The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:13:59 · Vidit Agarwal, Neil Plumridge, Robert Nason
[00:13:59] S0: Yeah, absolutely. And Neil, you've kind of collected all the consulting logos, right? Because you were at Carney, then you were at and then you were at PwC. Again, could spend a whole episode talking about your career, but if you had to summarise it, is there a highlight from your career that you can share? [00:14:18] S1: Look, the yes, I've enjoyed every firm I've worked with. They are all outstanding firms, and there's more that I haven't worked with. Our industry has outstanding people and outstanding firms across the board. And so I've been lucky. I've met the right people at the right time and events have changed my career. I didn't go seeking the moves. It was an event that happened and I was open to a conversation and that conversation then turned into an advance in my career and I took that advance a little bit like you jump into the unknown. I'm not all that well planned and I'm not sort of a five or ten year planner. I'm a what's real now and where can I make the greatest difference? And so the changes were opportunistic and just hit me at the right time, and I've been very lucky to be given those opportunities by the people that reached out. [00:15:16] S0: I think he's being very humble, Robert. Neil's had a very successful career but he's extremely humble. [00:15:24] S2: Yes. I would say Neil is the best consultant I've ever worked with. [00:15:29] S0: There you go. There you go.
00:15:29 · Vidit Agarwal, Robert Nason
[00:15:29] S0: There you go. There you go. [00:15:30] S2: He's very... And he's regarded that way by those around him. He became... And I didn't have visibility of this because we were together for... With two of those firms, but then Neil went his own path. I never saw Neil in his practice management era. We sort of competed a bit crossing paths at that time, but I see his results and he was incredibly capable as a leader of large firms as well. [00:16:00] S0: I want to come to the book and Neil, I believe you are the brains behind the startup that has become the book and a firm behind it. How the Best Consultants Think, Act and Win in an AI Accelerated World. I mentioned earlier, we just had the Melbourne launch and we've got the Sydney one coming up. Neil, take me back to when you started thinking about the book. I think in the time I've gotten to know you, I never would have thought of you as someone who'd go, let's write a book and let's do a big celebration about it. But clearly you felt there was some content there that you should put your intellect and time behind and involve Robert. Take us inside that period in your life and those early conversations that led to the book.
00:16:47 · Neil Plumridge
[00:16:47] S1: A couple of years ago I retired from full time work. Well, I thought I'd retired from full time work. A month into that retirement I reflected on the thirty years I had and the amazing people I'd worked with, including clients, and I started to write a LinkedIn blog. So the genesis of the book and our training business is actually a LinkedIn blog. But I don't write a lot of LinkedIn blogs so I kind of didn't know where to start. So I just started writing and it became a lot more than a LinkedIn blog. And by chance, again, my life's, you know, often sliding ball moments, met someone who said, well, why don't you turn that into a book? Because I never published that original LinkedIn blog. And they encouraged me to just share stories. Don't get into the theories and the frameworks and the models, but just share your stories. You've got amazing stories. This is someone I trusted. And involve others. So draw up a list of people that you would like to get their stories from. And so Robert was on my list of people to interview. I've had the privilege of working with thousands of partners and managing directors over the thirty years in those firms you've mentioned. But there were about 50 that I really wanted to understand their best deal, the deal where did it start from and how did it come about. So Robert was very early on in that because Robert's one of my heroes and rainmakers. I put him in that class. And so very early on in the interview I started interviewing Robert. I had all my questions just like this interview process, and I then said, hang on, time out. You're taking this to a different level that I hadn't even considered. You should be co authoring this book with me. It's your book just as much as my book. And so a couple of weeks went by, we went backwards and forwards and then, yeah, so very early thinking at the start was mine, but I would say I'm not the brains. It's a collective effort. We're coauthors. I'm very proud of Robert and being a partner of his. So then we went and finished the interviews. We did a lot of research on others that we didn't get the chance to interview but through different means we collected their stories. In the book we've got over 80 academic cited journals and thought leadership that we think every consultant, whether you're graduate or a senior partner, should be across.
00:19:09 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
We've incorporated that into the book, and here we are two years later. You've done the book launch. We've got one more to go, and we're doing this podcast, which we're delighted about. [00:19:23] S0: Robert, give us your side of the story. How did Neil convince you to come on board and what excited you about the project?
00:19:31 · Robert Nason
[00:19:31] S2: Yes. Well, somewhat like Neil, I think I've retired about seven times and had farewell functions and then come back again. So no one was surprised to see me back doing something, I suppose. But I was interested... Like, the conversation with Neil was good. Conversation with Neil are always good, and he'd done a lot of work and had some very good thinking behind the book. I had an opportunity of reviewing an early draft and gave him comments. I remember coming home and saying to my wife, look, Neil's written this. It's 80% there. This is going to be a soda. He wants me to go in. I'm happy to help him finish it and it'll be a bit of fun and he's got some good ideas of where to take it, so this will be an easy process. Well, then it became, know, Neil and I are both sort of serious people, and we have good conversations. We have good idea exchange conversations. Where we saw an issue, if the book needed rewriting or a chapter needed rewriting, we would rewrite it. Neil had the energy to go back after having completed most of the manuscript to say, okay, we've got a different thought there, let's have another go at it, We actually put that work into doing it. Became a very intense learning process to do this. I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the people we met, the rainmakers in other firms, some clients, discussing this topic. You meet high energy people that are changing the world, doing great things, and just exchanging views and ideas and concepts with them was really a big pleasure in putting the words down on paper.
00:21:26 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:21:26] S0: I'm curious, you both would have spent a lot of time writing the book and you probably would have learnt a lot about each other that perhaps you didn't know before the book writing process. Can you take me into that? Like was there something Neil, did you discover anything about Robert through the book process that perhaps surprised you?