[00:00:00] Dan: Hello and welcome back to We Not Be the podcast where we explore how humans connect to get stuff done together. I'm Dan Hammond

[00:00:12] Pia: And I am Pia Lee.

[00:00:14] Dan: How the devil are you, Pia?

[00:00:15] Pia: Yeah, I've had a good week actually. Very good. No snakes in my office today, so it's been a much, been a plus.

[00:00:22] Dan: Brilliant and I, and I've been, I think it's my second. business trip since the 9th of January, 2020. Can you believe it? And that's the, don't do much of that anymore, but I, I, I did get a bit homesick actually, but went to a city that we know well, Bristol in the west country, and uh, it was in fine form and was, uh, yeah, working with a team in a second round of funding to private, private actually back team to get clarity for their next chapter, which is excellent. They're a wonderful, wonderful company. Um, so that was great. That was great. And today, Pia.

[00:00:53] Pia: We've got, we've got, some old old colleagues, not old, but just colleagues from prior 

[00:00:59] Dan: Yeah. So this was an important chapter of my life for sure. Um, as we'll, we'll hear in a minute because it was re just this really help me to understand a lot about how organizations and teams, teams can work. And I've got this sort of slight pet peeve which is around all some of the things that we see on LinkedIn. You know, there's this quote attributed to Richard Branson, which goes something like, your customers aren't the most important. Your employees are. Look after employees and they'll look after your customers. That always causes me some trouble because of this experience. I actually have found on the contrary, if you, if you have an internally focused culture, it can really fester and, and get directionless. Whereas what we're gonna talk about today is the work that Marcus and Tom, our guests did, um, about 20 years ago now to really galvanize an organization through external focus. And I think they achieved amazing things inside and externally. But I think there's some things that we can all learn about how to bring everyone in, any size of organizational team, a real external focus that, um, brings them together to do amazing things. 

[00:02:05] Pia: And particularly now, I think this is, even though this is from an example sometime ago, I think this is probably something now to really get out of the tactical.

[00:02:14] Dan: Yes. Uh, get a bit more strategic. You're right to actually zoom out and say, right, how are we going to actually engage in field? Because yeah, resources are short, so how are you going to focus them on a point that's gonna make a difference? And I think that Marcus and Tom have a lot to share with us. So, 

[00:02:30] Dan: uh, let's get over there and go and see my, uh, ex-colleagues and, uh, see what they've got to say two decades on.

[00:02:35] Dan: Tom, Marcus, welcome to the show. It's lovely to see you after all this time.

[00:02:44] Marcus: Lovely to see you too.

[00:02:45] Tom: Great to.

[00:02:46] Dan: Excellent. You both look absolutely gorgeous after all these years, I have to say. you can reciprocate the compliment whenever you want. Um, so yeah, well welcome. So I'm gonna get, get us started with her, uh, with the good old conversation starter cards. Just, you know, warm the, um, warm the pipes a little bit. Ah, this is a lovely one for the two of you, my perfect day. What is your perfect day? 

[00:03:12] Marcus: I think it involves a beach and dogs,

[00:03:15] Dan: Yeah.

[00:03:18] Marcus: and a pub. Uh, were you expecting something businesslike?

[00:03:21] Dan: No, no. It must not be if you the be, no, no, 

[00:03:24] Tom: Mine would definitely be by the

[00:03:27] Marcus: it would be swimming with dogs, fishing and children. Actually, I like the kids coming in as well. 

[00:03:32] Dan: Do you swim in cold water as well? Do you swim through the winter

[00:03:35] Marcus: I only swim in cold water when I have to get you in, Dan.

[00:03:41] Dan: Well, That worked. 

[00:03:42] Tom: And I have the video 

[00:03:44] Dan: Yeah. 

[00:03:44] Tom: to prove it.

[00:03:45] Marcus: I think I've been in twice other times. Twice or three times. I think I told you I used to go in every day, but I didn't.

[00:03:51] Pia: that was just to get you in. 

[00:03:52] Dan: that got me in the gin, clear water of the water mos in Winchester. And Tom, tell me about that Riverbank. What, what are you up to

[00:04:00] Tom: Oh, well, I, I just love being outside by the lake, you by the river catching fish. But I do also enjoy having a on the way home and also, of course, be with my lovely wife and grandchildren. That's very special 

[00:04:14] Pia: Well, I feel like I'm sort of on that, that country edition of sort of a B, B, C, you know, gentleman at leisures. So, so, so let's bring it back to reality cuz most of us aren't there yet. So I wanna go back to who you both are and how you came to work together and do the work together that we're gonna talk about.

[00:04:36] Marcus: Well, I, um, I'd be working in CIBA Vision in the ophthalmology team for about 10 years when, um, I had a great opportunity to take over the optics team. And at that time I realized there was quite a few things needed to be changed. And I knew Tom as a great collaborator with a fantastic attitude towards working with people and customers. 

