The Tech Industry - the Good, the Bad and the Crisis

We miss Sam in this episode of Get Amplified, but instead Vic is joined by Lindsey Moore and Pippa Hutchinson to discuss the findings of our Tech Leaders Survey. As you will hear there are some real positives to how the Tech Industry has fared through the Pandemic, but we also believe we get to the heart of why everyone in tech is feeling the ‘heat’.

We hope you find it as insightful as we did, as the findings came to light for us!

You can find the full report here 

For a quick intro, check out our blog: Tech Leader Survey Report 2022 - Amplified Group

We would love you to follow us on LinkedIn!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplified-group/

Transcript

Vic 0:10

Welcome to get amplified. The podcast helping leaders build unstoppable teams to help their tech organizations execute faster. And yes, you might have noticed I am not Sam Routledge. I am indeed Vicky Reddington. And Sam is off dealing with some family matters this week. So we hope that everything is all well and good. But what that means is I have been joined by Lindsay Moore, which I am absolutely thrilled about because Lindsay is our head of marketing. And I just want to take the opportunity to thank her. She's holding a piece of paper over her face at the minute in embarrassment. Lindsay has been absolutely instrumental in when she first joined Amplified Group, she said, Vicky, nobody knows what you do. You need to be really clear on your messages. And we're going to have really simple ways of communicating. And I am very appreciative, Lynns, of what you've done there. But not only that, Lindsay asks the most amazing questions constantly. And so she is going to be chief questioner today, which is just absolutely brilliant. And the topic we're going to talk about today is our tech leader survey. And I'm also thrilled that we have Pippa Hutchinson with us. And Pippa has written our tech leaders report for us. And I think we can announce that is now a full-time amplifier, which is just wonderful news. So we're really, really delighted to have you on board fully, Pippa. And can't wait to get into this. So with that, perhaps Lins, you could just start us off by explaining why we are talking about the Tech Leader Survey on a podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

Yes. Thank you, Vic. I'm still squirming from all those lovely words you said today. Thank you. Yeah, so so much work has gone into this tech leader survey. And I think it's really important that we're able to communicate the findings from the report, but also in a way that people can really take some helpful tips or think about how things are in their own organisation. So it's really nice to be able to do this. Obviously, people can access the report, and I'm sure you'll put the link on in the show notes after to read it. But if we can just give a highlight of those findings and how it can help people. Brilliant. Now that I've answered one question, I'm gonna flip it. I'm going to ask the questions. We're going to put Pippa in the hot seats. And Pippa, would you be able to give a bit of background on the report, please?

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Indeed, I can. Thank you very much for having me on the podcast. And I am over the moon to be part of the Amplified Group officially now. It's 8 p.m. Uh, right then. So without further ado, let's talk about this report. We ran this report two years ago. I don't know whether people listening to this podcast will be aware of that. There is quite a lot of context to this, and I think it's really important that we talk about why this survey that we've run this time round is so timely and so topical. We've got a number of factors that are going on in industry at large at the moment, but specifically for tech as well. And I don't know whether people are familiar with the term the great attrition. I'm sure they are. But that is absolutely something that is a dynamic in all industries currently. And we'll talk about, I'm going to come back to that in a minute, but the the thing I really wanted to hone in on to begin with is the sheer pace of change in technology. It just carries on unabated, doesn't it? It just gets faster and faster and faster in terms of the expectations and the speed of change within tech. There's a very lovely quote, and I think it's very apt from Paul Weefels, who is Geoffrey Moore's business partner in the Kazan group. And Paul Weefels on one of our amplified podcasts a few weeks ago said, you know, we all need to recognize that technology is so mainstream now that tech companies are constantly in this time-based competition. And now these days, there isn't, you know, between one product and another, there isn't more than 10 pence worth of difference between the two in terms of the technology. And therefore, it's not about what you're taking to market so much anymore, it's how you're taking it to market. And the how is completely reliant and reliant on how you're organizing your people within the company. That's the differentiator.

