S2 E4: Byte - Champions (and a small announcement).

0:00Hello and welcome to season two, episode four of What's So What Now What.

0:05Ravi, how are you doing?

0:06Yeah, good, thank you.

0:08Uh not too bad myself.

0:09Good good, good, good.

0:10Just hot off the heels of a a lame Theresa Mayor announcement.

0:13I think it was

0:14pretty much an announcement of nothing.

0:16Yeah, right, right.

0:17And and I think we we were sort of get we set ourselves to s uh start recording just as she was going on and was ah yeah let's push back half an hour.

0:23And that half an hour turned into what is an an hour now before actually got been able to sit down.

0:27So um yeah, here we are.

0:30But let's not turn this podcast into a political podcast.

0:33Um today's episode is about champions and

0:36And um before we get into that, let's also do a bit of follow-up on natural language processing.

0:40Um how do you find the episode last week?

0:42Yeah, it was good.

0:43I I quite enjoyed the talking about that and l listening back to it as I sort of half listened back to while doing something else because

0:50obviously you never like listening back to yourself.

0:54I think it was um it was quite well reasoned I think from the feedback we've gotten on

0:59social media from people I've spoken to.

1:01Um it was very interesting in terms of not only just the the how it all works and put together, but also uh I think we did

1:09semi-successfully lower the tone of it from the hyper episode where it was easier to understand and pace quite nicely.

1:14And I think the other thing the other thing we were able to do in that episode, which I quite liked

1:18And I we've got some really good um feedback again from the wider audiences just about the the opportunity that this provides and sort of how this has set up the

1:29th the the next few s few years in in technology and i indeed in data.

1:34Exactly.

1:35It's it's such an important pivotal sort of first step.

1:38that enables um I think many different ways of doing uh analysis uh and more importantly uh ways of empowering analysts more importantly.

1:48um to do their job.

1:49And um I think, you know, up until now it's been about sort of empowering the developer.

1:55And I think if that continues to be the narrative for power users, but for more broad use, uh if you look at the way technology and

2:02sort of software and industries moving.

2:04Um this is a very important step for Tableau to make.

2:07Um and also many other partners who've been doing the same thing, um whether it's Power BI, Click, or whoever comes around tomorrow doing the same thing.

2:15same thing.

2:16Yeah, exactly.

2:17I and and the other thing that's uh also worth mentioning here is the the fact that it's not that it's easy to forget that business isn't comprised I think this is gonna touch on what we're gonna talk about today actually

2:28But it's not actually comprised of analysts and developers, right?

2:32If you think about like the largest businesses in the world, they're not made of

2:37Ever not everyone's an analyst, right?

2:38Not everyone's sitting down and building dashboards or charts and has that mindset of trying to investigate stuff.

2:43And this sort of gives the that data to the users.

2:47to to want to use the one of the m of the marketing phrase at your fingertips, right?

2:52It it's literally there for you to start typing and being a bit more natural and asking those questions and getting a a computer computer uh understanding it and then giving that answer back.

3:01In many ways, I think being an analyst is only part of many people's jobs and the very few people who are exclusively analysts, as it were.

3:09So um this kind of this kind of power kind of really helps

3:14Um we had a bit of a joke at the beginning about the at the beginning of the podcast um about our name and uh it's probably about time we changed that, right?

3:24Yeah, I mean uh I if we hark back to the first service, the reason we came up with that the the presentational structure here like so you break it down.

3:32But I think since uh since the what it's been a year and a bit now since we've been that, I thought, well

3:37I hate telling people like our three what's what what did that mean?

3:41Why is it called that?

3:42It's like what not what not what what what Yeah exactly.

3:46It's it starts turning into a rap song like what

3:49So what?

3:53So let's change that.

3:54Let's change that.

3:54Absolutely.

3:55And so we do have a a new name that we're going to be pushing.

3:59uh into our podcast or more more importantly across our uh sort of podcasting uh content.

4:05Um it's called datum.

4:07Datum datum is itself actually a word.

4:11Um I should probably touch on where I came across this

4:13I think um I'm a big fan of a guy called Nicholas Felton and in one of his reports uh he actually built his own app to help him collect

4:24um information.

4:26And so datum, if you look it up in the dictionaries, it really literally translates into pieces of information.

4:32So he built an app to collect pieces of information.

4:35information and so I thought it was quite a fitting name for our podcast because what we hope to do over you know over time is to have sort of these snippets of information.

4:45on different topics and different subjects whether technical or soft and so I thought it sort of mapped quite nicely to to our theme so borrowing a little bit from the shoulders of the great but

4:55But um yeah.

4:56Yeah, no, I I I like that.

4:58I like that.

4:58I think that really fits into the the rebrand from just generally talking about a topic at a time to actually thinking about how we're structuring it with the

5:06bits and the bytes.

5:07So um but don't worry listeners like it's gonna be exactly the same structure, the exact same content we've just changed the name.

5:14It's like when Google became Alphabet but

5:16Really in your head it's still Google, right?

5:18That sort of thing.

5:19Yeah.

5:19And we're taking more siff and jiff is the other one for UK listeners.

5:23Yeah, exactly.

5:24And we're just taking the opportunity also to do a bit of a rebrand, uh rest not restructure content, but to make sure that we

5:30We spread our content in sort of more places.

5:32So um uh when when when we make this name change, you shouldn't need to change anything in your podcast app of choice.

5:40Um the feed will automatically update um existing and new content uh with a name.