[00:04:58] Tom: I started off in finance, which was too interesting for me, so I went into IT. And then, uh, worked for IBM, worked in the financial industry, ran my own software house and did some consulting for CIBA Vision. And eventually joined, joined them as IT manager and then as Marcus says, as operations director and then short spell, actually sales director. So before I went off to America. So it was fairly varied.

[00:05:27] Pia: I guess that a number of our viewers will will not know who CIBA Vision is. So do you wanna enlighten us? What that, because it is a sort of slightly central to this conversation.

[00:05:36] Marcus: yeah, CIBA Vision is, it's been renamed now as Alcon Optical, but it was a sort of medium tier player in the on contact lens industry. And had been sort of bumping along for about 25 years by the time I became MD, and we'd had some peaks and troughs, but more recently, quite a few sort of low troughs and, um, we were competing with an outstanding company called Johnson and Johnson with the brand AccuView. And, um, it was clear that, uh, we were being shown the door in nearly every sort of interaction with them, uh, when, when I took over. So we'd launched a fantastic product and it wasn't doing very well, and it was time to change things.

[00:06:20] Marcus: So we were owned by Novartis, a big, uh, Swiss pharmaceutical company. About that time it was the 10th largest company in the world by capital, so a huge organization and it had a brilliant attitude towards developing its people. Particularly its managers. So we've benefited a great deal from that sort of indulgence. We were sent to Harvard. We were, um, really encouraged to cross ize with other divisions. It was a, a fantastic background, but the company had been underperforming for some time and, um, it was time to change things.

[00:06:56] Dan: And I, um, entered the picture, which we're not here to talk about that, but I, I think it's a good place to start the story weirdly, which is, I was working for Johnson and Johnson. as a competitor to CIBA Vision. And, and I got a call to say, do you wanna come to work for CIBA Vision? And, and I remember distinctly thinking, Hmm, I've actually seen CIBA Vision out in the marketplace. I've heard good things. Something is happening. So from the competitor side, I was already feeling something was moving, something was different and that CIBA Vision was making its mark. And I was so, I was lured over to this exciting. Upstart, really. 

[00:07:34] Dan: Um, so, let's use that as a cue. What, what did you, how did the story play out?

[00:07:40] Marcus: Uh, well, I think first of all, you're seeing a reaction to a crisis. I mean, an almost existential crisis that the company was doing so badly. Um, we needed to restructure and we needed to figure out what the, you know, strategy was gonna be to survive even the first year. And for me as a new MD, just to survive my first year.

[00:08:00] Marcus: So we identified things that were basically blocking our customers from having a great relationship with us. And all sorts of things were going wrong. And we won't go into those in any great detail. But what we did say is, uh, we'll get together everybody and have a strategic review. We went down to a nice hotel in the forest with about 30 or 40 people, and we did a big strategic six hats exercise. If you know what six hats is, the sort of, it's a collaborative team working thing that allows everybody to express their negative and positive views in a sort of compartmentalized way. And so you get everything, everybody's happy they've had their say.

[00:08:38] Marcus: But we came out of it and the, it was actually one of the most delightful moments in my entire leadership time at CIBA was, um, when the outcome of that strategic review was that we universally agreed to put customers at the heart of the business instead of just looking at the business from our own points of view or our own benefit. And I knew when that happened that we would be on our way. I got a kind of buy-in to something which seemed very obvious to me, but had actually through this, through this collaborative strategic review, everybody had seen it and um, so we were ready to move forward together with it. 

[00:09:13] Tom: it actually was a very special moment because, up until that time, what happens is the general manager, whoever would come up with a strategy and it would be like given from tablets from on on the top of the mountain and you'd just have to get on with it. But actually this was a strategy, which evolved from all, all the people in the company, or representatives of all areas of the company. So the buy-in was huge because they were part of that decision making. And so for me that was really important. And I was thinking about the, we were talking about the people who were there, and um, it, it really was people from each part of the company, even customer services. I say even customers, so especially customer services. Everybody, even an external supplier who was going to be fundamental to our business and distribution, we invited them as well.

[00:10:11] Dan: Hmm. And it, it, it sounds like, um, in a way that's, that's something that a lot of companies say, isn't it, um, to put their customer at the heart of the business. What did you, how did you bring that to life so it's not just a slogan in the, in the lobby?

[00:10:28] Marcus: Well, we had a bunch of things that we did. I mean, first of all, we were measuring things acutely. Uh, and so, we were both kind of great believers in, um, opinion polls, you know, walking management by walking about and listening to people. We basically took in as much information as possible and then objectified it, I suppose. I mean, we made it, you know, part of a balanced scorecard, which I've just learned about. And um, so we had sort of monthly checkups on not just does it feel good, but is it good ? So, uh, we easily feel good because we had this sort of collaborative euphoria, but um, what made a difference? You know, sales and performance of the teams and customer attitudes to us.

