Collaboration between teams with Corporate Fitness Services Lex Dwyer

00:00You're listening to the 2020 Marketing Series on the Growth Manifesto podcast, a Zoom video series brought to you by Web Profits, where we talk about how to drive business and marketing success through the rest of 2020. This episode is a discussion with Lex Dwyer, a business strategist with more than 38 years experience, helping companies drive improved performance. In this episode, we talk about how companies can leverage collaboration between teams, divisions, or departments to drive growth at the company level. So let's get into it. Today, I'm speaking with Lex Dwyer. He has been in business for longer than anyone else I know,

00:40since 1982. Same business, right? So 38 years as a business strategist. He works with organizations of all sizes and specializes, well, it's hard to say exactly what you specialize in, but you are strong in terms of collaboration and the facilitation of experience. Is that right? Yes, collaboration has been something that I've spent a fair bit of time exploring and it's ongoing and evolving because it can be pretty tricky.

01:12So I didn't necessarily set out to be working with that particular focus, but working with a number of organisations and sitting in on the sort of work they did, it became apparent to me that there was a bit of a challenge for them or for many organisations to get clear, A, what it would look like if it was going well and the practice of doing it.

01:43So a lot of the work that I do is about the practice of playing with concepts and principles around collaboration and seeing how they feel and what they look like. Yeah. So what kind of organizations have you worked with in terms of collaboration? What's your sweet spot? Well, probably financial services, professional services has been a big user of my particular business and a lot of business schools.

02:20So I've worked in a lot of business skills around Australia, looking to integrate this learning process through activity-based learning into their learning programs or executive development programs. So I think it's important to understand that my approach has been to provide some different ways of giving people experiences while they are learning, very, very practical, action-orientated learning.

02:53And so I've created a series of activities or games, if you like, that I bring into that learning environment. And I just have regular spots throughout a day where I will give them a break from their normal stuff and then give them an opportunity to play around with some of these concepts around collaboration. Fantastic, fantastic. I think it would be good to start with the definition then because I think collaboration is one of those things, right?

03:24It's like innovation. It's like one of those kind of like cool words that everyone likes to use. So how would you define collaboration? I would say it's to do with different groups or different teams working for a common goal. And as simplistic as that might sound, the interpretation of it within an organizational setting can end up looking quite different because the way teams or the way groups are rewarded isn't necessarily always connected to the greater good.

04:05And when people are rewarded for their efforts of the area that they have some responsibility or accountability for, they tend to focus in on that and sometimes lose sight of what their contribution to the greater good might look like. And so what happens is that we have a tension that becomes apparent between collaborative behaviour where we see the greater good and contribute directly to it and know what that looks like and competitive behaviour, which, you know, causes people to be more interested in their own areas performance and not so much because they have probably less direct input or control over.

04:53what other parts of the business are doing. So it's trying to find that sweet spot where people have a sense of being able to contribute directly to their own efforts, but also know how they might help others get better to do the work around the greater good. So it's complicated. And I think that's why it's difficult sometimes. So you really, because I think when I think of collaboration, this is probably for a lot of people right they're thinking individuals within the same team

05:28but what yeah but what you specialize in is between how different teams can come together and collaborate and that's right that is that's far more complex as well isn't it and so is it like a lot of the time within the same organization or is it within kind of the separate organization that this happens the most? You get lots of briefs. And so at the moment, I'm tending to work more with people

06:00from different organisations. You know, if you think about the sort of work I might do in a business school where you have representatives from many and varied companies coming together for the purposes of learning, you know, whatever the focus of that particular workshop might be. and it might be around strategy, it might be around sales, it might be around, you know, finance. It could be the content that they are there for draws them to it. But the thing that becomes interesting is that they, you know,

06:33if I ask a group of people, how many of you would say that within your organisation, there is some value lost when we think about the relationship between various teams or business units or divisions in your organization because of the way in which competitiveness or self-interest plays a bigger part than they would like so yeah at the moment I'm doing a lot with different people from different organizations but it's very

07:06interesting to work with in an organization where you have representatives from different parts of the business and when you start to just provide them with activities that aren't their normal work practice it becomes very apparent how some of the taken for granted assumptions about what they need to do to do well is really all about competition yeah because i think like and it's kind of like it's inbuilt into us because of the capitalist nature of the country that we're living

