Episode 35 - Howard Krais

Howard Krais is an award-winning leader in the communication world with over 25 years' experience working globally in senior corporate and agency roles.

His genuine kindness sets him apart as one of the most delightful individuals you'll ever come across. It’s no surprise then that the consultancy he recently co-founded with his business partner Ann-Marie Blake (a previous podcast guest of ours), is called True. Together they help organisations build winning cultures through maximising the potential of their people.

Howard is the former head of employee experience at sustainable technologies company, Johnson Matthey and has worked in senior communication roles for organisations such as GSK and Ernst and Young. 

A community man at heart, Howard led the UK chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators as president from 2018 to 2020.  He has been involved with countless other committees in our profession and wider community, including serving as chair of the Wealdstone Football Club in London.

Transcript

Adrian: 0:05

Hello, and welcome to another episode of A View From the Top. I'm Adrian Cropley. A View From the Top is a regular podcast from the Center for Strategic Communication Excellence, where I interview some of the world's leading communication professionals as we explore their career journey. Today's guest is a true gentleman and an all round nice guy. And I'm not just blowing smoke. Ask anyone who has interacted with the lovely Howard krias it's no surprise then that the consultancy he recently formed joining forces with Ann-marie Blake, one of our previous guests. On a View from the top is called True, which supports organizations in employee engagement and experience. Howard is an award-winning employee engagement and change communication leader with over 25 years of experience working globally at the heart of major organizations. Before he co-founded True he was the head of employee experience for Johnson Mathy and has worked in senior communication roles for organizations like G S K and Ernst and Young. Always on top of leading high level corporate roles. There was a community man at heart for sure, which saw him lead IABC UK as a chapter president from 2018 to 2020 and even chair of the National League Football Club Welstone he's been involved on many committees in our profession and community. You certainly get a picture of the genuine nature of Howard and why he does the work that he does. So it's no surprise to me that he's been working on some amazing research on listening with Kevin Ruck and Mike Ponsford, which has informed a book that were released later this year or in 2024. And I remember chatting to Howard about this study way back at Bahrain conference. So I'm excited that his book is actually coming along. Welcome Howard. And how's the book going?

Howard: 2:07

Thanks, Adrian. Great to be here. Yeah. The books coming along, we, we due to finish all the writing this month by the end of June, so So then I believe there's a sort of a six month process with the publisher. And so we hope that it will hit the shelves early part of next year.

Adrian: 2:24

That's fantastic. We'll have to get all three of you on and we'll do a special podcast when the book gets released. But how did that all start? The, listening, and I call it the listening project, but how did that start?

Howard: 2:34

Yeah, well you mentioned the Bahrain event, that that was probably after a year that we'd been doing it and probably after we published the first report. It was the previous year's IABC EMENA Conference, which took place in Copenhagen. So that would've been five years ago, I think. Mike Klein actually was one of the organizers, and I think he was the president of EMENA at the time, and he organized this open space event that took place, which some people will know what open space is, but basically where you can speak about anything and people join different conversations. And I wanted to talk about listening. It just was something that was in my mind that as communicators at that point, you know, it was really focused on communicators. Really not listening to audiences, which was a huge worry because what I was beginning to see was people, communication professionals who were not getting out of their head offices, not going and really meeting their audiences to understand, you know, what, what was on their minds, what was the things that they wanted to know about, they were talking about, or how they were interacting with the, the communication materials that were being sent out from these organizations. And so it felt to me that if. Communicators weren't listening, how could you actually create content and help the organization to, actually move and change and, develop. So that's where it started from. And, and Mike and Kevin came to that conversation. Join that conversation, Copenhagen, and we came back to. The UK and we, we had some further discussions and agreed, we thought there was some work that we could do in this, and we thought, well, you know, very sort of small scale research project with, just people we knew in our network. That led to the first report and we probably didn't see it going much further than that. But then, the way that that was received we, talked about that in Bahrain as you mentioned earlier, and, then we went on to do three other reports, one on a big survey, which we did together with IABC globally. And we did a best practice piece and we did something else on as results in focus groups. And then we thought, you know, bringing all this together, the next obvious thing was, was to, to write a book. And that's what we're doing. And, and I think one final thing on this, it would, maybe two final things is that, This is a topic, which I think is one of those topics, which is really now of its time. The number of people that you see online talking about listening in different ways is way more than when we started. So, that's really heartening. And I, and I see different reports or different events or different things that people are beginning to talk about this. And I've seen one or two strategies and, and approaches to listening publish, which are, which are very encouraging. But the second point is that, It's still a topic which really resonates with people and, clearly you know, one of the things we, we saw in our research is that companies all talk the talk, but they don't actually then do what they say is important. So, you know, most people say, yeah, this is really important, but they don't have the processes and systems to actually properly listen and respond. Listening's a leadership thing, it's not just a communication thing

