Mastering Transformation and Community | Interview with Lisa Carlin, Founder of Turbocharge Your Transformation

Ryan Purvis 22:03:44
Hello, and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines, the problems they face, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took, that will help you to get to grips with a digital workspace inner workings.

So, so welcome, Lisa to the digital workspace works podcast, you wanna introduce yourself, please?

Lisa Carlin 22:04:19
Sure. So I work in strategy execution, that's been my whole background. And I mentor executives to accelerate their projects and their change. So my clients love having that sounding board, for the end to get some fresh ideas. That's what they they hire me for. And so they can fast track what they're doing. And I also have a membership as well, turbocharging transformation, which I'm very excited about.

Ryan Purvis 22:04:45
Yeah, that's great. And I think that's the, I mean, we overlapped nicely there that I like to be the trusted advisor, or fulfil the trusted advisor role to with customers where they can just come and talk and, you know, your South African, I think we're pretty plain speaking people. So they know they're getting good feedback, or the feedback that only here necessarily, but it helps them to cut through some of the bureaucracy or the red tape or change their thinking a little bit or, or challenge some of their thinking, which, which I think they don't always get with was the directs.

Lisa Carlin 22:05:18
Exactly.

Ryan Purvis 22:05:19
So be interested to hear more about how you got to this position, maybe?

Lisa Carlin 22:05:24
Sure. So I started in South Africa working for what was then Anderson Consulting, now Accenture. And I'll specify sitting behind a green screen doing COBOL and a few other things. And other kinds of coding and, and then I kind of, I'm a very much a people's person. And I found a lot of the reason why the projects that the systems when we implemented them didn't stick was because of this the change in the people's sites, I became really interested in that. And then to cut a long story short, I left and I went to the US, and I was interviewing with a few firms, and I got a job offer for McKinsey. And I thought, fantastic, I'm gonna move here, I'm gonna go and work in you know, and I tried all sorts of different things. Because you, you know, you don't need to specialise in, like, choose whether it's technology or change, or it's just the huddled of sort of strategic kind of projects, I love doing that. But again, the reason why a lot of the strategy worked in stick was the people. So again, long story short, came to Australia with a backpack and, and basically stayed and, and went to go work for culture change organisation, and then in 1999, I started out on my own, so yeah, going on. Yeah, going on 24 years, and I sort of put all that knowledge together.

So I've been doing, you know, implementing change programmes, all sorts of transformation programmes from a multidisciplinary perspective as a usually in the role of approach programme director or programme manager. And, and love doing that. And I've had very high success rates with in an environment that where the traditionally it's been, you know, there's been a lot of failure rates. And so, but it's taken me a long time to get to a point where I'm sort of confident enough to kind of go out there and really own it. And I think that's when you start getting older, you sort of just get to the point we yep, I, you know, I know I can do this. And so that's why I'm so excited. Well, two things. One is that I've started sort of moved more and more into mentoring teams and executives to to advise them on, on how to accelerate what they're doing in strategy, transformation, all of that.

And then the other part is that I've started a membership this year. So that's the Turbocharge Your Transformation membership. And the purpose of that is twofold. One is to teach people how to do all of this from from the lessons of what's been most successful, and also to create a bit of a community and that kind of confidence that people have that the other people that are doing this sort of innovating innovative work. And it's pretty tiring. And it's pretty hard. It's pretty lonely sometimes, especially when you're in a big corporate and you've got really prickly politics to deal with. And over the people around you, it can feel quite lonely. So it's quite nice to have a sounding board for that. And I've got away with people can do it and still get a bit of confidentiality. Yeah, get some advice. So yeah, so that's what I do.

Ryan Purvis 22:08:41
Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned the politics the prickly Politics, I was talking to someone about it yesterday, that the, you know, everyone thinks the higher up you go, you go in a role that eases a lot easier it gets, it actually gets more and more complicated. And you really got to, I struggle with this when we moved to the UK, because the people I spoke to didn't speak the same way that I spoke, they were not direct and blunt and solve the problem people. They would talk around it, they would, they would end, I had to learn a hard lesson around how you had to have meetings before the meeting. And you had to get to know people and you had to know all about where they were coming from and what their things were and all that stuff. And then you would be able to get by into to what you want to think but you know, it was hard. It was a hard year and a half of of, you know, the typical Springbok rugby player would run into people and run them over that didn't work in the political game, you had to be a little bit more, you know, kiwi in the sense of, you know, a lot of fancy footwork.

But you know, in the end, you got to win the game somehow. And then the only way to win it was to get people on board. So and that's kind of where Valuu came from to large extent was, how did you add value as a product value is a framework? How did you get people aligned? What kind of, you know, how did you go about doing it without becoming imposing but more consultative, more trust building? Very clear, what are the reasons why we're doing some sort of sort of value of doing this thing? Why was this thing the most important to be doing? What was the sequence to do it, all that kind of stuff. Which, you know, led me to my sort of going on my own a year ago, just over a year ago. More formally, I've always had sort of consulting stuff that I've done, even when I was full time, with full transparency to who I was employed by. But this was much more formal in the sense of going into customers and saying, Okay, well, you bought this product, you spent a million bucks on it, why isn't why are you not seeing the value? Well, it's because your whole structure is wrong. Like you just you're not getting up in the right ways. You're still doing everything the way you did it before, but now expecting the technology to solve the problem. You've got to you've got to change how you work. And some of those conversations are, are not, as I say, not bland conversations, there are 6, 8, 10 conversations over a period of time. And you've just got to constantly be feeding back and guiding somebody.

Lisa Carlin 22:11:14
So that's exactly Sorry. Go ahead.

Ryan Purvis 22:11:17
No, that's, I think that's where we overlap. I think we've probably done something very different, just different disciplines.

Lisa Carlin 22:11:23
Yeah. So that's exactly the thing, because it's been quite, it's quite hard for a lot of folks that are in the digital technology space that are technical, and have come from a technical background to, to think from an integrated perspective. And so they miss the cues and what you've just described, Ryan, it's quite interesting. Are you doing the video as well for this? Because if so, I'm happy to, I'm happy to share a diagram if you like.

Ryan Purvis 22:11:55
Yeah, we'll do a video. And then also, we, if you don't mind me just do a screenshot of or whatever you do sharing the audio only.

Lisa Carlin 22:12:04
Of course. So what you've described Ryan is, is thinking from a multidisciplinary perspective, and that is very unusual for folks that have come from one discipline. Because what they tend to do is they tend to think from one or two disciplines generally I find. So people have come from a, like the business kind of focused on a business outcome, like in your case, technology, or being a subject matter expert on a project or being a product manager, they will all fit into the circle at the top, which is the business circle. So thinking from a specialised subject matter expertise, perspective, thinking about the business outcome, okay? Folks who've got a technology background, and many of those who listening I understand do well will mostly have a project management background as well, that's the second green circle.

What people also need to execute changes to be able to think about the change management and the people that's the third circle. And folks who can think from that multidisciplinary perspective in the middle of the most powerful and then I'll take it one step beyond because if you can then adapt the approach in the organisation you're working in to the culture to their culture, in the workplace. Then it's it's those those people and working on those projects that will get that flywheel effect for ROI and innovation. And that's the model that I teach people in the whole philosophy of turbocharge your transformation is based on that.

Ryan Purvis 22:13:50
I love this, I love this diagram. I think it's such a... So, so full for the value framework that we put together. Over the years, we don't have this kind of image, we have a different one. We don't call it I mean, there's there's similarities, there's not the same thing. I've worried more around strategy and execution underpinned by people. And the strategy comes from business and change. Right? So it's just a dirt, it's blocks, not, not circles and all the rest of but it's with it with an arrow to the right. So very similar. So I mean, I think you've, you've actually, it's a much better way of putting it. So now how do you how do people resonate with that, when you show it to them? Do they get it do you have to spend quite a lot of time coaching them through it?

Lisa Carlin 22:14:39
I think people get it at an intellectual level. But I think only when they really learn some of the and experience a programme where they asked to think from that multidisciplinary perspective, only then do they actually really get it. Because what I what I when I'm working with people, I get them to think about every single task on their project plan, for example. So say they're doing a big ERP implementation. And the whole business is basic core systems that will be being redeveloped or replaced, that they, like every task on that project plan can be done from the from the multi perspective, multidisciplinary perspective, rather than separate. So I'll give you an example. One of the projects I was working on, we had to sit and do a selection of a new a new system. And it was a government organisation, and they have quite a big tendering process to go out and look at different providers for the for the system. And they usually put together the brief and then of what they're looking for, well, they do the whole project setup, then they do the brief of what what sort of system they want, then they put out a very detailed request for tender. And then they pull a panel together to review them all and to shortly review the shortlist and then select and then they disperse the panel.

Whereas what we did on the project was we got the we got the lot of the so all the work I do is CO designed with people. So the right strategy right up front, you get the people involved, right at the beginning. So instead of thinking as a tender panel that was going to do a business selection of a binder, business vendor, right, we thought of it as well, that's actually a whole broader project process of involving people the whole way through. So we set up a cross functional working group representing all parts of the business, and all levels, and they smiling, you know what I'm gonna get it right, all the way through their whole way through this. And then when it came to, you know, right up front, they did all the strategy, but they were invested in the systems, they got the information from their divisions, and they represented their divisions. So when it came to, even by the time that the system was was chosen, and we needed to start implementing, it was going to be a very unpopular system, this particular system, because it meant people had to change the way they were working significantly, but the change management was built in, because we had all the change champions who actually had selected the system effectively. So, the and the culture, they just, it just fitted the culture and the way they did things with a very strong compliance focus. So, you know, and, and there was going to be a huge backlash in that in that business, because they were, it was a divisional siloed business, but we had representation from all different parts of the business. So culturally, they folks felt like they were involved and, and, and their division had a say, and, and the whole system was implemented really successfully, and they saved in this was an Australian government organisation that saved, you know, significant millions of dollars every year 10s of millions because of it. So if the if the team had not had that represent the, you know, the programme manager that worked that just all of that, like that, that different thinking from those different disciplines, and they would have done it separately. That's why I've seen it fall over and fail. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 22:18:24
So have you seen the Big Bang, the Big Bang failures? You know, and I've seen it with people building very, very single discipline, like very strong project managers who very much care about the project plan, the critical path, the risks, you know, the methodology, but not about any of the other stuffs and so they only focus on that stuff, and then they don't bring anybody else along on the journey. And it becomes these weekly meetings of just basically task driven, hey, we don't your task, your task, and they know and it's just a case of I'm gonna get beaten up because I haven't done my tasks, I haven't loved my time or, you know, whatever. And this is one of the reasons my favourite developers, reminder of why you're doing this all the time and having the people involved in as well while responding. And you explain it reminded me very much of how when I left, working on the system integrator side and went to work for a vendor, it was a business process management company called Global 360s.

And the reason why I was interested in them is a data, what they called the persona approach, which is you'd go and interview the people that are doing the process at the front line about what they did, but you wouldn't just go and interview them, like we do not call, you literally go to their desk, and you sit with them while they work in the day. And you'd see how they circumvented the current systems. Because everyone circumvents the current system, there's always a way around it, the times I phoned, Joe, because Joe just gets us through and how many times all that stuff. And then that's how we would design the replacement. So when we design the replacement system, and they had a very cool way of building someone's workbench for them, we turn on the widget you want to have and you basically create the workbench, that person was part of designing their own their own screen. And it was very clunky and ugly. But the guys who designed the widgets were the same guys who designed the iPhone. So it had the same intuitiveness to it. And your adoption was like 100%, because the person would go well, this is sending me logging into five different systems, I'm logging into one system, because all the data was being contextually brought to them, because they've now designed what they needed. And instead of having 26 buttons to have to click, and remember, they had three.

All the stuff that they needed to do all this all the shortcuts we were able to bring in to the technology and presented it, but they own the solution. And get a lot of that stuff. A lot of good stories. I mean, there was one where they were processing backlogs of documents that was a US, I think was a county sheriff in California. They're this huge backlog of court documents. And they had like 12 people doing this backlog scanning. And they implemented the system. And then they knocked it down to about five people. But they were doing five times the volume of work because they they were the ones that had bought into the system. And were therefore efficient. And the seven that hadn't bought in and basically left. And they use the money for what they saved, to incentivize it was all gamification based as well. So like how you how you're doing and other people and all that kind of stuff. And they incentivize the people that whoever was the top at the end of the year, would get a two week paid that two week paid vacation, anyone award, five star, whatever it was, I mean, I think the trick might have cost 20 grand in those days pretty grand. But they saved hundreds of 1000s if not millions, just because they've got this process efficient. And they caught the backlog up. In fact they were so they were ahead of the schedule because of the buy in from the people. And because they they had the trust in the system and the system could be involved. They can improve the system, as things got better.

Which was obviously another thing is they could they had the ability to direct how the system got better. Not someone in another department who didn't care, which is what you often have in technology versus the business because there's a lot of businesses versus the business. You know, they're logging in a support ticket, they're logging in a request goes to some black hole in it and never gets delivered. Or steel, which is demoralising. And that's where that's kind of it comes from because most businesses go you know what I can just go buy SAS service now my credit card, I can have a CRM today, I can pay a consulting firm as a part of that deal on my on my corporate card, I don't need to go through it and then it finds out and then there's then there's the worst situation where they're trying to bring this thing back in. But it's all on a negative foundation.

Lisa Carlin 22:22:53
Yeah. How can I ask you a question? How? How did you learn the importance of the people in the change management because a lot of the tech people with a technology background that I've talked to, they don't truly think from that kind of in that way. They don't think.

Ryan Purvis 22:23:15
Well, it's quite funny. I was talking my mom about this last night. So I've never fitted in. Like, if as far as my earliest memories go, I was always the guy outside like in a sports team. I would be in the sports team, but there will always be a nucleus of people and I'll always be on the outside. And and I've always struggled to be to be included or whatever it was and I think having that situation from from the get go I've always had to find ways to, to fit in. So, you know, when I, when I started writing code, I loved writing code, it was it was a thing. And that was a nice place to go, because you could just write code and get instant results. But I found that very, as much as I enjoyed it, I was unfulfilling it, because I wanted to know what the user wanted to do.

Lisa Carlin 22:24:07
Yeah, like me,

Ryan Purvis 22:24:09
I think it comes back to that thing that used to, you know, all the sports I played, I used to solve all the problems with a solution. And I used to go and tell it to people and, and I had a coach used to verbally abused me about all the stuff. You know, it used to call it shock treatment. But I always found that if I get past him with what I was doing, then I would be on it that I would have answered, and I say you verbally abuse me, because not every call of your verbal abuse. In those days, he was just being hard on me. But I found that if I could get past him, I'd learned how to deal with with the rejections from him, then he's, then everyone else would just buy in. Because he would have asked all the tough questions, he would have really made me cringe and think and whatever. And he always made a point of telling me his stories about how he always pushed himself to be a level above where he was. So as much as he would give me crap all the time, and abuse me, he would also tell me how many how to get around it. So I think that kind of set the frame that when I got into corporate world, or I was when I was selling to customers and dealing with them. I was always I was always prepared for the for those rejections anyway. And I knew how to think on my feet with that sort of stuff. So the technology part is always the easy part. Because I'd written the code and yeah, using the code was yes or no time sometimes to do something.

But in reality, there's nothing you can't solve. With with the technology, it's more the people that you had to get around. And expectation management was one of those things. So I think it's always been there. And you know, there's, there's that energy you get from the people, and you can pick up pretty quickly when the energy is wrong. And you just became more and more that as much as I'm a technologist and technology because more and more to the left, you know, it goes 20% of the of the solution. 80% of it is the people part. And I just, it became more and more about getting the people to buy in getting people to want to do this stuff. And also, you know, had a couple rough, when I'm first managing people, a couple of rough instances where, you know, telling them what to do wasn't the right way to do it. So I had to learn that the first thing you do is, is ask them what they want to do, then you coach them on where you wanted to go. And then the last thing is you tell him what to do. You gotta give him some some rope. But at some point, you've got to be, you know, you got to deliver something. So you got to be the last thing, but it was the order of that. And a lot of military stuff over the years I've read and how you know, the good militaries don't tell the people what to do. They just tell them what the problem is, and ask them how to solve it.

Lisa Carlin 22:26:50
Yeah. Well, that's great to hear. You know, and I've assisted you in in great stead. It just made me think of, you know, one so that as one South African talking to another when I when I first came to Australia, what I read, I went by the US and spent a couple of years there, but and then you know, it's fine to be direct, and the South Africans are always quite appreciated, but it's not as much appreciated in Australia sometimes. And it can be seen as quite arrogant. So, you know, that telling you kind of I really had to learn how to how to just tone it down and be a bit more patient and a little bit, you know, so that was quite just that sort of made me think of when you tell last Ask Don't Tell. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 22:27:37
Yeah. I mean, that was my experience. I moved to the UK because even even by South African standards, I was considered to be quite passive aggressive, but I didn't dictate even in South Africa, like I was very much like, well, what you want to do, how you want to do it, etc. And I got to the UK and they said, no, no, you way too aggressive way to direct. And I say but I'm not even nearly by, you know, if you were to have some of the guys I know you would be crying like you know, and I had to really learn that. That's where I learned to do the meetings, all the meetings. And, and my boss, I mean, I was an engineering lead at the time. He's the same way as you diary so full of meetings, like your job was to build stuff. Yeah, but I got to talk to all the people

Lisa Carlin 22:28:24
I call it Carter conversations, all the Carter conversations before.

Ryan Purvis 22:28:27
Yeah, but you because you're in a global organisation, they're, you know, your guys are us guys in Asia. So I want to talk to these people. I want to I want to talk to them every like multiple times a week to to get them to trust me enough and vice versa. And hear all the unhealthy moaning about What we want to do so that I can when they moan about it like, Okay, you're gonna moan about this, you know this that. So here's how we solve that problem herself. Oh, yeah, that's cool, like. So by the time we get to the big meetings, it everyone was so not docile, but so on board, that the actual meeting was so quick, like you kind of go wild. I mean, it's like quick as well, because everyone's already on board. It was just a case of you guys getting to hear that they're on board.

Lisa Carlin 22:29:06
Perfect.

Ryan Purvis 22:29:07
And it doesn't always work.

Lisa Carlin 22:29:10
It's like being a cultural chameleon, right? You kind of just you, you figured out how things will work in the culture that you're working in. And you know, you needed to have those conversations First, bring it.

Ryan Purvis 22:29:22
I think the other thing which, you know, my dad works, so that can do a good job, good old days. So I travelled a lot. And I think having that exposure to different countries from from an early age, I mean, getting my first job overseas with my dad on my own was Hong Kong, you couldn't be more different to South Africa. From an exposure point of view, and we spent a lot of time in Asia a lot of time in, in various European countries. So, you know, as I grew up, I saw things and I met people and I had to learn a little bit of language and cultural things. And I think that also helps now that when I speak to someone like I'm from Nijmegen, in Amsterdam, oh, yeah, we were in I worked there for six weeks. Oh, wait, where you are now? Yeah. And I think that's, that's an important piece as well as that define that way to connect with people. You know, just just to, to have that little bit of foundation, then you can build on the foundation.

Lisa Carlin 22:30:17
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Ryan Purvis 22:30:22
Tell you a lot about me. So tell me about your, your, your turbocharge, newsletter and all the rest of it. How has that become your go to market? What what is your what is your thinking behind that?

Lisa Carlin 22:30:36
Sure. So when I started this year, building the membership, the turbocharge your transformation membership. I have got I sort of had a move from being a basically I've always marketed b2b. So directly, you know, go go to corporate clients have a coffee with them, they get to know me, they call me when there's work and in between gigs, you know, you kind of do but more coffee, have a few more coffees, and then you know that you get the incoming calls. And that's how I'd fed myself over 20 years. And what I realised in building a membership like this is I'd have to change to to focus also on b2c selling, so selling to individuals who would buy the membership individually, rather than selling to a corporate who might buy, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of seats for the membership at a time. So there are two quite different markets. So that the newsletter is very powerful for for a b2c market, particularly if you are connecting with so many people on LinkedIn. And then you want to remind them and tell them about what you do and remind them that you're around and, and you want them to join up on a website directly. Right, who they may not have met me. And they've got just kind of go from knowing me it's a little bit better online and then and then and then clicking on that Join Now button. So and it's not a huge costs sort of $99 a month and they're getting a masterclass they're getting a a PowerPoint, playbook of templates that they can use immediately on their projects. And they're getting a group coaching session every month, all an hour and every month a different topic. So it's not a huge sell. But still people don't know me online at all. So what the newsletter does is it helps me build a relationship with those people. So I had a ready to start about two and a half 1000 to 3000 email addresses of people that I have worked with over the years, because in any given year, over 20 plus years. Yeah, I'd worked with three or four organisations and I had the email addresses of the people because I love people. So I collect people, and I keep them.

So that's how I started at the beginning of the year with these two and a half or 3000 names. And then and then I've grown them through connecting with people and asking people to send it out to more people. And yeah, and that's how the newsletters growing. And I can talk to you more about that if you think the folks would be interested in that. I love writing it.

Ryan Purvis 22:33:44
So I think. I think that's the interesting part for me. So we have a very similar approach. So when I started the podcast couple years ago, the reason why I started was that I wanted to write a book. And I wrote the book. And then other side of that the book just didn't get it across like I wanted to, to subvert it again, and still couldn't get it across. So I started the podcast because I was tired of putting all these hours into the book. And just not getting that and it's probably impostor syndrome, more than anything else. So with started the podcast, we started obviously building some following around that. We use LinkedIn as our primary thing. And I realised somewhere on the line that if I did it through LinkedIn all the time, that at some point, LinkedIn could change my audience, which I've already done multiple times, and I've seen friends that have been blocked and all the rest of it. So that's when I started collecting for the newsletter. But I didn't do that I already had a list of people on the newsletter, I just let it build itself. So I started off with one and then five and 20, and whatever it was, but that was purely based on the episode of the podcast going up. But also the same, the same reason that that that you doing is to build credibility. So LinkedIn posts, email was all about building credibility, not just me, but the people who were talking to. So the reason why the podcast existed was one, for me to meet new people like yourself, and to to build credibility around what we talked about. And people could then understand that, you know, here's Lisa, she does the things I can talk to her. That's right. So then, so we tried to community out with, with Slack, it didn't work. Why not just find slack? A terrible tool to look at every day. So I didn't, I didn't go in there myself. And two, it just you need people to talk in the group. Otherwise, it doesn't go anywhere. Yes. So now we're trying again with another product called circle, which is a bit more a community driven tool. Whereas some of the circle circle.

Lisa Carlin 22:35:48
It could mighty networks and one of those community platforms. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So finding that?

Ryan Purvis 22:35:57
I think tools, okay. But it comes back to the same problem. Again, people need to talk in them. Yeah. And what we've done initially is we've said that the the community itself is free to join. But then there's a sub community inside there, which is the value execs community, which is for the the fractional consultant looking for more fractional work. And they get access to the training that we've got there, get access to the product, we've got one that's already, etc. But I'm thinking that actually, the whole community needs to become paid for. And that'll drive, you know, because, you know, we're about 50 Members, I think it would take to get that going. And we get and we run a monthly networking session. So it's similar in some respects to what you're doing.

Lisa Carlin 22:36:46
What did they pay? What are the members?

Ryan Purvis 22:36:48
Well, so the main one is free for the value execs it starts at about 50 bucks a month. Okay. pounds and pounds. Yeah, yeah. And the crux of value execs, is if I get fractional opportunities, that's why I post them posted in their paid for group. Because that's, you know, what most people I speak to, and the story behind that is when I was trying to sell people on the product, through my network, most of them were going Yeah, I love the product. Let me give it a go. But how do you do the fractional work? How do you get consulting work because I want to transition out of my full time gig into fractional or I've been do fractional for a while, and I'm really like concerned, the market is flat. How do you find work? And and, I mean, the reality is most of what you get fractional wises to your network. But the other part of it, which is what we do with the community is bumping visible. So everyone that joins value, execs gets goes comes to the podcast, they got a YouTube series. And then we put them to our partner podcast, that we have pocket that there's a few of those. And then we we want to do. And I say want because we still do this podcast, take their content that they are publishing, and then republish it. And the idea behind this is based on a boon to which is I am because we are, is to be unselfish. And we are getting some of the members putting in the opportunities that they're not get that they can't handle all that they don't want to take on into the group as well to say, Well, look, I've got this opportunity. I can't do it right now. It's not my skill set. But Can somebody else pick this up? And it builds trust there where they can say, Look, I can't do this, but here's someone from my community that can help you out. And then a networking call last week, where two members never met each other before we just basically let them speak because they were just saying like, I do this, I do this, Oh, that's great. As soon as you let's chat, you know, I can help you etcetera, etcetera. And I was like, well, we can just drop off and let you guys carry up because, you know, it's clearly it's clearly working for you two to have this chat, and that they've gone off from it separately. And that was that was the goal of community was just to create these connections for people to, to help each other and, and have this sort of trusted network.

Lisa Carlin 22:39:02
Fantastic.

Ryan Purvis 22:39:04
So, you know, similar to what you're doing, in some respects building credibility, but for a group?

Lisa Carlin 22:39:10
Yeah, yeah, there's a nice app called wats app and website called Letter growth. I don't know if you've come across that. What that is, is a platform for newsletter creators, to meet other newsletter creators and find cross promotional opportunities. So there's a whole lot of I've just started reaching out to some people in there, and I'm gonna use that as a method to swap promotional opportunities with people at a similar level and with a similar audience. So that's quite a powerful tool, I think.

Ryan Purvis 22:39:50
Yeah. And I think that is the trick is to is to grow your audience. But then also the cross pollinate with somebody else's audience, because that's how you get your exposure, you know, not that everyone's the same. But you want to go into circles where you're not a strong presence, right? And expanded out. I mean, I spoke to if you know, Lloyd, he was on a podcast recently. I mean, he's got to put in the numbers now. But a massive newsletter. It's in the millions. And he's written a book on on his 13 rules, and whatever it is, and all the stuff we're doing is kind of in those rules of growing that thing, or anything that he does, which I haven't done yet is face to face events. Right? Which is what used to

Lisa Carlin 22:40:34
Do you have most of your community based in the UK?

Ryan Purvis 22:40:41
I've got a couple of the US, mostly Europe, UK, Europe. And I, interestingly enough, and I don't want to misspeak on this, but I find it's more if it's UK based majority are actually immigrants to the UK. And I don't know why that is, it might just be a coincidence. But you have a link, if I think about the majority of who's signed up recently. They've either been foreign as immigrants.

Lisa Carlin 22:41:15
Do you think there's a correlation between people working in the fractional space? Perhaps? Or just? Yeah, well, maybe because you, because you cover a lot of things around sort of starting up working in this kind of way that maybe people are in transit, sort of it will just, I don't know, thinking in their life transit in their life.

Ryan Purvis 22:41:40
And well, I think, I think if you if you immigration, you naturally are a hassle, because you've already had to move out of your home.

Lisa Carlin 22:41:50
Oh, that's so true. That is.

Ryan Purvis 22:41:55
And if and if you're in that mindset, then you're prepared to do literally anything, anything you can but you open to more opportunities and more ways of doing things. So you have that drive, that you know, what to say people don't have drive when they leave. But I think if you're never good, you have that extra that extra drive. And there's a there's a statistic that some economists put out once upon a time that an immigrant is worth seven jobs. The economy, amazing. And I always find that interesting, because if you look at Brexit, that's that's the anti anti anti migrant. Yeah. Which which the UK is under pressure. And it's not surprising. Whereas you look at the US, I mean, most of the successful people are immigrants. I mean, Steve Jobs is probably the most successful and his family are immigrants. You know, all the all the big corporates are run by guys from India. Yeah, yeah. Well, there's many

Lisa Carlin 22:42:57
Indian migrants are punching well above their weight in Australia, too. Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 22:43:03
Because because they've taken their hustlers. And you know, if you I've never been to India, but you know, you know, Durban I mean, there's a lot and you learn a lot about Indian culture. They're, they're hustlers. They they're prepared to do it. And I think to answer your question are the fractions. I think we're getting I'm getting a lot of that interest because the people that are looking for it, you get get the odd ones that are reached a point in their career that they know they won't get another job because they're getting to the age that no one will hire them. Because, you know, these are these archaic and you know, you call it an artificial ceiling is that you can't work beyond a certain age. So I got no choice but to be am a consultant or fractional? Yeah. But then so there's still that percentage. But I think the majority are just hustlers looking looking to, you know, to have multiple income streams and to have enjoyed to do the stuff they enjoy it too. I think there's also that.

Lisa Carlin 22:44:01
Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Ryan Purvis 22:44:06
So what are what are your what's your take on it?

Lisa Carlin 22:44:09
Now I think you're right, I hadn't really thought about it to be honest. So I'm just thinking through some of the folks that I work with, we have about 20 consultants in our core future builders community, in our for our core group work, who do you know, a fair bit of work under the future builders banner, there are four of us who are like directors, it's a virtual organisation, we set it up 10 years ago, so although I've been independent, and I'm doing air quotes here, for since 99, about 10 years ago, we set up the future builders group brand for all of us. So we all have our own PCI limited businesses, underneath that. Rails, but we combine and have a combined website, and we have combined marketing and combined approaches and values and, and collaborate very closely together. So yeah, and it's good fun that way. And it feels I was catching up with some of the some of the directors today. And we were saying it's sort of feels like we've got a bit of a home base, even though you know, still running our own business. So that's why I encourage people who, who working as solopreneurs, and consultants and coaches to find their people find a community, you know, communities like lucky if garden and I've gotten and, you know, others because that's that sort of home base is and that sort of sharing of like leads and gigs when people don't want them and that you could do quite well yourself, you know, they do quite well suited to those kinds.

And then there's more of that more and more of that popping up. And the other thing I like about it, I suppose since COVID Is this the move to more of a digital learning and being able to learn with other people online. I like the idea of being able to, you know, for people to be able to learn online and, and and learn on an ongoing basis, rather than this is not only doing one off courses, but have these sort of memberships where they can learn with other people, because and then they've got other people to ask questions. Yeah, because you've got social learning, which is learning from other peers is such an important part of learning as well. And everything that I read on the and research on the skills based economy skills based businesses, is that we're just heading in that direction, where skills are becoming so obsolete so fast. And we'll just need to keep up and that the volume, the sheer information overload out there is just massive, and people don't have time to, to curate and work out what the most important things are to learn. So if communities and memberships can help them do that a bit, and rather than them randomly doing searches on Google all day to find the things that they need to know. Because they've just got all this FOMO, haven't they? I mean, we all do like we absorbing content at the rate of knots, and then wondering, well, what the hell else are we missing? What don't we know that we should know?

Ryan Purvis 22:47:22
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So So essentially, so a couple things you said there. So value execs, is very similar to what you have with future builders. Peoples, right.

Lisa Carlin 22:47:31
Yeah, yeah. So that's the name of your group of all your consultants is that?

Ryan Purvis 22:47:37
Well, that yes, that's exactly as the pay for service that that's around the opportunities. And I did foresee, at some point, you will have like, groups or pods of execs going in to help a company. So you might need a CRO you might get a CTO, you might need a whatever a growth person. With the training stuff, we've put some courses together, which we sell through the platform, as well. But the part that we haven't hit on yet is the master classes. And I was just thinking about that, you know, from a visibility thing again, having the master class, do you get the master class as part of your community? Or you make a public thing now and then that Okay, interesting. Yeah, I suppose that is the way to do it. Yeah.

Lisa Carlin 22:48:25
Yeah. So I think the master classes are the most valuable content. So I've got, you know, a fraction of that in the in the newsletters. I do webinars and on other people's communities or podcasts and talk about some of the content but the most valuable content and the really useful the really, really useful frameworks are in the master classes. And what I do is then I teach people how to use. So today's what's the winds of yesterday? Sorry, the days are running into each other. This has been such a busy week. Yesterday I ran. So every month, it's a masterclass. And then it's a group coaching session two weeks later. And so this one was this month was the topic was conquering change clarity. So it's in the core framework is, is how do you plan change on a page, which is a lean agile tool for change planning. And anyone can go and pull off a free template of a Google search, right? But the magic is in how to develop and adjust the framework to suit the culture and the in the particular problem that you're working on the project or product launch or whatever it is.

And then how to think about the the gear, the culture that you're in how to think from that multidisciplinary perspective, and be able to plan for that change in a way that is most effective and going to be successful. And how to think of it as that whole process of bringing people along and CO design. So it's sort of coming from, you're not going to learn it only in a change management workshop, you're not going to learn it only from a project management perspective, you're not going to learn it, if you do a Design Thinking course, you're not going to learn a lot if you just come from a single discipline approach. And so not only am I teaching it from that multidisciplinary perspective, but it's valuable because of the people in the community. So the master class is mostly me and sometimes a colleague teaching the court the programme for an hour. So it's we don't our Express, very condensed lots and lots of information in that. They've, they've had the playbook for two weeks before, which is the editable PowerPoint, which has got the frameworks, it's got all the presentation material, everything in and it's in a version that they can then adjust and reuse themselves. So if a lot of them are consultants, so they want frameworks like you know, that they can use. So all those, those pages are editable, so they can use them and adjust them and making their own. And then yeah, and then and then they come to the group coaching session two weeks later, and everybody contributes, and we go into breakout rooms.

So if you were coming along with your, you know, digital transformation expertise, you would be able to contribute from that unique perspective of, well, if I was changed, you know, planning a change for digital transformation, this is how I might think of it differently. And so you connect with other people that are, you know, in the community, why not, you know, we go work out into one on ones or groups of threes or whatever, depending on the day. And then, so you meet some of those people. And then also people will send in their problems that they're working on, or the framework that they've applied, right, so we had one yesterday where somebody wanted to set up a change management function in the business was very fast growing business, and they'd filled out a Change plan to launch a change community in house. And then we all contributed, I used the visual whiteboarding tool, and everybody had access to it on the call on the Zoom call, and we all put different posted notes online. And so that person went away with all sorts of great ideas. So yeah, it's sort of...

Ryan Purvis 22:52:28
I love them all. I'm gonna steal it just to be to be honest, good.

Lisa Carlin 22:52:33
Good. And I'm hoping that we can collaborate further Ryan as well, because I really love what you're doing. And I love your multidisciplinary approach that you're taking. And I've got so much content, it's coming out of my ears, and I cannot wait to get it out there. So I would love to be able to share

Ryan Purvis 22:52:52
maybe you're my first year my first master class. Maybe you just run one of your master class and our group and see I've got Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's, there's, you know, one of the things that I wanted for the community is that they are experts in there. So the experts should come and do their masterclass. I mean, I don't know how to do commercially, it might be free to begin with, but will he feel the members but at least start building that that content train and then build the membership up further and that becomes how it gets commercialised. I don't know. But that's just me brainstorming with you as we're talking. But there's lots of people that have got experience, you know, guys that have grown businesses they've exited out of out of startups, that sort of thing, which is, which is often what I hear about people saying, well, they've got the startup or to build it, but like how do you how do you build a startup besides just building a product or you know, how do you go and sell it? How do you go In your pitch deck, you know, all that sort of knowledge is where I'm getting a lot of questions at the moment. But there's still on the other side of the corporate is going well, now I've got, I've got less people that need to do more work. And we need to solve these problems in the business.

Lisa Carlin 22:54:00
So you've got

Ryan Purvis 22:54:02
the two different worlds all the time.

Lisa Carlin 22:54:04
This is interesting, right? Because I've got the same dilemma. So a lot of my work over the last couple of years, mentoring has not only what the majority has actually been in smaller, high growth businesses, tech businesses, rather than the corporates. And so I have another whole set of IP. So I've got this whole, all these playbooks, right, I've carved up what I had into 16 different play playbooks, right on 16 different modules that are, I've got on you know, the ones that there's one every month that's being introduced to the membership. So we're up to number five at the moment, if anyone joins, they get all five, and then they get the new one every month, then I've got a whole nother. So that's the corporate sort of how do you do transformation in a corporate? Then I've got another whole set of tools that I haven't done anything with yet, besides use them in my one on one, like if I'm mentoring the CEO of, of a tech firm, right? And this is on the whole business model. From purpose. So I've played purpose, strategy, go to market, or design, people and culture.

Yeah, execution or all of that. All of that. And, yeah, Product Market Fit for all of you. I've got topic, those are all topics. And yeah, I'm, I've got all that stuff. And no, I can't do it all I've just like, because I'm so excited with it all at the moment. I just unlike a, you know, a content factory, I like I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night, and I have this another idea for a newsletter. So I write it down sometimes, or sometimes I wake up, and then I forgotten it otherwise, so and so. And so what's happened, and that's why I'm posting a newsletter every week, because I can't, I don't know what to do with all the content I've got. So it's the only way like otherwise, I would have just done it monthly, but I've got all this content. So I want to get it out there. Because I know like, you know, you read it in the Harvard Business Review. Last year, they had an audit that started this year, that article that based on 2022. All they had 78% failure of transformations, you might have seen that one. And then McKinsey on its website consistently in different places, talks about the failure rates they find are about 70% of transformations and strategy execution and all that. I know that my success rate is is ready, you know, like we've had for over 50 transformations to have failed. So that's like 96% and, you know, you talk about impostor syndrome, it's taken a while for me to actually come out and be able to say that without sounding like a you know. overinflated ego. Yeah. And to own it at that I do because now I know, I know what works and I want to share it with people I really do. Because all those failures are, you know, stuff ups of careers, you know, money down the drain, embarrassments, you know, people losing their jobs, you know, lost opportunities, it's terrible. It's terrible. I know, because when I've had those failures, I've, you know, it's taken me, you know, ages to get over them. It's awful. You know, I had one of the one of them I had, basically, the sponsor was fired of the programme. The it was the most nightmare project I've ever worked on. The two of the stars of the of his people that were on the programme, had both resigned about two weeks before he was fired, because it was such a mess.

And, and within about six to 12 months after every single executive on the executive committee, that we're all actually on our steering committee left except for one. Sure. And it was, it was it was an absolute mess, and I was the programme manager, and I felt dreadful. I felt so bad, like I hadn't, you know, hadn't done anything.

Ryan Purvis 22:58:31
I have a similar experience, not as not as dire as that. In fact, mine was the opposite one which I've it's a very special opposite, because no one fell on the sword for it, and they should have and It was one of those things that I'd left a role to join this company. And I'd left early because they were doing this thing. And I was like, This is my expertise, like, you cannot do this project without me. So I left early came to join them got involved. And I kept saying to them, you pick this, as you're doing this wrong, picking this, picking the wrong technology, this is the right technology, you know, this is how we have to do it, this is the approach and they just ignore it and ignore it, ignore it. And we picked the wrong technology, we put it in the supplier knew it was wrong technology, they told me that it was the wrong technology, they would they would try to do things with this technique would never be able to do. The technology was in bought by the vendor that that they should have got gone with. And this thing never delivered, I ended up resigning and I and I'm sitting with the end of the business saying, Tim, you need to pull the plug on this project, you spent a million pounds or whatever it was just my million pounds by that point, you're not gonna get this money back, the return on value is never going to happen. Like, you just got to pull the plug.

He has looked at me said, I'm retiring in a couple months of an era that you know, and I'm not the one who's accountable for this, this person here is a cat and he's not going to Intel, he does the right thing will hold it will carry on. And they spent like 12 or 14 million on these things, and then ever delivered anything. And the irony is that the business was actually in a really good space, they because when you were telling the story of reading, when I smiled, there's a lot of times when people buy technology, they don't change how they do anything.

Lisa Carlin 23:00:18
That's right. It just carry on. And it's an installation, not an implementation is what my professor James Columbia who taught me when I did my MBA, he was just to describe it as that and I love that expression.

Ryan Purvis 23:00:33
100% 100%. And this, the idea with this is that the business actually had redesigned everything, they've taken a shift left approach to redesign all their processes that the business like everyone in the business was bought into this thing. And they ended up spending like 140k to put in something else that meant that meant the solution. And I was like yeah, that's what it should have been, it should have been a very simple thing. But it just it weighed out completely out of control. There was all ego. And the guy who should have taken the fall, just refuse to admit that he was wrong. And he kept saying like to me like, Have you got those controls, controls and they will be this the guy that charging us Dub, because they have to basically write everything customed to fill in the gaps for this technology, they could never do it in the first place. So yeah, so So I don't know what kinds of words people actually getting fired for a bad implementation, or the bed rotation carrying on and people still carrying on drawers getting promoted? Through the process? I don't know, which is worse. Because they're both bad.

Lisa Carlin 23:01:37
Yeah, well, in the project I described, we never even got to implementation because like nobody could agree on the strategy. So there you go.

Ryan Purvis 23:01:45
The so with this thing, they they got rid of the vendor brought another vendor in. They couldn't do it. You know, they paid all these vendors to try and solve this problem. But you can't solve the problem if the core thing is wrong. And the business ended up just getting another little vendor to just do what they needed to get them going. But assist Yeah. It's probably one of the reasons why value exists is because of those sorts of bad decisions. And people not having a framework to make a decision. They just use their opinions. And I still believe there's a little bit of corruption back end or whatever it was to get this to go with this vendor because that's the only reason you would have done it that way. I mean, we come from South Africa, we know what corruption looks like. It's played in your face. It's not like in the first world where everyone hides it a little bit more cleverly, but it still exists. Anyway

I don't know if you've got anything else you want to want to chat about or we can eat there and you can contact you

Lisa Carlin 23:02:48
I think that's a that's probably a good place to end I'd love it if people contact me if they've got any questions if they want to sign up to my newsletter. My website is out or our website is https://www.futurebuildersgroup.com/. And if people go to the forward slash (/) turbocharge, you can find information on the turbo charge. All my colleagues are up there there's a resources section with my newsletter and you can sign up and I'll give you all of that for your show latest show notes as well Ryan and and and the page that I spoke about as well. And yeah, look forward to doing a masterclass for you and some cross promotion and let's get your mainly UK audience and my mostly Ozzie audience with some we've got some in the UK and some in the US and one Mexico but most of it is in Australia. So it would be quite nice to do some collaboration.

Ryan Purvis 23:03:52
Yeah, I look forward to though. We'll talk about that after this. We'll make it. Awesome. Sounds good.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Heather Bicknell is our producer and editor. Thank you, Heather, for your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes at the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DWW podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the website www.digitalworkspace.works. Please also visit our website www.digitalworkspace.works and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.