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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
Building an inclusive and resilient future in tech: My leadership journey: Peter Brown, Lloyds Banking Group
What if your neurodiversity could be your ultimate career superpower? Join us as we sit down with Pete Brown, Engineering Lead at Lloyds Banking Group, who shares his remarkable 15-year journey from graduate scheme entrant to digital lab leader. From eye-opening customer-facing roles to complex data center migrations and transformative mentorships, Pete reveals the pivotal experiences that have shaped his career.
Discover how he has navigated the nuances of a regulated industry while leveraging his unique strengths to drive IT transformation with significant business impact.
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Welcome to our podcast being a Digital Leader the good, bad and ugly of digital transformation. I'm sure everyone's heard a lot about digital transformation and unless you've done it, it can be quite scary and seem difficult to conquer. That's why we've set up this podcast so that we talk to people who have been there, done that. Not only do we hear about how they did it and what they did, but how they felt doing it. Let's begin. Welcome to our podcast being a Digital Leader the good, bad and ugly of digital transformation. Today we're joined by Pete Brown, a seasoned leader from Lloyds Banking Group with over 15 years of experience. We'll explore Pete's career highlights, how digital has evolved in a regulated industry and how he's turned neurodiversity into a superpower. Join us as we discuss the digital skills gap, sustainability and the importance of diverse skill sets in the workplace. Plus, pete will share insights from his experience as a semi-professional referee. Let's dive in. Welcome to the podcast, pete. Thanks for having me. Before we jump in, please just introduce yourself and your role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, my name is Peter Brown, Engineering Lead for Lloyds Banking Group, and I joined the group in 2009 on the graduate scheme and since then just been doing different roles throughout the group and worked my way up to the Engineering Lead that I'm in now, leading a digital lab out of Manchester. So plenty to talk about, no doubt.
Speaker 1:Lovely Well with those 15 years at Lloyds and joining on the graduate scheme. There's a lot in there, I should imagine, so why don't we start with maybe three highlights from that?
Speaker 2:journey. Yeah, I think the first highlight would be on the graduate scheme itself. So on the graduate scheme you used to rotate and spend six months in different placements across the group not always in IT, even though I joined the IT graduate scheme. So I started out in a kind of compliance IT role and then I moved into the business. So for six months I actually looked after an operations centre out of Chester, so the collections and recovery centre.
Speaker 2:So when people got into debt, try and help them out of debt and try and give them the right advice at the right time.
Speaker 2:The reason why that's one of my highlights is because I just think it's so beneficial to get on the front line to actually hear from your customers, to understand the challenges.
Speaker 2:And I came away from that six-month placement not only understanding how to lead people and a large operational on the front line, but really understanding the customer need and the wants that they needed from us, because you can sometimes get locked in and tied to and not really have the customer at the forefront of your mind. So for me, doing that customer role, I still think about it pretty much every week in my current role because it was six months of hard work, understanding the customer, dealing with customers on the front line, hearing their pain every day. It really, really resonated with me about actually our job here isn't just to provide tech solutions just for the sake of it is to provide the best tech solutions for our customers. So that is definitely and that's going back 15 years ago one of my favorite highlights within Lloyd's so far. I think the uh. The second highlight and it's where I get a bit techie because that's my role and I love the tech you go for it.
Speaker 2:Um was when I got involved in the data center migration for Lloyd's. So, um, lloyd's, and with many other organizations, get into a habit of moving data centers or moving systems around the UK, around the world at times. So I was involved in our largest data center migration in Europe at the time and that just gave me the ability to touch every tech element of the bank, whether it's in retail, commercial, ip&i, insurance and wealth. I managed to touch and transform and move from one data center to another. So we didn't just move things physically. Some of that was happening, we transformed it along the way as well. So that was end-to-end delivery of applications and back-end infrastructure type solutions to a new data center. So that was definitely my one of my second favorite highlights of of my career did you get that on?
Speaker 1:was it on time delivery or how was it? How did that land didn't?
Speaker 2:start on time. But we finished on time, if that makes sense when we, when we re-baseline those five or six times throughout that course, um, we, we managed to land it on time for for some of the key systems that we we promised, because actually it's a real fine balance between doing that type of transformation and which people would perceive in the background as a IT change, versus the business wanting to release some value on the front line. So getting into those calendars, those change calendars across the group, was very tricky actually. So if you missed your slot and we had to do lots of dress rehearsals and stuff, you could be waiting another six months. So it was pressure, it was high pressure pressure, but a lot of good fun as well.