[00:11:13] Tom: But I, I think one of the best things that we did right early on was to every two months pull a sixth, Sixth, yeah. Of our, of our customer base. So we'd send a prepaid card, uh, and they would write on all the comments and feedback about what they liked or didn't like about our customer. And actually each of those dislikes was a call to action. So we actually got a very clear picture of all our customers um, and we developed some strategies around those. And the other thing I thought was brilliant was actually to have customers from each territory at a, at a meeting, a virtual board meeting. It was called project gold. And they could look at the, we could look at the business from their point of view and they give feedback. That was just inspirational.

[00:12:03] Marcus: Yeah. That we asked them to direct the business from their point of view is, is pretty much what happened. We basically said, you know, think of yourself as directors of this company. What would you do to make us better? And, and that, that was really, really powerful. So we were around the country twice with, we did 26 board meetings. 

[00:12:22] Tom: Yeah, and the territory managers were told, don't just invite your favorite customers who are gonna say a lot of nice things. We want the dirty stuff to. 

[00:12:30] Dan: You know, it's one of those things that you've always got something more urgent and more pressing to do than get in the car again and drive to Nottingham and meet customers. There's always something I've gotta do that thing, and it's really pressing. So I think that that was a very interesting experience for me to see how, when that is a thing that everyone has to show up to, you get the dividends, but it's not that thing that's on top of your to-do list that day.

[00:12:58] Tom: But there were some other things as well, which I think were critical. Every single person in the company, not just salespeople, were invited to go and work in a customer's shop, uh, once or twice a year to try and visualize the business from their perspective. So how, because we were just one of a number of suppliers. So how, how does it feel to be working in a customer store with CIBA Vision? What experiences are you gonna have? The good and the bad, obviously. And again, they could bring things back and say, Hey, did you know what, uh, and it affected our strategy.

[00:13:37] Tom: For example, we, or Marcus in particular said, I don't want products sitting in a, uh, customer's shop that they would like to send back, but we won't accept it because of our returns policy, because every time they see it, it's gonna really annoy them. So basically we said, if you want to send stuff back, that's fine. We'll take it. Uh, and of course a lot of people said, oh, don't do that because customers will take the Mickey and they'll 

[00:14:08] Tom: Abuse, but they didn't, 

[00:14:10] Marcus: Well, what A two did. Um, but on the whole it was worth doing because yeah. I mean, there's one big chain really did take the Mickey, but anyway, we they ended up going bust anyway, . So, um, but coming back to, you know, how we did it, um, What we've said were the sort of, if you like, the obvious things. The, the, the, the, the, the real accelerator was, um, we did something with 

[00:14:38] Marcus: somebody, you know, Dan, um, we did the cycle of service. So we are looking at the way our company worked in order to fulfill our customers' needs. And we looked at the, the customer journey and we identified every touchpoint on that journey. And we found out that there were, you know, we used to think of our customer relationship as being a salesman and a customer. And that was, that was everything. And then we realized that out of the 2 million contacts a year with the customers, about 5,000 of them were from a salesman, and the rest of them were receiving an invoice, receiving a package, calling our call center, having somebody chase them for accounts receivable, um, uh, just mail shops, customers, other SIGs, professional services, all those things.

[00:15:26] Marcus: And we realized those touch points gave us an enormous number of ways of making that customer feel good about us. Um and I, I, I think we realized that you cannot just be good in one pot. It's like, you know, if, if you get a Tesco and you think, is this brilliant, the good value, I'm buying the stuff, it's in stock, you know, getting all these things right, and you go to the cashier and you've got this grumpy cashier who you know, doesn't say hello, and you just think, oh, it's just knocked to polish off this experience. And that could happen. With, you know, just having difficulty placing an order or receiving an invoice that didn't seem to stack up or was difficult to decipher.

[00:16:06] Marcus: And, and so that cycle of service thing became. , almost a religion through the company. Everybody bought in. Everybody yeah. Participated. Um, and it was so successful in getting people to accept that we could change things together, that we actually ran it not just for our customers, but for our own employees. Our associates were what's your cycle of service at work? What's the things at work and don't work? And how can we make those better so that you can be happier and more productive and efficient? So, so we called that internal cycle of service and um, it was, it was an accelerator.

[00:16:45] Pia: What was your biggest surprise from a customer perspective? that actually was quite quick and easy to fix?

[00:16:52] Marcus: Changing the way they ordered. So previously, if they phoned up to place an order for a high volume product, that order was noted down and delayed a day to punish them for phoning us.