Vic 4:52

Yeah, and actually that that ties in really nicely with what we're saying now as in people tech power the tech industry. Just before we go any further, it's also, you know, you said about the great resignation. I read somewhere not so long ago that tech and pharma were the two industries that had been hit the most. And actually, tech was the most impacted industry.

SPEAKER_03 5:17

Yeah, precisely. And that's why this report, again, is so timely, because if we know that, then the next natural question is why? And so that's we'll we'll come on to unravel a little bit of that and unpick that in a minute. So we've got these, we've got these dynamics at play at the moment, these forces at play, if you like. One one is this great attrition, great resignation. Um, and that is about, you know, that that's been happening for a while, but it is absolutely no doubt accelerated by the forces of COVID and the pandemic. Um, and and you know, on the other hand, you've got the sheer pace of change in technology. So, what's actually happening out there at the moment is this pandemic has it's placed even greater stress on the fault lines within tech companies. If there were fault lines, they're under even more stress now. So those companies within tech who are not delivering a healthy enough culture to attract and retain the best talent and execute at speed are going to unravel even faster as a result of the pandemic. Yeah, I think we're already starting to see some signs of that. Completely. Um, and and it you can see how it's going on, can't you, and how it's happening? Because remote working, you know, that's totally undermined the opportunity for people to work collaboratively as a team. How do they share success and get to know each other if they're always, always working remotely or have been for the last two years and only just now starting to come together face to face? You know, we're going to have thousands of new recruits in the tech world who possibly never even met each other.

Vic 6:49

And and actually that's an awful lot of where we're getting involved is is because of that.

SPEAKER_03 6:54

Yeah, precisely. Um, and just to throw in a couple of stats because I think they're always powerful and they they sort of press the point home. Going back to this great attrition point, McKinsey, they've done some research in the last few months and they've found that 40% of workers, this isn't just for tech, by the way, this is industry wide, may be about to quit their jobs in the short-term future. And if you think about what the effect on the bottom line is of that, it's massive. 40% of workers who are about to quit their jobs, and I might add, not necessarily with a job to go to, um, the cost to the business of um tolerating that kind of rate of attrition is massive. Everybody who resigns, according to another piece of research by a company called Talentworks, it's a third of that person's salary is lost, basically, in terms of lost productivity and the cost of recruiting for that replacement. So there's got to be an incentive to get a handle on why people are leaving and stop it from happening, which brings us on to the report.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

That's a really good summary of why we we wanted to do this report and really investigate what was going on with the tech industry. So, who did we go out and ask? Who completed this survey?

SPEAKER_03 8:12

We actually ended up with insights from 400 tech industry leaders. So we covered all regions, we've gone global with this, we looked at all tech company sizes, we looked at different maturity levels of the business, we looked at the C level um executive suite, and we worked our way down. So we we've really covered, as I say, root and branch of tech.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah. Incredible response. I mean, it it's um and it's really nice to have the two surveys now so that you can compare the findings with you know two years ago. Yeah, precisely. What sort of questions did we ask and what are the headlines that came out from the report? Can you help us summary?

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Absolutely. So there were there were five um we we posted them as statements actually, Lynn. So what we asked, what we said was we're going to ask you to respond to five statements, and we want to know, you know, it's the usual way to respond to a survey. Do you agree, strongly agree with this statement? Are you completely neutral in your response to this statement, or do you absolutely fervently disagree with what we're saying here? And what we try to do, as I say, is with the five statements, really sort of get under the skin of what makes organizations tick and makes people feel happy where they work. Um, and the first statement was, I'm inspired to go the extra mile because I have purpose. Really crucial. The second statement we asked was failures and mistakes are treated as lessons. So do you agree, disagree, etc. with failures and mistakes that are treated as lessons. Then we asked, How far do you agree or disagree with this statement? I clearly understand how my team contributes to our company's goals. And our fourth statement was there is trust and belief that the best ideas win. And our final statement was to ask our respondents to agree or disagree with the statement we don't have lots of competing priorities. And what we found was that the findings painted a really, really clear picture of the organizational health within tech at the moment. And what they also did was the findings highlighted an absolutely, I can't stress it enough, massive threat that's got to be overcome if tech organizations are going to continue to execute at speed. So there was one really strong finding absolute sort of yeah, um reveal-all moment in these findings that absolutely needs to be seized on and dealt with really quickly.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

So, Pitt, can you take us through the key insights from the report?