07:40right like you know we are built to compete to win right and that's what it is right now like i even have issues you know like i have a son um he's he's seven um he does pretty good at soccer but everybody got a participation prize and i was like i don't know if that participation prizes are the right thing to give but he was like oh it's also about having fun isn't it papa i was like oh yeah cool that's you can have fun but within an organization um how do you get different

08:12teams to collaborate especially when they might have to compete for budgets or they might have to compete um for promotions or they're trying to further themselves right and so like if i'm the manager right and i have like a couple of divisions that report to me and i'm trying to get them to collaborate better but how do i go about that you know so what does that look like right well i mean this a simple uh example is to look at the way people are rewarded right so if i reward you for

08:47your personal or your own just your own business unit results and expect you to work with others in a way that might in some way feel to you like you are losing focus or spending time that you don't have or resources that you could be otherwise doing, then you will not collaborate because you don't get rewarded for it. So I think the first place to look is to what are the reward systems that would encourage people to behave in a more collaborative way. And I think it ultimately

09:25becomes a leadership issue as to the way we try to find ways of getting the most out of people. I think competitive behaviour is really powerful. People understand it. But if you overuse it and you leave value on the table, then at what point do we say we need competitive behaviour, but we also need collaborative behaviour? If we know that we're very, very strong in competitive behaviour, because as you say, at schools, we have over the years and the sort of thing you're

10:02talking about with your son, I think is an example of trying to move away a little bit from such a strong focus on competitive behavior. But it's not a particularly well-rounded approach. It's just trying to do more of that, right? So I like to say is often, you know, simply not competing does not mean you're collaborating. Well, now what I mean by that, the absence of one does not imply the presence of another. And so the skills and the things that people bring to bear around

10:37being good competitors are not necessarily the same skills that they would bring to bear around collaborative behaviour. And so where I tend to start is to say, what are the sorts of relations, what are the relationships look like between either divisions, business units or whatever, and the people within those. And so many of the things I will do are about trying to get an appreciation for the people first and then the way in which my particular part of the group

11:12intersects with yours and if I don't know what it is that you really need to be doing to some extent I have no way of contributing in a positive way to it so there's relationships there's a bias towards competitiveness and a shift that needs to acknowledge the rewards that might go that would tell someone good job on collaborating there and this is why we think it's helpful to us so um that's why i say it's a leadership issue because leaders have to help

11:43people come to that realization people are not going to come to it if we have structures in place that reward more and more and more competitive behavior so that's a great point um and the reward system is definitely something that certainly makes sense. So let's say that I'm a business leader and I have some teams that are reporting to me, right? And I now realize that they're not

12:14collaborating the right way, which means they're not really working together, which means that my future growth is affected and I'm trying to change it, right? And you just mentioned about the reward system what kind of reward system works when you have two different teams or three different teams how do you change the reward systems that something with is it a team reward is it a collaboration reward like how do you adjust it i think i think there are there are a few different ways to approach depending on what what the starting point of that group is around

12:48the way they they connect and collaborate so one of them would be simply to reward behaviors that would show that there is intention at least because when i give people experiences to play with when i i will set it up and and to help you understand the way that these are set up I have let's say we've got four, five, six groups in the room and I put them into teams just like

13:19they would in the business they'd be separated in that here are our team members here are their team members and I say every team is meant to do the best it can and we will see what score you generate everyone gets that that's pretty straightforward what is most important though is the combined score of all teams. So people go, oh, right. So just like the organisation, we add our individual performances together and we get a grand total, right?

13:51And I will ask the group, what is it that we are not trying to do between these teams? And I'll say, we are not trying to compete because if we simply compete, all they do is try to do better than the other team because we know that the worst performer is the one that's going to get all the scrutiny, right? So away we go. We'll do the activity. And the first thing people will do, even though they know they're not meant to, is compete. So the first thing I would do is to start to point to the behaviours that the leader will know are there

14:29because in a way he or she has already set up a process where they are rivals over certain things now they might be rivals over resource allocation they might be rivals over status you know competing for a position that only one of them can get they might be competing over attention from the boss right there's all sorts of things that the leader will know about and it's a matter of helping people identify what that's what is it that's going on and are there ways that we might also think about

15:06it because alex this this is the the whole issue of managing paradox right that it's not simply i either or it's not we've got to be good at competition because people sometimes confuse what i'm saying is don't worry about being a good competitor i'm not saying that i'm saying you have to be a bloody good competitor. But in addition to that, there is a bigger game being played here and you have to be able to see how you contribute to your own success in your part of the business