Adrian: 5:38

That's, right. I mean, it really is that leadership skill. We often put it down to communication as we, say here in the center is the two skills that people really need is to listen really well and to ask really good questions. And it's interesting when you. Started that research which was all pre covid. It was already an issue was it really to do with the overload that was happening in terms of our very busy and noisy communication channels and people are just not taking the time to connect with others.

Howard: 6:10

That's where we started from. And I don't know that that's changed very much. I have this sort of negative sense, I guess, that, you know, there's too many comms folks who are. Who have really busy to do lists and, and very powerful bosses and, find it very difficult to maybe do the things that intuitively they know that they should be doing. But what I think that the damage that that does if, if you're just delivering content without really thinking about it, is, is you just create noise and, and There's a lot of research which says, you know how little sometimes organizations are actually getting cut through. So, you know, I think this is, for me, this is one of the key reasons for it.

Adrian: 6:50

Yeah, look, and I, I think this is just such an incredible topic to explore. No wonder it's ending up in a book and it's for, leaders, communication professionals, I think it's just such a big topic to, to understand, unpack, and then apply some really good listening techniques. Cause I think, that reconnection of, people certainly post covid, Where, we've had this kind of polarizing effect that's happening too, which we've seen through the, Edelman Trust barometer research. I think topics like listening and building actual skills in listening I think is going to be absolutely critical for the, for the future. So. Thank you for doing that work and I, I really can't wait till the book's released. I'm looking forward to getting into that one and and reading it. So I'm gonna keep gonna keep connected with you, Howard, until that book comes out.

Howard: 7:40

Yeah. very exciting. The whole process is exciting and I have to pay trto Kevin and Mike. To have done a lot a lot of the heavy lifting on it. But it, it's, it's been a great team performance, I think all the way through you know, three, three of us with all our own careers and what have you. So it, you know, it's fine. It's been a great experience to do this.

Adrian: 7:58

Certainly look forward to it. You've worked in a number of roles. You've, got to the senior levels within organizations and managed teams of people. let's take you back to where this all started for you, where did your career start? What were some of the first jobs you did that's kind of led you to where you are now?

Howard: 8:20

My first ever job was in a supermarket and I, I managed to break my wrist on the first day as I left the, I left that supermarket. And to their credit, they, they didn't say, well, thanks a lot. Goodbye. They, they gave me a couple of weeks off and then I came back and they put me in the green grocery, the fruit and veg area and, and why that was quite formative, right? Early on age 16 or so, was that, You were dealing with customers directly. So I think first of all, that formed some sort of thoughts in terms of service, in terms of customer service, how you work with people supporting, people in retail environment. That was, quite formative. And then, When I came out of university, I guess, you know, just again, because of other summer jobs I'd done it, it seemed that my career was probably heading towards some sort of finance role. And so I got a graduate job at, at NatWest Bank, one of, you know, one of the big banks in the uk. And what one of the things that, it was a good graduate scheme and I worked in a very big branch in, in Piccadilly, right in the heart of London. But it taught me that I didn't wanna be in banking. And it just wasn't for me. You know, there's just nothing that really excited me about banking. But the, the good news about NatWest was that I managed to move from the bank. Environment to a marketing role, and then from a marketing role to an internal marketing role. And then from there, you know, just because of being the right race place at the right time and perhaps, you know, a bit of performance into, into this sort of new area, which I guess we would today called Change Transformation. Nat West were one of the first companies in that I could see and we're talking the nineties here, who, who really embraced this sort of complete. Organizational transformation based around customer. They had some real visionary people working there. My first role in that environment was actually on performance management and we where putting into place the balance scorecard, which, is pretty old now, That

Adrian: 10:16

takes me back.

