Jo Twistleton – Director @ Twist Consultants
I was introduced to Jo through a work project earlier this year and Jo and I hit it off instantly.
The work Jo has rolled out over the last two decades really stood out. Not only does Jo help businesses to improve company culture, but she also coaches leadership teams and helps to collaborate when businesses are merging and being acquired some of the most challenging and difficult times for businesses to communicate and connect their teams.
Jo shares some of her learnings from her career and helping leaders to actually lead and many of these tips will help you in your role and develop your own business.
The Podcast:
Listen On
What Jo and I discuss:
- Why a client that actually want to do change better are the best clients
- Why coaching and mentoring is invaluable
- Why the next phase of return to the office is so important to set company culture
- What leaders need to remember – leveraging other people’s skills when they are better at things than they are
- Why there is rarely a stupid question
- Time management & reducing meeting culture
- If you nail collaboration you win business
- When team responses are so important
Jo’s Key Quote
Shows Notes & Referenced Podcast Materials
- Book – Imagine it Forward – Beth Comstock
- Podcast – Feel Better, Live More, Doctor Chatterjee
- Videos – theRSA.org – https://www.thersa.org/video/animations
- The RSA newsletter too – you can sign up here https://www.thersa.org/
- Quiet People In Meetings https://medium.com/the-ascent/quiet-people-in-meetings-are-incredible-7bb05ef9acd1
Jo Twiselton’s Bio:
Jo Twiselton is a coach and consultant helping leaders who want to deliver sustainable organisation change by putting their people right at the heart of transformation.
Using communication and coaching strategies, she works with her clients to develop approaches that really engage people in change.
She aims to reduce the potential for absence, staff turnover and impacts to people’s wellbeing, helping teams stay fit for the constant change we’re all facing.
Connect With Jo On:
Listen to the other Fixing The Broken World Of Work Podcasts
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Fixing The Broken World Of Work Podcast With Jo Twiselton Full Transcription
The transcript was automatically created by our tool descript and may have a couple of errors.
Danny: [00:00:00] Jo, thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:00:03] Jo: [00:00:03] Thanks Danny. I’m delighted to be here.
[00:00:06] Thank
[00:00:06] Danny: [00:00:06] you very much. So I know you a little bit, but our listeners, won’t, if you could just give me an introduction to who you are and what you did, that’d be, that’d be awesome.
[00:00:14] Jo: [00:00:14] Yep. So I’m Jo Twiselton. I’m a director of my own company called twist consultants. And I love working with organizations when they are thinking about change and particularly those organizations that want to do change better, um, which really means doing it in a more healthy and sustainable way. I sat up to probably about almost 20 years ago now.
[00:00:40] And over that time, I’ve got to a point where now I’m helping leaders who want to deliver that change. Well, and I do that through consultancy coaching with a focus on communications, wellbeing, and results. And training as well. So that’s where I come from with it.
[00:00:59] Danny: [00:00:59] Perfect. Is there something if someone asks you at dinner party, what you do, is there like a one-liner or, or a tweet that you would you’d be able to share to them?
[00:01:08] Jo: [00:01:08] That’s a really interesting question. And I have been faced with that many, many times , and what ends up happening is people look at me a little bit fuddled, cause they’re not really sure what it is, especially when they don’t work in organizations per se.
[00:01:23] So it’s a really interesting question. And what I usually say is I help organizations when they’re going through a big change and then I can’t seem to do it in a tweet. So I give examples of a couple of projects that I’ve been on and then they go, oh, okay. I get it. I get it. So it’s almost like mini stories that I have to carry around.
[00:01:44] Danny: [00:01:44] Awesome. I remember when I used to my career was in, in a really in marketing and when I used to work and do search engine optimization, people would say, I work for Google. And then when it moved more towards social, it was works for Facebook or Twitter or, or one of the newer ,newer ones.
[00:02:02] And now what I say to people is I fix the broken world of work. And then when they say, oh, that’s good. What does that mean? And then I dive into, have you ever worked for a bad boss or I’ve ever worked for a company? They don’t care about you? I help fix them basically. And then everyone goes, oh yeah. Great. Yeah.
[00:02:18] Jo: [00:02:18] So, so what about making it relevant?
[00:02:20] Isn’t it?
[00:02:21] Danny: [00:02:21] Exactly. I see. So when you started and what was your motivation for starting like organizational change or improve and organizational health?
[00:02:29]Jo: [00:02:29] Again, very interesting question Danny,. So before I started working for myself, I’d had over 10 years in corporate world.
[00:02:39] So I started out, um, my first job, I’m showing my age here. My first job, I worked with a sales director , in an office who had his own extractorfan above his desk. Cause you could still smoke in an office , and it was it times changed , but what that gave me through that 10 years was an insight into, I didn’t realize what organization change was and it wasn’t a thing then.
[00:03:04] And it probably wasn’t when I started up Twist to be fair in about 2004, but what I gradually saw was I kept thinking we should probably do this a bit better. Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we think about that? And all of those questions, I’ve kind of morphed into where I have got to now.
[00:03:22] So there wasn’t, there was a bit of an aha moment, but I think it’s been a gradual, like looking at things and knowing that we could do things better rather than putting up with it.
[00:03:33] Danny: [00:03:33] That makes perfect sense. Is there an example that you could talk to or, or talk on was a light bulb moment or could, could give people their light bulb moment when they listen to it?
[00:03:45] Jo: [00:03:45] Yeah, I mean, I’ve had set, I’ve had lots of them actually. The one that I would, I see, I have seen most often probably is where you start the ball rolling by putting, um, a date in people’s diaries for a get together or an announcement and naively, I think in some ways. Thinking that people won’t have put two and two together and made four. And so people turn up to said town hall meeting or online meeting with some sense of anticipation. Cause they’re not sure what’s coming. So there, that’s the thing I’ve seen probably on repeat the most often. And I think we could probably do that better or differently,
[00:04:34]Danny: [00:04:34] If really fascinates me the work that you do and how, how you do it. And they, that you’ve obviously worked for the big organizations and some of the mid to smaller size is that like an, is a, an ideal client that you have in an ideal work day that you’d have that, that would spring out to you. And you’d love to do that five days a week for the rest of your working career.
[00:04:55] Jo: [00:04:55] Yeah. Um, clients that want to do change better. So I’m not on a mission to try and change people or organizations really want to do this differently or for the sake of saying don’t get it because there’s always going to be people in organizations like that.
[00:05:13] So it’s a bit pointless, really in a bit, sole destroying to try to do that. So really it’s organizations and leaders who get it and want to do things better. And then those organizations where they want to try different things. So ideal day would be doing workshops. So, you know, working with teams who are trying to look one of my favorite projects that I did quite a long time ago, was working with a few teams to try and set the culture of the organization when they’d gone through a merger.