15:39and how you can see how you contribute to making others better. Now, the reward for making others better can look like behavioral. It can look, as you say, like financial rewards. You might start to find ways of looking at the way we might reward people for their contribution from a financial point of view as well. And so it's a matter of having that as the focus as well as just rewarding the simplistic, I would say,

16:12you know, simple KPI, achieve those, did that, tick, that's how your team or that your individual will be rewarded. So it's a bit more complicated, but it's still, I think, reasonable. So I guess traditionally or historically or however you want to put it, there will be the different divisions in a company, right? Those are separate divisions. We'll each have like a team lead, right? Those team leads or those kind, the managers will report in to the CMO, the CEO or whoever else it is.

16:54So are you giving the rewards to the team leaders? Is that where it happens? Or is it with the individuals within those teams as well? Well, I think it's both. you know the the idea that you will have a group of c-suite executives sitting around a table starting to think about their collaborative behavior first of all they are fear they have been successful in in the main i mean i'm generalizing but in the main for having been

17:29very good very good competitors right they will sometimes be brutally competitive and as you know not all things that happen in organizations are good for people, right? Because we need to get results, we need performance, and we need to be pretty hard on things. You know, we need to be really clear about what's acceptable and what's not. So for many people's careers, competition has been their main thing that they've been good at. So having a group of people like that leadership

18:04team go through some collaborative thinking can be a very unsettling thing because all of a sudden the things that have caused them to succeed up until now may not be the things that are going to make the performance of the group even better so there's a little bit of letting go there's a little bit of adding to and so yes when it comes to them thinking about the way we might better collaborate across our divisions they might start to divide the rewards up a little more a little

18:38differently than what they have before they might start to reward individuals as you've asked at a at a personal level but if people are not rewarded they will not do so you you do have to reward individuals and you do have to reward divisions and like how do you or what would you suggest is the proportion that you would reward the team leader versus the team in that respect right because it seems to me that the leaders would have the biggest impact in the collaboration

19:11so if they're rewarded more they're the ones who have more authority is that like because it's kind of the balance between that reward and their career progression and they will be thinking in back of their mind well my the kpi for that is this but my future progression is that and so trying to find that balance might be challenging yes and and the simple answer i have for you mate is i don't know okay cool but what i would say is you you start where you think there might be

19:45an opportunity and over time you build on it so it's not a it's not a one stroke of the brush that would say right we're now set up for this it will take time and it will take learning for those execs and I think it's I think it is very helpful for them because I work I mean an analogy would be I work a lot with general managers people who have been promoted into a general management role where they've risen to the top of their particular discipline and they're now

20:20sitting at that c-suite table and they're looking around saying well what does it take now for me to be successful they spent less time than they ever did before thinking about the technical work that goes on in their division they know that they don't have to focus as much on that what is really challenging for them is to have that level of awareness, what I call the vertical, right, the division that they've come from, and at the same time, be able to look up and across

20:53at what others are doing in the business and what are the points of intersection where I can materially affect another division's results. Now, when you get people thinking about that and seeing how little they do or know about it, they do stop to think, wow, the focus of my attention up until now has been in the vertical. I now have to let go a little bit of that and start to think about the horizontal.

21:24That's why collaboration is a T-based thinking process where you're doing both at the same time. Now, we know people are not very good necessarily of doing both things at the same time. It's challenging. And that's why becoming a general manager is quite daunting for some people because they have to let go of some things that they've used as their key success indicators. And all of a sudden they're playing a different game.

21:57And so I hope that answers your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It shows the complexity of the people side of things. It's like, look at web profits, right? Like people are awesome at their job. They are technically excellent. So they get promoted, they get promoted and they continue to get promoted. And now they need to start to manage other people. And then all of a sudden it's a whole new world. And it's like, it's the biggest shift

22:28in somebody's professional growth is to go from a subject matter expert to now a team leader or to become the leader. And so it is complex. Does it start at the very top or can a division just be doing it themselves? Interestingly, to maybe give you an example,

23:00if I'm working with really senior people around this issue, they are nowhere near as good at doing it as people down the tree. And you might wonder, wow, well, why is that? I think partly because they have become increasingly reliant on themselves to rise up, to chart their career. And people in teams lower down the organisation where they have maybe less authority,