5:46Um if you

5:48If you want to catch our episodes in new places, we're going to be also putting them on YouTube.

5:54And we're also going to be using a nice wonderful NLP-powered feature of YouTube to produce transcripts of the show

6:00So uh going back right back to episode number one, um you'll be able to find transcripts on our website and our website is going to be datampot.

6:10Datam podcast.

6:12Can't even get this one right.

6:15Datampodcast.

6:17com.

6:17So it's much, much easier to find.

6:20And type.

6:27There's been to this great podcast.

6:28Oh what's it called?

6:29It's called Datum.

6:30Rather than what's it called?

6:30It's called what so what?

6:32Oh man

6:33When you have what in the in the what's it called?

6:36Ah yeah, that's a real that's a real tongue twister.

6:38Oh yeah, right, in and and in i i for for our um

6:42quest for global domination, it's it's not helpful to be down on that SEO, right?

6:47Oh man, yeah.

6:48I think if you just search uh what so what now

6:50what um even the acronym which I I spent ages putting into uh SEO web pages it still doesn't come up so no this is uh this is uh a very welcome uh little sort of um

7:03change for us and then more broadly shouldn't change our content.

7:06But before So Tim.

7:08Yeah, go for it.

7:09Yeah, so Tim, so season two, episode four of the Dayton Podcast.

7:14What are we talking about?

7:16Absolutely.

7:17We are talking about champions.

7:19Not the Yorkshire slang for absolutely excellent.

7:22We're talking about champions in the organizations, right?

7:25Exactly.

7:26And then again, it's not anything to do with sports as much as I'd love to talk wax lyrical about sports all day.

7:32This is another one of my passion topics, which is um

7:35uh champions and by this we mean the evangelists, the experts, the the organic heroes of an organization and um the people who, you know, the the

7:45they have something within them that a quality that be means they they're almost selfless in w the way they sort of um share what what they what share stuff that they're interested in like the passion was it was to

7:57word.

7:57Um pet passions.

7:59No, that's not all.

7:59Damn Ravi, you went straight into a description there.

8:02Like passion projects.

8:05I was gonna I was gonna challenge you on literally every word you use there for a champion because

8:10I think in different places they mean different things, right?

8:13Ah, okay, okay, let's go.

8:15Right, hit me.

8:16So this is evangelist.

8:18This is this is actually something that I want to get off my chest.

8:21Because it massively frustrates me that I think in a lot of contexts we we come up with the term champions and we don't realize that

8:31that a champion is different in every organization, but we use this generic sort of descriptor and we all think they mean the same thing.

8:40And then you get sort of this discourse about

8:43what it means to be a champion in a particular company or or how to do a champion for a particular product, let's say Tableau or Adobe, which I've talked about

8:51about in the past.

8:52And no two sort of things translate to each other.

8:55And it really frustrates me that that's not apparent when when when that discourse happens, everyone thinks a champion is the same thing.

9:02And yeah as as consultants

9:04We see this time and time again.

9:05A champion who might be successful in one place would absolutely flopper somewhere else.

9:10Yeah, and I I think I'm I'm laughing along the way because it's literally what I did.

9:15The first thing I did was exactly that.

9:16It's like, what is a champion?

9:17Let me explain to you by using seven other different words for champions.

9:21Like and open up a thesaurus to thesaurus to the word champion and just

9:25just blurted it back at you.

9:27I didn't really explain what I meant, uh, which is a very valid point.

9:30And I can I actually do agree with you to an extent because um

9:34I think you really do need to be very careful on how you define what a champion is.

9:39Right.

9:39Especially when you when we're thinking about in the context of a role or or a characteristic or a trait.

9:46Um because it again, like you said, it means it means different things and like is as you say, if I picked up um Google's ethics champion and put them in the middle of uh a medical ethics champion scenario

10:00That person would be like, hang on a sec, I need to go back to like medical school or something.

10:03Yeah, exactly.

10:04You you need a context.

10:06Yeah.

10:07Context is

10:08Everything.

10:08It's absolutely clear.

10:09And so like I sort of one of the things I also I also sort of find really difficult in this discussion about champions is that um yes they mean different things in different places.

10:22However, I think people do need some sort of commonality in the way they find them.

10:27So whilst um you know different people have different qualities and that's intrinsic in the way that

10:34you know, just people in an organization work.

10:37Um you need some sort of um I'm gonna say common way of cultivating champions because it's not it's not sustainable in an organization to go around to each individual

10:47individual, figure out how they work and then try and bring out the champion in them, right?

10:51You can't you don't have time to do that.

10:53You kind of need a a a way of cultivating champions in a in an enterprise situation where you have thousands of employees who are

11:00accessing an analytical bit of software, right?

11:03That's exactly it.

11:04And and this this is um this touched on some pieces of stuff I've been doing a lot recently, which is thinking about a lot of this

11:10sort of enterprise level rollout and like how do you find your champions when you're hard well if you find if you start at the bottom right if you're starting right at the bottom of the wire with a startup company

11:20and you're gonna add 10 employees tomorrow and you're saying each one of you is gonna be head of a department and then in in five in in a year's time we're gonna add three more people to each department and you are you're gonna find you oh one of those people is gonna be a champion in that department.

11:34That's easy.

11:35Like e well, not easy of course, because startups are never easy and there's all sorts of stuff going on, but I in a hypothetical world in a setterist parabus, all things being equal um scenario, that's that's perfect right now

11:47Companies who want to find champions and grow champions and fight like have this champion mindset, um, they don't

11:57stop working just because someone wants to have this global strategy for um building this culture right.

