The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:35:15 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
[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. [00:36:21] S0: Does that also differ by geography where all three of us are pretty well travelled and we've had extensive experiences in different countries. We've just come back from The US. I was in Europe recently. On your point, Neil, like the industry has changed in different ways if you compare, let's just say, Australia to The US? [00:36:39] S1: I'll maybe defer to Robert on this one. Robert's worked in more than 30 countries. I've worked in a few but perhaps, Robert, you want to?
00:36:46 · Robert Nason
[00:36:46] S2: I would say no to this, Vidit. The approach might be different in Japan to The US in terms of how you pitch it but the concept of relationship first, C suite people choose transformational consultants based on their trust in the firm and the individuals leading it to deliver what is a very high risk based decision for them. So relationship comes first. Point of view, we think, comes second. So consultants having a view that is aligned with their client on what's achievable and the scale of what is achievable. You don't sit on the fence saying, we're here to help. Let us know what you want us to do. You lose doing that these days. You've got to be proactively putting forward. We believe in AI transformation. We believe AI transformation can lead to productivity savings of up to x. We've got a position on that. We know how to do it. That gets you in the room, And then demonstrating where you've done it before and that you learnt the lessons of experience and having a technology vision as part of your offering. So understanding the client's technology and moving on. We see that as moving on from the old days of having a methodology and the consultant saying, You've got to come to our boot camp where we'll train your staff in our methodology, on capability where consultants try and prove they're the smartest people in the room. That no longer washes in any organisation globally. It's collaboration with the client, working with the client to get results is what it all means. And the flashy presentations, the PowerPoint decks, the long qual statements don't cut mustard as much anymore. It's not that they're not important for the contract, but you need to be able to get your message across succinctly and you need to simplify what's required, not complicated. There are big changes that have occurred and we've tried to tease out in the book good examples of that happening in the last period of time.
00:39:18 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:39:18] S0: Maybe a story that we can also cover, not a story but a perspective from the book is the, I believe Neil, you argue the five levels of trust. I think if I read correctly, you say that most consultants get to level three, but the exceptional ones get to level four and five. Can you just maybe educate us on those five levels of trust?
00:39:38 · Neil Plumridge, Vidit Agarwal
[00:39:38] S1: Yeah. So the starting point was in a lot of the conversations we had it became quite obvious that trust is not binary, but a lot of consultants think it's binary. You either got the trust with the client or you don't. We think there's a nuance to that and we think there's five levels, level one being sort of at the foundational level where you kind of do what you say you're going to do and the client trusts you to deliver what you've said you're going to do. I won't go through each of them. All the way up to a personal level of trust. And it's at that level four and five where you've earned the confidence of the client to be able to... For the client to have a big conversation with you. And that conversation may or may not materialize into work, but there is the client opening up their whole agenda to you. They're not talking about doing a single functional review or doing a specific project. They're actually talking about something more transformational, and it's at that level of trust is where you can have confidence to put forward points of view, co create paths to address that particular agenda item, and often it takes a long, longer time. Right? It's not the client issuing a brief. The client doesn't have a brief. They've got an issue or problem. And it's of a magnitude that they'll only deal with people at what we call level four or level five. [00:41:13] S0: Before we move to the next topic and I guess talk about AI and how that's enabling and changing industry at large, was there anything else in the book that either of you want to cover?
00:41:27 · Robert Nason
[00:41:27] S2: Well look, I think there was one story that was the last project that Neil and I worked on together that we reflected how that changed both of our careers. If you like, the moment has caught up to that time. We actually believe what happened a long time ago, twenty five years ago with the last project Neil and I done, we worked on a procurement job for a telco. And in that procurement job we found that the industry was moving in a separate direction than the telco was. All the vendors for the telco were moving from copper to fibre as a network. We're moving from analog to digital. We're moving from fixed to mobile. But the telco that we were working with was still stuck in the old world and was still doing long term maintenance contracts for a copper network that wasn't going to survive the decade. So we thought there was a big cost transformation opportunity coming out of that. Neil and I was sort of a junior partner at the time. Neil was not even a partner at that time. We sat down and said, what do we do with this? We don't know the CEO and this is sort of a CEO decision. So we decided to approach the head of procurement and say we think you should go to the CEO and offer to do a cost transformation of the company based on your findings out of the procurement work that we've done with the vendors. So that was the concept, that was the idea, that was the point of view that we gathered. We persuaded the head of procurement to do this. We worked and coached them on the evidence that he could take to the CEO. The CEO gave him the job and it was an enormous success. Neil, as he does said, we have to brand this because this is relevant for every telco in the world. So we called it next generation cost reduction. I went around the world selling it and then sent Neil to Brazil to do it. We did it in America. We did it in Europe. We did it in Asia and sold it about 14 times as a project. I think the world has caught up to that style of consulting. The consultant leading with an opportunity, something they've done selling it and getting reward for doing a good project by selling it multiple times is something that gave Neil the confidence. We've done it again and again in our careers doing similar sorts of things based on the success of that work and having the consultant coming up with that idea.
00:44:27 · Robert Nason, Vidit Agarwal
We put that story into the book because it's sort of foundational for us of the lessons learnt from history. [00:44:37] S0: I'd also be curious like one of the things I was wondering after the book launch the other week and reading your book is what are some of the mistakes even the most successful consultants or quote unquote rainmakers make? I'm curious, open question to either of you. In the journey of interviewing all these people and spending time with them and reflecting on your own careers, is there one mistake that even the most successful rainmakers tend to make?