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Unlocking Leadership, previously Leadership 2020, is a podcast helping leadership lead in a world that is changing ever quickly. Join us as we interview even more inspiring people who provide information and skills on how to tackle the big questions affecting today’s leaders.
We blend real-life leadership experiences of our guests with the latest management theory to provide practical, relevant tips for anyone in a leadership position.
Unlocking Leadership asks the big questions about being a better leader in the modern workplace. Hosted by Clare Carpenter.
[00:00:00] Clare Carpenter: Welcome to Unlocking Leadership, a podcast about leading in a changing world, brought to you by Corndel, your strategic skills partner. I'm your host, Clare Carpenter.
I'm joined today by Antonio Weiss. Antonio is a senior partner at the PSC, which is a Public Services Consultancy, advising senior clients on user centered design, innovation thinking, and utilising technology to design and redesign public services to meet citizens needs, customer needs as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. Hello.
[00:00:41] Antonio Weiss: Hello.
[00:00:42] Clare Carpenter: Let's start with you, let's think about how you're arriving. What would you like us to know about you as a starting point? How did you get here?
[00:00:49] Antonio Weiss: Goodness me. Well, firstly, thank you so much for the introduction and to the invitation on Unlocking Leadership. I'm really, well, delighted to be asked and to be part of the conversation. In terms of what to know about me, goodness me, well, maybe a couple of things. One is that though ostensibly, I suppose, my domain expertise is digital transformation, which encompasses lots and lots of things, everything from data to tech to digital services to increasingly AI, I would say I'm quite skeptical about digital. I think there are limits to what it can do and I also think there's too much mystification around it. So like, I suppose I'd like to say maybe that, you know, I'm not a tech zealot. I think there are real risks to it, but huge benefits and I come at it with a, hopefully a healthy dose of skepticism and then I guess the other thing is that I've tried. to apply that through a number of different worlds. You kindly introduced me as a partner at the PSC and, you know, that has formed pretty much all of my working life over 17 years now there as advising public services and brilliant public service leaders. The public services is the main bit, but I've also tried to apply some of my knowledge on digital transformation to the world of politics and private sector business, particularly through writings and academia as well. So I guess trying to spread whatever good influence I can through a number of areas.
[00:02:08] Clare Carpenter: And you're being incredibly modest because you have written four books. You have Multiple layers of qualifications behind you. I'm really fascinated by that actually, your studies, your academic studies started in the world of history, didn't they? You hold a PhD from Birkbeck in London, don't you? How did you move from history to here?
[00:02:25] Antonio Weiss: Well, the honest answer, which is probably not the most polished answer, is that... I mean, this may go into a question about whether leadership and management doesn't have enough good career routes through, particularly in the UK, which are as well qualified as they could be, you know, when I entered the world of consulting 20 years ago, there was no requirement to have a, you know, degree in management or qualifications of management and actually being a generalist having done an arts and humanities degree, I mean, probably one thing which I'm glad people like Corndel are trying to move away from, one of the things back then was the assumption was you needed a degree, quite why you needed a degree slightly beyond me. But anyway, so history kind of didn't close down any doors and consulting had quite open doors to a variety of different backgrounds. So I suppose that allowed me into the world of work and then alongside consulting and the PSC has always been a very receptive place for like continuing professional development and learning. I was able to take some time out to do a master's which I did whilst a couple of years in and then I did my PhD at Birkbeck whilst working. Birkbeck was just a brilliant place for I guess adult education more generally, that I was really privileged to do and the subject matter that I focused on with the PhD was, you know, all phDs are necessarily pretty niche and abstruse, but mine was the British state's use of management consultancy firms in the post war era, which is pretty much what I've spent my work doing. So, I guess there was, I tried to have a kind of an intellectual coherence there as well as a practical experience.
[00:03:57] Clare Carpenter: There's so much in your answer to explore, because there's this sense of, in the world of leadership, what's the level of learning and development and qualification that sits in that space, which we could talk about probably for the rest of the month, at least. But also, as well as that, this notion that says, actually, where are we now in terms of being able to plug into all of the things in the world that are available to us as leaders to enable us to do a better piece of work for our environment, our organisation, our country, the world? I mean, it just expands, doesn't it? Bigger than that, of course. But as a starting point, then, in this world of consultancy and the exploration that you've done, as you say, in the last sort of 17 years of being in that space, your publishing is around data and digital transformation, isn't it? It's that space that says, actually, in the place we're at now, how do organisations work through the challenges that are around that space and come out of it in a more resourceful way?
[00:05:03] Antonio Weiss: Yes, yeah, yeah, very much so, and it's... I mean, if there's a theme that runs through my contributions to published work is that it's a trying to make things really practical. So if you are a manager who is told, hello, you know, alongside your business as usual, many responsibilities and teams are going to task you with this big digital transformation work, you know, we're going to onboard a new CRM system, let's say, and all we need is an extra day a week of your time to do that alongside, like practically speaking, what are the big questions you should be worrying about? What are the questions which you probably can't answer, so you need some domain experts, probably from a technology field, but not exclusively and you change management expertise, so what are the types of skills that you need to bring on board? And what are some good steps that you can take to try and beat the odds for failed transformation which is the norm, you know, so various studies over time, true of transformation, even more acutely true for digital transformation would say fewer than 20 percent of digital transformation efforts meet their objectives or aims on time or on budget and most of them fail. So, you know, I'm just trying to equip managers and leaders with good practices to try and beat those odds.
[00:06:11] Clare Carpenter: Let's think about that then more, this notion of good practices, trying to beat the odds against failure in the space of digital transformation and within the context of a really challenging environment that we find ourselves in right now in so many levels, I'm talking particularly here about, I guess, the West rather than the rest of the world because that's the space that we're in and that's a whole different conversation. But what kind of things do you see at the moment keeping leaders awake at night around this space?
[00:06:44] Antonio Weiss: Gosh, well, I should say most of my world is public services and I think they are different to organisational leaders in general. So maybe I'll talk primarily about public services and most of my experience is the UK, but we could venture into other areas as well. I mean, I think, you know, and memories are always shorter than they should be. This is probably the most challenging period that most public sector leaders and managers will have ever worked through and because the economic backdrop and so much of public service spending and the potential for innovation is determined by solid economic fundamentals because the economic backdrop doesn't look like it's going to be, you know, particularly pleasant for the foreseeable, it's sort of the crises of reductions of public spending and potentially, you know, significant energies going on to EU exit, which was a huge, you know, focus for many public sector leaders and then of course, COVID, you bundle those all on top of each other. Exhausted workforce, industrial action, you know, rightly might be, you know, asking, well, where's the return for some of the sacrifices made? And then where's the light at the end of the tunnel? So there's kind of, how do we keep the energy and momentum going is one of the big questions I think the leaders are facing. On the same time, every single organisation is going through a major technology change program of some description, which will be requiring new skills and ways of working and workflow changes that are going to rub up against existing practices. So how do you keep a handle on that? And particularly from public service users as a perspective, I think there's an increasing or decreasing satisfaction with the services being provided and I think when you look at the public opinion polling and satisfaction with services, nobody holds that against necessarily the public sector leaders or the managers of the workers or the frontline staff. There's just a frustration and you see people therefore turning to private sector or crowdfunding techniques or others to try and get the services, which historically, they've always just been able to expect will be part of the taxes that they pay. So, and you know, in dealing with, in short, you know citizen expectations, perma crisis almost, and then at the same time an expectation of change and transformation is, I think, exhausting.
[00:08:57] Clare Carpenter: I mean, it sounds exhausting and at the heart of it is this cohort, if you will, this group of leaders, many of whom have worked in public services their whole career, haven't they? Many of them have little or no experience outside of that world in sort of commercial leadership roles. I wonder what impact that has for their capacity to deliver transformative change?
[00:09:24] Antonio Weiss: Yeah, I think there's, and I should have the data more clearly to hand, I've got some bits which could probably help to make the point. I think there is a perception of, I mean, public service is lots of different things, if you're kind of trying to find the boundaries, there's the civil service, which is probably 350, 000 or so people, of whom the vast majority are not policy people. But all people think that they're policy people. The vast majority are not based in Whitehall, they're based in Scotland and Wales, and Darlington campus, and Manchester and Leeds, and Oxfordshire, Bristol, many others. And then you've got the wider public sector, which includes the NHS workforce, and the care sector, which we're going into millions and there's a perception that, which has held for a long time, and I guess this is maybe bringing a bit of my sort of historical bent largely since the sixties and seventies that, you know, the civil service in the public sector is generalist and elitist and closed and amateur and doesn't have private sector experience and there's some truth in that, but actually, if you look at certainly the technology leaders in some of the big government departments, be it HMRC or DWP or many across the home office elsewhere, you know, the, I think the head of digital in DFE, for instance, has a background in retail. Lots of them do have private sector experience. Lots of them do bring that lens, and I suppose that's both good and useful, and also there's value in public sector experience as well. But, you can't just translate the private sector into the public sector, because they're very different domains for reasons that I'm sure we can go into.
[00:10:55] Clare Carpenter: The perception is really interesting, isn't it? There's this sense that the public sector or public services might be slower to move, slower to transform, because there's more layers of difficulty in achieving that from a budgetary point of view, from a political point of view, from all of those kind of things. What's your experience of the pace of change in public services?
[00:11:18] Antonio Weiss: So, I think it really, well, the unhelpful but truthful on top level is that it really varies and then, you know, some examples are, I might elaborate a bit more, say, you know, the Ukrainian Family Homes Digital Service was set up in maybe two weeks. COVID 19 vaccinations tracking, I think it was like 10 working days, the NHS app has had 32 million downloads, which is just like astonishing, and obviously is a pretty recent endeavour and all of those things had really strong, not necessarily political drive, but political support. So I think a lot of the time, if there is strong political will and good teams of wealth, you know, highly skilled people from civil service and contract and, you know, great digital suppliers and elsewhere and money set aside, you know, stuff can happen really quickly and good things can happen really quickly and, you know, I'd point out that there's always issues with international rankings, but the UK was generally regarded as one of the best, if not the best digital government for many years, from sort of 2014 to 2016-17. It's quite rapidly declined since then. So, you know, the state can do brilliant things quickly.
Then there's other examples, major infrastructure elements, and HS2 is the most obvious and recent example, but there'll be others as well, which take a frighteningly long time. and color many judgments about what can be achieved and how. So there's a big range, and I think part of the job of good advisors, but also good leaders and managers is trying to learn from the successes, but also learn from the failures and unpick what are the ingredients, and quite often, some of the lessons there are just some times when you just shouldn't hit go. So, you know, you might have a great ambition to, I don't know, create a new platform for accessing healthcare data within a given population. But if you don't have the right skills in place, if you don't have the right budget in place, or there's various, you know, organisational restructures taking place, which are going to distract attention, you know, part of the job of a good leader is to say, the foundational ingredients for success aren't there, so we've got to pause or we've got to try and do whatever we need to do to get them there.
[00:13:27] Clare Carpenter: Fascinating, isn't it, that we could be talking about any organisation, any group of different industry sectors, and we would be having, I think, a similar conversation around things that work, things that don't, things that are quick, things that are really not. I wonder, in the context of everything that we've been talking about already, given the environment in public services that leaders are facing right now, how do those people that you've been working with in those roles, keep going through this. Where's the resilience to lead in this time, in such different places of capacity for them?
[00:14:04] Antonio Weiss: Yeah. I mean, I think I feel maybe slightly nervous on sort of speaking for them because I'm always humbled by so many of the people that we get to work with who we as suppliers and advisors that we hold a lot of responsibility and rightly should be held to account for what we deliver, you know, we're not the frontline staff and we're not, you know, the managers and leaders who, for whom it's their day to day life and I think a lot of it comes down to there is a real thing as public service ethos, which is probably best espoused by the Nolan principles. But it means, you know, you have a passion for making universal public services as good as they can be for citizens, because you think it's like an inherent social good and I think that's what keeps people going and such is the culture, obviously changes from parts of the public sector, which you know, nearly half the economies, it's a big part is that you will often surround yourself and find yourself surrounded by like minded people who share that passion and I think that's probably mutually reinforcing and helps people keep going, but it's certainly been tested.
[00:15:05] Clare Carpenter: Thinking about some of the really rapid advances over the last few years in technology and in the digital space, which you perhaps have had some experience of seeing implemented as transformative change in a really good way, what sort of examples do you have of things that have worked really well?
[00:15:28] Antonio Weiss: So I think there is a, you know, I was very lucky to, you know, we supported the government digital service from sort of 2014 to 16, which was really a high watermark of international good practice being established. So, I mean, they'd already established gov.uk as a domain, but it is amazing how, if you look at any OECD country, but also, you know, probably close to the majority of 200 plus countries around the world, they will have a single website for government services, which has as its basis or inspiration, gov.uk. which started as DirectGov, whatever it was, 2005, 2006, but then really fully developed from 2011 onwards and when you look at gov.uk, there is a simplicity in the design, in the language of, you know, I'd stress when we talk about digital transformation, people are still fairly, well, they're visual and verbal, but like, if you can get really clear language, you will make better services and better products for people. So I think gov.uk and many things that GDS did within that portfolio, transformative and that user centered focus has been rightly spread across much of UK public services, but across the world as well. So I think that's quite amazing really and then there's, you know, the UK has real potential and has real great success stories in some of the life science and research areas that UK Biobank or now Secure Data Environments and Research and Development functions are doing amazing work in doing the very difficult job of stitching together data, which can be used to develop better drugs and treatments and cures and therapeutics to save lives and that is hugely impactful. It's not about getting your passport quicker to you, which is a really important thing as well, but it's also about, you know, how do you improve medical treatments? And I think we've made great developments there and some of the things that we've been working on in this space, as in the sort of Low Earth Orbit and further domain area, it's just fascinating because again, that's a really, there's a real potential and real British strength, which is in our space capabilities and the UK, along with European partners and global partners, is leading the way in helping clear up space debris, which is, I mean, there was a lot of talk at the AI Summit of existential risk, you know, you have space debris, which comes and knocks out satellite communication systems. It might not be quite existential, but it's a pretty big risk. I think there's again, lots of great things to be celebrated there.
[00:17:55] Clare Carpenter: I was reading a recent article that you have written and some of the things that really stood out for me in that around this area that we're talking about now is that satisfaction with public services is higher in digitally advanced states and digitally advanced states are more efficient and so, I'm wondering what learning there is in that if we take that at a state level and move it into an organisational level, what can leaders in non-public services organisations take from that learning do you think that would be inspirational for them as well?
[00:18:32] Antonio Weiss: Interesting, really good question. So I think there's a, so this isn't true of all services, depends on the sorts of things that you do, but I would say most organisations, if you take banks, for instance, have many parallels with transactional government services, like paying your taxes in that fundamentally, if you do good user research, which is, I should say, you know, a key to unlocking so much good change and user research is maybe a slightly highfaluting way of just saying, going and talking to real people who could be customers, could be citizens and saying, what do you actually need or want to do? What do you need from us? If we're a government body, what do you need from us? And what are you trying to do? If you talk to them for banks, or if you talk to them for transaction public services, like again, paying taxes, most people would say, I want this to be as simple and as easy as possible and to take as little time from my actual life, you know, the things which give me happiness, spending time with my friends or family or learning or self improvement, whatever, give me the time back to do those things, or leasure. So therefore, make your digital products or services or indeed, they don't necessarily need to be digital, make my physical retail experience as simple and as hassle free as possible, and often the way to unlocking that is to try and change the mindset from being, well, we're a bank which has certain regulations, which means that you need to fill in a form in this way, and then we need to translate it and send it over to our HQ for them to rubber stamp and so actually, you know, the customer doesn't care about that, the customer doesn't need to know about that, the customer doesn't want to know about that. All they want to know is that you have safely and securely, you know, logged their mortgage overpayment and they don't need to worry anymore. It's like, how can you make that experience as simple as possible? And people need to do the user research to find that out. But the answer is probably you send them a text message, which says, thanks so much for your overpayment last Wednesday, all in hand, no further action needed. So I think to come back to your question, depending on the problem that you're trying to solve for a customer or a user, be very clear on what's the human motivation underneath that and try and make it as simple as possible and most of the time it's I want time back in my life away from this thing, which you're trying to make a digital service for. That's not true of everything, obviously, like gaming is very different. The entertainment industry and digital products there are pretty different, but not exclusively. But, you know, I'd say most of the time it's like, how do you shorten the interaction that people need to have with your service? Not how do you complicate it or elongate it?
[00:21:07] Clare Carpenter: It's super interesting to think that actually many of the people who will already know about the user experience of an organisation or a public service are also the employees of it, aren't they? I wonder what you've seen done well to capture that data, that's the simplest point for data collection, isn't it about the experience of a bank or a public service or anything like that.
[00:21:31] Antonio Weiss: Yeah, I think, I don't know if there's a term for this, maybe we could invent one. So most places only have certain types of, you know, certain categories of users, and you can skin the categorisation in different ways. So again, if you're a, if you're a bank, you might have some users who are digitally mature and engaged and want to have a frequent interaction with their portfolio. They want to look at different analytics, they want to see what happens if I do X, you know, what would it change the forecast? What's the product range available? You might have some users who are less digitally comfortable, but know how to access a digital service and they just want to be able to know the thing is still there. But you can do too much user research. So once you have spoken to 12 people from a well defined user category, you're probably going to quickly start hearing the same things again, which is great because it gives you reassurance and I think what would be really recommended to anyone embarking on this sort of work is to capture that information, you know, probably in a tabular format, like a user needs database, which says, you know, we spoke to X person and the key things that they wanted from the service as well and you could do that for external users as well as internal staff and once you gather that information, you probably don't need to continuously repeat the exercise. You might want to revalidate it every now and again, and there might be some spot checks to check that, you know, the frustrations or needs are still the same. But actually listening to your staff and your customers, listening to your employees, it shouldn't be a one off exercise, which is then repeated annually, it should be an ongoing process which is dynamically updated and kept to make sure you know that you have the latest sense of what's going on, but don't reinvent the wheel each time.
[00:23:10] Clare Carpenter: Yeah, because the shifts aren't neatly annual, are they?
[00:23:13] Antonio Weiss: No, indeed, yeah.
[00:23:15] Clare Carpenter: They're changing constantly. Thinking as we move into this space then of leaders and listening and acting with purpose around feedback, I'm wondering how you would strategically engage leaders within these organisations, within the public services that you've worked with before to really drive success in their organisations using the data and the innovative techniques that are available to them.
[00:23:48] Antonio Weiss: As a leader, role modeling is one of the most powerful things that you can do. So if you want your organisation to become data driven by default and you go around and make comments which are not evidence based in all staff meetings, that is discontinuous with the organisational change you're trying to see. To give an example, let's say, you know, you're a groceries retailer, I was talking to somebody from one the other day, and you want people to have a more data rich environment to inform their product based decision making or their store kit out or anything, common issues which most retailers are all grappling with. If you are the CEO or the other of that organisation that you do in all staff meeting, wouldn't it be so powerful to actually show some of the analytics tools which you and your team are investing in to help show how they fit into decision making and the wider senior leadership mindset, because then everyone in the organisation says, actually, they're serious. Like, if I want to be like that person, I need to do that, I need to act and do as that. So that role modeling can take different forms, that could be, you know, if it's data science, and obviously, you know, showing how you're using the data science is a great one, if it's user research and truly becoming user centered, actually sitting in on user research, going to a user research lab and seeing what comes out, or even playing back to colleagues, here's a video of some user research, which the teams did, this is what our customers actually think of us, again, is really powerful. So to get to that point of confident role modeling, you might need to get comfortable yourself with some of the techniques and you might need to find the time to ask the silly questions and that's not easy to do. But if you can get to a point where you're role modeling to others the change that you hope to see, even if it's in small, but very visible ways, I think it's just so powerful.
[00:25:30] Clare Carpenter: Yeah, I've seen that done really well in organisations that I've worked with and also really badly and it's linked to leadership skills, I guess we're coming full circle, it's linked to leadership skills that are apart from the conversation that we're having that sit outside of the world of digital transformation and data and that kind of space that sit in this basic fundament of communication and observation and emotional intelligence, isn't it? This capacity to lead with vision and detail and know when to come in and when to be out, there's all of that kind of stuff in there, isn't there?
[00:26:10] Antonio Weiss: There is, no, you're absolutely right and I think at heart for that role modeling, there has to be a degree of authenticity and credibility in how you do it. So you have to seem like you genuinely care in ways and behaviors and language, which is true to you and also you need to like, not say something ridiculous, which, you know, the technical team will then go back to their colleagues and say, well, this person doesn't at all understand what we're saying because our data warehouse isn't set up in a way that they could ever access that data, for instance. So it needs to be credible and that requires some work to do it. But particularly in digital transformation, we may get to a future where coding in schools and tech familiarity and tech literacy gets to the point where everyone understands some of the fundamentals of technology, but it won't be there for a very long time. So actually translating what digital transformation means in a way that can speak to your organisation or whichever part of your organisation you may be addressing is also a really powerful element, you know, you show that you, it matters to you, but you can also help to explain in certain ways. So you know, probably the best way to do that would be through benefits, you know, what are the benefits that technology will bring? Well, if you are moving to a single rationalisation of an enterprise resource, planning tool, it would help to have a compelling story to say, which was, I was talking to X worker the other day, and they currently have to log into seven different systems, which takes them probably five hours across the working week to juggle between them, isn't that ridiculous? And they're already overstretched. You know, I see it as the job of this change that we're doing to free up their time for them to focus on the things that they're really good at.
[00:27:43] Clare Carpenter: So there's a connection piece there, isn't there, as well? There's something important about the leaders being connected to what's actually happening and being pivotal in sharing the successes and the benefits of something that might feel painful and difficult at the time.
[00:28:00] Antonio Weiss: Yeah, and indeed, I mean, I think what I remember going on a lean training course, many years ago, back when lean was fashionable, the previous time I'm sure it'll become fashionable again and you know, the go to GEMBA philosophy, you know go to the, I think in that instance it may go to the shop floor to truly understand what's going on.
[00:28:18] Clare Carpenter: Yeah.
[00:28:19] Antonio Weiss: There's no substitute.
[00:28:21] Clare Carpenter: As we come towards the end of our conversation today, I wonder what parting words of wisdom you might have, Antonio, for people who are listening to the episode to think about around this space.
[00:28:34] Antonio Weiss: I don't want to say anything that people have heard a million times before, but maybe if I reinforce it, that possibly isn't the worst thing, but all of these big, intimidating sounding things like frontier models and generative AI, technologies and techniques and data science and all of that, is only beneficial if it solves a human problem and that human problem could, you know, it could be an organisational human problem, i.e. we want to increase profitability, we want to reduce costs, we want to generate better revenue, we want to place, make our organisation more compliant with certain regulations. But those are like describable, well established problems. The technology should only ever be focused on serving those and if it's not, then it's not going to work. So if you cannot explain how an investment that you're making into working out whether you could customise a new large language model from open source technology, which I know lots of people are playing around with at the moment, if you can't work out how that helps you address like one of your big organisational personal goals, there's no point in doing it.
[00:29:37] Clare Carpenter: Could genuinely continue this conversation for hours. Thank you so much for being part of the podcast today, it's been so interesting talking to you, really appreciate your time, thank you.
[00:29:50] Antonio Weiss: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
[00:29:52] Clare Carpenter: Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this episode of Unlocking Leadership, you can subscribe through all the regular podcast channels, and please do leave us a rating and review there. We'd also love you to share any episodes you found interesting so that others can join the conversation and share their experiences.
This podcast was made in association with Cornel. It was produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four.