1998 – Navigating the New Era of Leadership with The Success Factory’s Graham Wilson

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1:05With us right now, Graham Wilson. Graham, you are known as a leadership wizard. You are the founder of SuccessFactory. Over 31 years in business, your website is thesuccessfactory.co.uk. Graham, it's great to have you. It's fantastic to be with you, Josh. Can't wait to get started. Absolutely. So I'd love to learn what is it that you do as a leadership wizard? Okay. Well, the actual name was given me by a client. I said to them after working for a co-writer, what is it that you like about me? What difference do I make? He said, oh, you just make things so simple. You're a bit like a leadership wizard.

1:49And we can take your stuff and apply it. And we often say on our programs, the most important thing is what happens afterwards. What do they do with the stuff that we teach and we help them to learn? So it sort of stuck and it felt good. so that sort of became a bit of a brand really helps obviously with the books we've written and the work we do so it's a good conversational in a social scene as well where people say oh I just saw you on LinkedIn and you're a leadership wizard what does that mean so I guess for me it's about how do I decode leadership for today's world how do I help founders, you know start-up organisations even global organisations we work with how do I help them to look at what leadership looks like in today's world.

2:34And, you know, not too interested in research, looking backwards, what I'm really interested is, you know, what do we need to see what behaviors, what thinking, what mindsets do we need to be successful going forward? So I guess you could call me a leadership wizard. On that note, I would love to get your perspective over the past three decades. You know, the evolution you've seen in common thought around leadership. And I'm certain that you've seen quite a bit of evolution. And so I'm hoping you can give us just kind of a quick history lesson and then take us to where we are today. And then afterwards, we'll talk about the future.

3:12Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, my first career, actually, my first decade of my life was in the military, in the British Army. So I was grounded in a fantastic leadership opportunity at a young age. And what that showed me was the importance of team working, high performance, elite working, but also around a concept called mission command where as senior leaders, you're there to really share the mission. I guess we'd call that purpose now in today's world. And then it's about training your teams to have enough capability to be able to then work out what to do to achieve the mission. So I started in that sort of vein really at a young age and it was a really good grounding in leadership philosophy but also going out there and putting it into practice.

3:56I then joined the corporate world and I was quite amazed at how behind they were in their leadership thinking and what I found really was not only the organization I work for but also the customers we had, the clients we had, is I was finding that, you know, this is obviously going back 40 odd years now, where a lot of organizations were over-managed and under-led, you know, and the whole sort of concept of, you know, management by the manager knowing the answers, having appraisals, annual appraisals, working in silos. Yeah, the manager was the expert, led from the top and told you what to do.

4:34And I was quite shocked, really, because my early years have all been around empowerment and training people to have the capability to make decisions under pressure. So I did that for a while. I thought, yeah, maybe it's just isolated in the environment I'm in. But the more and more I sort of searched and looked and worked with different organizations, I thought, wow, it's all the same. um so 30 years ago um well 31 only 32 years ago I was sat on a beach and I thought do I want to do this corporate life for the rest of my life and I wrote down what a wonderful life is for me and then I said well if that's a wonderful life how do I create a business that gives me that wonderful life and you know what is my purpose and my purpose really is around you know helping people to understand what leadership really is um so I talk about how you as a leader how you awaken possibility in people to deliver extra results um you know it's interesting that not many organizations would have a measurement around the confidence of their team uh they do in elite sport and in the military but uh you know or trust or care um so that that concept of leadership is really where it all started and obviously 30 odd years ago um it has changed and i do believe we're actually in a new world and i think yeah if i summarized really i think the context we're in now is completely different to what it used to be.

5:54We're in a world where the pace of change is so fast, we can't actually keep up with it. And, you know, as leaders, it's not possible to have all the answers anymore. So gone are the days of management from the top and management from experience. It's about how do you lead people with a common purpose to make a big impact to solve customers' issues and challenges? But how do you then engage them and empower them by giving direction, autonomy and support. And what that requires, of course, is a different mindset. How do you lead without knowing the answers? You know you need to change something, but you're not sure what the problem is, not sure what the solution is.