12:03Because cultural ch change management takes time.

12:06Cultural cultural change takes time.

12:08But you can't just stop doing what you're doing day in, day out because you're like, I need this one full-time employee to go around and find out per region.

12:16who are the champions and then interview them, survey them, have this standardized way of measuring uh how good they are and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna say you guys are the champions and then we're gonna start like no board or

12:30anyone is ever gonna sign up on that.

12:32And if they do, well kudos to how you sold it because it's it's almost like you're trying to um fix your car while it's moving, right?

12:39That that's that's what we're going getting at.

12:40Like you're in the you're in the Le Mans rally

12:42Yeah.

12:43Uh with an old car and you're trying to add a turbo booster and DRS at the same time while also trying to be competitive, right?

12:50Exactly.

12:54And so I I think we I think we're we're sort of slowly transitioning into the um the so what here where we sort of try and unpick sort of

13:03Uh I guess different types of champions, but also just just generally sort of why they're important because um And what their role is as well.

13:11Yeah, exactly, exactly.

13:12I I guess let's start there.

13:13Like what's the what's the role of a champion or at least how do you see that sort of play?

13:17play out in organizations that you've engaged with?

13:20Yeah, so I'm I'm I'm really uh the way I always approach this is it's like where do you want to be in a year's time and how much control do you have on what what happens next

13:30Because getting that buy-in from the top um to say it's to for someone to say this is a directive that we're gonna follow, we're gonna commit to this route for at least one year and then we're gonna review it.

13:41That's really important and that's where you that that's where you typically start.

13:45But also you need to get the people at the bottom on the side.

13:47So it's like a top-down and bubble up and then you're in the middle trying to coordinate thing and orchestrate.

13:52Now the the role of the champion basically is because uh most firms uh have this the pyramid structure, right?

13:59So there's a few people at the top and many people at bottom.

14:02And

14:03No no directive from the top will influence and make some people at the bottom do exactly what you tell them to.

14:09Uh no matter how hard you try, no matter how much incentives you put in.

14:13And again, this this then

14:15comes back to my behavioral economics love, right?

14:18Bit where you can nudge and incentivize and do all these different things to uh change people.

14:24But really what you need is um

14:27To use a almost like a sales strategy, right?

14:29Where you land and expand.

14:31You basically plant people and show sh enable those people in those different parts of the organization.

14:38to become an extension of yourself and the vision that you want to embody and therefore a vision that the the the the directive embodies.

14:45It's a really difficult thing here because even with all those things, right

14:49Um, you know, things still go wrong, right?

14:51Even with all those sort of targeted efforts and very structured and very organized sort of approach.

14:58Um more so more ways than sort of a very simple job description to do

15:02like I don't know let's say development work or um you know role description in in an organization to do a specific thing a champion sort of job description as it were

15:11is kind of just to do whatever's required to get the company forward or um you know sort of push the mission of the company forward.

15:21forward in a way, but there's no real direction of where that is.

15:24No, no.

15:25And that's the that's where personality traits really come into it, right?

15:29Because that that person has to be has to have a vested interest

15:33Right, they have to actually want to do it.

15:35Like because if if you tell someone and th they can easily retort, you know, I'm doing my day to day, it's not part of my job description.

15:42If you want to pay me more or change my role, then yeah, I'll do it.

15:45Otherwise, why should I?

15:46What is it in it for me, right?

15:48because this this is uh generally how we work um that person then also has to have a desire to learn more and develop and almost go beyond and as you mentioned this it's unwritten their directive

16:00Right.

16:03Um, you know, I I'd love to make this a thing in our company and grow this grow this service and make sure that everyone thinks like I do and sees the value in this awesome thing.

16:12But they have to have that drive and then also feel like they're they have the tools and the ability to go out and, you know, do that because as you as I said earlier, like these people very rarely will this become a full-time role.

16:25Very rarely

16:26Um it'd be people doing this on the side as part of their part of their job or as as a passion project um to push that needle.

16:33Um

16:34And if you know, most of the time what will happen is a a company's needs day-to-day will take priority over uh some strategic goal that you might have um started um down, right?

16:46Mm-hmm.

16:46Exactly.

16:47And and you know, if I if I sort of touch on one aspect of this is um I think this fundamentally falls apart when a company's mission isn't

16:55actually very clear.

16:56So it's very hard for champions to sort of run with the flow if they if there's no sort of very clear mission and objective of the

17:05company as such.

17:06So if I take a very simple example, let's say I run Acme Industries and our mission is to

17:13um I mean missions are normally quite vague in in in a sense aren't they about to have to give something really specific then I fell into my own trap there.

17:21But missions are sort of um the missions try and encapsulate the ethos

17:26and the way in which a company does something and to what end, right?

17:29So yeah so look here's an objective this is how we're gonna do it and we hope to get here we hope to get there in this particular

17:37So so both of us are fans of Amazon and Apple, right?

17:40So what would you say Amazon's mission is?

17:43Oh man.

17:45Amazon's mission is probably to

17:48help you get from A to Z, whatever A to Z is.

17:51Right, true.

17:52And then apples would be I guess to create a product that's a pleasure to use which doesn't require manual.

17:57I don't think it's even creating a product.

17:59It's to create delight in product

18:00or something like that.

18:01An experience.

18:02Yeah.

18:02Yeah.

18:02Full stop.

18:03How they just get your Joanie I voice get your Joanie I voice out.