Speaker 2:So good stuff um and you asked me for free yep, go for it I think, uh, I would normally start with this, but, um, I'll finish with it. And just the people. I think it's a well-known fact in in in lloyds, and I'm probably quite lucky that you call nine people out of ten and nine times out of ten, they're going to help you. They always want to help you, they want to help your career, help you progress. It's a big organization. There's lots of people to learn from. So for me, people is key and I've been so lucky to be influenced by certain key characters along the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, awesome. Well, thank you, that's a really good one. That includes you as well, simon. You don't have to say that. So how has the industry and its approach to digital changed over those past 15 years from your perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So let's go back to why you asked me if the data center migration actually landed on time Before I even introduced the tech element. Just some of the thinking and thought leadership into digital transformation has just completely changed over the years. Long gone has the waterfall approach of doing all your testing at certain points during the waterfall cycle. So we used to have to wait until you get to NFT stage to do all your performance testing. You used to have to wait to do till you get to your integration stage to do your your end to end testing. It shift left. Do as much testing as you can early so that you can actually resolve it earlier, and it's a proven fact through research that you do that and you'll be 10 times more efficient and and save the same amount of cost. So the amount of time and effort spent of finding things out later in the cycle is definitely a thing that we've walked away from, which we're now trying to think differently, apply different methodologies so that we find things out earlier, get quicker feedback loops and that we can fix things earlier before it even goes live, and we're trying to get away from that monolithic release cycle and those monolithic applications.
Speaker 2:So in my previous role in insurance and wealth of a digital lab that I I was running for scottish widows. We we basically broke up the whole monolithic application into microservices front end, back end, on modern cloud technology so that we could release often and frequently based on the journey that you wanted to release on, so you didn't have to wait or take down the whole application or roll out the whole, the whole application. In a monolithic release process we were doing very small, often changes to the application or particular journey that didn't affect the rest of the uh, the rest of the scottish widows app or website. So that was in my previous role. And then you got the cloud technology mixed in with that, where you get the scale, you get the uh, the resilience built in. You get the speed, you get the um, the ability to just at scale, very quickly transform your application If you need to. You know, over the Christmas period, because you might have a product that is relevant to the Christmas period, you might need to completely scale your solution, which cloud gives you the ability to do that. Likewise, I've seen cloud completely fail but spin itself up, self-heal itself within seconds and minutes, so your service isn't out for hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the capabilities within the cloud infrastructure just gives you so much more flexibility and also the cost is obviously a play. It's a lot cheaper than doing kind of some some of your on-prem solutions that we're quite used to in a large organization like like a bank. But we also have to balance that with is it safe? Is it the right type of thing to go into cloud? Do we actually want to go that direction? Do we keep it on-prem? So I think all of those mixed in and I've not even mentioned yet and I'm sure you're going to ask me about it later with ai and gen ai and where we're going with that.
Speaker 2:You know the future is bright and you can tell where we've come from to where we are now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean thank you. I mean, as you say, the last 15 years has been so much. One of the things that's come out is much more prevalent now is the kind of social media platforms. Is that? Has that kind of impacted your industry, which is obviously heavily regulated?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So our customer expectations and our customer research has changed. We can't just rely on branch or word of mouth or some of the traditional ways of research that we used to do, so we are constantly looking at different ways, different avenues, different ways of connecting with our customers. So social media has played a part of that and, even more recently, when we've asked a sample of customers where do they get their best banking advice, some of them are saying tick tock. Yeah, you know like this is a different world and we have to stay modern and current, which we are doing, to stay connected with our customers. So, like I say, we can't rely on just tv adverts and some of the traditional ways of reaching out to those customers. We also need to think about the different channels that we can reach, and it'll be dependent on brand, the right type of product as well, and the right type of customers we want to connect with.
Speaker 1:Oh, fascinating, and I think you've signposted this already but what do you see kind of how do you see the role of digital transformation kind of evolving in the next five years? What do you think is kind of coming?