23:30but are far more used to working with other people in a really, as you said before, within your team, they are at least aware of how they have to work together, right? Well, that's sufficient. It's necessary, but not sufficient because once we start to open up and I put people who are from that part of the organisation with other teams from other parts of the organisation, they get it a lot more quickly because they're not so stuck

24:04with the things that have caused their success. So I think it's harder for some senior leaders to let go, but intellectually they get it because they see the benefit when you say, here's value being taken off the table, here's value being taken off the table, because all you're doing is competing against each other and that is not helpful beyond this level, right? So it's helpful up to here, go for your life, compete. But if that's all you've got, you're not going to really transform the results

24:36that you are hoping to be able to transform. Yeah. Because most organisations are looking for growth. They're looking for innovation. They're looking for the coming together of people with different talents and abilities and really harvesting the benefit of that. and you don't get there by simply competing. But the bigger the organisation, the more competition there is, right?

25:06And the more bureaucracy there is and the more politicking there is, right? And so there's that balance where I think collaboration still needs to lead to some type of promotion of some sort, right? It seems to be confusing to get your head around how do I share the glory with other departments yeah right yeah but then how do I stand out in sharing that glory right because if I'm a good collaborator then we've all done it together

25:41right and so what would you say to someone it's like yeah yeah yeah this whole thing sounds great but I have a career I've got to this point because I'm a certain way and because you know unfortunately it is the more competitive you are the faster you will achieve some success internally in an organization right and so how do you like talk like start to change how you believe you can progress in an organization well i i guess a starting point is having a conversation

26:17with someone about their ability to even see what benefits collaboration could bring in their particular circumstance. And there may be a little bit of education to come with them starting to explore that because you're right, if they can't see how it applies and gives some added benefit, then they will not sort of buy in either. So there has to be a vision of what it could look like,

26:48an imagination, even if it's nowhere near what they're currently doing. But it also might connect with why the next step for them might be easier if they do. Because it doesn't have to be organisational wide. It'd be nice, but let's face it, it's pretty hard to just come in and rewrite, although lots of big management consulting companies come in and say well we're reorganizing and we're reorganizing because we want a more of a matrix system because that's going to make

27:20people more able well you know all people do is wander around trying to figure out how do i work this new system you know to my benefit it's the same thing again right it's always that internal competition it's a competitive thing so you know it's like any change process that there there are steps along the way to help people understand what the bigger picture is what are the first steps that we would take let's acknowledge the value of competition but not overplay it there's there's a story that gets told about how we and it might be initially that your division

27:55starts to collaborate a little better with one other division right and let let let's say that would be the the easiest one for them to do there might be some real tension between you know marketing and production because historically they're going well all you guys do is go and sell too much and then throw the problem over the fence to us and leave it for us to sort out because that's not your issue well you know great but the consequence of that when it gets up the tree to say well how come we're not you know and we can point fingers and blame everybody else

28:30but in the end that's not a particularly sophisticated approach and you're right politics pay huge amount power seeking pays a huge amount and the leader has to start to do something that helps those people see that's not the only game in town and so so punishment for just being a competitor sorry sometimes there could be punishment for just being a competitor yeah because we see we see people all the time say well you know uh alex is a great salesman

29:05He's hitting his numbers every single time. But the way that he does it is not what we want in this organization. He's undermining other people. He's competing for clients that others have a better track to or whatever. So the tension that exists between simply hitting results and how you get those results starts to show more likely a collaborative bias than just simply saying win at all costs

29:36because win at all costs does not necessarily see long-term success so is this well there's so many pathways i want to take this let's start with this one first right um you you mentioned up front um you like that you work um with finance organizations right they seem to be very aggressively competitive but individualized kind of organizations right and so

30:07like are you able to share like an example of how this like can play out potentially you know like how you know like collaboration has helped or there's other examples out there where like you say you know before it was like this and then it was like that and that helped in some way you know what i mean especially because finance seems it's it's one of the most aggressive places in the world um to work right yeah well um you know i suppose that if i think about

30:47the sorts of examples that, you know, I get people in the room from different divisions. And the simple example is giving referrals to people who you might not normally give referrals to. And the simplest example of that is the leader starting to pay attention to acknowledging where the referral came from and the help and the support that came