18:08We really thought about the phone, but they're really designed but they're really high level sort of statements.

18:14that allow, I guess, employees to um uh what is it, uh morph into how they see that mission.

18:22And generally speaking, a good mission means that everyone in the organization might interpret certain aspects uh slightly differently, but everyone understands the end goal very well.

18:32very well and understands you know the ethos behind something.

18:35So you like you'll get this in consulting where you go to one company and a thing that people will say is that's not how we do

18:41things around here, right?

18:43And those those are the companies where you know the mission isn't great.

18:46Like people probably s uh you know spend five minutes reciting the mission before they start

18:52Working every morning.

18:53Um Pledge Allegiance to the flag.

18:55Yeah, exactly.

18:56And then you go to other organizations where um the mission statement is a little bit sort of vague.

19:01Uh it sounds like something you've heard before.

19:04Um, you know.

19:06Actually, I actually you'll find employees describing their company like another company.

19:11So you know, one example is um I go into a client and

19:15they'll describe themselves as X.

19:17Then I'll go into another client and they'll describe themselves, oh have you heard of this guy?

19:21Yeah we're like them.

19:22And it's like oh

19:23Yeah.

19:24Like was it?

19:25My my fate my favorite fad of like two years ago is like we're Uber for.

19:29Oh yeah, exactly.

19:30Yeah, those Delivery is Uber for food.

19:33Yeah, exactly.

19:34Those are companies with no mission is literally just latching onto

19:37anything.

19:38Yeah, well and that and I think laundrap was like we're d we're Uber for laundry.

19:43It's like but you're not used to like you're saying Uber just 'cause like you press a button and yeah something arrives.

19:48Exactly.

19:49And Uber's philosophy isn't just

19:51Yeah.

19:51Like they were kind of they were missing the point.

19:53They were referring to Uber in in in scale rather than um you know i in in in

19:58and ambition.

19:59But we're sort of go going off the track here.

20:01So I'm I'm I'm gonna challenge you there to uh on the the mission point because I don't think the the the mission is what um a champion sees.

20:09What what um what the thing that guides someone like that is

20:15Because we're very centralized people, right?

20:17As human beings, we're very centralized.

20:19What is it?

20:20How is this going to change my life?

20:22How is it going to change the way I think?

20:25And I think that's where everything starts.

20:26Like you if you find that why and the what within you, and then you start relaying out slowly in like concentric circles.

20:34You start with you yourself and then you go out to

20:37um your department, you go out to your job and then you go, then you eventually reach the wider business.

20:42But really where it where where I'd say it

20:45It starts is when you can say the value I see here will help this department.

20:49It's very much a dip departmental thing.

20:52And then what will happen is once if there's a platform for people to showcase

20:57the the the success stories and the dollar value savings and the cost savings and the time savings that's where other people start to adopt and that's where you see other champions come up.

21:07Now

21:08We're sort of drifting towards how do you measure a champion as a person, but then how do you measure the the impact?

21:16Right.

21:17Um I think I think let's sort of stop you there a second because I think um

21:21I think you skipped something there, which is I think you're falling victim to this thing I said earlier on, which is you've described a particular type of champion.

21:31And so I think you absolutely nailed it when you said

21:34how do you measure champions, right?

21:36How do you measure the the qualities of a champion?

21:38And I think this is actually a really good point to sort of just step back a minute and let's let's just sort of thrash out the different kinds of champions

21:45champions.

21:46So sure.

21:47I made some I made some sort of um notes.

21:49So mission mission, you know, champions of your mission was an easy one, you know.

21:54Who do you see that portrays the, you know, the mission

21:56of your company, number one.

21:57Sure.

21:58Um the second one was people who challenge your thinking.

22:01So champions aren't there just to, you know, just follow the Bible as it were.

22:05They're they're also there to challenge it.

22:06You know, challenge it's the way it's understood, challenge the way things are done.

22:10Exactly.

22:11And then um once you once your challenges sort of come to play, you need some early adopters to sort of take on that philosophy and try it out, you know, take risks on behalf of others and find out where you waste time and where you don't waste time

22:24And then that's where your value drivers turn up, right?

22:26Because they're the value drivers say, hey, look, in we've tried these 20 things.

22:29These are the three things that actually create value for us today.

22:33Let's accelerate these.

22:34forward and then uh to do that guess what you need cpd activities right so then you have uh championship cpd here being uh sorry can continual professional development

22:45So uh training at work.

22:46So not just CPD of others, so training of others, but also training of self.

22:50Because if you're going to go out and show people how to use this wonderful stuff, you might have learned it as an early adopter, but when you have to teach it

22:58completely different thing so you have to kind of give yourself some training you know maybe train the trainer or some sort of training like that to then allow yourself and then the last quality in my mind is sort of professional leaders you know people who can take all of those things we've just mentioned

23:12and package it into an individual, right?

23:15And then sort of guide each and every one of those activities to it in through through its uh through its uh fruition it as it were.

23:23And sort of to the end conclusion.

23:24And so I don't think that champions or a champion has to have all these qualities.

23:30I think in an organization you can have different kinds of champions working to the same aim

23:35As long as there's some sort of level of leadership that's bringing the activities of those people together.

23:41Uh yeah, I mean that that's a fantastic point.

23:44Um mainly because of the way you sort of ramp that up and I really like that.

23:47So I'm just gonna go back to the bits that I would

23:49Um that I quite liked because like for example the um challenge your thinking one is really important.