[00:05:45] So how did they want it to look? What would it be like? Love that. Coaching is another thing and mentoring I love doing. And I think, and I’d love to get your views on this. I think we’re going to see more need for that over the next few years than less. Um, coaching has gone stratospheric in the last 18 months.
[00:06:04] There’s loads of people learning to be coaches. And I think that’s a great thing, in workplaces. Uh, and I think there’s a lot that we can learn from coaches who are already out there. Massive fun of it. And I’m not just saying that because I am one. I think you can get loads out about, I have been coached and mentored for most of my work in life in one shape or another.
[00:06:26] Um, and it’s invaluable and coaching and mentoring other people. I learned more from doing them, being on the other side of that too.
[00:06:33] A
[00:06:33] Danny: [00:06:33] hundred percent. I I’ve got this saying that I’ve probably stolen or tweaked slightly, but our framework, maybe I think if you’re a mentor and you don’t get as much, if not more from the mentee, then you’re not mentoring. And I personally believe that it’s coaching a mentor in a very different. So mentor in is a little bit softer. You’re not necessarily improving skills, but you might be improving confidence or how people deliver or how they articulate themselves.
[00:07:04] Whereas coaching is more skills-based to me and some of the exec coaching I do. And, the work that I do with different people often is how just to reframe something or storyteller differently, or how to tackle a problem slightly differently with their team or even with their seniors or, or with the across of whole business. And it typically comes down to a few things for me. And the reason why I say , we’re going to personally, I believe that we’re going to see less managers and we’re seeing more mentors and more coaches is that managers don’t have the time to manage.
[00:07:39] Therefore they can’t really lead and they can’t really inspire. And although there’s hundreds of leadership traits and, I boil most of them down to about 16. But I think there’s going to be this shift towards, we might, I see a change in the coming months when people decide where they, where they are and hybrid.
[00:07:59] So I think actually there’s going to be a lot of people that just can’t manage in a hybrid environment. So if someone’s working from home four days a week, it might pop in one day. I think it’s gonna be really difficult for managers, especially those who aren’t trained. So I think it’s gonna have to be a lot of coaching for those managers is going to be so much adaptation needed from the team that they’re going to need to be mentored and coached.
[00:08:21] And then I think we’re actually going to see a lot of leaders having to take a step up and actually just concentrate and leading and not being managing their day to day. And they’re going to have to move away from the in-person bias as I call it. So you’d have to spend so much time in-person so face-to-face, you could do it over a screen, but I think there is going to have to be a move towards asynchronous comms.
[00:08:40] So how people communicate through documents and better tools, not more tools, better tools.
[00:08:47] And I think that that’s where the coach is going to come into play. And the way I explain it is even the best tennis players in the world need a coach, even the best golfers need a caddy who essentially are there on course coach and even the best, CEOs in the world.
[00:09:05] You know, even if someone says Tim Cook or, Sundar Pichai from , Google, they had bill Campbell who’s coached almost everyone, unfortunately passed away a few years ago, but everyone has to have a coach at some point. So that’s my two Pence on it.
[00:09:20] Jo: [00:09:20] No, I totally agree with you, Danny. I think, the other thing that I think will happen is we’ll see, because there’s more coaching.
[00:09:29] Coaching style in leadership is we’ll see that broadened out. I think it’s been a bit exclusive for senior leaders for a long time. Um, I know, I personally think you get more investment return on investment from coaching and mentoring than you potentially do on big scale training. So some adaptation around how you do, how you use training alongside coaching and mentoring to really get the value from it.
[00:09:55]Danny: [00:09:55] Maybe a slightly different question, but with your coaching clients, is that like something that always stands out for you? Is that something that you have to do, or the questions you have to ask to get them prepared to actually take on a coach. Cause people say they want one.
[00:10:12] They say they need one, but there isn’t, there’s time constraints. There’s people constraints. Is there like a, is there something that you prize out of them or you’ll tell them straight up that makes them know that they have to take this seriously?
[00:10:25] Jo: [00:10:25] I think it’s understanding what coaching is that I’m not going to turn up and tell you how to do this stuff.
[00:10:34] It’s, I’m here to help kind of facilitate you to get to where you want to get to. Um, and I think that’s the most important thing that I keep in mind and you’ve got to do the work. If you want to get the results, you’ve got to put the work in you, get back what you put in. Same as most things in life to be fair.
[00:10:55] Danny: [00:10:55] Completely true. Do you think there’s some motivations that people have when they, they take on a coach obviously to improve in inverted commerce and brackets, but you think there’s like a very specific motivation that they have, or they’ve been told they need to take?
[00:11:12] Jo: [00:11:12] So your question is really interesting because there’s two aspects that you’ve just flagged, which is what’s my personal motivation.
[00:11:18] And then what, what have I been told to do sorts of if I’m reading, if I’m listening correctly, to what you said. So the first one is that like intrinsic motivation, which is something that I really want to develop for myself. And then it’s how I’m asked or coaching is suggested to me as a development opportunity and how that’s delivered by your leader as that opportunity is really key at getting people engaged with it, because sometimes coaching I’ve seen it where someone said, you need coaching, like at some kind of remedial tool, and it’s not, it’s a diff it’s a brilliant development opportunity.
[00:12:04] Danny: [00:12:04] I kind of see it as Eastern and Western medicine, Western medicine, we take tablets to feel better.
[00:12:11] Whereas in Eastern medicine, they take, remedies to stop it from happening. I think in Western business, we’ve relied upon taking tablets or, band-aids or vaccines or whatever the metaphor might be. I think we’ve over-indexed on, on having to have a crisis to, to adapt to something or wait three to six months for feedback.
[00:12:36] And I think, yeah. And they asked about organization health. It’s so important to me. Isn’t something that you do once you hit a crisis or you hit a low point, it’s something that you do to build upon and actually build the foundation that everyone agrees on the principles. So that’s, that’s really, really important for me,
[00:12:55] obviously, a lot of the work that you do and you mentioned around culture, do you feel there’s like a bigger need now for company culture and the modern work environment?
[00:13:08] Jo: [00:13:08] Um, I think so, definitely that sense of belonging to something, whatever that something is and having shared values with that something , will be, I think will be really important. And it will be fascinating over the next few months to see how this shakes out. But I think the organizations, how organizations have dealt with the pandemic. Or return to work, return to work places or the great to return to the office as I keep calling it how they deal with that is going to inform talent and employees about it’s a really sort of like invisible signal, I think, as to an organization’s culture and leadership.
[00:13:55] Danny: [00:13:55] Do you have a way that you define culture to people? So everyone’s got their, their version of it. Do you ever way that you define it?
[00:14:03] Jo: [00:14:03] I think I usually stick with it. It’s the way that we do things around here, because so much of it is you can’t really quantify or qualify sometimes, but you know, when you see it, definitely. So it’s a bit of a rubbish answer really, but that’s, that’s kind of that sums it up for me.
[00:14:21] Danny: [00:14:21] I think if you’ve worked anywhere and if you take a step back. And then you give yourself time to review it. That’s exactly what he’d say. It’s the behaviors that are either rewarded or the behaviors that people do when their backs are turned or, the boss isn’t looking or the leadership team isn’t looking.
[00:14:41] I wonder if it’s the returns to the office might be a much harder for people and it might be a big sort of hangover social hangover for some, because they are so used to the complex habits form in 88 days days, et cetera we will to that stat. I wonder many people are going out and live in life, again, as much as much as possible.
[00:15:01]I wonder if people have the ability to return to the office and do the work that they should be doing or can convert back into return to the office. I wonder when talking to your clients or your potential clients, is there, is there a stair that you’re given people.
[00:15:19] Jo: [00:15:19] So I think there’s, well, there’s so many stairs.
[00:15:23] It’s another change. So if you think of it like that, when you go through change and your listeners will probably know this one, we go through a curve, it’s old school but it’s the change curve. Everybody goes through that curve differently. My experience of change is going to be different to yours.
[00:15:42] Yours will be different to mine and remembering that as we’ve been doing over the last 16 months or the pandemic, we’ve all been dealing with us in different ways and we’re all experiencing it. We’re all feeling it in different ways. It’s showing up differently. This exactly the same. So if you apply the principles of listening to people, um, and hearing what they’re saying, and then feeding back, all of the stuff that we talk around around organization change pretty much applies in this context too.
[00:16:14] So, yeah, it’s, it’s those kinds of basic principles listening, being at the top of my list. Yeah.
[00:16:20] I’d love to say in two ears, one mouth. Yep. That’s stuff. That’s how every leader
[00:16:29] I’ve had that drummed into me from a very young age. Yeah.
[00:16:33] Danny: [00:16:33] Yeah. It’s amazing. How, if you give someone the platform, they can they’re, convert and that they’re be able to, they want the time to talk and other people to listen.
[00:16:44] And I think there’s some leaders that have the fear of listening more than they speak. That means they feel that it means that they’re not leading anymore. And that’s such a misnomer, you know, don’t say misaligned to what actually happens. Is there like a, is there an example that you could give people that you went into, you don’t have to name names, but any organization that you went into and it was almost like it was a huge struggle. and thenpeople found out that the change, the company culture needed to shift it was there like in that curve that you were talking around, is there, was there something that happened there that you can talk through?
[00:17:22]Jo: [00:17:22] There’s usually a situation where in, when I, when I’ve been bought into projects , it’s usually quite, it has typically been quite late, um, because the idea of whatever’s been changed.
[00:17:39] So my background has been usually on large, large projects, large change projects. So it can be IT-based behavior change based mergers and acquisition, that sort of thing. So I’ve come in when the decision’s been made and the rollouts being planned and it’s like, how do we engage people? How do we communicate this?
[00:18:00] How do we help people along the journey for it? And at the point that I come in where they’re usually ready to announce something. So it’s a case of putting the plan together for that. And at that point then we’re, we’re on that curve. So the interesting point with that one, Danny, is that the leadership team who have been living with this thing for potentially two years or more in some cases can be longer and you know, this better than I do.
[00:18:34] They’ve been living with it for ages. So they’re really familiar with it. And they’re now presenting it to hundreds of people or thousands of people. So it’s a case of how do I put myself empathetically into a position of not knowing this I’ve all of those other people, and then taking them through that journey and anticipate them.
[00:18:56] What the questions are going to be, how they might feel about it. And, you know, without flying the flag for consultants, if we’re not married to it, we can ask all the questions because we’re not in that detail that a leader has been in before. Plus we’re kind of organization agnostic because we’ve not been in there long enough.
[00:19:19] So we can ask what sounds like quite dumb questions, but they’re not, they’re going to get to the heart of what’s needed.
[00:19:25]Danny: [00:19:25] I don’t think there’s ever a stupid question.
[00:19:27] Jo: [00:19:27] No, there’s not,
[00:19:28] Danny: [00:19:28] there’s a clarifying question. So, I’ve worked on R and D and M and M and A, and one thing, you know, I’ve been through IPOs and acquisitions and been on the leadership team.
[00:19:45] One thing that you unfortunately, you can’t tell the truth a hundred percent of the time you have to, you have to. There’s some things you can’t talk around. So one of the things that you, you really struck a chord with me on is leadership teams will have to do one two three years of comms internally in it just between the leadership team, that the rest of the organization will have no idea on it’s completely agree on the consultant side.
[00:20:13] How would you, how do you go around helping leaders communicate something that they’ve communicated to death between themselves, but now they have to communicate in such a way that’s going to resonate and they can’t seem to be bored on or that they have to be so empathetic in because it’s a huge shift. It’s a huge change. Is there a way that you help people with that?
[00:20:36] Jo: [00:20:36] It’s that’s a really good question. And you see it. The other thing that you see too, just going to just a little bit that you talked about the four ounce, that one is the teamwork and the leadership team working together. And it’s making sure that, although they’ve gone through the motions of it, are they actually all in it?
[00:20:57] So because you can drive a truck every day, if you’re not careful, um, cause people’s awareness is heightened, so they will spot it. If, if you, or say Mr. Jones is kind of thinking or when I think it’s a great idea, but we, you know, I think we can probably not do this bit because you’re not aligned as a leadership.
[00:21:18] Mr. Smith’s way off on a different tangent. So there’s that unity as a leadership team that I think is important. Um, but not necessarily all being sort of drones around it. It’s having had a robust conversation about what it means for you as individuals and as part of a larger organization. And to your question about how you get people engaged, it’s almost like starting again, really.
[00:21:43] So you might be bored with it, but there’s a little bit of like the challenge of the questions, the putting content together, because I would imagine , be great to get your view on this, but a lot of the content that leaders will be dealing with is not, they will have done communication stuff, but being from a different perspective.
[00:22:03] So it will be from a P and L perspective or a, how are we going to turn this into some sort of value? Whereas this piece is, how am I going to get people? It’s a hearts and minds. So there’s that different perspective. It’s hard work sometimes but it’s, you’ve just got to do it.
[00:22:20] Danny: [00:22:20] Yeah, definitely. There’s the event.
[00:22:24] Everyone has a role to play in that, especially from the leadership team. And it doesn’t have to be the middle initial, say if you’re a CFO, it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you deliver the financial pieces of information. It comes better because you, you speak with authority, complete authority on it.
[00:22:40] But I think sometimes some CEOs or founders or co-founders are almost too close to it. So the way I’ve I was thinking it comes better. Leaders lead is to say in, but I think often if you’re not the greatest communicator, it’s important that you utilize the people around you who, who can deliver it in such a way and storytelling in a we’ve taken it each side, we thought about it. This is how we’ve landed. This is where the feedback is. This is the communication cadence that we’d love buzzword bingo there.
[00:23:12]This is the way that we want you to be engaged or we’d love for you to being engaged. Obviously you’re going to have some questions go away and condense it and digest it and then come back to us.
[00:23:23] And here’s the way that, or would prefer it. I’ve experienced it in Europe where you bring two brands together. And people weren’t sitting, you want to know what team shirt they’re going to wear, what color kit they have to put on. And is it going to be this, or is it going to be that, or is it this brand powered by, or was it that brand by X and often those questions can’t be answered.
[00:23:50] And in human nature with we’re tribal, we want to know how to survive. So human nature, we’ve got two things that we were born in born and bred in all of us is we have to find a tribe to survive, but then we want to be individualistic and stand out. So how do we shifted a tribal to herd?
[00:24:08] And then how do you make sure that we’re herd? And we stand out enough in, in this and something I learned really early on was when you’re going through change or you’re going through a big change it’s to make people feel like they’re steps to it. There isn’t this huge. There’s a step and it’s going to take faith and it’s going to take everyone to be part of the movement. It’s not a tomorrow. We’re going to shut it down. Are big companies that do do that. You know, the really big tech companies will or acquire and shut down, but they tend to call it an Aqua higher or they tend to call it out. So people have an understanding of what it means.
[00:24:47] Some of the most senior people I’ve worked with deal with changed at work the hardest, because they felt like it hits them harder as opposed to of younger or lower down the hierarchy as it were.
[00:25:00] So I think there’s such a difficult challenge for internal people. I think that’s where consultants really earn them really own the buck is, is they go in and they can, they can help shape it can help organize. They can help. Like you said, break down those questions. And I think if you can’t have clarifying questions and you can’t think of it from all your stakeholders self and it’s internal, so it’s your, your employees and then it’s your external customers and then potentially your stakeholders to the owners or their shareholders.
[00:25:33] I think if you can’t answer all of those questions and it, isn’t almost all aligned, then, that’s where you really do need the consultant. And that’s where they really earn the bang for their buck, in my opinion.
[00:25:46] Jo: [00:25:46] And you’re never going to have all the answers. There’s two things that really stood out from me from when you were just talking.
[00:25:52] So one is you don’t have all the answers and there’s being honest that you don’t have all the answers because if you are taking it from different perspectives, you’re never going to think about all of that. And the humility to be able to say, that’s a really good question. I’m going to take that away and I’m going to come back to you and then come back to people don’t disappear.
[00:26:11] So that one, and then the other one about the tribal aspect, I think we it’s such a good reminder and CA and COVID has been such a good reminder of this, that a lot of what we, how we are as human beings is evolved of centuries of evolution and our responses haven’t changed, although our outside world has.
[00:26:31] So we’re still responding in the same way as running across the Savannah with a spear, obviously not in my case, that would be your job, but, um, I’ve been around a campfire, but that sort of, those sort of responses, and I, we get, we still get surprised, but.
[00:26:47] Danny: [00:26:47] This is. Yeah, I think there’s like the fight flight and freeze people often just think it’s fight and flight, but freezes is one of the most natural reactions that we have.
[00:26:57] And it’s so important that people call that out and say, you know what things aren’t going to change. Or if you feel like you need to fight. That’s completely fine. If you need to, if there’s flight and that’s your natural instinct, again, that’s fine. But until something happens or towed as a really big challenge, you don’t really see people’s true person in there to their true self. I know it’s overused more recently, but I finished completely true. And that’s where leadership traits are so important to me. So everyone thinks a leaders is different, so if you asked, we went and voxbox 10 people now, everyone would give you a different example or a different trait.
[00:27:36] Is there like, a trait that you. Called out or a few traits that you’d call out from a leadership perspective, that that is a leader to you?
[00:27:46]Jo: [00:27:46] empathy is one I know, and I firmly believe we can learn that emotional intelligence. The other one is humility, which kind of comes with empathy , so knowing that you don’t have all the answers and that you don’t have to make all the decisions and that other people in the organization, if you’ve got a bigger one, a bigger organization, they will know how to do stuff that you won’t possibly know, and they will have the answers that you don’t have.
[00:28:16] So it’s being prepared to ask, listen, again, you’ll hear this from me a lot. Listen, and then feedback so that, they’re the ones that really strike me. And that, then that goes with the ability to build trust, because trust is a deal breaker.
[00:28:34] Danny: [00:28:34] I think once trust is lost, isn’t it? There’s no going back.
[00:28:37] Really.
[00:28:39] Jo: [00:28:39] It’s really hard if you lose it, it’s really hard to go back. I think you can, but it’s, it’s very difficult.
[00:28:47]Danny: [00:28:47] The merger and acquisition that you’re talking about previously it’s trust is such a, it’s such a fine line, such a sheet of ice for so many people, because you might have some finance dedicated their time on it.
[00:29:01] You might have a lot of leadership team that they’ll go off and hide for a long time and become unavailable, or you know, not to interrupt them. And that say that just grates on people’s trust and it devalues the trust that you’ve built. And that’s the, some parts of the broken mode of work is definitely like being able to, and I completely appreciate why it’s been able to be as honest as possible, be as transparent as possible.
[00:29:29] And if you can be empathetic and you say that is something I can’t talk around, I know this must be frustrating. It’s for the positive, et cetera, et cetera. I think if you can communicate that that’s one of the most important traits as a leader. Is there a person or, or a theme of leaders that you, you would say as a leader to you don’t have to name names or name and shame, but is there a leader at court screams out to you when someone says leader?
[00:29:56] Jo: [00:29:56] Yeah, I’ve got a couple in my head who have, are probably, um, composites of several people over the years and yeah, that’s probably true, actually. They are composites and they’ve been leaders that I’ve worked for or worked with. And it has been around that empathy that I haven’t, you know, that I can’t tell you everything.
[00:30:20] I’ll tell you what I can when I can. And it w you know, when I do have all the information, I’ll tell you that sort of thing. It’s refreshing, which it feels a bit of a shame to say that in a way. Cause it feels like that should be the way that we all do it , but I think a lot of it is learned behavior.
[00:30:38] So we’ve all grown up with leaders like that. So that’s what we do because we think that’s the way that you do it. So I don’t quite know. Um, it’d be interesting in your work as you move forward about how, how we change that. Because I think that is a bit broken. We’re just repeating patterns that we’ve all learned.
[00:30:56] Um, from the days that my dad used to go into a factory every morning, work on a factory floor and they had a union and that was the way you did things. And in some cases that hasn’t changed much. So
[00:31:07]Danny: [00:31:07] There’s definitely a conditioning that you get from, from before and different leaders. And then I fitness when you’re within a business for a set period of time. It’s the behaviors that set you up to succeed in that operation, in that business. And that’s part of the political game that no one wants to talk around. And it’s very difficult for someone, you know, who does strategy company culture change is, is to recognize and talk openly around playing the game.
[00:31:37] It’s something that if we coach people, it kind of has to come up and it has to be talked through sure. Really interested in that people within organizations don’t call that out. And isn’t something that you copy in. And lot of people become conditioned by the current boss or their boss’s boss.
[00:31:55] And it’s something that’s rarely called out. I wonder if you think there’s a way we could fix it, or there’s a way that consultants like you and I could, help businesses. I have a formalized it in a better way. Or make it to something that everyone knows is part and parcel of your job, but actually in a bad boss doesn’t mean that you will be successful. He might just be little bit more successful in this company, not for your wider career?
[00:32:22] Jo: [00:32:22] I think that’s the $64 million question, is how you break it. And I think it will be in some organizations that will do it first. And I think there’ll be, the reward will be in the talent that they get and they keep talent. There’s a whole different conversation around talent retention, but attracting the right talent for however long that’s relevant for the organization. And the individual will, I think, make a big difference, but I think it’s chipping away almost. I don’t think it’s an overnight thing. Do you?
[00:32:58] Danny: [00:32:58] I don’t. There’s so many different business model types. But one thing that in archives, I shout and scream about having a culture community manager, someone who sole job is to make people aware, connect people, helping them become better individuals, better managers better communicators, et cetera. And I think that it isn’t a hire and fire HR role because there’s isn’t a trust there despite how much people want to call it.
[00:33:30] A people team it’s still untrusted, if we Vox post a million people or guarantee 800,000 people would say they don’t trust the HR team. So I don’t think it can come from HR, but I think those types of roles are going to be really important in the future. I think that there isn’t an overnight success, but what you could do in smaller organizations is you could pull everyone together and say here his bad Behaviour, he is was good behavior. And here’s how a reward, those types of behaviors moving forward. I struggle with many organizations when I say what is, how do you reward good behavior? How’d you call that bad behavior. And often it’s based on results and can it’s landing opportunity in every result. It’s just often we only celebrate the wins.
[00:34:23] Actually, if we’ve learned a huge amount and it’s improved everyone, that’s probably arguably better to celebrate than hitting a arbitrary number on a spreadsheet, or that hits your targets doesn’t actually help anyone else progress. And there’s going to need to be certain set of leaders or a group of consultants that help improve that because at some point, you know, the Simon Sinek, why everyone’s asking what their, why is now. And I think that’s important. but people are going to ask, why does it work this way? Why is the culture set in this way? How would I be rewarded for great behavior?
[00:35:00] These are sort of questions that people were starting to ask, which is great, but a lot of businesses can’t answer or if they do answer it, it’s in perks. So it’s weird out. We have office dogs or we have table tennis, or we gave karaoke every first day. Kerrick is great because it gets people around and did the same activity and that’s what helps grow affinity, but their perks and they don’t really help people understand how it can be successful for much longer period of time.
[00:35:27] So
[00:35:28] Jo: [00:35:28] I, I know a lot of that comes from your individual relationships and you, I think from my own experience of working in house, I tended to align with people that thought the same thought the same way or were polar opposites. So I could have a good debate. Yeah, and I’m kind of not too much in the middle.
[00:35:47] Um, but yeah, there’s, there’s some important stuff that you’ve just talked around around failing forward. And how do we learn more from things that don’t go well? And I don’t think we do enough of that. I
[00:36:00]Danny: [00:36:00] My opinion is we’re all time constraint and people would feel like it needs more meetings where it doesn’t. There’s ways that you can break down these things that happen. You can talk around them more authentically. You can be more deliberate in how you communicate and you can have, awards is a great thing that, that sort of, if people have bought into them, they love them. And I think there are certain ways that you can gamify I say people.will have failure of the week in certain businesses. I can’t remember is a big example. That is a start, but that does it and celebrate break it. And I think it’s every Friday or every, every fortnight that they celebrate a fail of the week instead of one, give a free tip away and steal it. If you like to, the listeners is whenever I have teams or I work with teams, it’s one when two challenges sort of went into the week or the fortnight and a month. So you can all celebrate a win together and feeling like you’ve contributed, and then you can all tackle a challenge together. So then there’s the reason why I say two is because typically someone will moan and bitch about one, but then it’d be a genuine challenge that they’re facing and they could do with some help with, and it’s how people collaborate together. When has a challenge really shows that the team dynamic and the spirit and shows people how to tackle it. Is there something like that you do in the way that you do? Is there the secret sauce, but something that people could, you don’t mind giving away and people can borrow.
[00:37:37] Jo: [00:37:37] I think there’s, there’s lots, actually. I think that piece around challenge and sharing things that haven’t gone so well, and then how you’ve dealt with them. And I had one last week, so I gave a presentation to a client and we’d done a run through and it, on the day it didn’t quite work as we’d planned.
[00:38:01] So quite a lot of the people who were on the other end of a screen couldn’t see me or my slides. So luckily over the years, I’ve decided that having loads of words on slides, isn’t a great thing. So that wasn’t too bad. But what I discovered was that my own experience of going through lots of learning over, locked down.
[00:38:23] meant I’ve seen lots of good presenters and facilitators. I didn’t realize that I’d gone somewhere in my, the back of my brain to go, ah, now I know how to use chat.
[00:38:34]So that was a game changer for me. It’s like, right, this is how I’m going to do things in the future because it gives a different experience in a corporate environment. So although it was something that I was, you know, I don’t think everybody realized how much I was panicking inside. It was a better outcome because it’s given me something to me forward with. So I think sharing those, but creating the right atmosphere in the team where people feel comfortable with sharing that stuff, have a laugh about it, but then learn from each other about what’s going well.
[00:39:04] Don’t you think we do a lot of that too. I think we do the, Hey I’ve I’ve got this deal and it’s this X, Y, and Z. Then we move on. But we don’t go through how much I had to get to, to get that deal. And how many kind of positions, rather than run the post, I had to go to get that to where it needed to be. So that would be my one is just talk to people about it.
[00:39:29] Social media is great for that, that we present this, this perspective of how good stuff is, but there’s a lot of stuff going on in the background. Like you can’t see how messy my desk is at the moment. Okay. I think, you know how great things are because you can see my lovely wall and, and screen behind me.
[00:39:47] Yeah.
[00:39:47] Danny: [00:39:47] It was a brilliant colored to be a hundred percent
[00:39:55] is quite eye catching color, actually. It’s yeah, it’s great. And some of it, you said that I’d love to just dive, dive into a little bit is you said all the, the steps or the hoops that they jumped through. I often find that it’s the people that they jumped through and with but often they don’t call that out and that’s something that I’ve learned more and more over the years is, you know my other in my pocket, Marva pocast my co-host Nick us identity question and he basically asks what team sports did you do in your growing up? Or what sports did you participate in? And if they don’t say a team sport, he then says, tell me about like a service shop you might have, or your first job to understand if you’re a team player or not or I call it single or doubles player. Like are they singles or can they, can they play over for people? And it’s really important. And that’s something people don’t necessarily ask enough and they don’t really prize out of people.
[00:40:53] Do you think there is a room for Teams to be called out more often and sort of more collaboration to be called hours. Do you think that’s something that is more and more important now because it takes more and more people to do anything and work?
[00:41:11] Jo: [00:41:11] I think collaboration is, is a win. Um, and I think the pandemic has showed that even more. It’s really highlighted it, particularly when , I can spend seven or eight hours or more in this room on my own, but I’m collaborating virtually with people to get a result.
[00:41:31] So I feel less lonely. I feel less isolated. I feel like we’re achieving something. Even if my contribution is really small, I feel part of something. So there’s a whole lot of work and. Not overthinking it, but just thinking about how teams can work in this environment more and how we try to work across silos a bit more than we do.
[00:41:59] Um, I’m not a big fan of silos if you might get,
[00:42:02]Danny: [00:42:02] I said, uh, there’s a, a book called the bomber mafia and it’s Malcolm Gladwell. And I don’t often read, I love some of his stuff, but the book really resonated with me because in world war II, it’s based around world war two and went in the war.
[00:42:19] It’s a leadership book, as I would call it out. I don’t think it’s some other people read it. They won’t see it as that. They’ll see it as real hard war or war book. Um, but essentially they, they built inside those. So they go off and build like bombs and things to make, to create as much damage as possible.
[00:42:39] And unfortunately deaths,. But they built it in silos. And that’s basically one of the parts to say they built inside of silo’s. But then people took a risk to use it before having to prove that it worked and then just show the destruction and then it won. And then the allied forces used it and basically won the war.
[00:42:59] It’s a brilliantly told story, I’ve probably done it a disjustice, but I think that when you join a company, I call it a work graph. When you join a company, you anyone, whatever level you are, you tend to be given a buddy and then they your first light in a circle as an index, I bet Dunbar’s number.
[00:43:19] And then over time, you’re you interact with more and more people. So more would light shine up and you have to decide whether they’re close to you, that you know that they have a work friend or a colleague, or just an acquaintance or just someone in your office. And I think 20 20, 20 21. Become this great unfollow where you’ve decided because of lack of interaction that they’re not as important and that’s completely fine.
[00:43:44] But when people return back to the office, I think there’s going to be this huge shift where people actively have to decide whether they follow them or they unfollow them. And I think what companies don’t do well enough is help craft that work graph for you. So they don’t help you say, these people are going to help you be successful.
[00:44:04] So when you join a company, they never say these people are going to help you be successful and this is how you are going to be successful. No company that I know of ever speak to you does that. And I wonder if there’s we should be more deliberate in that. And is that something that you subconsciously help people build in your, in your work?
[00:44:26] I think it’s
[00:44:27] Jo: [00:44:27] because I’ve mentored, I’m just trying to think. I’ve mentored a couple of people for quite awhile, and that is around navigating. A lot of it is around navigating organizations. And that’s what a lot of the work that I did with my mentors and coaches has been, how do I navigate organizations?
[00:44:45] How do I navigate situations that political landscape that you were talking about? Because in the first three months, six months, 12 months in an organization, sometimes it’s really depends on the organization. What layers of politics have got, it can be really difficult to navigate and then find out who the best person is to do that.
[00:45:06] And that goes right back to that point, where I mentioned about emotional intelligence, there’s a level of self-awareness so that you can understand where your time is best spent. It sounds a bit ruthless, but you’ve only got finite number of dials in a day to do a job. So how can you use those relationships in the best way?
[00:45:25] And then aware that other people are going to use you for your relationship with them as well. So it does sound a bit brutal, but that’s how it works in organizations. And as you said, you know, you’ve got work friends, but that’s a different perspective.
[00:45:39] Danny: [00:45:39] Okay. I think the brief time is so important.
[00:45:42] It’s the one thing people don’t realize, like I fit in. That’s what some of the Chinese apps did so much better than the Western apps is they mapped out time so that they knew when you used to typically commute, they knew when you’re going to be at work. They knew when people typically had lunch breaks and cigarette breaks and they mapped to all doubt.
[00:46:00] And then they thought this is the time that we’re going to capture. And this is how S is how our app is going to dominate that time. And if someone, there’s a company out there. That’s going to do this and I’d love it to be me, but I don’t have, unfortunately don’t have the raise of investment or the VC money or the angel investment yet.
[00:46:22] But there’s times in the day where we’re really productive. And I guarantee you, if you asked most managers, when you you’d asked them out of your team, who’s successful in the morning, who performs? When do they perform best? They probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. So for instance, I’m a morning person. Since I have a glass of water, I’m up and ready. And after two, three o’clock in the afternoon, I’m useless. So someone puts me in a meeting, I have to a hundred percent concentrate, and there’s not a chance that you’re going to get the best out of me. That’s why I think shift patterns have to come back into the workplace. I think in a flexi time is important, but I think we should, we should really think around timing and time structure.
[00:47:05] There’s a lot of tools out there that try and do it. I just, for me, it makes sense that we build software and help people realize when they’re most effective and when, and how to be successful within meetings, within projects, within campaigns, within one-to-one appraisals, et cetera, just there isn’t something that, that does that.
[00:47:26] There’s loads of tools that could help, but I don’t think there was enough tools or software that really helps people know how to be successful. Who’s going to help them on their journey and how they can help other people. Because when you join, you’re there to be part of the bigger we you know, not the me, it’s the way we have to connect with a bigger company.
[00:47:47] So how can you help them do that? And at some point it will come I’m sure, but it has to be done for the right reasons, not just to squeeze more, more effort and energy out. Because actually people need to be more deliberate. And I don’t know what you think about this is, do you think we need more focus time, like more deep work, time, less meetings, people to be able to disconnect and just get their head down?
[00:48:15] Jo: [00:48:15] Yeah. I can talk about this for a very long time, because it’s around, it’s around wellbeing as well. So how do you and this again, pandemic really put the spotlight on this , I’ve a really good buddy that I’ve been working with throughout the pandemic , and we use productivity planner. So it works on the Pomodoro technique of for people that don’t know.
[00:48:40] So you work in 25 minute sprints. So I work at a standing desk and, uh, the aim is that an alarm will go off.
[00:48:47] I write the most important thing of the day. I’m a morning person like dummy. I’m not part of the five 30 club. I’m sorry, but I’m around the six 30 club, but I know when the best time of the day is for me to work which means that I get more fulfillment out of it.
[00:49:04]So I’m just echoing what you’ve said, really, but that has been a learning experience for me over the last of five years, about when I’m most productive. And therefore when I get the best out of myself and then where I can offer time for clients and where deep work really matters and how to do that better.
[00:49:21] The other aspect is meetings, which I could spend a whole podcast talking about meetings. There is a law called Parkinson’s law. I don’t know if you know this one where you feel the amount of time you have available. So if you’re an hours meeting, you will fill an hour. So why don’t you shave 10 or 15 minutes off a meeting and give people the chance to get a drink and have a wee,. You know, that that sort of thing is there’s, there’s some basic things that we can do just to, to make a difference. And I think we’ve gone the other way in lockdown of, because you can be in front of a computer all day, you haven’t got wandering around from meeting to meeting to do in an office.
[00:50:01] Your time’s gone.
[00:50:02] Danny: [00:50:02] Exactly. There’s an ops director and operations director. I’m helping and their calendar I get everyone to screenshot their calendar and send it to me. And often there for three or four overlaps and often it’s with the same people. So effectively what they’re doing is they’re just spending mornings and or hole whole afternoons and having lunch at the laptop, just changing subjects and it doesn’t start or stop. It just continues. So when I had to look and I said, well, you’re 60 minutes, cut down to 50. And if you’ve got 55, you’ve got five minutes. And then move on to me in, in the morning, shift them down and then cutup the way, because typically people aren’t as productive in the afternoons, but the Parkinson’s always exactly right.
[00:50:53] Like I try and get people to shave time to get back. I don’t like the ones that you have a meeting to have another meeting, you know, that’s one of my pet peeves always hated it. Like, um, if you’ve got 20 people in a meeting, 15 of them are not going to say a word, not to be engaged, not going to add any value to it.
[00:51:09] And they’re just going to get upset. So, meeting recovery syndrome, Mrs.
[00:51:13] Jo: [00:51:13] Yeah.
[00:51:14]Danny: [00:51:14] If he designed your meetings more effectively, you get better out. So completely agree. You’ve been amazing and, I know we align on so many things. Is there any, any other well-being tips you could, you could offer.
[00:51:28]Jo: [00:51:28] Well, the classics hydration vastly underrated, massively important. I think your brain uses if I’ve got this right, someone will correct me if I’m wrong. I know it uses 20% of your body’s energy. So you got a fuel it properly. Hydration is the number one. I had a tip from someone a few weeks ago, which has really stuck with me.
[00:51:50] So then my other biggie is sleep. So that’s kind of like non-negotiable, really. So someone said to me a few weeks ago, that when you go to sleep, there’s a little army of work people that go through your body, repairing stuff overnight, this the easiest way for me to explain it. And they go in, they go through your brain and all of your body to fix stuff.
[00:52:12] They need hydration and they need sleep to be able to do that effectively. If you don’t have that, then you wake up groggy. So one question I had from somebody a few weeks ago, when I was talking to Paul at sleep was with the wellbeing effective, going out for a few beers and having less sleep, be a trade off of like totally up to you, whatever you want.
[00:52:33] But yeah, so because we’re all a little bit of starved of human contact, there might be some trade offs going on in that respect. So
[00:52:42] Danny: [00:52:42] that’s one of the questions I get. Cause I was asking if people are introverted ambiverted or orange of it, say if you’re an extrovert, you get energy from other people interface, you get it from yourself.
[00:52:53] Ambiverts tend to get energy and they run away , they go to the group, get what they get, what they need or help collaborate. Then after, after we get away and energize, I definitely am ambivert. I’ve known this all my life. I probably have to have had to become more ambivert it over time. So I used to say I’m a extroverted introvert and then realized ambiverts actually exists but I wonder if, if you think there’d be a trade off in sort of organizations in company culture, moving forward on some extroverts going to have to want to spend more time outside of work, you know, the beers and the, the less sleep. That’s the way that they feel like they connect with their colleagues.
[00:53:35] Do you think there is something that might have to be a trade-off?
[00:53:40] Jo: [00:53:40] Um, I think we all need social contact. From one end of the scale to the other. So I tend to be, I’ve realized over the years, I’m more of an ambivert than I am the other either too. I’m much more introverted than I thought I was.
[00:53:56] And I learned that through the pandemic. I need time to think. There’s going to be a need for people to understand that social piece. So I think our own natural responses to how different people behave when they, we, you know, when we have locked down, released those, now we respond in different ways to people going out and going out to the pub and stuff like that.
[00:54:24] So, that’s that real craving for trying to get back to something. Alison and mixing socially. The other thing is not to underestimate I found a fabulous article, which was shared by someone else. And I can’t remember who it was and I’ll send it to you for the show notes or medium about quiet people in meetings you mentioned there, so you might have 20 people in a meeting. Um, 18 are probably the most vocal ones. I know the rest of them the other two, you’ve probably got some nuggets in there that just don’t come out in the meeting, but they’ll come out somewhere else so understanding that there are different dynamics in your teams, but the quiet people thing. I mean, I, when I first started out in my consulting career, I had a client who said to me, you don’t say much in meetings. You’ve been two weeks and I went, but I’m listening. I’m trying to learn. And I don’t know enough to be able to contribute. And I’m not going to say anything unless it’s valuable and I’ve learned that over the years.
[00:55:27] So yeah, you can learn so much from listening to
[00:55:30] people.
[00:55:31] Danny: [00:55:31] Does that a quick story I can share. I was in a executive remote away week and we were on day free. So it was a Wednesday and we’re in the middle of a meeting and we’re talking around , sales and performance. And I hadn’t said anything for the whole morning.
[00:55:49] And that was deliberate because until I’m one of those people, until you need to say something, you don’t have to say it. Or if you can’t add value, you don’t, don’t have to hear your own voice. And someone pulled me aside and said, you haven’t really said anything. And I said, I don’t need to. And. Spare my words and have more impact from when I say something, as opposed to saying something.
[00:56:15] And some people would see that as a weakness. And I see that as a complete strength. And I’m one of those people that sometimes has to Murray task to concentrate. So if I’m in the meeting, I’ll scribble or make notes, just so I’ve made sure that I’ve taken it in. When quiet people , have something important to say, it’s important that people listen or that you’re confident enough to even stand up, if you have to, to deliver something.
[00:56:42] And I think that’s a really important lesson that people can take away is because everyone else shouts and screams and says words. That don’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean that you have to, and the higher up you go the totem pole, the less that you should have to say, the more that you should try and be deliberate and have really focused communication around them, be really deliberate. In what you’re delivering as a page to that for experienced people that tend to be a little bit naive or have a fear of not being on the same level, they were over talking over communicate. So a little tip for people.
[00:57:18]What I try and do is a quick fire round. is there one book that you recommend,
[00:57:24]Jo: [00:57:24] The book that I keep revisiting is a book called, imagine it forward by Beth Comstock and she was, I think if I’ve got it, I’ve got it on my shelf. Uh, vice chair of general electric.
[00:57:39] It’s probably the book. I’ve read in the last five years, it’s got the main post-it notes in it, which is usually a good sign. Um, and it’s got some great quotes in it. And, but the great thing about it is it’s got lots of practical tips, like how to run workshops and stuff like that. So it’s a really useful practical book.
[00:58:00] I love a bit of theory, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to kind of do something with it. So that that’s the one that I keep revisiting to me forever.
[00:58:08] Danny: [00:58:08] I think I’m going to order that straight away.
[00:58:10] Jo: [00:58:10] Yes. Dead, dead. Good read.
[00:58:13] Danny: [00:58:13] Is there one podcast that you’d recommend to people?
[00:58:16] Jo: [00:58:16] Wow. Um, with I’m, I’m, don’t listen to many podcasts.
[00:58:20] I probably listened to about a maximum of five. Uh, the one that I listened to all the time is Dr. Rangan chatterjee’s for you better live more. And he has some fabulous guests and they’re all about things related to wellbeing and like having a good life really, but great podcast.
[00:58:39]Danny: [00:58:39] It’s one of those that you invest the time in and you realize you don’t realize where the time has gone.
[00:58:43] You just it’s con it’s just brain food. Yep.
[00:58:47] Jo: [00:58:47] Totally brilliant.
[00:58:49] Danny: [00:58:49] Is there a one news or a source of information that you’d share like that you, you openly share a lot?
[00:58:55] Jo: [00:58:55] Um, so the one that I, I don’t share enough actually, and, uh, you just prompted me actually that I should share it more. So I’m a fellow of the Royal society.
[00:59:05] I’ll try and get this right of arts manufacturers and commerce. And they’re all about really making an impact really, and the stuff on their website and the newsletter is really thought provoking ideas around education and how we make society better, really, but there’s some brilliant stuff.
[00:59:28] Danny: [00:59:28] I’ll definitely add that in the show notes, is there a video or a course that you’ve, that you would recommend, or I’ll give you an example. One I always share is, um, there’s a famous Ted video and I’m not a big Ted shaver, but, um, where a guy starts dancing on the field and then other people join in it’s for her, didn’t say in a prime example of when people clap at conference, other people clap, or if a geek or concert people singing along the dancing ones, brilliant three minutes of pure human (people) watching, which is brilliant.
[01:00:00] Do you have one that you would, that you share or that you share regularly?
[01:00:07]Jo: [01:00:07] A little bit on the RSA stuff again. So they do RSA shorts. And there’s a few on their website. There’s not a huge number of them. So I came across them because they’ve done some work. They’ve done a short, uh of some Brenae brown of Brennan brown talks. So they basically animate the talk they’d great little nuggets for just getting ideas across.
[01:00:32] So if you’re time poor or your concentration poor, in my case, sometimes it’s a really good tool and I share those in my newsletter now. And again, so I’ve got loads of Ted talks that I could bore you rigid with that yeah. But I think those ones are really cool because they’re so tight and short.
[01:00:50]Danny: [01:00:50] We’ll definitely share that. Share that as well. And just the last question, what’s your number one piece of advice that you’d give anyone on their organizational journey?
[01:01:02] Jo: [01:01:02] Hmm. Um, my number one piece of advice, number one piece of advice is.
[01:01:09] Ask questions and don’t think you have all the answers, that’s it just being prepared to ask or be nosy? Basically.
[01:01:20]Danny: [01:01:20] If someone comes into an organization that has been there for a while and does it, can’t find the answers, I’m a huge believer in knowledge shares and wikis, because rather than an having to in a search slack or teams or email, there should be essentially a space where people can find it, but be nosy is brilliant because what I used to love about how I would Google operate as you could go.
[01:01:43] And you could essentially an open door meeting, so you could go and sit in them. And I think that’s where people learn the most is where they are I’ve been curious, had been nosy and find the information. Obviously not bombarding them with questions, but trying to help people understand that you have to go and source information.
[01:02:01] You have to ask question and just to wrap up, is there a, how can people find you? Where would you like them to connect with you?
[01:02:09] If, if their ideal clients are out there, is there somewhere that you’d send them?
[01:02:14] Jo: [01:02:14] So I hung out mostly on LinkedIn and on Twitter. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Jo Twiselton, and I’m on Twitter at Joe Twiz.
[01:02:23] If you are vaguely interested in photographs of nature, you can find me on Instagram as well under Jotwis. That’s pretty much all I post on Instagram is do a daily walk and a daily picture, which is kind of my wellbeing thing for the pandemic helped me
[01:02:38]Danny: [01:02:38] What’s the favorite picture that you’ve taken?
[01:02:41] Jo: [01:02:41] Golly. Oh, so we used to have in the early days of the pandemic where we used to go through. On a fence near the church yard, there was a little plastic cat that someone had put there and we called him monsieur le chat. So there is, there are a lot of pictures of monsieur le chat on there.
[01:02:58] If you want to look for a plastic cap from 2020. Um, but there’s lots of other things on there. Um, and then if you want to visit my website, I’m at twist consultants.co.uk, and you can sign up for my newsletter on there and that’ll give you weekly updates on a monthly newsletter.
[01:03:16]Danny: [01:03:16] Thank you very much, Jo.
[01:03:18] Thank you, Danny. It’s been a pleasure.
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