The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:25:26 · Neil Plumridge
[00:25:26] S1: So Robert gives me credit for the writing. We would have a conversation. I'd go away and write it as best I could, flip it back, and then I used a whole bunch of tools, AI tools. Grammarly was my favorite best friend around grammar and really trying to get some clarity in what I'm saying. I use different AI tools for research. So we would have a conversation on, say, trust in the AI area and the some emerging trust topics that we should be talking about. And so I'll call that, you know, Rachel Botsman in The UK. She's one of the leading thinkers around trust in today's world. We would go away and research what she's doing. So it was an iterative process, a bit like a consulting process, right? You kind of have some hypotheses where you want to take it and then you go and find the data that proves up, that doesn't, and then you iterate and run it through an editing process. Probably wouldn't do it again. It killed Robert and I in terms of this. But it's been a really enjoyable process and I can say that the book is full of stories and it's us sharing our stories, sharing other stories. But I personally have learnt a lot through this too. And I mentioned this at the book launch. I didn't realise the degree of how trust in professional services is different, the degree of it and magnitude, if you like, across cultures. So researching and learning about even though we've consulted in Brazil is different than Poland and different in Tokyo than different in Sydney. We've got half a chapter or chapter on that dimension. So learning is part of the writing process. It wasn't just telling our stories, it was actually a learning process too.
00:27:13 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal
[00:27:13] S2: Neil and I sort of pride ourselves on our quality of our end product. So we said to the editor before the editor had a look at a book, You won't find any typos in this book, and we're pretty confident we've got a pretty right one. Well, what we got back of made us eat humble pie a bit that we needed that edit process to correct things you've said on page eight that aren't consistent with what goes on page two ten, all of those things being picked up. The editing process certainly lifted it beyond what I thought it was going to need, but that's writing a big 300 page book is different than writing a 30 page consulting report. That's the difference. [00:28:04] S0: That is so funny and I think the premise of the book, at least my understanding the human side of exceptional performance, right? I think even my podcast, that s what we do here is reimagine the concept of a high flyer and showcase the human aspect of exceptionalism in different industries. I d love to cover some aspects of the book. Of course, we want people to buy the book and read it, but we can give them a bit of an entree. I love the story you start the book with, Neil. I think you take us into Mumbai and you're riding on the back of a client's motorbike, I believe without a helmet. Yeah. Can you just recount that day and what you learnt about business then?
00:28:43 · Neil Plumridge
[00:28:43] S1: Yeah. So I learnt that's why it's at the start of the book because it was really the pivotal moment that changed. I was successful at that point in time. I had great bookings, had great clients, mostly in Australia. I was taken into the opportunity to do a big project for a large mobile phone company in Mumbai. I was well prepared for that meeting with the client. I was the COO, had all the slide packs, had all the questions I thought were going to get asked. And then he said to me, you know, I'd arrived the night before and he said, actually, I don't want to go through your slide pack because I don't think you actually understand how business is done in India and how my business actually really works. He obviously said that politely and respectfully. So he said, leave your jacket behind. We went downstairs, jumped on a couple of motorbikes, and he then took me to where they were selling mobile phones in the markets in Mumbai. It was an exhilarating, scary emotion all the emotions you've ever got experience. But I really learned that to be an effective consultant, it's not in the boardroom, it's not in a nice glass office. It's actually you've got to be at the coalface to really understand how that business works at the coalface and then how he interacted with his customers. And so I learnt about connection before content, something we're big on as a theme. He the in the markets in Mumbai selling mobile phones and making a connection with his customers and the penny dropped for me completely that it's not about the content first. It's not about slide packs. It's not about boardrooms. It's something different.
00:30:40 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:30:40] S0: Yeah. It reminds me of prior to starting my business I spent a decade in FMCG and retail and we'd often from the head office or store support centre as you'd call it, go into the retail stores and it was always a very humbling experience to spend time with the staff on the shop floor and be told this isn't working and that isn't working. We'd come with our suit jackets as well and end up leaving with our sleeves rolled up and humility very much left on the shop floor. Yeah, and then we had a big floor of consultants at most of these firms I was at. I think for them it was a big eye opening experience that actually this is how the retail shop environment works. Great story. Robert, one of the things that you and I have talked about and we covered this in the Melbourne launch the other day as well is are rainmakers born or are they made? I think both you and Neil have some very well developed thoughts on this. Think again, people think of rainmakers or high flyers as people that are charismatic and extroverted and all that. What has been your experience, Robert, through the book about answering that question, are rainmakers born or developed?
00:31:47 · Robert Nason
[00:31:47] S2: Yes, and absolutely they are developed. We are convinced of that having spoke with many rainmakers in various firms. Some are extroverts, some are introverts, some are specialists, some are client relationship leaders. It's different across the world, across firms, there is a consistency in terms of the fact that they adopt similar practices that anyone can follow. So there is control and a discipline around their work habits, behaviors that they consistently apply. We just captured that. We aimed to investigate this topic in every dimension. We looked at how they do origination, what are their attributes, what are their behaviors, what are their principles they abide by, what are their routines that they follow. We explored that in-depth, and the fun thing for Neil and I, and it's something that is an issue in professional services, I think, no one really analyzes exactly why something was achieved, like why you won this project. There's various systems that exist within the firms to reward people for sales success. Generally, the lead on the project gets to allocate things called booking credits or sales component to different staff members who contributed to the result. Neil and I had the opportunity of actually working with people who had achieved success and the people around them to actually determine what actually did win this project and what was it. So we came to conclusions that sometimes the firm had not concluded. They hadn't asked the client or the client made a decision not knowing what the consultant had actually put together. That gave us an opportunity to actually pull out, okay, what are these factors that lead to success? That was very interesting for us that we put those judgments, which are basically Neil and my judgments of what it took to win. Just quickly, secondly, we looked at what's changed in consulting and there's been dramatic change in the last decade. But then we went back through our personal histories to say what's the best evidence? What's the best case study of this working? Sometimes it was something that happened long ago but it's an example of this trait or this behavior having success. We put those stories into the book. We actually have, I know, we've put 35 stories in the book. We've got about 90 of them. We had to select which ones made the book because they reinforced the right points.
00:34:50 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal, Neil Plumridge
But we learned some really interesting stories from people in the industry. [00:34:57] S0: I want to come to just a couple of other stories that I picked up in the book, but just your point there, Robert, about how the industry has changed is a really interesting one that maybe we can spend a minute A question to both of you. Can you share any anecdotes on how has the industry changed? [00:35:12] S2: Yeah, Neil, do you want to go with this one? [00:35:15] S1: So a number of changes. There are some enduring things that have been around for eight years and will continue like independence and objectivity and the like, but probably the one that I'd call out is origination. From our research and conversations is the majority of work today comes from the consultant pitching a point of view or an idea or a concept or a major event, and a major event being a leadership change, a cyber event, an unexpected M and A event. So some sort of an event occurs or the consultant sees something that the client doesn't see and pictures an idea. So that's where the majority of big transformational work is. There's still lots of other work around RFPs and the client deciding what projects to issue. But the big deals, if you go through the top 100 deals in the last twelve months, the majority of those have come from the consultant initiating them or a major event has occurred.