23:56The people that I will stop you and say

23:58But why are we doing it like that?

23:59Or why should why are we focusing on that aspect when if you think about this as a wider thing and where we want to be, how do we change that?

24:06That's really important.

24:06Now, the other thing that's also important is the value drivers

24:09because as I mentioned, something that's very important from the get-go is to get some senior buy-in to show the impact it will have.

24:17And this is where the early adopters are so vital.

24:20the the the blueprint you set out with these first like the the first first sort of men or women children who go home well obviously not children because children don't work but

24:31Like th th the folks that go ahead and and start saying like right we're gonna do it this way for a period of time and we're gonna s set up this framework and we're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna learn from them.

24:42Right.

24:42And then what we're gonna do is feed that back and then we're gonna try it one more time.

24:45And then one more time.

24:46And then once we've done it three times over, or however many times, or how many few times you want to do it, that's when you can go back to the business and say, hey, so

24:55Uh that thing we tried, it's actually is gonna be a fantastic thing.

24:58Or it maybe it's something we we need to treat something and do something slightly different.

25:02Uh because as you mentioned in a podcast where we talked about platforms, moving away from old school platforms is really hard.

25:10And also moving away from new new platforms as well.

25:12Think about Microsoft and Azure.

25:14The second you bought into Azure and everything that Azure offers.

25:18Ripping yourself off that and saying, hey, we're not going to use that, but can we keep off his 365?

25:26It's not gonna happen.

25:27I don't know.

25:28I I'd love for if a listener's to actually have this conversation with a Microsoft rep, I'd love to know how that goes down.

25:34It's like you get you

25:35it's so easy to get stuck into it's uh for example another another like more human example is um so few people change their banks like right like current account yeah you've got once you've got it you just keep it

25:47Um what's another one?

25:48A washing machine.

25:51I once likened a uh a database to a washing machine.

25:54You don't change it until it breaks.

25:56Exactly.

25:56You don't change it until you literally every decade.

25:59Yeah.

25:59Exactly.

26:00It's such a long life cycle.

26:02Um so again I've gone gone off a bit, but uh it's it's

26:07Once you have those things in place, uh that's when you can move forward.

26:11Now a lot of people will jump to the s self-development section and the training section really early on.

26:17Yeah.

26:17Because they think, oh well, let's grow our channel.

26:19Too early, too early

26:20Yeah.

26:21It it depends, right, because y it the thing about going too far too fast is you lose that buzz, right

26:28True.

26:28Um that that buzz about the new technology that you've showcased and the new technology you've shown or the new way of thinking you've shown.

26:34Like for example, I've heard a

26:36a customer again we're gonna go back to tableau here um and what what they did was they um actually just spent a year going from department to department giving people two week trials and then taking it away

26:48Which is recycling, recycling, recycling.

26:50Right.

26:51And then the way they are they identified their champions is the people who kept coming back and saying, when do I get that thing back?

26:56That was really cool.

26:58Right.

26:58And that's how you spot those people who can immediately think and challenge and challenge the work they're doing and see how this can augment, improve, or develop the work that they do.

27:10Right, yeah.

27:10It's a it's a really tough one as well because one thing I never I don't hear a lot of.

27:16I hear a lot about champions and champions is a very individualistic term.

27:19right like who are what are individuals but what I don't hear a lot about is um sort of champion teams you know I I'd I I've never heard like a um a business leader talk about champions as being a team

27:31So this team, you know, okay, actually I have, but it's very rare to hear people talk about this team is our champion for this, right?

27:38It's all it seems to be this all this emphasis on an

27:41the individual.

27:42And actually I think that's a lot of pressure in especially in an organization to put on someone because it can either go one of two ways.

27:49Um either that person here really steps up and

27:52Um and sort of pushes the company forward in lots of different ways.

27:55But if the incentive structure isn't set up right for that individual and also um for their own development, it can sort of go the other way, right?

28:02You spend all this effort and time developing champions for them to only leave

28:06because you train them up so well they become sort of industry leaders as it were in sort of many many champions in the community as well as in your organization.

28:13They become unicorns.

28:14Exactly and and so they be yeah and it doesn't take them long to figure that out

28:18out and they and they move on.

28:20Um on the flip side, you know, if you sort of water it down too much and uh you make your whole teams champions, then no one real person is actually

28:29got the incentive to to sort of push something forward to new levels.

28:32It's sort of when something's a responsibility of the collective, then it tends to be no one's responsibility, right?

28:37Exactly.

28:38Exactly.

28:38But that's that's really sort of you want somewhere in the middle, some sort of balance between the two.

28:43where um you kind of had different champions.

28:46I I'll touch on Adobe because I love Adobe.

28:49It's too much.

28:49I think I keep referring to Adobe all the time.

28:51time.

28:52Um I love I love their evangelists right and to me an evangelist is a champion.

28:57They're a technical champion as it were.

28:59They show you how to do things um with the product.

29:02Okay, so um yeah if I if I look at Adobe Terry White, I can't I don't know how many YouTube videos I've watched of Terry White showing um people

29:11people how to do stuff in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop.

29:15And equally there are other champions in other sort of uh products, but they all have sort of unique aspects of them.

29:21But when they come together as a team to make something, you

29:25the the sort of the quality of their outfit isn't just the sum total of three people.

29:29It's it it it sort of trans transcends to another level, right?

29:33It's like when you bring these three awesome people together

29:36and you put them in a room, the output isn't 3x, it's 10x because they're multiplying off each off each other's sort of sort of brilliance.