Speaker 2:my life as as as I am right now in the digital lab that I'm operating in now, which I can go into a little bit of detail on um, it's obviously been around for a while. When people ask me, why has it become so hot? You know there's lots of reasons for that the open source, nature or sharing this capability, the, the compute power and cloud technology to allow us to do it, the amount of data that's accessible to play into the models, the APIs that we can talk to each other and share this kind of get it in a reusable state and the benefits it can bring to every individual in any shape of life it's just massive. So, like I say, ai has been around for a while, but our ability to use it at the scale that we're talking about, with the data sources that we're talking about, it just opened us up to this whole. Where are we going to go with it? I think for organizations like us, there's different buckets that we kind of think about when we reflect on how to use AI at scale. There's whether or not it's customer facing, it's whether or not it's colleagues who are helping our customers, and it's whether or not it's just pure back office and there's no customer kind of connection directly. Um, I think it's safe to say that a lot of organization organizations operating in bucket two and three at the moment being a bit safe trying to work out how we get this right, get the balance between actually having responsible ai and having all the right ethics and governance around it, which is a different topic in its own right, versus rolling it out for the benefit, for the cost and all of the customer value that you can get from it.
Speaker 2:There also has to be a play on the right use case for the right reasons. There's a lot of conversations that I have around. Actually, is the answer here just not to have the process? You know, ai you don't like? We've always said let's not just automate stuff that shouldn't be automated in the first place. We should really think hard about what are the use cases, what are the right technologies to support that use case? Could it just be automation? Could it be machine learning or could it be gen ai? You know you got different flavors of ai that you need to fly to play into that.
Speaker 2:So, um, constantly thinking about the right use cases for the right purposes in the right domain, whilst being responsible about it and having the right use cases for the right purposes in the right domain, whilst being responsible about it and having the right governance around it. And guess what? Even when you've done all of that, you still need the people to have oversight, to have the touch point to say, actually, that's doing the right thing, that we expect, yeah, yeah, and I think there will be a day, well, fairly soon, where it'll be customer facing for some of our, some of our organizations, um, but we just need to be mindful about when the right time is with the right thing and be be responsible with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, well put, I'm going to change tack slightly. So you know, both you and I are passionate about closing the digital skills gap. Yeah, I'd love to hear your personal journey, particularly around your neurodiversity and how you turned that dyslexia into into a superpower of yours yeah, okay, um, my story starts with a lady called mrs barker, back when I was 11 years old in in primary school.
Speaker 2:Um, she actually did used to love having dogs as well. I don't know if that was just, I don't know if she changed her name to link it to dogs, but she was called mrs barker and I should really connect with her again because she really did influence my life. Maybe she'll listen to this, maybe, maybe, um, she spotted the fact that I struggled to concentrate in class and especially on certain subjects, and she obviously marked my homework. I didn't mark my own homework back in the day, obviously, um, but she spotted the fact that there was lots of spelling mistakes in my, in my class work and I struggled to concentrate and she thought I was dyslexic and she broke that subject with the school that I was in at the time. And, bearing in mind I'm going back, I need to do quick maths now to 1996. Ok, so it's not a time where it was well known or understood of how to really deal with it. And, on that note, guess what my mum did? My mum found out the information, information went out, got a pair of glasses, blue tinted glasses, because they're meant to help you read, and they can help you read when you're dyslexic, so you don't see words mix up, and. But what's that like, going to school when you're 11 years old with blue tinted glasses? So, bless her, she's trying to help me out. What does she do next? She gets me extra class time beyond school time, you know, with extra tutor, because wasn't a known thing about how you deal with it. It was like well, obviously pete just needs more education. Yeah, like well, actually I probably needed more education, but in the right way. Yeah, not just more of the same. Yeah, and that used to annoy me because I couldn't go and play football with my friends for a period of time. And then, bless her again. What did she do is the final thing. She decides to try and move me schools for a trial period where all I can describe was I'm back in 1996, so it's not a million miles away.
Speaker 2:I was just in a room of chaos. It was like there you go, pete, go and be creative. You can go and get a paint pot over there and do some paint or whatever you like to do. And there was all various different disabled people in the room for all beautiful people with their own skills but no structure to actually how do we help each one of you and probably not enough manpower or funding to help each of us individually. So that lasted two weeks because I want to get back with my mates. Um, I learned then to cover it up a little bit, okay. So resilience in the playground.
Speaker 2:Focus on my strengths. I knew I was really good at maths so I used to be at the front of the class working really hard at maths to show I used to be great in computers, you know, breaking down problems, so doing really well in certain subjects but just getting by in others. And then it got to secondary school and I needed to sort of. Just I realized myself then. I've been battling with this for years. I know that I'm strong and weak in certain subjects and at that point and if you could thankfully for mrs barker, she logged it in the system you have to show that you've got so many years of it being a thing before the school would invest in you. Okay, so it seemed like I had five years of, because she logged it when I was 11. When I got to like 14 or 15, they did it. They did a, an assessment on me because another teacher said, yeah, I do think there is something here. They logged it. So I got a free assessment and, yeah, I was dyslexic, so really strong in certain subjects like maths and computing that I just talked about, and really weak on other subjects.
Speaker 2:And, as I say to my direct team, there's no point sending me a hundred page contract. Yeah, because I'm just not going to read it all. Yeah, and actually this is where ai helps me out, actually, yeah, so ai gets to summarize things for me me and help me out in different ways, but, on the flip side, really good at problem solving, hence why I'm in IT and breaking down problems, putting them together and doing maths and different elements and people skills. So I speak to all of my direct reports and these are grown adults and earning a lot of money and been in, been in the organization perhaps longer than me, uh, for sure, um, some of them, you know I speak to them about what their strengths are. I'm a strengths based leadership type style person and we all bring something different to the table. Yeah, yeah, and we need to lean on each other and work with each other and build that high-performing team Rather than back in the day it used to be.
Speaker 2:How do I round you out, yeah, yeah, how do I make you a rounded more whole person? I think that's just a load of rubbish. I think everyone's different for different reasons. And you know I think I looked the other day this there's like 700 million or 800 million people out there who got some form of dyslexia. Okay, I think it's 10 of the population.
Speaker 2:And from a disability point of view, um, I think it's around one of the highest disabilities to have. Yeah, and there's a lot of people who don't know that they've got it. So that's estimated figures. So I do think I have the conversation start with a blank piece of paper what you're really strong at, how do you evidence that on a regular basis? And then what you're weak at, and also how do we improve your strengths, because that's what you're good at and that's the marginal gain that you're weak at. And also, how do we improve your strengths, because that's what you're good at and that's the marginal gain that you're going to get. And how does that play into the team? Dynamics is definitely my leadership style.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's very sensible. You know where are you a rock star, and how can we help you be that rock star?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, definitely. You said that much better than me and I spent five minutes talking.
Speaker 1:I could just sit here and reflect um so kind of building on that. Then what do you think businesses need to do to focus, to ensure there is a diverse skill set in the room?
Speaker 2:yeah, great question, because diversity is key.
Speaker 2:So, running the digital labs that I've been doing for the last six or seven years um, I didn't get it right to start with on the first couple of years, but you think you we need to reflect the rest of the uk population, yep and build products that are fit for purpose.
Speaker 2:You can't do that as an organization if you don't have the diverse thought in your team to do it. And if you surround yourself with the same thinking and the same people, you can get into that obviously similar mindset that you're just going to create that same product for the same reason, without all the benefits I just talked about. So I'm really passionate about picking people and their backgrounds and experiences to build the best product possible from an engineering point of view. And there is this digital skills gap that we're both passionate about as well. So I think I did read somewhere that 90 odd percent of organizations fear for the fact that they don't have the right skills for the future yeah um, and we live in an it world, so that will probably that probably be in the it space.
Speaker 2:I imagine so. And when you work in, like when I worked in scottish widows, edinburgh is quite a small place. Yep, for our head offices and sc, edinburgh is quite a small place for head offices and Scotland's quite a small place actually Beautiful place, by the way but quite a small place in terms of skill set. So what I was really passionate to do and I think you're the same, I think you will echo this is if you've got the right mindset and you can break down problems and you can apply yourself in the right way and got all the right interpersonal skills, we can teach you anything, and if you've got that passion to learn. So in my Scottish Widows lab we picked up five people. One of them is an ex-teacher, one of them was an ex-policeman, an ex-garden centre worker, a mother of three and an ex-teacher.
Speaker 2:One of them was an ex-policeman, an ex-garden center worker, a mother of three and an international student. None of them could program before. Wow, we picked them up, put them into our digital lab, gave them all the right support, mentoring, and brought them back together as a cohort to learn occasionally, then split them out into the feature teams again to shadow and learn, and they all became a couple of them were tech leads in two years' time Wow. So it just showed the power of having the right mindset and mentality to learn and skills. But they didn't have any programming tech background. Yeah, but they became some of the best developers in our lab and I know that's five versus the uk no, it's brilliant we all do five yep and we work and help people achieve their dreams, and I mean that's only a good thing that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that kind of difference between growth mindset and fixed mindset, you know, in terms of exploring, and actually yeah, yeah. Amazing, wow. So for you, then? How do your personal values shape the role you do and how you lead your team through transformation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, great question. So my value, just before I kick off, and I might ask you back. Actually that might be interesting.
Speaker 1:That's not how this works. You can't ask me questions.
Speaker 2:I'd say to people listening to this just have a moment and write down what you believe your values are, because not all the values are the same no and that's absolutely fine.
Speaker 2:Some people might not be compassionate. That's absolutely fine for them. You know, be true to yourself, believe in what you really do believe in, because consistently you can't be someone else. You know like your values are born when you're younger. The environment, the people you're surrounded, with a bit of dna in there, you know like it's generics, um, genetics sorry, that's my dyslexia um, so my values are very much people, yeah, it's very much compassion, it's wanting.
Speaker 2:I do have a want. I want to be loved. Because I come from three brothers mm-hmm. I was the youngest, yeah, I was always fighting for attention. So there's the want to be loved and liked, I suppose, and to help support others. So so I'm very much. But also money-oriented. I was very money-motivated at a young age. I was very entrepreneurial. I tried to set up businesses. When I was quite a young age I even set up a business that I left with my mum, actually called Noah's Ark, where I used to look after people's animals when they went on holiday. Oh, wicked Little did I. I know it continued whilst I went off to uni and my mum enjoyed it for about five or six years after when I came back home, but anyway um, so, and it comes back to the interpersonal skills.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, as much as we might be the best react or you know, spring back-end engineer, whatever you full stack engineer or infrastructure person, you can be the best talented person in that field, but if you don't have the interpersonal skills to, especially as a leader, to communicate, to influence, to story tell story tells massive. We tell stories every day and to get your point across, you need to tell stories, to communicate, to influence, to storytell. Storytell is massive. We tell stories every day. And to get your point across. You need to tell stories.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure if I'm doing a great job today or not, fantastic and being accessible. You know, I think if someone says to me I need to call you in five minutes, no point being on a back-to-back meeting all day, not having the space or freedom to be accessible and I'll really encourage people listening to this just give yourself freedom in your diary. You manage your own diary. People who say I'm on back-to-back all day, I do kind of roll my eyes and think I just don't believe that's the right thing for you to do and you could opt out and there's probably a lot of things that aren't adding value. And are you really delegating and letting others have the opportunity to succeed and rub shoulders with other people? Because, like what I said earlier today, I've rubbed shoulders with some fantastic people, but when I was on the graduate scheme and working my way through the organization.
Speaker 2:But I only managed to do that because my leaders, my bosses, allowed me those, those opportunities. Yeah, you sort of have to allow others to do that as well to grow their careers, and there's nothing better. And it takes time, but there's nothing better when you get a phone call out the blue or an email off someone to say I just wanted to let you know I've managed to get that next promotion. Thanks for your help, or, um, if it wasn't for you I wouldn't be in it. You know one of those five people that have recently contacted me. It's just fantastic. That makes me feel really happy and kind of done my job in Lloyd's.
Speaker 1:Awesome, thank you. Thank you. I was busy trying to work out what my words were. They weren't quite as compelling as yours. Yeah, what are yours? I don't think they're as compelling as yours. So I had. I think I had in my head integrity, determination and honesty. Honesty, I like it. I don't think it comes across as particularly people focused on that, but there is an aspect of people on there, but I'm trying to maybe have my cake and eat it on that and in that order as well yeah I think.
Speaker 1:So I think kind of, if you know. I think, like you say, these words are easy, actions are actually hard. So you know, but you know, if you act with integrity, you've got to be able to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and say you know, I've done what I believe the right things to do. Always, as you get more information, things change potentially, but as long as you believe you've done the right thing, as long as you've determined, you know, you've given everything in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve. Um, yeah, and honestly, facing up to things you know, facing up to mistakes, facing up to whether you should be in that meeting or not, you know, and being honest, it's interesting I think, um, having insight is the first step, whether or not you take the action or not.
Speaker 2:Just have insight and I know that sounds really obvious and easy and people probably sat there thinking I know my values, like, honestly, yeah, write them down, yeah, reflect on yourself consistently, prove to yourself that they are your values and look at them from week to week.
Speaker 2:We were saying just before this like on a friday, I try and yeah, yeah it's a good idea, like, have I really been true to myself and what's my focus for next week? And um then act. You've got to act. On, on, on, on actions and show, not just words and actions, and because that's just trust gone yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very easy to see through, isn't it?
Speaker 1:yeah, cool, let's go on to net zero then. And I know you're, you know you're these you're not representing necessarily the bank in this. I'm sure the bank has got lots of statements out there, but what do you think? Why should businesses around the world, do you think, be taking a stance now on sustainability, and how do we do it? Big question, big question.
Speaker 2:Big topic Do you know? 2023 was the warmest year on record since 1850 or whenever? They've been recording this from? I think I had heard that one. Yeah, and you know they we still to the to this day. I think it's 14 billion pounds of waste into oceans, wow. And we've got a target in lloyds, which I'll, you know, break down into subjects, but we've got a target to do our bit and to be net neutral by 2050. So, alongside all the other organizations trying to achieve the same goal, and obviously we're trying to do as much of it as we can beforehand I live in that philosophy around because I think a lot of people, what's dawned on me, even though we all know it's the right thing to do, is a lot of people will probably be listening to this and thinking well, until some of the international countries start, some of the big international countries start making a change, what I do doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, um, that's definitely not the right attitude. Yeah, agreed, just stepping back a moment. If we all do our bit and I'll explain where we can do our bit in a moment if you do your bit, I do my bit. We've got a little bit of a a neighborhood doing their bit? Yep, the organizations or your business area do their bit. We've got towns popping up to do their bit. Yeah, if we've got all the organizations across the uk doing their bit, we've got the international play. You then got the uk leaning into the rest of the world showcasing you need to be doing your bit. Words and actions again. Yeah, yeah, and that will define what other countries do. Yeah, the right time as well, and there's lots of so in in in lloyds. The way that we try and look at it is, um, kind of three different dimensions really. There's. There's a bit more to it than this. I'm going to really oversimplify it.
Speaker 1:No, that's good.
Speaker 2:But we have a people kind of perspective on it. We have a tech perspective and we have a supplier perspective. Now I'll work back, because the supplier one guess what? We work with suppliers and some of our partners and some of the uh. You know, investments, yep, don't all happen in the uk. Yeah, so there's a play into the international waters again.
Speaker 2:Um, we obviously have a tech responsibility to do the right thing and to make sure we're not just wasting consumption. And, yeah, we've built infrastructure that is massively oversized. And do we really need it? Can we switch it off?
Speaker 2:I think the other day, for one of my applications, I managed to switch off elements of their route to live, which actually saved a whole household of power emissions, carbon footprint on an annual basis. So, you know, that's the scale that we can operate in terms of our own little plays. And then, just from a people perspective, can we car share? Can we do other bits around the uh, the, the uk, to actually help lean into the overall subject? So I do think, um, and we're all across the organization, we're consistently trying to run these playbooks, as we call them, yep, to ensure that we're doing our bit and we're going to meet our targets and I think we'll. We'll go above and beyond to um showcase and we're already starting to do this. You know, externally, you know some of the good work that we're doing, yeah, yeah, so we can start. And when I say above and beyond, we can only get to net zero, obviously, but I mean actually helping our, the rest of the organisations, maybe even on digital.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, the ecosystem yeah, bring us with. Yeah, yeah, bang on, bang on. We could probably carry down that route quite a lot and I would love to, but I'm probably going to get told off if I don't bring us back to digital transformation. So, and we're called yeah, this podcast called the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, so it'd be fascinating to hear a key moment from each of those. So, for your perspective, what's a really good moment? You know, key success in leading transformation. What's a bad moment? So a leading transformation. What's a bad moment? So a point where you had to kind of go. If you could go back to the drawing board, what would you kind of change? And then the ugly, in terms of when have you, when have you stopped something? And that is going back to kind of maybe bravery, again in terms of stopping something because it just wasn't working yeah, um, wow.
Speaker 2:There's probably a few things I could say. Um, what am I proud of? I think the work that we did in scottish widows was transformational, modern, had some great thought leadership. We did everything from ways of working, mindset shifting, left, the testing and automation, the cloud technology that we, we, we um implemented and the microservice architecture that we, we applied. You know, I just we did so much and it gave us so much benefit and flexibility and business need. It was just incredible.
Speaker 2:So I think I was really, and the actual people and the ecosystem that we created in in that space was fantastic. Um, so I'll probably say that was probably the proudest moment, and that was going back a couple of years ago and I was the lead for that digital lab for about three or four years, I think. What I had to stop on the Horizon program, early doors, which I talked about, the data center migration that was the largest one in Europe at the time we had to make a big, bold decision that we as always we want to be data-led with our decisions. We were spending a lot of money to try and work out how we map the whole organisation from the outset yeah, and obviously things change and it's hard to do and you can't get all the up-to-date information at the moment in time and so we had to make a big, bold decision, after spending about a good six to nine months of trying to map out the whole organisation, that that wasn't the right approach and actually some things that we were going to touch we weren't going to touch for probably a couple of years. So we started breaking it down then into the most but and it sounds silly now when you reflect looking back, but back in, I'm going back many years now.
Speaker 2:Um, you used to think waterfall, yep. Think, oh, I need to do all this, thinking up front. But actually that wasn't the right approach and we changed our tack with it. So that was quite a brave approach and we changed our tack with it. So that was quite a brave, brave and bold decision. Because we had people who spent, you know, nine months or maybe a year trying to do this mapping exercise and we had to sort of say enough's, enough, yeah, yeah, think about this differently. Um, the one thing I would change um, I think I was always kind of, when I was working my way through the organization, I was always kind of keen to sort of showcase my skills and what we could deliver and how fastly, how fast we could deliver, and maybe we're quite an efficient team and I always remember one particular implementation and I reflect on the individuals involved now and I was very early in my career of doing digital change- and being involved in the aspects of that change.
Speaker 2:It didn't go well. We woke up on a Monday morning to havoc across the business of this particular area that I won't get into detail. I think I spent two days in my pyjamas without any sleep fixing this problem and I think that just teaches you Can't do it this way next time and actually get the right help and support around you. Yeah, because there was a few of us that knew this area, this SME kind of area, and it was on us to fix this problem and fix forward or roll back. And we managed to fix forward. But it was two days of my life that looking back, probably could have got back, and also never good to sit in your pajamas for two days without sleep, but a great learning experience.
Speaker 1:You I presume you took a lot of. That's where you learned the most, I presume in that moment I anything.
Speaker 2:I kick off now I try and think about the individuals in the detail as well. You know, have we got enough support? Are they being well supported? Are we we're not trying to do things uh, too efficient, believe it or not, because having knowledge in one person's head is not good, no, so yeah, I did probably learn the hard way that way. Yeah, thank you. Not sure if I should have said pjs in my well, certainly created an image.
Speaker 1:Um, I mentioned at the start that you, you, you were a semi-professional referee. I think you've kind of retired.
Speaker 2:Now how?
Speaker 1:does how? What lessons you've taken from that experience and into building high-performing teams um?
Speaker 2:a big shout out and respect to all the referees out there. Definitely that's a fair one people say that, by the way, like big respect, and a lot of football fans say that and then in the game they're not that kind of yes they follow through with those words, Words and action.
Speaker 2:I think I spent 10 years refereeing and I got up to semi-pro National League, which is, I think, a great achievement. Would have loved to continued, but family and dynamics I've got two kids now, so I can't justify being out of the house on a Saturday from 10 am until 10 pm, even though I tried and look it's not the right thing. My family are my priority now.