[00:17:03] Tom: Don't you, your orders.

[00:17:07] Marcus: I'm not making it up. You, you can't make it up. And uh, if the first thing I said to the company, I thought, this is nuts. We've, I said We've gotta be open for business. We'll take any order any way they like. If they order sent an order in by carrier pigeon, we'll give it our, you know, top priority. I think changing that made an enormous difference in the mindset of our customer service people. It wasn't just the customer. The few customers that had their orders delayed, they probably couldn't tell whether it was deliberate or just stupidly accidental. But the customer service team and everybody else involved realized that that was a serious step to prioritizing a customer and looking at it from the customer's point of view.

[00:17:47] Tom: I think one thing that we're talking about is that there's an industry survey that was done by the NOP each year, wasn't there? Um, and we came out seventh or eighth originally. Um, and we designed our own, which was similar to terms of you, how can you order, etc? But had a question at the end, our own question, which was, which supplier would you best like to do business with? And our objective is wasn't to be sent. We said our objective now is to be top. We want be the customer, sorry, the supplier that our customers most like to do business with. And that was very key. And we, and we got there.

[00:18:27] Marcus: We did. I think, you know, you look at all these hygiene questions and you think if somebody asked what, you know, why I would go to Tesco's as opposed to Waitrose, it's not just down to one thing. It's a whole, if you're like red hat of the whole lot. And that's what that question was intended to be. And in fact, Tom, we were unable to put that an into the standard industry survey because the others objected to it. it was only when they all couldn't afford to do the survey anymore cause they were going bust that we could put it in.

[00:18:58] Marcus: And so that leads me to this whole charm thing, which is, you have to just get down to one simple determinating question, really. It's all very well, you know, nitpicking around the detail of speed of service and handling returns, and with the salesman smiles. It's, it's, it boils down to when you've got a choice between four or five, almost equivalent suppliers to phone up and place an order, who, who are you gonna. And you're gonna pick the one that you prefer to do business with for all the reasons that they have in their mind, not that they can specify. And so that was the lead item in our, in our states of the nation. I'm sure you carried on with it too, Dan, after you succeeded, didn't you? That, that it was, it was all that mattered really, in terms of customer regard.

[00:19:43] Dan: And it boiled all of those other things into, into a bundle which is much more customer centric, which is, as you say, it's a, it's, we, we are not that good at really splitting down all of those different things, but I do know how I feel and about that. So I think that question encapsulates it.

[00:20:02] Dan: So how, talk us through how you, cuz some of these things very often, and Pia and work with all the top teams and they work with all the metrics, but it's sort of stuck the team sometimes. And talk us through some of the ways in you help this built that visibility and, and everyone to be attached to the customer. Because, you know, if you're an accounts payable person, you can feel quite a long way from, um, from, from the reality.

[00:20:28] Tom: One of the things we decided to do that was everybody was in everybody in the company. And to do that, we would align, uh, people from the organization to, uh, to the territories. I can't remember how many territories there were about 15, 13. Uh, so everybody, wherever they were in the company was aligned. One of territories. Uh, so whether they were in, could be accounts payable as Marcus said, or it top actual Salesforce obviously telesales. Um, customer service, logistics, whatever, so that they were dealing with a set of customers were very on those customers rather than just any old customer.

[00:21:11] Tom: So, for example, when the customer called, they be a routed to a particular person in a call center or set of people in the call center. So they, over they building up very strong relationships and felt accountable to those people. 

[00:21:25] Marcus: I think it's worth saying that the number of calls that we were taking into our call center was 10,000 a day for 40 people or so. And so there were three customer service people for each of the 13 territory teams, on average. And some of them would be taking around 400 calls in a day. So, this Tom's brilliant co call line identification and, and, and systems to bring up the customer details immediately, the relationship was one of literally the customer being on the other side of the desk and just speaking to the same person three or four times a day. And that made a huge difference to the customer and to our customer service people. They, you know, that was a real trusting relationship. That was easy. And that's the reason people prefer to do business with us, amongst other things. 

[00:22:17] Dan: And those teams their own sort of regional identities, if I remember rightly as well. 

[00:22:22] Marcus: Yeah, we encouraged that. Um, but the other thing that we did was we kind of had objectives running through the organization that literally they, they had to cascade a little bit from the ones that I'd been given to run the organization, but they were sort of divided out in appropriate sort of levels to different teams and different levels of the organization, so that everybody was pulling to the same objective and nobody could really achieve their objectives if other people weren't achieving theirs. So it was a big, it was a huge collective understanding that we were in it together. And um, and as we were very successful, that was a very experience for people.

[00:23:01] Pia: And wh when did you would rooted to person in the shift happen? And, and, like, how long did it take before you really started to see the traction?