29:43And that's the hard thing to really cultivate.

29:45in a team.

29:46It it's not impossible.

29:50But it's such a rare thing.

29:52Because that that because that is

29:55the fundamental issue that we have in our time, like we go this is gonna get really deep in meta, right?

29:59It's the the fundamental issue we have in our time as employees, the reason that in the world of tech and data

30:05We're gonna have to wait till the primary school kids who are learning how to like code a Raspberry Pi uh in the in the job market before we get to this point.

30:13The reason for that is because

30:15the skill shortage right now in this field is so big and people aren't thinking the way you and I think, right?

30:22If we have to break down the amount of times we we have to break down the what w the way we've approached a problem

30:28Because at on the other day as consultants, um, both of us are problem solvers, I'd say.

30:32I think that's right.

30:33The easiest way I've explained it to uh folks who are prospectively joining the data school or if

30:38I've explained to my friends about what I do.

30:41It always comes back to I'm solving other people's problems.

30:44And that that's a fundamental thing.

30:46Like you have to if you're changing

30:4810,000 people in the company and you're saying, you know that thing where we used email and you all were like, oh man, email, not sure about that, to get your reports.

30:56Yeah

30:57And we weren't having meetings all the time.

30:58Well, we're about to change that again.

31:00We're going to give you this tool called Tableau, and you have to log into this platform and then you have to find the charts you want to look at.

31:05And then you had to click around on them because that's why you investigate.

31:08It's like, no, give me the report.

31:10Like, like that's exactly what happens.

31:12And um

31:14The role of a champion is uh it it I think the the thing that is easily missed out in it from your list is um I guess the CBD one does cover it, but it's an educator.

31:24It's someone that's constantly educating um other people in the organization, people around them, and really continually

31:32like thanklessly relentlessly selling that message you notice that queen um a a good example um would be like you know that the person that tells you like Pavlovini in training right yeah um

31:44When you're telling someone something over and over and then giving them a task afterwards, suddenly that then becomes intrinsically into habit and then you start doing that without realizing it.

31:53Again, this is where we get the nudge concepts in.

31:55Right.

31:56Um

31:57But yeah, the the the cultural change and the educational change is is long and difficult.

32:01And as you say, it's also the other is issue that people might find is um people leave.

32:07Um but the the to the trick is to build that

32:11Build that mentality within people that like we're building something that you want to be part of.

32:15You don't want to miss it.

32:16Okay, so this really nicely touches uh on

32:19on something that companies don't often think about before sort of investing heavily in time and resources and you know of uh obviously money um and that is culture and it it's i it's something that um you know I came across a couple of weeks ago

32:33which is the model for managing complex change.

32:36This is a sort of a theoretical model and I'll put a link to the show notes.

32:41But what I really love about this is that it sort of breaks down sort of the different components

32:45for change and ultimately culture is about delivering continuous change in a in a in an organization.

32:50I think people always think culture is this static thing that doesn't change.

32:54It's just this the

32:55this thing that that that that stands still uh and what you're trying to do is defend it when actually culture is actually about this sort of constantly evolving sort of workplace and how

33:04you continually sort of add elements to that and what I love about this model is that it it nicely touches on the core components so visions skills incentives resources action plan

33:16And then that all results in success.

33:18And we've kind of actually touched on all these aspects in some of our thinking.

33:23But what it also shows is sort of what happens when you're just missing one of these components.

33:28So right, you could have, you know, I'll just

33:30I'll I'll just give one simple example.

33:32You could have the vision, the skills, incentives, and resources, but completely screw up on your action plan, which means you end up with a false star.

33:39And I love that.

33:39I love that because

33:41So it's so easy to just forget this.

33:43Yeah, and and that that's that's like if you don't have a vision or a goal or something you're aiming at and you don't like this is how we're gonna do it, we're gonna start off s with this first pilot, then we're gonna try this different thing, then try this other thing

33:54And all the that's well that's where you get that full start.

33:57And I think the next one on that, like this matrix that Tim's Jim's referring to, uh is if you don't have the resources.

34:03So you've got the plan, you've got the skills, the incentives and the vision.

34:07But you don't have the resource sorry, but you you don't have the resources to do it, which means like you just get you're pounding your head against the wall almost.

34:14You're like you're talking to um talking about this grand vision that you have.

34:19um about what you're going to do with within the actual grand scheme of things and then s suddenly you're like, well actually we're gonna take two people for you off your team or we're gonna take off, you know, I don't know, three different things.

34:32Oh you can you can have this product here's money here's power BI but you can't have enough licenses for it to actually make it work, right?

34:40Right.

34:40Right, exactly, exactly.

34:42And we wouldn't make this enterprise wide and you tell everyone about it and then suddenly it's like uh we're only gonna buy ten licenses.

34:48Yeah, exactly.

34:49And let's cycle the licenses around while we're at it.

34:52So we can get 30 people using those ten.

34:55So common, so common.

34:57Um and and this is uh and it's it's I mean we're not gonna sort of pivot to the culture now because

35:03I think that's a separate topic.

35:05Analytical culture is a separate topic.

35:08But it's so vital because without culture, you don't create any sort of canvas where champions even stand a chance of succeeding.

35:16Um and then you know if I touch on the last thing which is professional leaders, I think this is the one thing that you I think most companies actually do have a good feeling for.

35:26Um by virtue of other sort of mechanisms in the business.