6:27So what we tend to work and the evolution of leadership these days is, you know, in the military, they talk about this VUCA world, don't they? And, you know, volatile and certain complex and ambiguous. And that's really what we do. We help leaders to be able to become more agile in their thinking, to be more collaborative, to become more humanistic and to move away we still need great managers of course but but we also need great leaders who can deal with ambiguity and uncertainty and complexity and and take that your collective approach to to really drive performance and i always say that you know the role of a leader is to create a high performance environment where success is inevitable so you know do people really think about that every day so we give them the tools and techniques to be able to do that so i guess that's a little potted history so moving from a bias towards management to more of a bias towards leadership and coaching, mentoring, I guess.

7:18Yeah, you have worked with the biggest of the big enterprise level companies throughout the world. And I'm certain, you know, at the SMB level as well. But you've worked with Coca-Cola, Kellogg's, Fujitsu, Office Depot, DuPont, Bank of America, Unilever, Land Rover. The list is quite impressive over your decades. And so I'm wondering, Graham, could you maybe share a couple of principles that you think are just absolutely spot on today, maybe kind of building upon what you've already shared? And I'm thinking perhaps we could share something a little tactical that our friend listening right now could maybe take back to their next meeting or start implementing themselves in their day-to-day routine.

8:11Sure. I think when you think about leadership, I always think when you think about leadership, the only thing you're really in control of is your behavior. The rest of it is about people choosing to follow you or not. And I think sometimes, certainly in startup mode, you can get so locked up in the tech or the product you're developing and you forget it's around people. I often say when we're teaching project management, it's 80 % people. The process is still easy. It's the people stuff, which is all about the relationship. So being able to understand who you really are as a person, I think, is a foundation.

8:45I think it starts with who. so you know doing some self-awareness understanding your personality understanding your strengths build a way of working that builds on your strengths and obviously conversate with other people that you need around you to to be successful because you can't be brilliant at everything I think it's once you know who you are then it's really about being able to articulate your leadership brand your your leadership journey what's important to you and non-negotiables I guess and your values and then it's around you know why you do what you do which is really around you know common purpose so for me my purpose is about awakening possibility of people to deliver extraordinary results so if I have a tough day and it hasn't been going well I can reflect on that and think well actually did I get someone to think differently or did I teach them a tool or technique and if I did then it's been a great day so helps to become more resilient if you have a clear purpose about what impact you want to do and what's your legacy, I guess.

9:43Once you've worked that out, really, which is obviously who you are and why you do what you do, I think the next step then is to really work out what type of leadership you need in the context you're in. So if you're leading, for example, some of the global organizations I've talked about, even within those organizations, like, for example, Siemens, for example, they're throwing away their complicated leadership frameworks now and saying, we need a set of guiding principles, but we want to train leaders and develop leaders and educate them to be able to think around what's the style of leadership that's appropriate for the country, the culture.

10:19If I'm leaving a digital lab in Manchester in the UK, for example, that might be different than running a heavy engineering plant in Germany, for example. So you can't just take what you did in the last job and apply it to the next job. You've got to look at the situation and craft the approach. I see that a lot in startups, you know, when organizations, you know, start to get that 100, 200 people where they've done the startup stuff. It's very entrepreneurial. They know everything. They've done everything. They've done every job. But then suddenly they're starting to employ people and they start to get team leaders and heads of departments, all that stuff.

10:55And they really struggle because the style of leadership they started the business with isn't relevant for the context they're now in, particularly if they're going for fast growth. um so so i think you know leadership is around the ability the art form of really understanding the context you're in and then working backwards and saying okay well what style or what approach of leadership do i need to take in today's world so once you've done that i mean i i talk about you know um genetic i suppose from a key point of view i guess is um what i call 10 leadership disciplines i found over the i guess the 40 odd maybe 50 years of leadership i've been involved in is there tends to be a set of principles or disciplines that are common.

11:37So if I quickly share those with you, for me, number one is about the role of the leader is to create a high-performance environment where success is inevitable. So you've got to think about what is a high-performance environment and then remove the blockers. So a lot of people set fantastic goals, but don't go to the next step and say, well, what could stop us? So a little tactical tip there is if you're setting your strategy and your goals, it's worse getting your team together and saying okay what what do you think can stop us um identify those risks and remove as many as you can and if you can't remove them then have a plan b uh if they do rear their ugly head yeah you can do something about it um so that's the first thing second thing is around people which is around awakening possibilities so building confidence in people mentoring coaching developing them i think is really important um i think yeah when you do that and you get out of the way then they surprise you how good they are so building that psychological safety and that you know that sort of care aspect one of the things i noticed when i left the military was the lack of care in a corporate world you know care is is key to high performance i've worked with in the sports world as well and a lot of athletes will tell me is that they won't listen to a coach unless they know the coach cares for them and i think that's that's stuck with me really so i think i say wow i think the third thing then really is about striving to be authentic you know I think um you know this whole bit about you know leadership is all about being real you know my grandfather ran the docks in Liverpool which was quite a tough um sort of gang warfare sort of type environment I guess back in the day uh but he said you know the leadership for him was all about being real the more real you are uh the more people will believe in you and the more likely then to to follow you so I think that's key so striving to be authentic I think the next thing is you can't be successful without a team.

13:20And it's particularly important in growth of organizations is that, yeah, the success often with the leaders, not down to leaders, but the team that build around them. So being able to build a high performance team, set up your team success, being able to sustain high performance through reviewing and reflection and actual learning, I think is key. In today's world, we have to unleash innovation. And in innovation, often people think about new products or new services. But for me, it's around everything we do is looking at how we improve things right down from marginal gains, 1 % improvement, or up to a new product or service in terms of transformational stuff or changing a market, for example.

14:01And we have to unleash that innovation. And for me, that's a collaborative process. So how do we collect ideas? How do we take those ideas? How do we decide on the best bets? How do we embed those and make them work and add value? because I always think innovation is about how you take an idea through a hazardous journey and add value to society. I think that's key. I think the next thing then really is around how do you manage ambiguity and risk? I think in today's world, we need clarity. So I'm a big fan of simplicity. I always talk about leadership principles being around boldness, simplicity, and speed.

14:38So being courageous, being bold, challenging the norm, doing things differently I think is key. keeping things simple you know in a complex world the more simple it is the better i've certainly learned that from sports and certainly in the military and the third thing about that is speed i think a lot of people confuse speed with being busy and you can be really busy or really efficient doing the wrong things so for me it's around being effective so i often talk about the ability to speed up by slowing down um so that whole strategic agility piece but my father used to race bikes and my uncle used to race cars and they whenever they raced the reason they lost the race was normally because they're going too fast which is quite ironic in terms of that world that's normally when the mistakes happen so what I learned from them is you know you need to know when to go fast but you also need to know when to slow down so this concept of speeding up by slowing down I think is key I think another aspect then is around you know how you not only set up your team or sustain high performance but how do you then mentor coach and teach I think leaders and say well you have to be teachers so how do we educate people and I think was it Gandhi I think or was it Nelson I think it was Nelson Mandela said wasn't it that the the greatest weapon we have for change is education so yeah a lot of organizations struggle with change but I think what they don't do is start they don't start with changing mindsets first they just announce to change and then try and manage the resistance.

16:05So I think there's an educational piece there. And the final thing then, of course, is we've got a dilemma of our promises. So being really effective at the management stuff, at getting stuff done, time management, energy management, delegating, all the key things, running meetings. A lot of leadership stuff is done through meetings. So logically, if you're going to be a great leader, you need to be world-class at running meetings. But quite often, people never have training in simple things like that about how to make them effective um and i guess yeah the final thing then really is you know you're you're measured really on the impact you have so i often you know when i'm coaching leaders talk about what you watch your legacy you know what's the impact you you want to have on the world um so i think that that's a quick guide through and then the final bit really is so you've got the who you are why you do what you do what you do which is the disciplines the final bit then of course is to turn that into routines and rituals and habits um so a way of working i think is really important so i i always sort of like to look at you know leading self leading my team get my team together build our plan uh we talk about a lot of 90 day agile plans now um yeah how do you how do you then you know cascade that through the business communicate it with meaning inspire action through through fantastic communication storytelling um how do you then review and reflect to make sure you're on track and then how do you then you take that learning adapt grow and go again so that whole leisure flywheel approach i think is really important so so i guess that's that that's the sort of stuff we teach and then obviously underneath that of course here are all the tools and techniques you need to make that happen yeah okay wow that was a lot.