31:20where the score, if you like, on one group's KPIs wasn't shown up as a sale, but it's like in basketball, we start to measure assists, right? So having people see how the things that they're doing can be recorded as in scored it is a simple way and a referral in in financial services is often spoken about but often not done because I potentially lose that so

31:57it's that thing where you can't hold it in right like you keep it close to your chest you don't the concern for myself usually will dominate as you said as you start to become more concerned about you know rising up or getting better as well you do have to start to be concerned about how do you help people realize what else is going on here and and my my sort of simple world because

32:28I'm a simple man, mate. All I try to do is give people experiences where the things that they're doing clearly doesn't end up with a better result. And they go, oh. And what they will do, like you pointed out, is I'll say, yes, Lex, but the organization stops me doing it. And I go, well, the organization may, but you know whether or not you are going to be someone who continues to do that because let's face it people notice what's going on and people figure out what's what's

33:04working better and yet maybe the results aren't immediate and directly personal i get real benefit from this but that's why i keep coming back this is a leadership issue and i've ended up spending more of my time focusing on helping leaders realize the folly of expecting a while rewarding be i say figure out what the reward needs to be so that people can align their actions to it and so

33:35so it's better to start small in the area that you have some control over and demonstrate how that looks for your people and if a boss doesn't notice that well i'll be worried about the boss yeah um especially if you're the boss right um but i think um um um so it seems like so a you need to figure out kpis shared kpis you know like so for example like at web profits you know we've

34:06got this thing called the north star metric right which is like organizational it's basically the focus for growth right and each of the teams have a responsibility um to get a component of that that contributes to the North Star, right? And so they all know that they're going towards the same goal, if that makes sense. Yeah. And so that's a way of doing it. But it seems to be that like you need to kind of have the metrics in place first that require collaboration.

34:38Yeah. That mean, like if you fail, then we all fail. And then individually, you can still succeed, right? And so you can still stand out. in that area but it's almost like like each team has a goal that is not independent of each other right so i think is that's one part right that prior to the shared accountability shared accountability it's interesting one um just quickly on the kpi side of things it seems like

35:13it's something that we've been like investigating as well the um the 360 reviews right um does that play a role in this you know like is that how you will get it at or is that not the right way to think about it it's not what other people think about your collaboration it's actually what are the results of the couple of the collaboration yeah look i think it depends on the sorts of things you are asking people to comment about in relation to collaboration of

35:43what others are doing so if I look around the 360 people who might be in contact with if you're able to articulate the sorts of questions that are clear about that then then I think it can be a useful tool whether I'd again as I say there's a starting point with this and you would build in things that were progressively supporting the collaborative process. So whether or not you would want to

36:18hear the results of a 360 without having done much work leading up to collaborative type behavior, that might not be the best way to bring it to people's attention. so you I would agree with you in the sense that if we've got some things in place that we are trying to promote that are collaborative at least in the world of you know our company then I think the 360 can be a way of checking whether we have a view around people as to how that is going but

36:55I don't think I'd start with it okay yeah cool okay so like it is it's more about the rewards and the KPIs and stuff like that than it is about what people think about you yeah sorry it's firstly about having a view of some of the things we think would be really helpful to us and sometimes that's simply looking and in an organization you know in a workshop I'll say all right we've seen an example of this activity where certain things have come up where competitive behavior

37:28has really undermined the overall net result. And there might have been, and it's a bit hard for me to sort of share that without having seen the activity, but they go, well, clearly we did that and we did that and we did that and they didn't help. I will say, see whether or not if you sit back into your organisational context, do you see any evidence of that happening in the day-to-day business and people say absolutely and you go well what why does it

38:02happen well because of whatever that'll be quite particular to their organization and you say well is it possible that that would be something that you could work on to take away or you know reward differently so that it was it was less of that and they go well yeah we could see this this and this happening so you know people when they when they see a lesson that's been something they've experienced and they go wow the interesting thing is i'll say

38:33we didn't intend to do that nobody discussed that we were going to do that why did that happen well often it's because the assumptions i make about what's appropriate here and usually it's because I need to compete. That's the operating unspoken assumption. I need to compete. I don't want to be the worst in the group. We want to win because we know that that's a good thing generally. And when you say, well, how did that work for you?