35:30business so you tend to find professional leaders are incredibly good at m navigating I'm gonna say company politics and I don't mean that in a negative way uh necessarily I just mean sort of understanding the way uh your particular organization goes from

35:44A to B is really important and professional leaders and you know just naturally rise to the top because they they prove time and time again they know how to navigate this and they know how to

35:53handle these things in lots of I think that's uh yeah and I think that's awareness.

35:58I think that's awareness of of the the industry you're working, the company you're working in and uh as as you say those people self select themselves as like

36:06I wanna be two rungs higher, so what do I need to do?

36:09They speak to the right people, understand the company, they understand what matters to the right people, and then they sell

36:16that slice of the dream to them.

36:18Right.

36:18Exactly.

36:19And and then and then that in turn allows them to motivate the people further downstream.

36:25You know, this is this is where we're touching on that bubble up and bottle down um

36:28bubble up, yeah, bubble up and to um top-down thing, right?

36:32They they're able to speak to senior management and really speak to those people in in the higher positions and offer them something that they're interested in.

36:40Right.

36:41And then they're about to allow to able to turn around to everyone that's going to do the work and they're able to say, hey, this is what you're interested in.

36:48This is what I'm what what I'm going to do to help you.

36:51And it suddenly stops becoming that thing where it's like, how is this gonna help me?

36:56And it's it becomes this thing where it's like, let's do this together and you're you're creating this

37:01really motivational uh culture.

37:03And I think that's that's where you we get to the the the the start of this whole pit piece which is you're thinking about there's different types of champions and

37:12That's that's that's awesome, right?

37:13That that's such a cool thing to understand and be aware of.

37:17Um because it's it reminds reminds me at least that

37:22There's so many different thing activities that can be done in organizations to get the right people on site.

37:27Right.

37:27And it doesn't start with just planting one person who's uh really passionate and thinks that it's interesting in like three different teams.

37:34Exactly.

37:35Exactly

37:36Wow.

37:38So go for it.

37:39So so what?

37:41Like what what next?

37:42What what are we doing with this?

37:43So like the the thing that I I'd like to finish off on is uh the measurement piece I talked about.

37:49So um measuring champions is is really important because you want to measure that progress because if we go back to that that frustration piece if if you don't have

38:00Um the action plan and the vision, right?

38:02If you don't have that sort of goal and then you can't come back to that that that directive that you've had for a year and say, here's what we've done and here's what's changed, and you can't map that growth of

38:13individuals, of teams, of the company, of departments, and the impact you've had um as a leader, as a value driver, as a adopter.

38:22You can't really go back and justify the things you've done.

38:25And it is so important.

38:26The amount of customers I've spoken to on this sort of uh the strategic level and said, you really have to start thinking about

38:34Collecting those use cases, collecting those dollar value time saving things that really help you drive yourself forward.

38:40And this is where it really comes down to the fact that

38:43If you're not able to do that and pull those things out on demand and you're not collecting as you go, first of all, you can't, it's really hard to retrospectively collect those things.

38:51Right.

38:52Um, second of all, uh, you can't mo use those figures and that that data to motivate people.

38:57Like for example, if you could show someone

38:59Here's like uh l let me go back to an example with my tableau public profile.

39:04I can scroll back to my first ever pieces of work on there and then scroll back up to my first piece of fur my most recent pieces.

39:10And I can show that journey, right?

39:12Now that's a really powerful thing to show, you know, p uh a middle of of me a couple few months ago what if I was feeling, you know, down or something, right?

39:21Or me next week when I'm feeling like, oh man, I'm really forgetting all this stuff.

39:25But you really need to show that journey and measure that journey and allow people to reflect and understand that what they're what they're gaining, right?

39:35Exactly.

39:35And to stop them getting frustrated.

39:37Absolutely.

39:38And I I think also touching on that, I think the most important, the most valuable part of that exercise is actually context.

39:44And you can't get context by simply sitting in your own organization.

39:48You can't get context by just

39:49Just going around, you know, meeting rooms and asking people, hey, what do you think of you know the this work or the value this can bring?

39:56You get context by taking yourself out into the wider community, as it were.

40:01Whether it's uh your industry, uh whether it's other peers in the same uh sort of uh organization but in different business units that see value in different ways, whether it's

40:10It's finance, HR, legal.

40:13And you get context by immersing yourself in other places where value sort of uh bubbles up to the top.

40:20So

40:21uh maybe going to conferences and just getting involved in debates and stuff.

40:24And I know this sounds like I'm I'm turning into a marketing sort of um marketeer for for events, but there really is no better value than actually just talking to

40:34other people who are doing the same thing because it's only then when you let's say have to share your ideas with people that you really get the critique that you kind of need that you would never get inside of your organization.

40:46Or any uh any echo chamber for that.

40:48Yeah, exactly.

40:48Exactly.

40:49Yeah, absolutely.

40:50It's the biggest criticism of some of the communities that we're part of

40:53of but um i it's exactly that and you you you kind of you need to go somewhere where no one knows who you are no one knows what you

41:01do people aren't sort of drinking the Kool-Aid and they can just give you raw honest feedback because um one of the funniest sort of contrasting things is

41:10obviously there's this power bi versus tableau world stuff okay and what I always find funny is that um you uh you know people who absolutely love power bi and they're professionals who literally they're

41:23their whole entire career Power BI.

41:25They get Power BI, they get the way it works.

41:28They get the challenges that it can solve.

41:30Then on the other hand, you have sort of Tableau professionals who, let's be fair, haven't been around as long as Power BI

41:36professionals.