Howard: 10:17

Exactly, exactly. But we, I think again, first, one of the first big companies to really start to look differently at, at the performance measures within the bank. There's a lot of resistance to it. So again, you are dealing with change and how do you overcome resistance? And then from there via a very interesting sort of step to, to one side because there was we had a bit of terrorism in London at that time and, and there was some bombs in the, in the city of London. And, and the NatWest Tower where we were working got badly damaged. So I, I was sort of co-opted onto a to look after an area which we called the decontamination zone which was, sounded very grand. But basically where contents from the bank, from the tower, you know, this is a 45 story building or whatever it is, and where, where all the contents, desk, contents, filing, cabinet contents, everything had to come out and create. We took it out to this center we had in North London where basically I was the one person in charge of about 120. Cleaner contractors who were moving crates from, you know, one per place to another. They had to have quite a lot of logistics in terms of what was coming in, what was going out. And, and that was a fascinating sort of month of leadership and, planning on the job and, and project management. So, so that was, again, some really interesting skills, which I to, to learn very quickly, which I didn't necessarily think, you know, I hadn't planned to do,

Adrian: 11:41

I think we learn quickly when we put on the spot in crisis. Right?

Howard: 11:45

You do, you do. And, I, I look back on that bizarrely as a very exciting time. I know the circumstances are are not exciting, but it, you know, in terms of learning, in terms of, you know, having to do something in the moment, there was no six months worth of planning going into that. So that, was really interesting. And so in, in a sense, my profile was quite high at that time and I had some options as to where I was going to go next and, And as part of the change, communications was one of those areas. And so that's what I chose to do. And I worked with the leader of that was a, a guy called Malcolm Groves, who was my sort of first, you know, big mentor figure in, in comms and learned so much from him. He, basically challenged everything, you know, he was like this. The guy that you, you would make a statement, he'd say, why? And he just really told, you know, taught the importance of challenging, of really understanding, of really being clear. I studied history at university and, and the good thing about history in a sense was it asked you to do the same thing. You know, don't, don't trust what's written, just make your own mind up. Just ask why. And I think for, for a role, like a communications career, To be able to really be clear in your mind why something is what it is and is, is so important if you're gonna communicate that to someone else. So, so these were really important skills at that sort of early stage. I went to the bank and I was given responsibility for the bank's output of video. And you know, I hadn't got a clue what I was

Adrian: 13:11

We've all, we've all been there, Howard, and you kinda go, huh, okay. New skill. Let's get that one developed.

Howard: 13:18

Absolutely. Well, we were like monthly magazine programs, at least monthly at that time, plus everything else. So, so that was, that was fun. And And, and great to awaken your sort of creative sense as you were working with some really good, you know, top video people and, you needed realize, hold a minute, you know, I'm the guy who's, who's responsible for this, for the bank. So I can't let them just dictate everything to me. And you needed to start to really learn quick. The other thing that I had responsibility for was the banks. Feedback channel, what we called the hotline. So we had the chief executive's voice, you know, welcome, you know, thanks for calling, leave your message and we'll respond in 24 hours. Which was, again, new at that time. And, and a few months in there was a bit of a pay dispute and the unions I remember, really instructed all their members to use the hotline to register how they felt, which was almost like giving a great sense of. Approval. And, and you know, from the unions and, so this was really established as a popular channel and, was a great learning again, in terms of listening as we were talking about earlier and, feedback and how you responded to that. And so, you know, really important for me, I suppose those experiences very early on in my comms career.

Adrian: 14:32

And it was good to get a bank under your belt as well. Cause I think, you know, being the bigger entities that they are, you gain an awful lot of experience and it sounds like you had a great mentor in there. And that's how we learn and develop. I think that's been key in your career as you've had great mentors in your jobs. So from from banking, where did you go then?