[00:23:12] Marcus: Well, uh, uh, I think we saw it probably about as fast as Dan did when he was in our competitor. I, I remember when I first met Dan, uh, you'd said something like that and, um, and this was in January of 2000, I think. Um, so within, within six months or so, we knew we were getting better sales than I a product that was being better received, brand new product was being better received than we expected. Um, it, you know, it started to, to, to show signs of lifting off, but I mean, I think our sales were still flat that year, around 10 million on the optics. And then over the next five years, they accumulated to approximately, I think 80 million down, wasn't it? When you,

[00:23:58] Dan: Yeah,

[00:23:59] Marcus: Something like that. Yeah. So it was a fairly massive increase.

[00:24:02] Dan: And from, yeah. And fourth in the market to first by some way. And one area I wanted to explore with you is, I've got, so two questions, but, uh, the first, there's one reflection when we were talking earlier, um, you, you, you denied on knowledge of this, um, both of you. But, um, I remember being in marketing, and the leading the lens business. And what the, one of the ways we look at teams and organizations is through clarity, climate, and competence. We talked a lot about You've talked about climate in terms of systems, but resources sits at the heart of climate as well, there was a real push in my memory, uh, to, to drive resources to the customer and to be customer first. And the, I remember for example, the call center was redecorated. They had all new, new furniture and everything, and us sort of rear echelon people upstairs had to wait about three years even to get a lick of paint.

[00:24:59] Dan: And so, my question is, so I think that that did reinforce what customer centricity was all about, is driven towards the customer, and you are dweeb. You can, you can wait until you've earned it. But, my question on the back of that is Did you ever get any pushback? It all sounds rather wonderful. Was there any, did you get pushback from, from, from any of this? Did you get any, any resistance from any part of the organization?

[00:25:23] Marcus: I don't think so. Honestly, I can't remember any pushback at all from anybody who felt entitled to be treated. With a more respect than customer service. I mean, uh, they wouldn't have, they would've had a fairly big pushback from me if they'd pushed back, I tell you.

[00:25:38] Marcus: No, the only pushback I can remember, which is kind of funny, is we had this conference to launch, uh, a brand new product in November of 99, and we we're so out of money that we basically went to Sandy Bulls holiday camp, 

[00:25:50] Tom: And 

[00:25:50] Marcus: was one of these places they used to and nice hotels. And this was a family holiday camp in sort of static caravans in the New Forest, um, in November.

[00:26:00] Tom: In November.

[00:26:01] Marcus: And because the product was oriented, it was called night and day, and it was for, you know, you could wear contact lenses every night. So everybody was issued with company pajamas. Uh, and now the only pushback I remember was that some of the sales guys thought that they should have had their bed made for them. Cause when they turned up in their cabin, there's did the bed roll and the pillow, they had to be made up.

[00:26:21] Marcus: So that was as, that was as serious it ever got. And, um, the rest of the time, I think people appreciated what was being done. Particularly, the first real revolution was did any you know, having our foot deep on the brake and, and putting it onto the accelerator. And, um, so yeah, that, that, that was, we felt that quite quickly. Pia, to go back to your earlier question, that was, that was, that was noticeable right away that, um the customer service team were happier. And when we had visitors, our cu, the, the reception area was on the side of the customer service team in the same open space. And they'd come and say, gosh, you've got a buzz in here. You've got a real exciting buzz. And we could feel that all the time. And often if I got a bit depressed after a discussion with somebody in head office, I'd go and have a wanderabout in the customer service area just to get a bit of buzz.

[00:27:13] Pia: And, and the other, the other question I wanted to ask you was, I mean, we we're all, we're, we're focusing a lot on teams here. This is what we're all about. How did you keep that alignment through the teams? So how do you ensure that customer centricity is aligned at every level and every type of team? Because sometimes that can wane or get misinterpreted or we take our eye off the ball. What, what? How did you do that?

[00:27:38] Marcus: I think. We included everybody for a start. So everybody was in the team, or you know, if necessary. The territory teams, as Tom said, and of course their own departmental teams. But, but everybody was included and, and I mentioned before the objectives were cascaded so that they were open. Everybody could see everybody else's objectives. You could see that they were fairly distributed and that we were all in it together. So that, that was a sort of underpinning. But that's not the emotional stuff that just helps people sort of intellectually recognize that we were seeing it through.

[00:28:13] Marcus: What I think made a difference on the, the emotional side was, we first of all, listened to our own employees like we did to our customers. So that was, you know, we removed all of the frustrations and wasted time things. Tom did a brilliant job with the, the, what was TQM became ISO BS 5 75, ISO 9,000, all these sort of quality systems. We removed aggravation. We, we took out the things that were not efficient processes, which sounds nice and sort of bland, but actually non-efficient processes really hack people off who are delivering them. They can see that it's just wasting their time and they've been forced to do it. So we refined all of those so people could see that their performance was improving because the processes were smarter. And they were involved in rewriting their processes. We asked them to, you know, maybe interviewed them. We, you know, we, we went through them and Tom and I led that process for about a year.