39:04Didn't work very well at all. Why would you do it? Yes, what's an example of, you know, one of the experiences or the games or the things which you would kind of go through? because like I'm sitting here thinking, okay, I guess I'm a team leader or I'll see a CEO and I'm listening to this. I'm trying to get my head around it. I got the KPI thing. I got the reward thing. I still don't get it. You know, what's like an example of an experience

39:34that could help me to see it a bit more? Well, I mean, a simple game you may have seen before is the Jenga game of blocks, right? So you've got a tower of blocks and the objective generally in that game is you remove a block from the tower until the tower falls over, right? So I use Jenga as an example of a simple activity where each team aims to remove as many blocks as they can

40:09without the tower falling over. Now, there are certain rules around that which aren't relevant for me to go through. But an example of competitive behaviour is that if I say to the groups, and they all hear the same information, here are the rules, and one of the other teams will be waiting for their go, because they do it in, you know, one team, then the next, then the next. Everyone gets to see what everyone else does. A couple of things often happen.

40:41One is that another team will start to sledge the other team, try to disrupt their ability to do the job. They'll throw in a smart comment. They might say, oh, he just touched the block that he wasn't allowed to touch. They should be penalised. And I would say to them, so what advantage to the overall score is there for you pointing out that that team member from another team did something that should have been penalised?

41:12What's the advantage? You say, oh, well, it's an ethical issue. We want to all apply. I will say, oh, right. So we all abide by all the rules all the time and nobody has any. Well, no, we don't do that. The reason you're saying it is because they want to do a better score than the other team. And you go, well, so let's post the first score. Let's say the first score is 20. Every team after that, what do you think their target is? 21.

41:45Anything better than 20. They don't know whether 20 is a good score or not. They just know that 20 was the number. so you're right Alex the next team comes up right no one says what the target is everyone knows that anything better than 20 is good right now when we come to the debrief and I say what do you think about a score of 20 or 21 or 25 they go oh

42:16well they're pretty good scores you know I go well a good score is 1200 well people are like what 1200 is not even possible well not the way you were playing it it wasn't and they go well what do you mean well you were caught up with just doing what you saw the other teams do because you just wanted to be better than them you had no shared understanding

42:48about what else could be possible because as soon as you see competition, you go like that. You go narrow and you go do better than that. Now, everyone talks benchmarks all the time. Well, it depends whether the benchmark is any good or not. No use just being the best of a bad bunch. Well, what happens if we look outside and we see somebody doing 1,200? What do you think would happen? Oh, we'd figure out what they're doing and we'd get 1,200 too. Well, brilliant. why wait you know why not create a view of the future even though you're not sure what good

43:25looks like just simply doing better than those around you just leads to mediocrity and that's the problem so when you start to show people what else is possible than just being measured by the things that are around them and immediately available for them to see their game is a different game and i be i say often be careful of the game you think you're playing because if it's not the real game you'll get good at something that's not very good yeah it's like it's like you

43:55get lost sometimes in the politics or the structure of the organization that you work in and you forget that you're competing against other organizations that may be playing a different game that's way faster and way better than you and you're so stuck in how you feel and how you think and you're limited by what you see not by the opportunity so so i guess collaboration um kind of leads to innovation then i would say right because then all of a sudden you get out of

44:27your myopic view of the world is that right well absolutely and you know the the you don't necessarily want everybody working on the same you know breakthrough idea or or thing that's going to change the game because that often comes from just one person but if i if i think i'm going to get rewarded for this good idea how many people am i going to share it with

44:58right because what happens in this game this jenga game let's say somebody has an idea that could really transform the game do you think that they share it with the two or three teams ahead of them no they wait for it's their turn and they go right when it's our turn what we're going to do is that right everybody everyone clear yep and they walk up and they do that and they get a really good result and people look at them say wow we didn't think of that and then you

45:29asked a question why was it do you think that nobody else knew about that idea before your team had it go and of course you know what they say because we wanted to be the best team yeah and i can see how i do that stuff as well like like like like even in like the team events like you just you just want to win i think we've just been built to win like and if we lose it's so bad You're winning. I can't even lose against my son who's seven in a game I'm pitching him.