SPEAKER_03 10:58

Yeah, absolutely. So we've got six. So I'm going to um do a whistle stop tour, and hopefully, for anybody who'd like a lot more information about these in detail, we've got all of this online, haven't we, Lindsay? It's everywhere in terms of report findings. Right, so our first insight is a really positive one, and what that tells us is that most tech organizations are actually really clear in their purpose, and we believe because they're really clear in their purpose, they are motivating their people to do their best. So we asked this statement, I'm inspired to go the extra mile because I have purpose. Nearly 90% of our respondents agreed or strongly agreed that they felt that way. And what's interesting is that we ran this um in 2019, the same statement. And actually, the response uh to that statement was was lower two years ago. So it was 70%, I think, who said two years ago that they felt that they, you know, they had that, um, they were prepared to go the extra mile because they have purpose. Now that's saying that even in the event of a global pandemic and all of the upheaval and the uncertainty that that pandemic's caused, our tech organizations that we've surveyed have actually carried on really successfully galvanizing their people behind a really compelling overall purpose.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So do you think that's through you know all the Zoom and virtual and when people are on virtual calls and family members are walking in and dogs are barking? We've been able to connect on a human level a bit more rather than having our business aside.

SPEAKER_03 12:34

Yeah, I think so. And there's a lot of work at the moment within every industry, isn't there? Every company in every every industry to pivot the purpose in a direction that makes it more meaningful for for us all as individuals that we can all gel behind um and feel motivated by.

Vic 12:52

I think, yeah, I think, well, certainly it's funny, everyone that I meet relative to work, and I asked them about Simon Sinek, everybody has heard of Simon Sinek now, and they all understand the purpose and why he's done an incredible job of talking about that and making it so widely recognized as being important. But I think there's a second thing that's actually come out of the pandemic with it as well, which is many of the organizations are holding global all hands with their leadership team much more often than they were doing previously, and so employees in the field are getting that touch point with their leadership team who have honed their purpose and message so much more. So I I think that has got uh a big piece of it, and it's really great to see that that all hands connection has continued, even though people are now returning back to the office.

SPEAKER_03 13:55

Yeah. There's some really big learnings, aren't there, that have come out of the pandemic in terms of ways to communicate that won't be lost again now. We had a second insight, which was again a really positive one. And that told us that more than 70% of our people that we surveyed believe that failures and mistakes are treated as lessons. So, in other words, you know, it felt like people were saying, I feel like I work in a safe and a trusting place. I feel I can I can participate and I can give everything without you know fearing that I'm gonna be blamed or that I'm gonna there'll be some sort of recrimination for making a mistake. And that's really important because the workplace has got to be this place of psychological safety. People and teams they can they feel that they can say what they really think, they can ask for help when they don't know the answer to something, and that they do feel that mistakes are treated as lessons and it's a a praise, not blame culture. So, again, uh you know, really positive insight to come out of the survey.