[00:29:07] Marcus: The other thing we did is we trained people together. We tried to get everybody together. I know Tom's gonna talk about some of the major events because he absolutely loved them and organized most of them. But there was something called, um, Leading with Vision, which was a, um, it was intended for leaders of organizations. It came through the Novartis sort of training philosophy, and it was to teach leaders how to share a vision with the organization. And one of the thing s we realized is that the only way you can really get people to be good followers is to let them know how to be a good leader and understand, you know, what's involved from the other side as well. And so we ran this Leading with Vision theme. We, we took the, the, the, the super trainer from Switzerland who taught sort of five of us, and we said, right, come over and spend a week and teach 40 people a day for a week or 30 people a day for a week in exactly the same way you just taught us. So everybody understood the language of leadership, the language of followership, um, the examples that rang true to them. And I think that was, that was a, that was a very important thing that we

[00:30:15] Tom: Yeah, we took, we gave people whatever training we could and as much as we could, uh, because the key to them is, you know, making sure people are equipped to do their job. Um, Uh, somebody of May very much once said, well, well I it's saying, yeah, but what if I train all people and they would if we having what if I don't train them and they stay? And that's very, very true. Uh, so we, we, we were very keen on training. I know a lot of company and we had a, um, and was one of the, the last thing we would cut.

[00:30:48] Marcus: Absolutely. I mean, defiantly, we'd never cut the training. Uh, in fact, we'd almost guard our way to expand it if we were in any sort of difficulty. Well, actually we weren't in any difficulty because we did the training.

[00:31:00] Dan: I mean, it's a great example actually of, that's the exact opposite of what most companies do. Um, you know, been in professional services a while, that is literally the first thing that goes. So that, that's, that's quite a r it's a, it again, an easy thing to say, but quite radical.

[00:31:17] Marcus: Yeah, if you dunno how to train people, well then you obviously you're not appreciating the benefit. But I mean, the, the, it was everybody being trained together, whether it was the cycle of service and the Tragic to Magic stuff, which was brilliantly delivered and everybody really understood it and could exercise it in their daily lives, right to the Leading with Vision, which was about really being participating in a team with a vision.

[00:31:42] Marcus: But then, the other thing that we did, Pia, which, we made us, we, we just got everybody involved as much as possible. So, um, we had something called Juice Wars, which was crazy name for a program where we wanted to get our contact lens solutions sort of slightly more dynamic. They were slight lagging behind the success of the lenses, and so we had these multidisciplinary teams. I think they were about, Eight of them went there, something like that. And it was a sort of competition between them to come up with new ways of developing the lens solution business. And they ended up being, the presentations were massive. Pantomimey song and dance routines. I mean, it was just, it took off with such creative fun. And that, that fun was enabled. It was, it was allowed, it was encouraged actually. But it meant people could really participate and, and, um, And it made for a very happy organization.

[00:32:34] Marcus: One of our other benchmarks was morale in the company, which we never really found anything better than day's sickness to, um, to measure it. But, uh, day's sickness is a very objective measure and, um, and people could decide whether they're sick enough to stay off or to take a sickie or, or, or to come in. And, um, whilst we didn't want people with, you know, viruses coming in, anybody who maybe, you know, had a bit of a bender wouldn't really feel that they could cut to take a sick. So yeah. 

[00:33:04] Tom: That'd be me then.

[00:33:05] Marcus: So Tom never took a day off in spite of the appalled he heaped on himself every evening.

[00:33:10] Tom: 15 years, not one day off.

[00:33:12] Dan: oh my word. If I hear that one more time, Tom, honestly, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to have a sick day. Um, so you've had a few years to sort of look out sea or across the river and contemplate. Any, any regrets from that time? Any would or coulda, shoulda?

[00:33:28] Marcus: I reckon, going to your We Not Me theme, I think we probably only thought of we as us in the UK and not we as the entire organization enough. And we tried to explain when we were given the chance that, you know, everybody's in sales and people say, oh yeah, I understand what that means, it means everybody's got a business card. You know, you just hand it to somebody you sit next to on a plane. No, that wasn't, that wasn't the energy. We had trouble, well, we didn't really try hard enough. I say, I suppose we didn't feel that we were empowered to make a difference to the rest of the organization with this philosophy. And It, it was so universally applicable.

[00:34:08] Marcus: We did take our people to, to our manufacturing sites, and we took our customers to manufacturing sites, so some integration through that, but it, it never, people didn't really. I found quite a bit of pushback from, from my bosses to some of this stuff because they just thought about our business in terms of financial performance and not about customer regard and happiness of the team and processes being really efficient. Yeah. So was, they were blind and, and we could have made more of a difference and actually perhaps got more assistance in developing a new product, for example, which was slow to come later, quite slow to develop new products.

[00:34:43] Dan: The bigger we, I think in your defense Marcus and Tom, that I would say that when I think about the people were, uh, trying to influence there, pretty pedestrian. But yeah, it's a very, it's a very good intent.

[00:34:54] Tom: But I think the handover of that whole territory team alignment, customer alignment to the next general manager probably could have been better because he traditional view of, uh, not to you. I'm not talking about, I'm talking about after you. And, and obviously if they don't, if they don't understand the power of what we were doing and the results that it created, they would go back into the silo approach. Uh, and I think possibly that's what happened. 

[00:35:23] Pia: Uh, my, I've have one last question. Do you think what you did could be recreated in a hybrid environment where you don't see people on a day-to-day basis? Could you have done it?

[00:35:35] Marcus: Yeah. That's the environment we're in now and, uh, you know, talking like this. And, uh, I think if you've got a, uh, a vision where everybody can see, A, a benefit to their goal, but also personally to themselves. So improving their quality of life. I mean, Tom and I were talking earlier about a business that, that we launched together later, which didn't have the same sort of power of a gatekeeper. And, um, you know, having this charm offensive with, with opticians who are determinating all of our product sales basically, just doesn't replicate to selling products online to an end consumer. You couldn't load the experience with enough charm for it to be determinative. They were still looking for a price deal or, you know, next day delivery for free or something like that. And um, so there are some businesses which you'd have to dig deeper to find what the determinators would be. But for our business, with a determin, with a gatekeeper, as it was with my ophthalmology experience with, you know, cataract surgeons, that's a, a relationship you just really have to develop to itmost, and then you, which we did.

[00:36:43] Dan: That is so juicy, and, um, yeah, so full of insight and, um, as I say, when on over the years on, on what was done, it's just such a consistent. Story and so impressive. But, uh, took a lot of, lot of good thinking from a couple of chaps, and I'm very delighted that they've joined us on the podcast today. Marcus, Tom, lovely to see you again. I'll see you again soon. Thank you so

[00:37:07] Marcus: Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, Pia. Cheers.

[00:37:10] Pia: Some real, really rich insights there and, and things that even though this is two decades ago, I think it's important that we can see some, some real relationship to what's happening now. I love the idea that they got all the reps involved in crafting this vision. And as part of the de the decision making. There was a real inclusivity so that everybody owned it and a, and a, and a deep accountability. And I see that now. I see the need for that now. But what we sometimes don't do is take the time and effort to involve everybody and actually get them to become part of the solution instead just to shortcut it, you know, by here's a copy and paste and this is where we're going, which, which isn't gonna be inspirational. So I think there's some real, really key parts to that.

[00:38:01] Dan: Yeah. That seemed to give the initial direction. I think it's actually, if we cast the three Cs lens over this, clarity climate and ccompetence, I think it's very, I think one of the reasons looking back why it worked was that all of those were covered. So, you know, if you look at clarity, that piece around once that direction had been set involving everyone, you know, getting, having that customer focus in, in their clarity, that was a consistent thing. And then the hard side of that, if you like, both in terms of difficulty, but in some terms of numbers was the, was using metrics to drive that. So what does a customer actually want? And how are we gonna, it was amazing and genuinely, everyone in the organization had customer metrics because, um, to your point, everyone felt involved in the execution then, and, and it had an impact on them.

[00:38:47] Pia: And it's, it's actually quite a simple thing. It's got that alignment, so it doesn't matter whether you are customer facing or not, you still feel you, you got real connection to, to what the overall purpose is. 

[00:38:59] Dan: I actually by the way, had had a conversation with someone who was really in the depth of the organization, and they said Why have I got these customer metrics? What can I do about that? And I said, well, what can you do about it? And they, they had to think, well, I suppose I could do. And it was really amazing how that metric, because they wanted to achieve it, really, really drove them forward. 

[00:39:17] Pia: It's that connection piece that, you know,

[00:39:19] Dan: Yeah, exactly. See that thread.

[00:39:21] Pia: What about climate? What did you think there?

[00:39:23] Dan: So I think I mentioned this, but I think that, well there's definitely a culture of customer centricity, so, and positivity. You, you couldn't speak ill of a customer in that organization. It was really interesting. So everyone had a positive regard for the customer. And the other thing was, I mentioned this, the thing, resources were funneled towards customer facing end of things. You know, we'd, we'd take people out of head office and set up a new, a new territory, put another salesperson on to improve service. All the initial investments are around systems, processes, infrastructure in the call center. And so that, and that was really pushed, pushed to the front. So they were the two that jumped out for me in terms of climate.

[00:40:01] Pia: then I think the final one, competence. I, I was pretty blown away by how much training they did. And, and I think that maybe listeners are thinking, Hmm, really? You know, does that, is that still relevant in today when the budgets are more squeezed and, and we're not flying around the planet as much, but how do you. Yeah, it's, it's great when you've got deep pockets and you're able to build people's capacity, but that's, 

[00:40:24] Dan: I think you're right. I'm sure people think, oh, great, lucky you. I, I think it's worth capturing that spirit though. The intent of that was that everyone should have this as many people. If you can train people in, uh, then you have the same mindset and the same language, actually the same language of how you operate together. And I think there are low cost ways of achieving that. We used to do cheap, you know, we used to have people running lunch and learn sessions as well back in the day. But I think it's worth thinking for everyone about that personal development, which is, we expect to be expensive, but how could we do that in a more economic way, maybe together virtually, covering a topic. Someone could actually study a topic and, and share that with their colleagues or, or whatever. It's not, it's not as well funded, but I think there might be some ingenious ways to get everyone on the same page through development.

[00:41:10] Pia: And I think it's also the attitude training. So I mean, it's also not expecting it all to be delivered, but it's actually more of a learning 

[00:41:17] Dan: Yeah. Yes. More than a training culture.

[00:41:19] Pia: Yeah. Than a training culture, which probably is a little bit nineties, but I think, I think the

[00:41:23] Dan: Yeah, no, you're right. And to be honest, a lot of that money, a lot of that training in that company was wasted. I mean, it's, it's, you know, I think that training was go somewhere fancy, do some amazing things, see professors, and really not that much expectation. You'd come back and do anything different. And, and I think it, it's right to move on and say, no, actually this can be done much more efficiently. We have all kinds of e-learning, low cost loads of platforms to get learning from at low cost and then do something with it, do something. So I think the models change, but the intent is right about creating the same, the same common language.

[00:41:56] Dan: So yeah, and I mean if I return to the shop at the top of the show, if I think about people who might be pushing back on this, potentially they might be thinking, no, actually you should do it the other way around. Put your employees first and they will, they will look after the customers. Go back to that quote, whether it's Richard Bransford or not. And I'm not sure, but I'm hoping the show today has sort of shown a shown another way that actually, put the first thing first, and then the culture will engage with that and, um, and get aligned and, and be positive and you get everything you need rather than becoming internally focused, which I do think is, is a hard thing to maintain.

[00:42:30] Pia: So my final question to you, Dan, I'm gonna put you on the spot, extraordinary customer service that you've received that you, that is notable. Cause I know you look for it.

[00:42:39] Dan: I mean, I, I think at the moment that, that employees and customers are to, to be honest with you, are getting a pretty short shrift. The one that I would actually say w I love is Pret. Pret a Manger in, in, you know, and they just have, and it's really great to stand and watch them. The good thing is you order your coffee, stand back and you can watch the team and I really commend it to people. So you know, you get a friendly face asking them, asking, they're very quick, they know exactly what you want, and they're shouted to the people at the back, which is a always a multinational, you know, international multiethnic group at the back, just absolutely pounding away on these coffees. And then, and just to see them working together is, is an absolute joy. And then you get the coffee handed to you. And they send, tend to remember whose it is. So you get a little bit of personal touch there without saying, you know, what's your name? And I'm gonna write it on a, on the cup or whatever. So I, I just think that is a wonderful thing. Um, and just to see the machine, you know, working in the background there in a way that's a totally committed team is, I think is a, it's a little pleasure that you can take when you go into one of those Prets. Yeah, Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Obviously there's a lot of other poor ones. 

[00:43:52] Dan: But I think the other thing I'll say, finally, I know we've got a, we've probably got quite a long show here, is that I think our understanding of customer service is, is often limited to the capability of the person in front of us. So we'll sort of say, right, this person isn't doing a good job for me. They're rubbish. That's a competence thing potentially. But more likely they do not have that backing of all those things that, uh, Marcus and Tom put in place, that they have everything they need to serve you well. Um, and I, in my experience, it's very rarely a competence thing. People are let down by the other conditions behind them, processes, systems, whatever it is. And I, and I think it's really, I hope this, this conversation has helped people sort of zoom out and say, no, all of those conditions matter. And it's, yeah, as I say, it's, it's rarely a competence thing actually.

[00:44:46] Dan: But that is it for this episode. You can find show notes and resources at squadify.net. Just click on the We Not Me podcast link. If you've enjoyed the show, please share the love and recommend it to your friends. If you'd like to contribute to the show, just email us at wenotmepod@gmail.com. We Not Me is produced by Mark Steadman of Origin. Thank you so much for listening. It's goodbye from me.

[00:45:07] Pia: And it's goodbye from me.