46:03I mean, I can, but it's like a big emotional hurdle. Look at yourself, Alex. You better have a good heart. Look at yourself, mate, because what you are teaching him is one-dimensional. It's great. I mean, I played footy at the elite level. I know what it means to compete, but it is not the only game in town. So how do you change this? Because this is the part, right? Where it's, we're being conditioned through experience. Because that's how you got there, right? You got there by experience. You

46:35got there by doing well, doing that. And when it's very interesting, because my initial, when I first started to do this, I thought it wouldn't go so well if teams didn't do well in the activity, right that is they got poor scores or or i pointed out things that really weren't very helpful and what i've learned over time is successful people respond better to that thing of well

47:07you just weren't really very that you weren't very good at that why weren't you very good at it and and we start to unpack why and it's not to make them embarrassed or humiliated it's just to see and get them to feel what it's like when they're doing something that is not useful especially when they're very good at doing and very conditioned to do and all of a sudden it's like a blinking light going wow everyone can see that that's what we're doing and somebody's saying

47:41for the for this moment at least that's not very helpful and the reason it's not very helpful is this, this, this, and this, are you going to keep doing it? No way. We're not going to keep doing that. We come back to activity number two, right? And I'll say, before we go into activity number two, what were the three things that we learned from it? Or they say, dah, dah, dah, you know, all about, let's not compete. Activity number two, here's the rule, here's the rule, go. What do you think happens? Compete.

48:12Compete. Compete. Because you think it's almost a trick. It's almost a trick. It's like, is this a trick? Yeah. Because that's what people do, mate. They try to rationalize or justify their behavior based on what's worked before. You know, and guess who's the villain here? Me. Oh, you're just setting us up. Well, we've had two goes at it now. You've competed both times when you knew and you said you didn't want to do that.

48:45Let's have another go. and then people start to see things entirely differently and it's like a veil being lifted from their eyes to go we never think about it like this we never think about the way we relate to other divisions or other performances like this we just get stuck doing things that have helped us do well before but just being good at history isn't very good about being good in the future

49:17and we i've heard you speak before you've got to let go of some of the things that helped you get to where you are because they are not going to be the things that help you next and people don't like that no like it you because you're challenging you're challenging the thing which i know is is the truth for me right but then so so then as a leader like is it like to start this thing right is it that you take away the team leads for example and you go somewhere that's a bit more

49:51relaxed and say cool cool so like you create almost a central goal you know say like across the teams basically you know here's a central goal that we all want to go towards and we get them starting to brainstorm how they could work together and how they could help and then stretch it and say okay so if we have to stretch it now how would we do that you know because it seems like it's the stretch that is where collaboration is required like this is standard

50:23this is everyone separate if we collaborate we can do this is that a way of doing it like like I'm trying to make it real. It is a good way of doing it. Because, you know, if you think about the typical process, and I don't know what it's like for you guys there, but, you know, a lot of the time you say, all right, last year our results were this. This year we want to go for that plus 10% or that plus something on top because of this blah, blah, blah, the marketplace. So let's all work to get that, right?

50:53So all that usually means is each of those divisions tries to dial it up a little bit, you know, based on what they did well or blah, blah, blah. You know, if you say even especially I like what you said about let's take them away for a day or a different environment and we scenario a few things and we say, well, you know, last year's results were 200. Let's imagine what it would take for our results to be 1,700.

51:23right now it doesn't matter whether 1700 is absolutely right you go well well clearly just doing what we've done before he's not going to get us there so it forces you to think about the possibilities that that go with what the you know what happens between relationships what you know and in as in departments and the sorts of things that are going on it requires a very different set of conversations and understandings about what good would look like that may just generate

52:02an idea that you go, wow, if we do that, I think we're onto something. And look, it's not a fait accompli by any means, but it does force you into a world where you start to see the resources you have available as being more than those that just exist in each team right yeah and CEOs and you you know you're looking down across the organization and you're trying to find the the links and the connections and the the the building

52:32blocks that go to make all of that come together there's not a lot of people in the organization doing that at all I'm saying is if more people are starting to think about the way the network of relationships and the, the way we see a potential, you know, really different result, what that looks like, all of a sudden good ideas start popping up. And so it's, sorry, then something to work with, you know, then, then people are talking about real things and you've got to have a

53:03process around that. But you know, a lot of people can do processes around helping ideas get, you know, sort of germinated into real business plans. But, you know, that's where I will often find myself in those sorts of forums and those sorts of workshops, helping to shake people's ideas up and just help them come to that realisation that, geez, I am overly doing the competitive thing.