41:37Um but on the flip side, they understand the tableau philosophy.

41:40Okay.

41:41And they have this sort of real friction where they they kind of try and go at each other and say, hey, this is better.

41:47How can you use that and how can you do that?

41:49that and they're arguing completely different points.

41:52It's like if somebody who's using Power BI clearly doesn't care about X and someone who's using Tableau clearly doesn't care about Y.

41:59That's why they're using those different things.

42:01that's that's why with all you know all all all due respect they ended up in different places because they see the world differently and and so when people argue you know when people go back and forth

42:12because they see the world differently.

42:13That that gets you nowhere.

42:15But when you have a common understanding of a goal and you go out to the community and you talk about that goal and how to get there, then you actually start talking about the same thing.

42:25And you can actually get valuable feedback about where you're heading and where you're not heading.

42:31Yeah.

42:32And I I think I think to use an analogy, it's like when you compare phones, right?

42:36Like someone who might be using

42:38an uh what is it, a s um a really old LG phone.

42:41But really all they're using it for is getting text message, using WhatsApp every now and again and sending text and and like

42:47um receiving and sending phone calls.

42:50Whereas other people will have an iPhone and they'll be like completely using it all the time because that becomes their centralized point.

42:56And that's exact there is no superiority between two products in of as you mentioned because

43:02They they service completely different crowds.

43:04Uh and it it comes back to exactly what you said.

43:07It's about what is important to an organization.

43:10Right.

43:10Um that's what it ultimately comes to.

43:12down to and that's the same thing for champions I think.

43:14Exactly.

43:15And and I think that's I think that's the most valuable bit.

43:18That's the most sort of most important say what

43:21you know understanding the context of where you are as a company who you have as you know your champions your individuals and then who your wider workforce is i is

43:30is basically and then uh having a clear understanding of where you're heading so that you can actually bring all the constituent parts of that journey together in the right time in the right place and

43:43So that you can actually deliver some of that change.

43:44And you know, this is all abstract.

43:46Um, we haven't once today talked about anything tangible that you can actually hold or see.

43:52Um so that in itself is actually kind of hard because, you know

43:56m we might describe it one way but in reality it looks entirely different in different organizations.

44:01And and maybe that's another podcast.

44:03Maybe that's another podcast where we actually get into the weeds a bit and say here's some

44:07raw examples some tools, some things you can do.

44:10Uh obviously a lot of our example be on Tableau, Tableau Server, Alterics.

44:15Right

44:15Right.

44:15Um among other things.

44:17Uh maybe maybe even quantified self really falls into this quite nicely actually.

44:22Oh man, so much, so much there.

44:23I think it's funny, quantified self is one of those great areas where um whenever you you you you go to

44:29to a meetup and everyone sort of respects the talk that's going on because you'll track such different things about yourself that no one can really speak up and say you're doing it wrong because it's about the self.

44:41So no one can really come up to you

44:43and say, hey, you're doing that wrong because no one understands you better than you.

44:47So that's one of the unique things I love about that community is that there's no wrong answer.

44:51And there's sort of really good mutual respect for everyone's approach, regardless of how simple or complex it is.

44:58I love it.

44:59Yeah.

44:59Yeah.

45:00And and and I think uh this this is definitely for another episode, but a company is definitely doing some quantified stuff.

45:06When you're trying to do some metadata stuff, you're trying to understand how your company works.

45:10That's that's all quantifying yourself.

45:13So But hey, that that's that's another episode.

45:16Qualitative or quantitative way.

45:18Same thing.

45:19Absolutely.

45:20Exactly.

45:21Okay, great.

45:21I think that's been an episode.

45:23Um uh this is oh season two, episode four.

45:26I quoted earlier season four, episode two, got

45:28that the wrong way around.

45:30Um between uh this episode and the next episode, um as we mentioned at the beginning of the show, look out for a change in name.

45:37The album art will also change.

45:39or the show art will change.

45:41But you won't need to change anything in your podcast player.

45:43So if you're listening to us now, then you don't need to change

45:48anything um once the change has happened um our twitter handle will also change so that will change to datum pod um but uh again no need to change uh which account you follow we'll just

46:01simply be doing a little renamed switch um on on Twitter.

46:05So um look out for that, look out for the messages.

46:07Um help us spread the message as it were.

46:10We're going to be doing a lot of promotion and uh trying to get more and more listeners in

46:14involved.

46:15Um Ravi My Amazon uh S3 bucket bill uh went up this month.

46:19So we're definitely Amazing.

46:21We're definitely we're definitely getting more listeners, which is great.

46:23That's that's my I love that

46:26Uh yeah, I love I love that that's that our benchmark to see how how many listens we're getting.

46:30Like uh it's quite quite hard to get that data out of Apple or whatever podcasting app we're using.

46:34So we just see how many times that the we're being charged for the um for the uh

46:40MP3 to be streamed.

46:41Exactly.

46:41It's actually just bandwidth and and storage.

46:43So it's like, okay, we're producing more episodes, tick.

46:47Um, and how much how much bandwidth are we streaming?

46:50Is it

46:50percentage of our total storage basically and that's that's basically the number I'm currently using and I I think the pricing's more complex than that but anyway when the number goes up I'm thinking yes we're getting

47:01more people because it's a monthly it's a monthly target.

47:05Wonderful.

47:06Great.

47:06Thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next show.

47:10Cheers guys.

47:10Take it easy.