Speaker 2:So, refereeing, I thought I was resilient anyway after the whole school dyslexia delivering change and um. But being a referee, having people run up to you physically shouting in your face, having the mentality to allow them to have their moment, don't add to the fire. Decomp, decompress, take your time. Techniques as well, laughter.
Speaker 2:You know a bit of storytelling and a bit of in the moment comedy to take the edge off it as well, because I thought I was okay, funny type character anyway. But actually you learn in the moment and people shout at you. You need to have things up your sleeve to just break the ice or to at least calm it down, and they can be quite generic sometimes. You know you don't have to have a unique um phrase or comedy just for that individual. So I think I learned from refereeing the resilience and having the ability to take the sting out of things at work because at the end of the day, just like a footballer who misses a tackle or whatever, yeah, they're probably 80 percent of the time they haven't done it on purpose you're working out that percentage?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'll probably drop that down for footballers, but most of the time anyway, they haven't done it on purpose. They're frustrated and they're probably thinking about something that happened five minutes ago and that's kind of like in a work life. What's happening in your life right now? You know this might not be your best day this might.
Speaker 2:You might have things at home that you haven't opened up, you haven't told anyone about, and so I'm constantly thinking they just might be having a bad day. How can I help them? How do you take the sting out of it and take the emotion out of it, whether it's humor, and also just give them a minute or two and be resilient to what you face into on a daily basis and as a leader and if there's leaders listening to this as I speak, you know, you know as well as I do. You can go from one call yeah, you're having a private one-to-one in a very low mood to an all colleague call yep, and you need to be all happy and fine and dandy yep.
Speaker 2:Vary your tone and you know like get the messages out there too, then actually quite a serious call about finances. So you need to have the flexibility, the resilience, and football definitely helped me meet lots of characters, a lot of people with frustration, especially in game, and fans and the ability to deal with that.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Mean you're a better man than me, and you must be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a very commendable and there's lots of women that do great jobs in in refereeing, by the way, so just uh no, definitely, absolutely plug that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and it's got me. So I I'm a big rugby fan and that's definitely coming through more in the rugby side as well, which is really good. It's good. Um, two easy ones to finish. Then I think okay, so what's the one book or podcast you'd recommend to anyone interested? Um, in digital transformation?
Speaker 2:is there anything particular that you tell to your colleagues, do you know what I'm going to be different? Because I don't know how many people come up with the usual kind of podcasts and stuff. I would say, depending on you as a person, I would avoid podcasts for Except for this one, except for this one and any other ones that you really like, and what I mean by that. I don't mean, if you love podcasts, that's for you, and I do like podcasts, I do listen to them, but my advice would be focus on the people around you. Loads of good people around you, people who work for you, people you work alongside, people you work for, and my philosophy has been pick and choose.
Speaker 2:You'll find little things that certain people do that relates to you and you think, oh, I can take that, yeah, yeah, I'm going to use that, whether it's humour, it's structure, it's personality, it's the interpersonal skills, communication, a tone of phrase, yeah, yeah. Look around you, because this is a small world and you take something good from everyone. I've taken something from you today, actually, when you talked about one of your values, and I'm going to have a think about that myself. So think around you and actually don't dismiss, because I think, people look for these podcasts as inspiration.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but there's nothing better actually than meeting a real person yeah, yeah, next to you, who's probably gone through a lot of stuff in life, a lot more stuff than some of these millionaires who are doing podcasts.
Speaker 1:anyway, yeah, yeah, so no wise words. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's, as you say, there's stories, there's insight, there's lessons you can learn from the people around you. Yeah, bang on, bang on. Uh, what would your? An title be retired.
Speaker 2:Referee oh, do I say this on record um whistleblower? Oh, very good okay, yeah, okay because the link to refereeing yeah, that could actually mean something completely different. Maybe I shouldn't go. I'm gonna go whistleblower, okay. No, I like it. That's memorable. It's linked to refereeing yeah, that could actually mean something completely different. Maybe I shouldn't go. I'm going to go with whistleblower, okay, no, I like it, that's memorable.
Speaker 1:That's memorable, that's good. Yeah, brilliant Pete. Thank you very much indeed. It's been a real pleasure. That's everything for this edition of the good, the bad and the ugly of digital transformation, and if you enjoyed this episode, please follow or subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode to enjoy. And Digital is on a mission to close the digital skills gap. No-transcript.