53:36And if I can get people, certainly C-suite people to do that, I've made some progress because they have massive influence. So it seems like, it seems like a, if they're confused, they should, they should hire you. Cause, cause like this thing is like, is against everything, which is probably like natural to people. I think that's step one. I think step two is, but well, like a separate approach is it kind of starts at the planning stage,

54:07right? It's kind of almost like, it's hard to just to just get company to just get the divisions to collaborate it seems like it's more you need to create a plan like a central goal you need to have you'll have their kind of understanding how their contribution goes towards that goal then those team leads will then kind of share it to their teams individually so the the kpis and the rewards they go all the

54:38way up and that seems like it would be the only real way to actually integrate it properly right because otherwise it's more just with legs there's there there is truth in that but i'm sure you you know also you know if if there is if there is a couple of parts of the business starting to do things differently that is about collaborative you then create a contagion you know people are looking around, especially if they get some acknowledgement and some status or some kudos

55:11that says, you know, that's a new game. We want to see more of that. So yeah, you're right. You can do the big organizational change program around it. We know those things have limitations too. you know so you know you've got to be a bit of a ninja you've got to you've got to figure out what's how to how do i play this because how things happen are not always organized

55:42yeah how most things happen i think how most things happen are not organized i think um it's interesting you know just when you kind of um start to look into organizations especially the large ones you're like especially like can i say for example banks right like 30 40 000 people somehow all working together create something in the world right and but but each individual is like an individual in the organization trying to get the it's it's quite chaotic sometimes like

56:17to think about so it seems to be that this this adds a level of complexity to those organizations you know um yeah look it it does but i mean i work with leaders of smaller divisions you know regularly right and they get their group of people together and if that leader has influence over those teams and that you know leaders will have 10 15 whatever number of teams working they might be geographies they might be functional they might be all sorts of different things if

56:49you've got a leader who is starting to help people identify this give them some experiences around it and give them an opportunity to explore what more collaborative stuff could be and reward them for it you're not trying to change the world you're trying to just deal with an area of influence that these leaders can have now is that going to change the total bank maybe i'm an optimist But let's face it, competition in the banking industry has caused some very big problems.

57:28Yes. So continuing to see everything, you know, it's the hammer and the nail analogy, you know, if everything looks like a nail, all you're going to do is hit it with a hammer, then brilliant. So, yeah. that's just on that point as well like i just again this is this is this is the conditioning right if i'm that person that has the 15 um or so um kind of um um you know teams or divisions yeah i could personally progress further if i could get them to collaborate better right so again

58:05potentially i should be thinking how i should collaborate with my peers but i'm thinking well i could use this as a way to progress my own personal thing if i can get everybody else collaborating well you know because everything is nested right we all understand that there's this system here and that's replicated at the next level and you got smaller people reporting to bigger people you know all the way along all the way along if you say here's here's an example here's an experiment that i could try with this this

58:38particular segment um what does that look like then then people can get their hands around it it's not you're not trying to change the world um and people respond well to to to positive experiences where they learn together and they see things that they can do that is within their control and manageable you're not you're not asking them to revolutionize the digital process around the way we deliver the platform in day one.

59:09It might lead to that, but it's not our goal initially. So I think it is doable in small chunks. And would I love for organisations to start to acknowledge that competition has got its limits to the extent that they are changing some of the systems and processes as well? Yeah, I would. but I'm sniping

59:40I'm just picking off opportunities where I can influence the most and that's what I do with these activities that's awesome thanks so much for coming on the podcast this is really it's really something that we've been pushing hard internally at WebProfitson so I know how challenging it can be especially because we have a competitive streak in us and we all want to win individually but also at the same time, we want to win more. Well, we're trying to win more as a company. So we do understand how complex it is.

01:00:11And it is something that I'm definitely going to start by being less competitive with my son. That's step one, right? So the people that are listening, so like if they want to get in, well, to speak with you and to see actually how you could help them, how do they get in touch with you? corporate fitness services.com.au is is is the website um my email address is corporate at aussie mail.com.au so you know uh be more than happy to to talk to anyone who's got groups of

01:00:47people coming together for whatever reason to include some collaborative activities because it energizes people in ways that maybe they they wouldn't appreciate and plus we'll have all the links in the show notes too so if you forgot that um you can just go to the show notes Lex, thanks so much for coming on the podcast and we'll talk soon Brilliant, thanks mate Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast If you enjoyed this episode please head on over to iTunes and give us a 5 star rating For more episodes please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast