Interview with Operations and Supply Chain Director of Rolls-Royce SMR

In this episode of the Nuclear Leadership Network podcast, host Matt Gavin interviews Ruth Todd, Operations and Supply Chain Director at Rolls-Royce SMR. Ruth shares her extensive career journey, highlighting her experiences in various regulated environments, including the nuclear sector and the Vaccine Task Force. She discusses the evolution of her leadership style, the importance of soft skills, and the challenges faced in high-pressure situations. Ruth emphasizes the need for collaboration, diversity, and continuous development as key components of effective leadership. She offers valuable insights for aspiring leaders on building confidence and navigating their career paths.


Takeaways

Ruth Todd has a diverse background in regulated environments.
Leadership requires a shift from managing tasks to guiding teams.
Soft skills are crucial for effective leadership.
Confidence can be a barrier for many aspiring leaders.
Collaboration and diversity enhance team performance.
Managing risk is essential in complex programs.
It's important to learn how to deal with failure.
Continuous development is key for leaders.
Mentorship can provide valuable insights and support.
Effective communication is vital for stakeholder management.

Creators and Guests

Guest

Ruth Todd

Director of Operations and Supply Chain - Rolls-Royce SMR

What is Nuclear Leadership Network?

The Nuclear Leadership Network was established to fill a gap in leadership development. By the time leaders hit a certain level in their path, it becomes more and more difficult to know what development steps to take to ready yourself for a shot at the top executive leadership roles in the Nuclear Industry. As you climb the ladder the number of people available to help you on your path become fewer and fewer, and your journey becomes a much more personal one. There will always be a need to collaborate with others, seek advice and guidance from those around you and take feedback from others seriously, but when you get to a certain point, you realise the more you are on your own. It’s up to you to develop yourself, through conversations, self reflection, making mistakes and being brave enough to learn from them. Not having all the answers, but being bold enough to seek the answers, is where much of that later growth in leadership occurs.

Matt Gavin (00:29)
Hello and welcome to the Nuclear Leadership Network podcast. I'm your host, Matt Gavin. And today I'm delighted to be joined by a colleague of mine, Ruth Todd, who is the Operations and Supply Chain Director at Rolls-Royce SMR. Hi Ruth, how are you?

Ruth Todd (00:42)
Brilliant Matt, it's lovely to be here with you.

Matt Gavin (00:44)
Yeah, thanks for joining us and thanks for taking the time to share some of your insights. I'm really interested and excited about where this could go. I'll kick us off with a question straight in Could you give our listeners a little bit of an insight as to who you are and where you've come from and how you've got the position you're in today?

Ruth Todd (01:00)
Yeah, sure. I mean, that could take a long time. I've got grey hair, so this could be a very, very long podcast. So I'm the Operations and Supply Chain Director for Rolls-Royce SMR. So we have reached the end of our design phase, and we're still developing our product. But that is the kind of moment to think about how we're going to deliver it on the ground. So I'm setting up the structures that allow us to deliver both the supply chain that sits behind us and the methods by which we'll build it.

My background, so why am I doing this job? Well, I kind of love major programs. I love things that are big, complex. I worked mostly in regulated environments. So this is another regulated environment. I've had a dabble in nuclear before. Previous jobs, I've done jobs that people love and people are not so keen on. My last one was one of those with HS2, where was a chief commercial officer managing an enormously complex program.

And I always describe it as the program that divides the nation. Although I think probably the government's done a really good job of making everybody hate it and not really managing the stories around it particularly well. I still remain really proud of it. And every time I drive past the trace, I live really close to it. I can't help but be incredibly, the engineering is beautiful. And some of the work that's gone on is groundbreaking and doing things that have never been done before so efficiently and well. You just don't see that when you hear what the media say.

Before that, I was the Vaccine Task Force Programme Director. So the UK's efforts to provide a vaccine to mitigate COVID and to help us all survive that horrible pandemic that seems such a long time ago now. So my job was to take what was a great strategy, let's back a whole load of vaccines, put a load of enabling works in place so that we could...

prevent things that might have gone wrong, like there was a massive fire in a glass factory. We bought loads of glass. There was all sorts of interesting things we did there. I'm sure we'll talk more about that. And then I've done, before that, submarines, commercial director there. Before that, I worked for Babcock managing the Army's inbound supply chain for their equipment. So that's 61 different bits of complex equipment, anything from a Challenger main battle tank to an explosive ordnance device, those little robots that you see go in before.

person goes anywhere near something that's a suspect device. I worked in the automotive sector. I ran a consultancy for 14 years, working in lots of different industries. I had sort of 13 big blue chip clients. And my early career was in the automotive sector. So I was a manufacturing engineer and I built some factories. I ran production. I ran supply chains. I did some strategy jobs around big procurement teams. I was really lucky. I think I was a woman in a world there weren't many.

And I wasn't hopeless and I kind of got noticed and I had very, very good opportunities in that that those 14 years, which kind of were my grounding. So I've had a fascinating and really varied career starting out in volume manufacture, but now really applying myself to major complex programs that have some manufacturing content, some infrastructure content. Yeah, that's why we're here. Married, married, two kids, both grown up left home. My husband and are empty nesters.

have dogs, horses. have this mantra that says I like having it all. So yeah, I don't really do a lot of sitting around. I like to kind of be active and enjoying every bit of life.

Matt Gavin (04:22)
Yeah, that's awesome. Awesome to hear that. Are you really interested in your career? It's obviously very varied, very far reaching. Along the way, were there clues that you were going to be a director level, an executive level sort of leader? Were the clues along the way there or was it just an evolution, constant evolution?

Ruth Todd (04:41)
I don't, I'm not really ambitious. That sounds a bit bizarre, doesn't it? My ambition has always been to reach the limits of my capability. So to find the things I'm not as good at. So, and I've encountered some of them. I know there are things where I'm not strong and I know there are other areas where I still haven't worked out whether I've found the limit of what I'm capable of. It probably means that I'm setting myself up for that being promoted beyond your ability thing that you see in so many people, doesn't it? But that's kind of what my ambition has been about. the consultancy I ran, had

Maximum 12 people averaging three to five people every day. So it's a small, small enterprise, but sort of as the MD of that, that was a broad ranging job. And running a small business is really helpful because it teaches you to kind of end to end what matters. And then coming back into employment, it wasn't long before I took director roles and it was kind of scratching an itch because it's all very well telling other people how to do it as a consultant. I kind of wanted to prove to people that I could do what I said they should do.

So yeah, and I've carried on in that vein. And I enjoyed being at the exec table. I enjoy that sort top table part of it because you see, get a chance to influence the whole company as well as your remit. So that's something that I consider to be important for me. But yeah, it's kind of, it's been a bit of a meandering journey. I'm not sure I've really ever planned.

Yeah, I do things because they sound interesting. I usually go, is it Cool Kit? Yeah, it's Cool Kit. I'm going to be in for that one. Vaccines didn't qualify on that front. That was for very different reason. And I've just had this sort of organic approach to, let's see what happens next.

Matt Gavin (06:16)
Yeah, that's awesome to hear that it's not always planned even for the top people. What are the key leadership differences do you think between it? are a lot of our listeners, the reason I started this podcast personally was trying to see how to develop from a senior position, probably having a remit, like you say, to being that executive that oversees the company. What do you think the gap is there between sort of leadership growth and how did you fill it? How did you take that challenge on?

Ruth Todd (06:45)
Yeah, I think being a manager and being a director are very, different things. And you move from managing a team where you're tasking what they do, controlling the workload, controlling the remit that they cover, to giving a lot of direction and guidance and being far less in control of the work that goes on. I think there are some features of being a director you have to get used to. You're usually failing somewhere.

If your remit is substantial, there are some things that aren't working for Deafinit, so you've got to understand how to deal with that. And you're almost certainly going to have a remit where you aren't expert in everything. And there are some things that you'll understand, but there are going to be other things that are not your bag. And you've got to understand how to lead people who know more than you do. I've actually grown to love that. And my aim now is to try and recruit people who are better than me at everything, because that makes my life much, much easier if they're better than me.

It also means my succession board looks great. And you know that whatever happens, there's always going to be someone who can step in and make what you were envisaging. They'll take it to the next step. They'll do the next thing with it. They'll grow on that thinking or take it in a new direction and give it a new lease of life. So yeah, there is a big distinction for me between being a manager and being a director. And it's all about the way in which you interact with the teams that you lead.

Both have leadership clearly.

Matt Gavin (08:04)
What was that journey like? Was it a fairly natural transition for you to sort of relinquish control or was that quite a drawn out, difficult affair? Did you face many challenges on that journey personally and also professionally within the business?

Ruth Todd (08:19)
Yeah, I mean, I still face challenges. I joined a new company not that long ago, and things are done quite differently here, and different voices are influential, and the way you manage stakeholders is different. So wherever you are, you're learning, whether you're in a management position or a direct position. It was reasonably natural for me. I think I had to learn how to deal with failure because I'm very motivated by performance. That's what matters to me. It sort of drives me every day to get up and be

as active and passionate about what I do as I can be, but there are always going to be things that aren't going well. it took me a while to work out that it's not about the things going wrong. It's about how well you recover and it's okay. I'm lucky in that I've always been quite confident. know a lot of, well, it's not a lot of women's groups and I think this imposter syndrome thing is quite an issue for some people. I don't have that. I come from this line of fascinating women who all have done fairly unusual things and as a consequence,

And going back to my grandmother, mean, it's a long, she in the war ran all of the supplies for food and animal feed for the whole of mid Wales, you know, and she was a, she's a little tiny woman, absolutely, and absolutely lovely, but clearly utterly terrifying too. So I come from this line of women that goes, it's okay to do stuff that's not normal. So I don't have an issue with confidence, but you do have to learn how you deal with failure and how you retain.

positivity when things are tough around you because they always are going to be the more senior you are. There's something somewhere that you've got to recover from and find a path forward with.

Matt Gavin (09:52)
So very interesting insights. of that. love that. And maybe we should interview your grandmother's store and get that out there as well. But yeah, there's some really interesting information there for sure. I'm interested in your transition into nuclear a little bit. So, you know, having worked outside it quite heavily and I guess getting thrust right into the thick of it with a new...

Ruth Todd (09:58)
She's not around anymore, but she is really happy. She was so wonderful.

Hmm.

Matt Gavin (10:16)
project with the industry the way it is right now compared to where it probably has been last 15, 20 years. What are your impressions of the industry? What are your impressions? What do we need to do as leaders to prepare ourselves for all the challenges that coming our way and the opportunities? What do you think are the key things we need to learn?

Ruth Todd (10:36)
Yeah, I mean, the value I bring is that I've worked in lots of different regulated sectors. So you kind of try and pick the best from all of them, don't you? So I would say wherever I am, there's always something that you can work on and transform and improve. we shouldn't imagine that any sector we can look at is perfect, whether they are highly efficient or not. But nuclear has got quite a way to go. And with the product that we creating at Rolls-Royce SMR, the idea that we're going to be repetitive, that we're going to be able to produce these as products.

that we're going to build them in a way that's predictable. There are lots of things that we're doing that isn't normal for the sector. And that isn't just those that have nuclear accreditation and the deeply nuclear companies. It's also those support services that are normalized, so accredited organizations that are going to be working with us too. that doing what it says on the tin, having a bit more foresight, not just waiting for a job to land and getting on with the job that's put on your lap, but being a bit more

thinking a little bit further ahead and planning for the future. And then having the confidence to build the skills around ourselves so we can do it. think those probably are the three things I would observe that we have a lot of challenge with. And I'm doing a lot of supplier conferences, as you can imagine at the moment, as we're picking our team and trying to make sure that the individuals, the companies that we're working with have the right scope for us. It's a constant mantra.

You know, we can get in our own way brilliantly. We are wonderful at standing back and going, yeah, just wait. Let's wait on that. Let's just see what happens before we make that step forward. Let's think about that six times over before we go forward with it. And we can't survive if that's the case. We're going to, know, wind and solar are starting to be really effective. There are going to be other energy sources soon. If we want nuclear to be a civil, to have a place in the civil energy market, then we absolutely have to make it happen.

And that delivery mindset has got to sit behind everything we do. So yeah, that would be my reflection. I don't think there's anything that I'm totally surprised by. And I don't think there's anything there isn't a remedy for. And an awful lot will be helped by the fact that we're thinking about doing things repetitively. And once we get people to believe and imagine what that will be like, it will be really helpful. I think it will be really useful to their order books, to their bottom lines, to

I'm always going to talk supply chain, aren't I? Because that's where my focus is. But that idea that there's continuity and you haven't got an ebb and a flow and an ebb and you're waiting and waiting and waiting and then you're off at 100 miles an hour again will be revelationary, I think, for the sector. Just got to get ahead of that and believe it's going to happen.

Matt Gavin (13:16)
Yeah,

bringing the right sort of thinking and the right leadership traits into that is going to be, it's really important and the right mindset, I guess, as well around, like you say, making that happen and just believing that we can make that happen. I've been being a very stop start industry probably over the years. Yeah, super. Just want to talk about your time on the vaccine programme. Obviously quite not surprising that I want to talk about that. I can't think of a more, I guess, high profile, high pressure.

you know, things on the line that, you know, society on the line ultimately like, you know, countries and, you know, lots of people really relying on that program going well. I can't think of a more, like I say, high pressure environment to operate in. As a leader, as a sort of leader in that space, how do you maintain those sort of good leadership traits that without letting that pressure just completely suffocate, it just feels like, you know, all eyes will be on that, on that program at the time and.

delivery of that program was probably the most significant thing that's ever happened in history, right, or close to it. So how do you retain some control, some sanity in that kind of environment as a leader?

Ruth Todd (14:23)
Yeah, mean, clearly there was a massive imperative and it was pretty compelling to be part of the program. And I got it wrong sometimes. So let's go back to failure. And I will talk about something I got wrong as we go through this little bit. it wasn't difficult. It's not the most difficult job I've ever done. So that's a really important thing to know because everybody was on the same page. We all wanted the same outcome. We were all very, very wedded to what we did. I also got to handpick my team.

because government was in the throes of throwing everybody at every problem around COVID. So there weren't lots of people available. So I ended up with a rainbow team, some civil servants, but I pretty much emptied my black book. And my black book's pretty good. But I emptied my black book into the program and handpicked the people that came and did it. None of us were for the roles. Every team had kind of

three people in it. You had a project manager, a commercial person and someone from industry in it. So we were always, or a technical person, so that we were always able to handle any of the complications. It's a really complex product to vaccine and the idea that we're going to take what was a 10 year development cycle and do it any sooner was pretty revolutionary. We put on paper the way we put on paper that it'd be two years.

None of us believe we do it in 10 months, although I will admit I was late. I thought I'd be there in October and I wasn't there till December. I did think I could get there sooner, but I didn't quite manage it. It was only for a few doses the first lot, but would have been, some of the very vulnerable people would have been very important and we couldn't get one of the batches to make, so it didn't happen. But yeah, so it was incredibly compelling and therefore not difficult to get everyone motivated to be part of. There were...

just normal good management practices. We had quite pragmatic governance. We got the IPA in, who at that time were the body that looked at all these big programs and said, come and make sure we're doing enough so that we're being sensible about spending public money. But please don't give us loads of governance to go through because there's absolutely no way that we'll get anything done if we have to go through all the normal government layers. had some Nick Elliott, who's now in fact nuclear as well, because he's done at AWE as the CEO there.

He did a brilliant thing and refused to accept the normal government process of signing off money. And we had a ministerial subcommittee that sat. So anytime we wanted money, it go through the department forum, but then it would go straight to the ministers. So we had cabinet office there, treasury, we had health there. So Matt Hancock, it was all the names that you saw on the TV. They would sit.

And they were so fast in their decision making. They'd listen to what you were saying. You didn't see people being political at all. They would sit and they would say, is this a sensible thing to do? Yes, go and do it. Yes, you've got the authority. So I spent a billion quid in a week once. That was quite exciting. I negotiated a deal in a week and then got the approval within a week. And that was just before Easter. It was like, wow, that was pretty fast. Things went really wrong as well. So I nearly broke a team. And it breaks my heart to

remember that time. I didn't really consider just how much pressure I was putting them under because everyone was treated really similarly and they were doing everything they could and I was always pushing for another hour saved, another day saved, another mitigation on a risk. We didn't manage to schedule and cost, we managed to risk and lead time was our kind of mantra all the time and I was pushing them on too many different fronts at the same time and nearly broke them.

But we've got a really strong relationship and relationships are really important when you're a leader, aren't they? Because they felt able to tell me. And so I brought my coach in, the coach I've been using for some years, since I've been a director pretty much. And she came and worked with them and worked with me until we found a better way of working. That meant we kept up the pace, but they recognized, and it was basically about them feeling okay to say to me, Ruth, we can't do that.

Because no one wanted to fail. No one wanted to let you down. None of us wanted to do. We'd all sit and look at the 10 o'clock news each night, because that's when we stopped. You'd stop. I'd stop, go downstairs, watch the 10 o'clock news, go to bed, wake up, get up in the morning, do my first call as I was walking the dogs, have an hour off in the evening to talk to the kids. Because my one son was doing his finals at uni, and obviously from home, and the other was doing his first year of A-levels. It was really high pressure in our house. My poor husband, honestly, had all of us moaning at him.

But other than that, we were working and you go each evening and listen to those deaths and then the next day I get you going again to go, that's another thousand people died today. We've got to find another hour. We've got to find another day out of this process. We've got to be able to find something that enables us to get there faster. But breaking that tea, they didn't break, but that conversation was incredibly humbling because it's really easy when you're doing these high pressure jobs to forget the effect you're having in the leadership shadow you cast.

And I was never nasty, but I was very, very tough. it was. My programme reviews were a pretty terrifying place to come. And it had to be, because we couldn't afford to miss a trick on anything because of the lives that were being lost. But you had to be human at the same time. I hope this meant I'm a more authentic leader. That's what I try and be. Try and be pragmatic. Try and listen. But it was a real learning moment for me.

Matt Gavin (19:35)
Yeah, that's great. mean, it's literally one of the most harsh environments I think you could probably operate within. You couldn't have more on the line than that, like you say, so it's really interesting. Obviously that delivery performance, that sort of leadership performance in that environment, how do you think, what have you learned from that in terms of bringing that to like a much less...

pressured situation, but still, it's an imperative that we do the right things in nuclear and that we deliver and that we hit our schedules and hit our costs and all that sort of stuff. Yes, people aren't dying on the 10 o'clock news as a result of nuclear running late, but certainly there is an impact, a very big impact if we don't solve the energy crisis. What have you brought from that into your role today to retain that pressure without breaking that team, I suppose?

Ruth Todd (20:25)
Yes.

Yeah, so you've heard me talk about manage the hell out of risk. It is one of my main heuristics is one of the things that I will always say because it's how you get difficult things done. It's the only thing you do that means you're looking forwards. When you're in a program, you're always reflecting on where are we against schedule, as in what happened and did it happen as we planned it to you spend very little time looking at forward. Same with cost. You go, what did it cost? Not so much about are we in control of what's happening next?

So management of risk is something I took out of that world. And by managing risk, you help people focus on the right thing, which gives you prioritization. Collaborating is another thing that I think I carry with me. And I've always been quite strong on collaboration, but it brought it home that the team of three that we had on each vaccine and the supporting teams that were doing things like buying and building factories or creating stuff like buying, there was, I have to be careful, I say there was some equipment we had to buy.

in order that we could keep the vaccine being manufactured. And there were some very, very good decisions made on that. the idea that you're enabling and trusting and empowering people to do that comes by collaborating and making it OK to say what's really going on and being never overreacting, always being calm, and just allowing people to be open and honest about what the situation is so we can work out together what to do.

I was the other my other one things I say is if you can see it, you can sort it. And I do really honestly believe that if someone if someone's prepared to share a difficult thing, then you must never shoot the messenger. You must always listen to what they say and go, OK, thank you very much for sharing that tearing that now we've just halved it because two of us know about it. So let's work out what we can what we can put around that helps us resolve that problem. So those are those are the sort of things. It's quite they're the human factors really, aren't they? They're how you work together.

to be effective and leverage the best that everybody's got to bring so that you can do these quite difficult things. And I think that applies in all major programs because they were all way too complex. You can't really see the ends of either any major program. You can't see where it starts and finishes. There's always going to be blind spots. So you're completely reliant on having a team that are looking at the things you're not. So you can't be too hierarchical. You can't be too authoritarian. You can't be too closed because you're only ever part of the

solution, there's someone else who's got the rest of it and you're only ever going to be part of the conversation because there's a whole load of stuff going on that you're not even going to be party to. So yeah, it's that recognition that you you may be sat with a responsibility but your reliance on those around you is really, really important.

Matt Gavin (23:09)
Yeah, that's really interesting to me. I'd like to explore that a bit if that's all right. I think a lot of leaders we've spoken to talk a lot about that people element, empathy and building those relationships and that collaboration being way more important than some of the technical nuts and bolts sort of stuff. Do you share that? Do you think that sort of, at the level you're at now, is it more about relationships, collaboration, people?

and less about your technical experience, let's say, in your field or your...

Ruth Todd (23:39)
Yeah,

I'm probably a bit unusual in that the jobs I do are normally to go in and cry and create something from scratch. So I do a lot of solution. I'd call it solution design. It's the it's not a product development activity, is it? But I'm usually developing vaccines that wasn't there before. There were some particular problems I went into the subs world to solve with my background, taking over the army supply chain. was it was not in good shape and it was about stabilizing performance. I'm always doing transformation.

So you do need a technical skill set to bring with you. can't do that without this job is another great example, isn't it? Where we're doing something new for the first time. So you do need to have technique for the jobs, jobs I choose, the jobs I'm motivated by. I'm much less of a routine leader and more of a leader who turns up when there's something difficult or interesting to try and make happen. So I think I have to have a technical skill set, but I also have to recognize the limits of that skill set. And then you're building the capabilities around you to do the wider.

wider content. but that's more about the jobs I've chosen than general leadership. I think most leaders would say to you that it's their teams that make them successful. I'd say the same, but I do, I enjoy the technical stuff, so I don't particularly want to lose all of it. you know, you've experienced it too. You know, that I, when I'm in a factory, I'm going to look around and go, do I think these guys are capable or not? Because it's my bread and butter. I've been to more factories than I've had hot drinks really, you know, and it's, so it's, it's kind of

Bringing those things with you just helps you to help teams get to the next level of their development.

Matt Gavin (25:11)
Yeah, I think you've spoken about it as well, is knowing your blind spots as a result of that, but also bringing your experiences. It's a two-way thing, isn't it? It's a two-way thing.

Ruth Todd (25:18)
It is for me.

I mean, everyone's different, aren't they? And that's my bag. I don't expect that of leaders working for me. I don't expect everyone to be the same shape. I like diversity in a team. I like to have challenge and different thought. don't consider when I'm in a group and I'm, if it's my team, I don't consider myself to be the most important person in the room. I like to make sure that we've all got a voice and that we're collaborating to come up with the best answers. And the diversity of thought is really, really important to me when we're in a.

It's kind of like my diverse teams to me are so important because you do get a different perspective from people who've come from different backgrounds and have different experiences to those that you have. know, what am I? I'm a white middle-class female. That means I've got a pretty narrow view of the world.

Matt Gavin (26:01)
Yeah, yeah, diversity is an interesting topic that I'm sure we could spend another hour talking about. So we'll not, we'll come on to you and you as a leader. What's next for someone in your position? How do you continue to develop? What kind of tools do you employ? What kind of techniques? do you develop now from where you are to the sort of next iteration? know, if Ruth Todd, what does that look like, do you think?

Ruth Todd (26:21)
Yeah.

So at the moment, mentorship is my approach. So I used to coach for a very long time, but I realized it was sort of running out of steam and it wasn't working too well for me anymore. So I've moved on now to having some really inspiring industry leaders as my mentors. And my growth comes from understanding. I go to them and I say, I'm looking at this at the moment and there's something I've done that I'm not terribly happy with, or I don't quite know how to deal with.

this circumstance, it's not usually a problem, but something that I think we could probably find a better path through. And I get their experience, or I'll get a different perspective on how you can deal with different circumstances you find yourself in. Or I'll also quite often get told off and go, yeah, yeah, right, well, that's just you, isn't it? The rest of the world just look at it like that, and you just need to shut up and get on with it. And you go, OK, thanks very much. I trust you. You told me that probably right. So there's that.

I think when you're a leader, it can be quite isolating. having folk you can talk to is the current thing I do to help me develop. And then I am a bit of a saddo because I do like technical stuff. So I do try and keep abreast. So I'm currently fairly interested in AI and its applications, trying to understand how we're going to break through in regulated environments, whereas security protocols we need to be careful on. That's something I have these little passions that I take a bit of time and get my head around.

And I find that helps keep me interested. It keeps me current. It means that while my hair might be gray, I'm not completely down and out, although try not to talk to the kids in a way that they get really embarrassed by. My children tell me I'm never allowed to do a selfie. I'm not bad at it. it's just, you know, try and try some stuff that keeps you current, some stuff that keeps you fresh as a leader. And for me at the moment, that's mentoring and some reading.

Matt Gavin (28:10)
Yeah, that's really interesting. As a, you know, I guess a new senior leader myself or a fairly new senior leader, it's the reason I started this was to get these kinds of insights from people like yourself. Life's really busy, right? And you surely know different, you're way more busy than, you know, than me probably. How do you balance your time in terms of the, you know, the day job, if that's what you call it, the pulling and pushing and making things happen and the development piece, you know?

How much of that comes from your experiences and how much of that is outside and how do you find the time to just continually learn and read up on AI and, you know, have these mentor programs.

sure the pressure's always on, right, so.

Ruth Todd (28:52)
It is. No, that's not wrong. And I guess it's, if you're interested in something, you generally do it though, don't you? So I am a have it all person. So I'm not really very, I don't sit around very much. I can't even watch TV without doing some craft at the same time. It drives my husband insane that I'm always on my phone, which I'm not allowed to do, get told off for that, or knitting or doing sewing of some sort usually. So I guess I'd.

balance my development by making it a priority in my diary. So I try and see my mentee mentors every three months or so. And we go out to dinner and we'll chew the fat about things and they get stuff out of that conversation and I get stuff out of that conversation. And then I'm a bit dyslexic. So actually I don't read very much. I was kind of being misleading by saying that I listened to lot of podcasts. I listened to a lot of books. I try and listen to conferences that have called backs on conferences when you know, someone's talking about things, Ted talks, all those kinds of things.

So because I find reading in the morning, but when it comes to the evening, I really struggle to process words. Long documents in the evening are my idea of hell. And I had to do one last night. And I know it takes me twice as long as it would in the morning because my brain isn't tired enough to cater to the fact it doesn't quite process that information particularly well. So yeah, I just, when I'm traveling, because we're always traveling somewhere, aren't we? Then I'll be listening to a podcast. Or if I'm not sleeping at night because

I don't always, my husband, you know, my husband never did a nappy during the night. I just want to put that out there. did all the night nappies because I've never really slept very well. And now because I don't have night nappies to do anymore. They're 22, 27, totally embarrassed if they watched it. I even said that. I might listen to a podcast during the night. I did Elon Musk's biography recently. I can promise you that is the best thing to get you back to sleep I've ever listened to. Very, very long and repetitive. It's not a complex man.

Matt Gavin (30:29)
Yeah. ⁓

Yeah, who'd thought we were going to get onto nappies in the night, That's great. I love that. Yeah, we'll definitely keep that bit in.

Ruth Todd (30:43)
Hahaha!

I don't know, Matt, I

interview many women because it could be quite problematic. can get into all sorts of places you don't want to go to.

Matt Gavin (30:50)
You

No,

it's all great. It's all great insights. It all shows that we are all normal, We are all normal, yeah. Just a few before we sort of finish and wrap up here. It's been really, really insightful. Obviously aspiring leaders, this industry is going to need a lot of future leaders. We're in it for the long call. What could leaders start to do right now to sort of...

Ruth Todd (30:59)
Yeah, isn't it? We are all normal.

Matt Gavin (31:16)
get themselves on a trajectory to be a future sort of senior CEO, director, whatever. Is that even possible to sort of say that now? And that's an interesting discussion in itself. what advice would you have for people listening to this that want to go on a similar journey to yourself?

Ruth Todd (31:31)
Well, you sort of muted it earlier. You have to start with the soft skills. So communication is really, really important. So get yourself out there, do the presentations you don't want to do. Be the one who stands at the front in the conference if you get a chance to. When you're writing stuff, make sure you read it back and see that other people are going to understand it. So communication skills I put out there as being really important. Soft skills can be all of these. Stakeholder management, work out how you get decisions made and start

Practicing what you're seeing because I think that's that that's one of the big things you have to navigate the more senior you are you must have seen that to the How do how do I work out? This thing which is a bit nebulous, and I'm not sure of myself yet How do I get to the point where it's gonna have it's gonna be a decision we can make as an organization who needs to be involved in that what do need to understand as I go along the way so Communication and stakeholders would be top of my list

And then confidence would be like my last one I talk about. And I see so regularly really fantastic people whose fear stands in the way of them being able to take that next step. And I did some really interesting studies at HA2 about what stopped people being able to take the next step. And confidence was a massive part of that. And it comes in lots of different forms. But that's

addressing the things that you aren't confident about and being bold and being courageous and finding whatever your version of that is and then working out how you deal with the situations where you feel truly uncomfortable, because you will in leadership. There are times when you feel really, really uncomfortable. Understanding your reaction to it and getting to know yourself well, I think is the last one I would call upon. So all soft skills, the more senior you get, the more important they are. the preparing for that now is kind of, then you're making it so it's not a bigger transition.

Matt Gavin (33:18)
Yeah, more gradual sort of building of that. Confidence is a great thing and, you know, something that we all develop over time. And think as you get a bit older, confidence comes a bit more naturally. For me personally, it has, you know, younger Matt weren't as confident as probably more middle-aged Matt. But that's certainly a great piece of advice. We could talk all day, Ruth. It's been truly fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us. Really appreciate it. That's awesome. Thank you very much.

Ruth Todd (33:43)
Very welcome, it's been lovely to talk to you.