Vic 15:02

I also think that that in the tech industry, as you alluded to earlier, about the tech industry moving so fast, that question also relates to being able to take risks, yeah, yeah, and being able to try things, yeah, yeah. And that fits beautifully with being able to move at a fast pace rather than standing still and treading water. Exactly. So fail fast. How does that compare with our survey that we ran two years ago?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

In 2019, the same question, 75% of our respondents agreed or strongly agreed that failures and mistakes are treated as lessons. So it was slightly 3% higher in 2019. Yeah, maybe so fared pretty well over pandemic and everyone working virtually, you know, maybe not having met anyone in person before. So it's maintained.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Okay. We had a third insight from the survey, and that told us that nearly all 91% of our survey respondents, they told us that they really do understand how their team fits into the bigger picture in terms of achieving the overall goals of the organization. And that really told us again that tech organizations at the moment are being really successful in creating a sense of purpose and inclusion and clarity for the people that work there. And again, it's so important for speed of execution because you have to create so much clarity and focus so that there is no room for confusion. And team members who clearly understand who they contribute to this bigger picture. Well, they're by default are going to have a much greater sense of belonging and commitment to the organization. And now for the butts. So we talked about three of our six insights. So we've got a happy tale, and now we've got a little bit more of a tale for concern. So just want to talk about the insights that we thought, oh, hang on, this doesn't look quite as rosy. So our fourth insight was telling us that while our tech organizations are brilliant, it would appear, in communicating an overall common purpose. What is happening, however, is that the this sort of sense of trust and belief that the best ideas win, that's actually dropped since we ran this survey two years ago. It's dropped by 10%. And we we're asking ourselves a question within the Amplified Group, which is, you know, what's driving that? Why would purpose still be really, really strong? But trust and belief that if you come up with ideas or that you're part of a team that's generating innovative thoughts and ideas, why are you losing your sense of belief that the best ideas ultimately win? And is that a function of people losing faith that their voices are being heard? You know, is there increasing competition for share of minds at the top of the organization?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

What's the danger to the business if people's voices aren't being heard or the best idea isn't bubbling to the becomes it becomes self-fulfilling, I think, Lindsay, because um it's a risk to organisational health.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Because if you feel that your voice isn't being heard, if that keeps happening, you're just going to become really frustrated, aren't you? You're going to become more frustrated, you're going to become disengaged, and you know, ultimately demotivated enough to leave the business.

Vic 18:39

McKinsey say there's two main reasons why people are leaving their um their jobs, and it's it's because they don't feel valued, and because they don't have a sense of belonging. And I think that feeling valued, if you feel like you're not can contributing and you're not you're not being heard, and what you're saying is falling on deaf ears. Yeah. And I and again, I think it can relate to the pandemic, can't it? Because if if we were all at home, what what is the mechanism to get your voice? You know, you're not gonna have those networking events where you're able to get to your exec team and say, Hey, I need to tell you this.

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Yeah, precisely.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

That's a really good point. And also, I was just gonna say, if you are a quieter person like me very often, it's really helpful to have a manager to recognise the different personality types within the team so they can actually go around and ask people's opinions because I think that can sometimes get a little bit lost if you if you can't have the opportunity to speak after a meeting if you if you want to have another conversation. If you don't speak up in that meeting, it's lost.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

There's a real paradox at play here, and it's quite a frustrating paradox in the sense that you know, on what on the one hand, our survey is telling us that our respondents, even in the face of a pandemic, still really get the purpose of why their organization exists, they still really get um why they're important as individuals in terms of how they contribute to the overall organization. So there's they're not they're not ambiguous on why they're there. But what they're doing is they're feeling frustrated that every time they want to chip in and weigh in on um making decisions, that they're potentially their voices are going unheard. And you can see, you know, you'd start in an organization with all this enthusiasm and um and and feel really sort of you'd you'd want to advocate, wouldn't you, for the for the organization? You would really get why you'd gone to work there, you'd really latch on to the purpose and feel part of that that organization and feel um like you'd invested in it personally. But if you're over a period of time, nobody's listening to you, who's gonna hang around under those circumstances?

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Yeah. So the team dynamics are super important, aren't they?

SPEAKER_03 21:00

To make sure you're getting and yeah, precisely so yeah, the execution of the plan, you know, and and how people pull together is just as important as as you know, the lodging the concept in the first place. Yeah, I get why I've come to work here. I subscribe to this, this is this is really important to me. But the day-to-day has to bear that out. Um and then you know, it so we were talking about the buts. So the the insight for is is a big I was gonna say is a big but that's probably not the right phraseology, is it? Insight for is quite important to recognise that that is that's probably that's ringing an alarm bell for us, is insightful. Insight five, if that's a little alarm bell, this is a great big blinking alarm bell insight five. So, what we've got here is a really concerning response in our survey. Um, and I'll preface that by um telling.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

what the the the statement was and the statement was we don't have we don't have lots of competing priorities now the the number of people who felt that they didn't have lots of competing priorities was worryingly low it was less than a quarter so only 23% of our respondents felt by inference that they've got clear and aligned priorities which is not a great um outcome and and so and and again this plays into this paradox that's that's at play here so what we what what we're perceiving as what otherwise appear to be very healthy organizations in the tech world um especially in the face of a you know a hopefully now disappearing pandemic what's going on here though is we've got a very clear evidence of complete of competing priorities and therefore we've got this this um force at play of complexity rather than simplicity is potentially taking root it goes hand in hand with this finding that this considerable number of people that we asked don't have trust and belief that the best ideas win and so all of that combined what that's suggesting is that at ground level if you like there's too much noise there's too much ambiguity and people are competing to have their voices heard and there isn't clarity from the top and it's such a shame isn't it because we've had those really good three insights where people really do want to do the best go the extra mile they feel motivated and and they've joined a company that they really believe in so then to have this knock them back is yeah and it's yeah and it's it's an extra hard slap in the face isn't it because you you've gone in that like I said before you've gone in there with all of that enthusiasm and and and what the survey is telling you is that people you know they're really committed they really want to work in these places they understand the purpose so to then have that unravel because you're not getting the clarity on the ground or you're not feeling that your voice is heard is is really undermining yeah and and and you know and you can see why tech as Vic pointed out earlier as an industry tech has got a higher than um average rate of attrition and if that's what's going on in terms of what our findings are telling us then we can see why.

Vic 24:30

And Vic you must see this a lot when you're with clients what's really interesting is you know we came up with that question because it was almost always the lowest score in the speed checks that we do and we've done nearly 50 speed checks now and I would say apart from five it scores the lowest and so that was why we decided to put it in the tech leader survey and what I also need to admit having recorded a podcast with Jeffrey Moore um I was completely unaware when we came up with this question and added it into our speed check about his zones to win and about how Jeffrey Moore in 2015 talked about the tech industry being in a crisis of prioritization. I was unaware of that and yet what what is really clear from the survey that we've just done is the tech industry although he highlighted it seven years ago we're still in a crisis of prioritisation and it hasn't got any better and I think with what you were talking about with you know with the pandemic we already knew that silos were an issue but when you're all working remotely and have done for two years those silos are just going to get exacerbated aren't they? Yeah completely so it's no wonder that people have internal competing priorities and you know I feel like I'm on repeat with well don't worry about what the competition's doing just compete internally and and I certainly knew what that felt like in fact I felt like I was being pulled in different different directions even when I was uh at VMware there was a point where I had two business units that I looked after and I spent 50% of my time apologizing to one business unit whilst I was focused on the other one and then the other 50% of my time apologizing to the other one about spending time on the other one. I mean it was just being pulled in two completely different directions.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

So when you speak to clients Vic is this some I mean is the report is this helpful when you're speaking to clients to point out because I think when you when you're in a company you perhaps think your problems you're the only one experiencing this and as because it's across the industry is it comforting to clients to know that everyone's affected by this I think using the word comforting is absolutely right because that's it's you're not alone everybody is feeling this and actually what is quite incredible with the the breadth of different clients that we have now just how consistent the challenges are that they face. And and why is that do you think why how has it happened that that conflicting priorities are such an issue you know is it from leadership down or is it across like you say silos are forming so teams have their separate priorities that aren't aligned up to the company goals?

Vic 27:49

My take on that I'm really going to steal from Patrick Lenzioni because he talks about this happens right at the leadership level to start with and he talks about the fact that if there is a degree of separation between leaders at the top as that diverges down the organization that degree of separation just gets wider and and therefore you're setting people up to compete against each other but I think it comes down to the team dynamics of the leadership team what do you mean by that well very often I will observe a leadership team and it feels like it's a it's a meeting of two halves and actually it doesn't even need to just be a leadership team this is just across the board you have those people that have the loudest voices dominating the conversation and the rest of the team observing and so it's those that shout the loudest that say what the priorities are and yet that hasn't had the feedback from the rest of the team and there hasn't been that what we call robust debate or positive conflict in the first place but you can't have that robust debate to be able to allow you to get to the decision if you're not listening to everybody's voice in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

And that's when you get that um the meeting after the meeting yes phenomenal don't you where you the people that didn't get the chance to weigh in in the in the meeting itself huddle outside the room at the end of the meeting have their own meeting and possibly come up with a whole set of different priorities that they contrive together. Yeah and we've all experienced that we've all experienced that and that's where it gets really muddled and a bit toxic because then you've really got a lack of clarity.

Vic 29:52

Well and lack of commitment so it goes it's completely party to the passive aggressive it's like I'm gonna say that I'm gonna agree with you but then I'm gonna go and have another meeting and I'm gonna get people to come with me and then we're gonna do something completely different.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Yeah and the the thing that would unlock all of that is that um ability to get a balance of views and robust debate in the room at the time. Yes but you don't you don't lead to a meeting after a meeting you don't need to have a meeting after a meeting.

Vic 30:21

I think there's another element to that as well and I think it comes down to effective decision making. I think this is a real big challenge because you know as as we called the podcast with Jeffrey Moore leadership teams don't want to put all their eggs in one basket they want to spread the risk but in doing that they're actually just causing the organisations to slow down because there is so much confusion of what's expected of them. And so I don't think that's been spelt out enough.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah agree that also came out with the conversation that you had with Scott Heron from Disco wasn't it about the importance of I guess you talk about it the time difference between consensus and and commitment yes and how you go about or who's responsible for making the final decision and I think that's a really yeah I'd I'd be important I love that phrase that you you quote a lot Vic that disagree but commit.

Vic 31:28

Well it's not my phrase it came from Intel but actually Amazon used it quite significantly as well so they but Amazon started off with Lenciona's five behaviors but actually interestingly they're very strong on accountability um but to have accountability and to hold each other accountable to do that disagreeing commit you have to have the psychological safety to start with and so quite often we're asked by leaders to to help them fix accountability issues but you can't go straight in at the accountability level you have to start with having that trust that vulnerability based trust or that psychological safety where it's a safe place for everybody to say what they really think without thinking about the consequences of what they say so that you can have that robust debate. And then I think if you've had that robust debate and everybody's been heard then you're much more likely to not have groupthink and to make the right decision in the first place that people will commit to and that's the bit that we get lost on I think yeah I agree.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

I think Pip came up with a really good um uh point in the report when you've when you quoted that McKinsey stat.

Vic 32:46

Can you just talk us through that and and the importance to a company the tech industry is constantly driving big change initiatives they have to to keep ahead so I think this is really relevant McKinsey say that over the last 20 years of the big change initiatives that they have worked on only 30% of them have been successful because they have been so focused on actually what are you changing in the business? And to drive that success rate up to 80% you have to put an equal emphasis on the human element as well as what you're actually changing. And that doesn't mean we're gonna palm it off to HR that means that the leadership team puts as much focus on bringing everybody with them and investing in that human element and I think that is the bit that is missing. So everyone says oh right we've got a crisis of prioritization okay right how we're gonna prioritize what we're gonna prioritize and they forget about actually who's making those decisions in the first place and how we have to start by getting that communication and the team dynamics bit right. And I think that's the bit that's missing and I'm going to put it out there that I think that we are still in a crisis of prioritization because we've not been starting in the right place. And we all think that actually if we do this mad scramble on the business piece and we don't focus on the people piece we're gonna stay where we are I get a sense that everyone is going at a million miles an hour with their foot down on the gas and it's like we came out the gate in January faster than ever but it's faster than ever with people busy doing what they think is important yeah but then they'll look across at another team that they think they're helping and that team will go I don't understand why you're doing that. Yeah and we see that so many times in so many different organisations and it is simply because time has not been taken at the beginning to put the right plans in place that then cascade down. And I know we did a podcast a long time ago about OKRs objectives and key results or how you cascade that but I you know there was an organization that I was working with two years ago and this leadership team really cared. There was a hundred people in the UK organization and they really wanted their team to feel empowered and yet when we did our survey it came back with people and I think I've described it before as it's like they were on the end of those extendable dog leads where you know they could keep going keep going and then they got choked back because they didn't know where the guardrails were. And I couldn't understand why people felt like this until I went and watched a planning meeting and they had 24 business objectives. If you've got 24 business objectives how on earth do you know where your guardrails are so we did some work with the leadership team and it was really great to be able to the timing was good because we did it over the Christmas period and we reduced it down to four and then they came back to me this year saying that they'd had the most phenomenal year. Yeah people were people they knew what was expected of them and they hadn't got this internal competition. It was really clear but that goes back to making those tough decisions at the beginning with the leadership team and you can't do that I don't believe unless you've got the team dynamics bit right in the first place.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Yeah I agree must be so demotivating if you know you how do you ever know you've achieved and finished that priority how like everything gets started and nothing finished.

Vic 36:59

Yeah I mean they're just uh competing priorities are just corrosive aren't they you know they they just halt momentum they do they just but I don't think everything in his consciously called that out in such a way and so it was wonderful to know that Jeffrey Moore had written a whole book on competing priorities. Completely but I still think you know that's that's how you organize as a business but you've still got to start with the human element and get that team dynamic right before you can have the business discussions that then lead to the the decisions.

SPEAKER_03 37:45

I agree and the final thing I was going to ask just this the sixth insight there Pip Oh right yeah of course the sixth one so uh only it's kind of goes on the back of insight five which is our most concerning one around competing priorities insight six well what we naturally expected was that when we looked at so we so we found that we had competing priorities as a as a major issue for our survey respondents the next question we posed to ourselves was well where's this happening is it happening in a specific sector of our tech world and to our real surprise actually it was endemic across the board which was a real uh alarm bell because we thought well surely you know as as organizations get bigger and more mature and more complex you can see naturally that you're going to get silos and competing priorities but actually what we found is that for over half of our respondents who said they had competing priorities half of them were less than three years old. Now that's a real risk because if you're a very small business that's less than three years old and still in your formative stages, you know to have competing priorities at that point in your life cycle if if that's what you're experiencing now and you haven't got a um you haven't sorted that out that's just going to get worse and worse. So that's that's again something that we really need to um highlight is that this isn't an issue for the big complex beasts in tech this is for the smaller guys as well so it's it's endemic across the board.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

Yeah that's really interesting and you would think a startup a smaller company would be really clear on on their goal who they're who's their profile customer who are they going after and what do they want to achieve and and actually this has shown that that perhaps isn't quite as clear or maybe a new bit of technology is the new shiny thing and I I was listening again to the Jeffrey Moore podcast talking about the zones and he talked about the innovation zone and how that sucks in resources from the rest of the business. So when you have a new technology that you're taking to market if you're going to go and and do one of those you've got to stick with it and see it to the end. You can't start it and then walk away and do something else. You've absolutely got to commit to it so I think this is a a really interesting point. So Pip I was just wondering you know with these really interesting insights what do people do with this information?

SPEAKER_03 40:16

How can they take this back to the business I I think there's there's quite a lot to celebrate in these findings and I think there's a story to tell here which is a game of two halves if you like so that the the the elements to celebrate are you know despite a pandemic of the last two years what this is telling us is that in the main our tech organizations are really good still at communicating their purpose and they're pulling generally in you know people behind their purpose in the in a the same direction they're motivating people to do their best our tech um employees understand how their role fits into the big picture and in the main they feel that they work in really safe and trusting environments where it's okay to voice an opinion and you're not going to get sacked for making a mistake. But all of this and this is the the thing that is so crucial to grasp is that all of this is massively put into jeopardy at the moment because of this increasing trend to have too many competing priorities and and that's the takeout is that that has to be um dealt with without delay really because if you don't get a handle on competing priorities very simply put our organizations will just grind to a halt and you can't if you grind to a halt by definition you can't execute at speed so it it that is the the the key takeout from our survey is there's a big um a big thing to deal with here which is competing priorities.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

Yeah and I think Vic you've had a really good point um about where companies start where where do you begin to sort of unpick this if I'm in a team so I'm not the team leader yeah but I feel I have a lot of priorities and it's not practical for me just to make the decision on what's priority what's not or it's difficult for me to make that decision what what advice would we give people within a team that are are struggling with workloads so much of this is really in the subconscious and I think you have to draw it out and get it into the conscious and that really is the value of our speed checks and where we start with those because the speed check so it takes two or three minutes to fill in but it asks 30 really practical questions about how the team works together and from that you can start to unpick so how you can overcome those challenges of of competing priorities it almost gives you a a step by step on how to to do that.

Vic 43:11

So we can give some practical insights to the team on where example I mean there are so many there's so much transition in the tech industry at the minute of people moving around new people starting in new roles and not knowing each other very well how on earth can you have a robust debate and make a decision that you're confident in if you don't even know each other very well. Precisely yeah or if you don't feel like you're having effective team meetings um or if you feel your voice isn't being heard and it's it's just a very pragmatic set of questions that just gives you some numbers to turn opinion into fact and start a really tangible conversation that doesn't get personal and I think that's a really key piece. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:12

And something that's so straightforward and packed with common sense as well, isn't it? I hope so. Very simple um approach.

SPEAKER_01 44:23

That's really interesting. Thank you. I think I am out of questions, you'll be glad to hear.

Vic 44:29

Can I ask you a question?

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Yes. Where can our listeners find the report? Oh good question. On amplifiedgroup.co.uk on our website on the front page, just click and you can access the report. Also on LinkedIn we've been promoting so you'll be able to find it through our past posts. Thank you.

Vic 44:53

I've got another question for you.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

I thought I was the questioner.

Vic 44:57

Yes I know I know I know but you know like we we like to change the rules don't we? So as you know we have been asking our guests to recommend a book and I know you consume books like There's no tomorrow. So have you got a book recommendation for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Well my first one was Atomic Habits I was going to say but I think that's quite well known now and it is a very good book. So the one I'm going to say is The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle and I'd actually forgotten that I'd read it so it's been really nice to pick it back up but it's all about how you build and sustain great teams and he's got so many nuggets of just brilliant research and stories. There was just one really nice quote in there about and it's a bit more lighthearted but about embracing fun and how instrumental that is into building into building teams and it said because laughter is not just laughter it's the most fundamental sign of safety and connection and I just thought that was a really nice phrase and I thought I'd point oh gosh I love that and we laugh a lot on our meetings do that a lot in our meetings yeah so yeah that's good to know very good thank you and thank you thank you how how did it feel having your arm twisted behind your back doing podcast okay I've just about stopped sweating so it's it's all good.

Vic 46:23

Well that just leaves me to say thank you Lindsay and thank you Pippa for joining us that'll be joining me on the podcast today. I'm so used to doing this with Sam and thanks to our listeners for tuning in and for all your comments and your feedback we really appreciate it and we look forward to tuning in again with you. Keep safe