Howard: 14:53

Well, and then I made a sort of right turn. So Nat West uk I think Nat West Group was bigger, but obviously it was much bigger. But the UK Part Bank was about 55,000 people at that time. And I left and went a video production company where I was like the third person. so I went from big to very quickly. And again, you know, just great learning. We had three years there and you know, just how to act in a small business, you know, you are in the, when you're in a big company, especially at that time, In a bank, there's a lot of systems. Were, were not very efficient. Everything moves slowly. Decision making could be quite slow when you go into a small business. Yeah. This, this sort of realization that you didn't have time for all that, you just had to get on and make things happen and deliver and, and again, that sort of customer approach you know, creativity, working with some really great people. I'll tell you a story, Adrian, in terms of. The, the difference between the two, you know, in, in, in the 1990s, bank culture, if you put an expenses claim in then it probably needed to be signed in, triplicate, sent off to some far away place, and you get paid eventually. And you know, they, they check and double check to make sure if you put a mileage claim in that it was the right amount of miles. And you know, there's that culture of almost. Yeah, absolutely not trusting you. And when I first put an expenses claim in, when I went to the video company to gave the bookkeeper my form and sort of turned to walk away and she said, hold on a minute. And she wrote me the checkout there and then, and, and the point being, we, you know, we haven't got time not to trust you. And that point, you know, so this, this notion of trust was probably a really important one. Very early on. And you mentioned Edleman and. You know, when you look at employee experience, employee engagement these days, and the role that trust plays, and again, that comes into the listening piece,

Adrian: 16:45

and doesn't it go a long way? Yeah, it, it goes such a long way when you, you feel trusted in an organization. And, they did that out of necessity. You're a small organization. You, you can't afford huge processes. But it's, if I put the trust in the person that I've employed to, to do what they need to do, and they're giving me the expense claim, do it, sign it off, and it's, it's done. I mean, I felt that when I, when I first started in, in, in my own business is, is you've just, It's out of necessity. You do it, but you realize you've got the right people around you and you see their reactions to going, oh wow. You know, like, this just happens. And you know, I feel trusted and I feel supported.

Howard: 17:31

It, it's, it's fundamental, I think these days. And, and you know, because I think in a lot of, in a lot of different places in society where trust has broken down,

Adrian: 17:40

Hmm.

Howard: 17:41

We are cynical as well. We get that, I think, you know, from, from what's happening around us, political situations and so on. So it's, and as well as organizations, we get that because people, you know, we talk about authenticity these days and, and rightly so, because we, we know when someone's being overly positive. We know when someone's not telling us the truth. We know that, you know, someone's being too paternalistic or, or patronizing in some respects. And, you know, as employees, We don't respond well to that, you know, but we do respond where someone levels with us when someone's honest with us, when they trust us. So that, to me, trust is absolutely essential if we want to deliver change successfully these days.

Adrian: 18:25

Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's absolutely critical for, for engagement of people to have that trust, given the context of society today. I mean, let's face it, there's businesses being grown out of scamming, right? So it's it's a very scary world that we're, we are living in where people think it's great to go to work because they're gonna be ripping people off for the, the date, and that's, You know, we've, we've, there's a place now in our world and society to try and change that, that context. And, and I reckon that could be another, another topic for another day, Howard but it's thinking about your, your career, so from video, video production, where did you go to next?

Howard: 19:08

went back in house I went first to a recruitment company where I was their first internal comms person which was really interesting because. That sort of, you know, it was a high street recruitment company and it was, you know, very much sort of, you know, sales, but, but real sort of sales now tough people. And one of the things I owned there was the recognition process, which was very important in, in a, recruitment world because these guys, you know, that they wanted, To be seen as amongst their peers as, as winners. And so, but, but again, just not running a, a recognition pro process. But how do you tell the stories off the back of that? How do you show the attributes that make good salespeople, good salespeople make winners? Winners. So that, that was fun. But then that led to going to a in to totally different direction again, to a law firm called Eversheds. Eversheds were had been a number of regional firms around the uk. Had in essence merged to create one big national firm. We, and probably international, with some international offices. And that was quite sort of different counterculture. Another great chief exec or managing partners. He was called a guy called David Borough, who really gave me confidence that, you know, you, you've been hired to, to be our. Comms person. So you know, you, you need to lead and you need to have, you know, have an opinion on these things and have a, a way of doing things. And that really got me into doing some very counterculture stuff in, in that fee paying environment because to suggest that we wanted to get people to start to do what we called, you know, have conversations and take people away from just doing fee paying work not, it was not a natural thing in the law firm.

Adrian: 20:53

No. Cause it's, you know, six, six minute blocks, isn't it? Or something like that.

Howard: 20:57

exactly. So, so we were able do some very different things and, and it was a very exciting time, not my mental picture of what a law firm was at that time. And a very exciting few years actually, because we, we, you know, we were doing stuff that no other professional services firm was, was able to do. And again, building trust, building two-way feedback, building conversation. Having some fun with it as well. So I think people were enjoying being, you know, what we were trying to do, communicate in a very human way.

Adrian: 21:30

Brilliant. And, and it's, it's just lovely to see that in, a law firm. And how progressive, which is fabulous.

Howard: 21:37

Again, you know, it, it's, as you said earlier, you know that theme of of having great bosses and great mentors and people who, you know, I, I worked with two, David Ansborough was there for the first three years and he was succeeded by a guy called David Gray. David Gray was someone I'm still in contact with today, you know, many years later as a, as a friend. He was very challenging because he never worked with communications really properly before, so he really wanted to understand the value it was going to deliver. And so I, I had to almost You know, almost like re-interview and, and because he, he wasn't sure what this, what this role was about. And once he'd sort of been persuaded and was able to give it a chance, again, we did some really interesting different things. You know, I remember some conferences we ran for the partners, which really took people to a different place in terms of their thinking of what was possible and both from a creative perspective as well as a business perspective. So, yeah, it was a really fun time.

Adrian: 22:32

Brilliant. Brilliant. And then from there, you was that when you moved into Ernst and Young, or there

Howard: 22:39

Before, just bit before ey I, I, so I left Eversheds and actually at that point tried to set up my own business. Went to business with two other guy other people. And sort of worked for a year or so. And, and again, a lot of learnings as to why it didn't. Didn't go for longer. In terms of the work you've gotta put in upfront, I think, in terms of what, what you believe and what you're prepared to do for the business. So we left on good terms and, and then I did, you know, some contract work for, for a while. And then I, I was sort of trying to work out where, which direction to go and I saw this role at at EY and again, you know, I was able to take advantage of working with some, some, you know, brilliant. In, two bosses actually, you know, this was a new part of Ernst and Young and this was a an opportunity to work with a part of the EY where they were globalizing all of the back back office functions. And they this, now that's something that these days we take for granted I think in a lot of companies, but in professional services in one of the big four firms that had never been done before. And, and that was a huge change. Journey to take. And so there was a guy from Australia actually called Tim Eddy who came across to, to the UK. And I, and I knew I had met and another lady called Barbara Davis. And Barbara was head of comms for EY. And, and she basically offered me the job and Tim offered me the job. Tim said to me, you know, come in, spend the first five or six weeks getting to understand the business and then come back to me and tell me how many people you're going to need. And so I said, okay, great. And I did that and then came back to him and said, well, you know, maybe five or six people, maybe a maximum of about eight. I, I think, and thought eight would be at the sort of pushing it stage it, and. And he said, and I, I drew a dotted line to some other folks and, and he said, well, why wouldn't you just have all of these people in your team? And, and what happened because one of the first things that EY had globalized was the IT function. They sort of hoovered up in that about 35 different communicators and, and these were like technical writers and channel managers and, and people doing a whole range of jobs, some of which were on the, on the you know, the fringes of what we might see as a. Internal corporate communications type role. And so suddenly, instead of having six to eight people, I had 40 people, of which about 35 were in a place called Caucus New Jersey. And and that was, so that took me in to, in, into a totally new realm, particularly around leadership and, and what a learning that was, you know, in terms of suddenly not being the, the communicator. Advising the leader, but being the leader of this team, you know, I never expected at that point to have a team of 40 people. And I, and that was a, really brilliant opportunity to learn around, you know, leadership and, and how you wanted to be. Especially because we needed to, you know, the, the team that I inherited was not, if I'm honest, was not the team that I needed because what I needed was a team of, Change comms, you know, globally minded, change comms experts. And, and that's not why inherited. So we had to do, you know, quite a significant piece of restructuring. And again, you know, as the leader now, not as the communicator, as the communicator, it's easy. We've all been there and we've of whispering of the leader. We say, you've gotta be visible, you've be, here's all the great principles. You've gotta, you know, that, that make for a. Dealing with a sort of a redundancy situation in a, in a, in a good way. And suddenly I was that leader and, and you realize it's not so easy. You know, it's,

Adrian: 26:08

That's right.

Howard: 26:08

Cuz cuz there was a moment where I thought, you know, I, I could hide in London for about three or four months and do the work here and then suddenly reappear with the answer. I really had to say to myself, do I go, do I work via the easy way because I was busy, I had other work to do, or do I actually do work according to my principles. I think you, you know, the principles that as a communicator you would have. I had to go that way. And so I was, I was commuting to, to New York, you know, probably at least once, if not more than once a month, and, and being very visible in the team and, and led them through that. And, and it was again, you know, the, the sort of. I think when, when you are a, as you are, as you are sort of going on your career as a communicator, you know, if you get the chance of having real leadership opportunities, leadership roles, you must take them because it's one thing to advise a leader, it's another thing to have had that experience and, and then the, the value that gives you, and you mentioned the role at the football club, example. Yeah. I was nine years as a chairman of a, of, of a, you know, reasonably sized football club and. Everyone's voluntary there. No one's got a paid role apart from the players actually. So again, you, know that, that's really testing your leadership and how you get things done in that voluntary environment.

Adrian: 27:21

When you get those opportunities come up. It's, it sees them and go, what am I gonna learn from that, from me as a leader in these roles?

Howard: 27:30

I've always believed everything you do is just a sort of you know, the gateway to the next thing that you do to some extent. Everything that you do, you learn and you develop and, and you learn more. And, and I think you've really gotta be in that mindset of saying, you know what, how am I gonna develop as an individual? What is this role? Was this opportunity going to give me that I haven't had before? And how can I take advantage of that? Because certainly in my career when I look at it, you know, every role I've learned something. And, you know, all of those learnings help me to where I am today For sure.

Adrian: 28:02

A little bit like, the analogy of you travel through life with almost your Santa sack, right? And you're just filling it with the gifts that you get in the different roles and the people that you are gaining those experiences. From to the point where you get to a part in your life, you go, well, I've had such a diverse background and a diverse opportunity in working in all these different companies, and, you are so thankful for sometimes the risks that you take in maybe starting your own business and it didn't, you know, didn't go as well as you expected or stepping into a big role where you felt. Out, you know, out on a limb or out in your, out of your comfort zone, and then you learn from that. But I, you know, I was reflecting as you were talking about Tim, Eddie in, in EY and I, you know, you and I had chatted last week, but I didn't mention to you, I actually worked with him in, EY in Australia. So before he left for the UK one of my jobs with EY was actually managing their relocation change nationally. So we put together what was called a, National Workforce strategy, and it was about designing the office to be more communicative. So the whole strategy was around how do people work? How do they interact? What are the touch points in where they communicate? And so this is, this is going back quite a number of years actually. And the design drove the fit out for the office and the amount of rooms and offices and client areas and all of those things. But Tim Eddy was one of the, the senior partners at that time. So when you mentioned his name went, ah, so we went to London after that.

Howard: 29:45

He said something once, which really stuck in my mind. And, and, and was an astute comment from someone who in, a sense had just dropped into this situation. You know, we were doing that thing that, you know, talked about that globalizing back office functions and part of that in a professional services environment is each of the country practices is their own legal entity. So it was more than you, you couldn't just say from the center, right, we're going to do this. And, and everyone falls into line because everyone sort of feels that they have some ownership and has a voice.

Adrian: 30:15

Yeah

Howard: 30:16

and one of the things that he realized, you know, being in Europe and, and traveling a bit about around Europe with our European colleagues, he said that, you know, you realize that over the last hundred years, which, which might sound like it's a, you know, a long time, but in the course of history, it's not that long a time. You know, in the last a hundred years, most of the people we're talking to have been at war with each other, and now we're trying to get everyone to play nicely together. And, and, whilst everyone's mindset is to play nicely and to get on and you know, we've got to go through various change processes, you understand that there's different cultures, different histories, different family ties, which all informed people. And, and I think again, this one of this is EY was where I sort of really learned the difference I think between being a global organization, which many companies are, EY certainly was a global organization and have having a global mindset. And, you know, really beginning to sort of see the differences that, that are, that are to be welcomed and not to be sort of dismissed, but you know, then to work through in terms of how you can work together. And so understanding different cultures, different ways of working. You know, I, I talk a lot now how one size doesn't fit all. And yet a lot of what you see coming out from organizations just assumes perhaps a, UK-centric or US UK-centric approach. Just, you know, sort of dropped on the rest of the world and that can't work, in my opinion. So, you know, it was really at that moment, you, you began to learn what a, what a global mindset meant and, and the curiosity and interest that you need to have to act across borders and to, and that it was a really important lesson.

Adrian: 31:54

And, and it was so much more than just diversity and inclusion. It was, it was very much around really stepping into understanding those markets around the world when you're a global organization. And I even found between Australia and New Zealand when I was working on one of the regional strategies with Ericsson. It is just those sensitive times of communicating as being aware of timezone, being aware of, national celebrations and all of those things that kind of go, it's a whole different mindset and you've just gotta be able to step into, into the, the mindset of the, audience, the, the employees in those different areas. It's, you know, it's interesting working in a global organization and given the experience you've had in the different organizations, this is where it's come home to roost, I guess, in now developing your new business. And, you know, I really wanted to explore that. I know we're getting towards the end of our time together, but I really wanted to explore True and what was the catalyst for, for bringing that together and starting to work with Anne-Marie Blake.

Howard: 32:59

Yeah, so, so after EY, I went to GSK and the big company that was, I learned huge amounts there. In terms of, you know, you, again, you realize in these big companies how they are at the forefront of culture, of so many things that you have at your disposal even if you feel that resources are being constrained, you still have resources. And when you go to smaller businesses, you realize how lucky you were in these bigger businesses and you've two many good things. And, I was there for three years. Again, worked some brilliant people there and then went to I took some time to really think what do I wanna do next? And actually what I wanted to do then to go somewhere where I could start up a comms function again, which is something I'd really enjoyed doing. So terms of, you know, took a, a step back in terms of things like salary and grade and that type of thing to go to Johnson, Matthy and I was their first comms person in their clean air division which was the majority of the business and clean air. Was all about, you know, we were world leader in the very exciting area of catalytic converters which is very exciting if you don't really take much interest in science. But actually in terms of the climate crisis, you know, cleaner air is the fundamental thing. So it was a, it was a really interesting place to be, but the business had grown on changes in regulation and law, you know, across the world many times over and, and leading to new science, new technology needed over 40 years. We again, a big time of change. A new CEO lady called Joan Bracker came in towards the end of 2019 and we, we knew that we needed to change because the market was changing around us and the company wasn't in the best shape. And so we went through big transformation. We changed to a, new strategy, new organization. New processes, you know, new systems went from, sort of regionally based to globally based, you know, so a lot of change there. And we were 17 sites, 6,000 people or so. So that was, that was good. And I was given the, you know, really trusted, use the word that we used earlier to develop the, comms approach. And I think Joan recognized, you know, that, that not bringing people with you was a, was a big risk on the change. And so, again, conversation-based program, which we called airtime, we developed and, and it was a huge time investment and I think hugely successful to bring people along the journey with us through this time of change. And I, had a great time, you know, because I was really, I think working with inspiring Boss, but given the, the sort of tools to, do what I thought were the right things to do, and, I really enjoyed that time. But that was a team, I was a team of one at that to start with, with a bit of agency support. And I guess, when Joan left and the company as a whole, not so much our part of the business with company as a whole had some trauma at the end of 2021, I guess. And Last year was a difficult year, and you start to think right where you're gonna go next. And when I was a bit, you know, as I probably always had this itch that, you know, when I'd started my own business. I never quite did what I wanted to do, and I knew why I'd gone wrong. I knew some of the decision. I mean, we all make decisions, which are not the right decisions in the end, I'd always say, you've gotta, you've gotta look at yourself and say, was it the right decision with the knowledge that you had at the time? Not, with subsequently hindsight. And, and so I wanted to have another go at that, and I didn't really, I was a bit bored with being in a corporate, things going in a particular way, and then things happen around you, which had nothing to do with you Other people leave. You are sort of, you know, areas where, where you are influencing, you either gotta go back to the scoring board or whatever. So I, I just felt I'm done with corporates now and Anne Marie and I have known each other for years and, and we, sort of joked that we worked together and we were probably both in the same path and wanting to start something up. And almost this time last year, Ann Marie and I both in New York for the conference. And so we spent quite a bit of time talking about this and then we came back to London and said, let, we need to decide either we're gonna do it or we're not gonna do it. And we thought, let's give it a go. When we decided that last summer, we, we sort of thought. We mapped out that, maybe next February would be a good start point because, we had various things we needed to get in place first, and eight months goes very, very quickly. So we launched officially at the end of February and and we're now in our fourth month and, and it's very exciting.

Adrian: 37:07

It's exciting to see the two of you working together. I, Admire you both greatly, and I've spent time with, with you and Anne-Marie independently. And I think it's great that the two of you have got together and are, running with this and, and I think you came up with the right title for the business because, you know, all I hear from both of you is authenticity and being true to yourself, being true to the, the organizations that you work with and building that in, organizations.

Howard: 37:34

I let you into a little secret I'm, I'm terrible naming things. It's not a strength of mine at all. People always go, oh, the comms person, they, name something. I'll say, oh, no, I'm, I'm, I'm not good. But I'm just reading. A novel actually, and it was called True Story, and I, was reading it and I thought that could make a really good name for a company. And so yeah, that's, that's where it came from. And, and I think exactly as you say, you know, it, what we're trying to do is to, to talk about employee engagement, experience change, transformation, comms, you know, all the, all, usual things diversity, inclusion, comms but, but from what we are calling a people-centric approach, you know, and I think. I think most people talk about that. And then you see what organizations really do and, and what they do in reality is, is, you know, CEOs will all say our people are our most important asset. But, but the reality is, you know, that you see most comms programs, change programs or whatever, have a, leader centric approach, a head office centric approach where they rarely put their people first.

Adrian: 38:34

The giveaway words, isn't it? It's the we'll say it, but we don't really believe it.

Howard: 38:38

If we do believe it, we haven't got time or it's too Every organization has to at pace. That's the new phrase, I think at pace and I don't, I think that people think we haven't got time to do the things that are actually important to do. So I'm trying to, you know, what I want for Anne Marie and myself to, to do is to make a stand, say, If we do it properly, actually we can make it successful. If you don't do it properly, you know, we can see the stats. McKinsey say 70% of all transformations don't deliver what they promise. That's a, that's a huge number. And they, they list the second, the second The second reason they list is cause you don't bring your people with you. So it's, it's not, we know this, so hopefully we can, we can, you know, help to do things differently. That's what we'd like to do.

Adrian: 39:23

Well, I have no doubt the two of you will working together. It's a great, great team and, and thank you for sharing your career with me today, Howard. It's been great having you as a guest.

Howard: 39:34

Thank you, Adrian. been a pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Adrian: 39:37

Terrific. Well, I will say thank you and thanks to everybody for joining us on today's episode of A View From the Top, and look forward to connecting with you next time. Stay tuned to a from the top. All the best everyone.