Speaker 2:That I knew, from us across scottish water and we cycled up ben honzi, which is just outside, uh, crief and per Um, just over the 3000, just over the 3000 feet.
Speaker 1:but enough enough to be a Monroe, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, so you're very difficult. Uh uh, the descent was incredibly hairy as well.
Speaker 1:Cause we, we went, we went down a different way.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, really, it was a great. It was a great day out, um, uh, yeah, just bonding with people that we work with and just just as you cycle along chatting about various things, and then, uh, a number of people laughing at us as they were walking faster up the hill than you were cycling well, that's their problem.
Speaker 1:Um, what does water aid do then? What's the what, then? What's the function of WaterAid as a charity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so WaterAid's focus is about bringing clean water to those who can't get it, predominantly in African countries. It spends a lot of time in Malawi and other places and Scottish Water's always been a huge promoter and investor of that. The current president is a scottish water employee, paul davidson oh fantastic. It works on our digital digital teams. Um and yeah, but it's always been something that we recognize and being our primary charity that we would like to support thank you, good stuff.
Speaker 1:So two final questions. One maybe kind of a bigger question, one easy one. So the bigger one is what's the next big transformational challenge for you at Scottish Water?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think the transformations that we've done so far is you're trying to find a purpose for our people and something that helps the business. I would like to see the next transformation flip that around Is that how can we find a transformation that helps our people, that our business then finds a benefit from? So initiated by Covid, but for other reasons as well, I've witnessed a change in expectations from people and what they want from work, how they connect with it, um, and what.
Speaker 2:What balance looks like, um. So how can we get transformations that have well-being at the heart of them? So that's well-being in terms of how you carry out your role and but also how you engage with the business. So things like four-day working week or flexible working or just different productivity measures. So I think if we can get a well-being-led transformation, the business will benefit from that. You'll have happier people, you'll have more productive people going forward, and the thing that wraps around that as well is that we're on the precipice of a different transformation happening around us, because up till now, most of those have been led by task, by roles that are task driven.
Speaker 2:Yep, so you currently fix three jobs a day, simon. I want you to do four jobs a day. Here's the digital tools that will help you be more productive. However, there's vast parts of the business and support functions predominantly. They don't have productivity measures around them or any challenge on that actually, um, but the emergence of the ai tools and the language models is actually making people more productive anyway. So I use copilot, I use chat, gpt, um, it doesn't give me the answers, but it helps me get, get there quicker. It helps with my language. It helps me refine issues and perhaps take out emotion out of things, things.
Speaker 2:So that productivity challenge, which has historically been driven by field teams, task driven teams and less so on the support teams. I think it's going to come more into the support teams as well. But if we can do that with a well-being focus, I think scottish water will focus.
Speaker 2:I think Scottish Water will benefit from it, our people will benefit from it and the wider society. And then the last thing which I would say is that we're also on the challenge. We're also at a point where connecting with our customers more directly is a need into the communities that they work within. So one of the privileges I have in my old role was getting to visit very remote communities and understanding and seeing directly what that's like. So you know, I've been to places like Fair Isle and Fula and Fetlar and Shetland Isles and many others where often the operator there will be the postman or woman. In the morning they may be the fire person that checks the planes when they land and then they go and operate the water treatment works. But what you sense there, not only in that person but in the community, is a strong connection to the water service and how they interact with it either, and how much water they're using, what the condition of the reservoir is or things that they're putting down their toilet into their septic tank and others. So we already have that connection in some parts of the country. How can we create that stronger connection into some of the perhaps more urban areas where you don't have the reservoir at the back of your house. You don't see the impact of what you flush down the toilet. You know, for example, wipes, which cause most of our issues.
Speaker 2:So we need to be able to have a more open and transparent conversation with our customers about how they can help to improve service going forward. Use less water, only flush the three peas down the toilet. Yeah, uh, don't, definitely don't put wipes down the toilet. So that's going to be a difficult broaching conversation for us because as soon as you go into that um you have, you then are open to criticism about, well, you've not done this, you've not done that um, so be opening up yourself up to that conversation. You have to be able to be opening up yourself up to that conversation. You have to be able to be ready to come back on that.
Speaker 2:So I think there's to answer your question. I think there's two things. If we can have well-being led transformations going forward, how do we enable our people to be more productive, happier in general about their roles? And then, secondly, how can we engage communities and place? So what's the best solution for this place? So St Vincent place here. What's the best solution? That Scottish Water, the councils, all the other people that interact with this. As a community can can make sure that we serve at the best.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Chris. Fascinating, I think I might know the answer to this final question. But what would your antitle be? I think I might know the answer to this final question but what would your antitle be?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my antitle would be cyclist. Definitely, it's an important part of my wellbeing strategy. It allows me to digest and work through times and it also allows me to take out some frustration, sometimes as well. Where you could, uh, where you can do that, um. But going back to that hard work thing, um, often the hardest thing with cycling is to is to take the first step out the door. Yep, once you're on the bike, it's great, yeah, yeah, but the first step is the hardest getting out of the door. So you've got to have the dedication, the the discipline to want to do that. And when I don't go on my bike, very often it affects my well-being, it affects my work, it affects everything. So for me, it's something that's really important to my personality.
Speaker 1:Yeah, bang on. Do you have a preference in terms of road or cross-country?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, definitely road, road, definitely road. I uh a big thing for me, cycling 100 miles, that's that's. That's that for me. Is nirvana being able to go out in a scottish summer not like not like today scottish summer, quiet roads and cycle 100 miles either in a group or on your own. That for me, when you get back that day, is just uh, it just feels great. I really enjoy that beautiful.
Speaker 1:Thank you, cares. That's fascinating. I've got lots more questions, but I know I'm going to be called time on, so that is everything for this edition of the good, the bad and the ugly digital transformation podcast. Thanks again to you, cares, for being with us and, um, if you've enjoyed this episode, uh, please follow or subscribe so you'll always know there's a new episode to enjoy. Thank you.