17:46Graham Wilson, your website is thesuccessfactory.co.uk. The Success Factory. Share just a bit about who you work with, what that looks like, and what our friend from here should do when they go to your website. Yeah, sure. Have a look at what we do. We pride ourselves really on understanding our clients. So I think it starts with what's their needs, what's their objectives, what's their vision, what they're trying to achieve. A lot of stuff is bespoke and tailored. We have a core curriculum of what we call a new world leadership curriculum where we have a range of tools and techniques for all sorts of different areas.

18:26For example, we have an innovation toolkit. We have a leadership toolkit. We have a team toolkit. We have meeting toolkits. So a lot of those are written in our books as well, of course. So what people really like about this is that we will take a complex situation and give people the tools and techniques in order to be able to then craft their own solutions. So we're not the sort of organization that will come in and tell you what to do. We're more about getting you to think differently to generate a load of tools, techniques to be able to solve your own problems. So for example, if we're working with an organization to help them create a strategy, we won't go away and create a strategy for them.

19:02What we'll do is teach them how they can create a collaborative strategy with their teams and get them to think differently. So I guess that's what we have. If that's the sort of thing you're looking for, then that's what we do. And we tend to work in the areas of obviously leadership, strategy, change, projects, innovation and teams tend to be the areas that they work in. And, you know, we don't work with one particular sector. I think we look at leadership across the board and that gives us a great advantage. As you said, we've worked and we're honoured to work with so many different organisations, right, from startups all the way through to, as you mentioned before, global organisations.

19:38what that does is help us to become very rich in examples and stories um so we teach a lot through stories and examples of what's worked and what hasn't worked and obviously there's certain things we can we can never share but there are certain generic things that we can can share um and i think that helps organizations and helps them to to then apply it so we're not heavily theory based we're more on a pragmatic approach where you know this is how you can take these tools and techniques and use them every day. I love it. Graham, now you're also an author as well, right? Yes, that's right. Yes.

20:17Yeah. Share just a bit about your book and where folks can get it. Yeah. So I've written a few books, actually. Yeah, you have. I see it now on your website. These look really fun. I love the aesthetic of these books. Yeah. Yeah. We do a lot of um graphical facilitation so we do a lot of stuff um you know we find a lot of people we do gambling meetings for an apple they never use the whiteboards or the um you know the big boards and so we like to get people thinking through um different formats so our books represent that and so they're very um i call them um coffee table books where they're not sort of books that sit on a shelf they're the ones you can dip into on your desk and i've got a problem here i can look and that is full of tools and techniques.

21:01So leadership laid bare really is really my thinking. It's around why I think we need to change, what I believe great leadership looks like. I'm not saying I'm right, by the way, but that's what I believe. And the tools and techniques to be a great leader in today's world. So that's leadership laid bare. The new leadership manifesto is really a summary document which goes through the 10 disciplines, but really asks you questions which are quite deep. And obviously the answers are the questions. If you say yes to every question and you're doing it really well. So that's a great sort of, I call those airport books.

21:33You know, when you're waiting for a plane or a train or something like that, where you want to have a quick 30 minutes. So that's the leadership manifesto. I've also written a book around resiliency with my daughter. My youngest daughter has cerebral palsy, so she's in a wheelchair. And it's great to be able to relate to her story about how she's overcome adversity and apply that to our resiliency model. so we have a approach a particular approach which is very holistic around resilience so that was uh really enjoyable it's called it's called wabuzugi because um uh jenny is saying well we can't call it resilience that that's really boring what can we call it and we as you see we work with a lot of japanese organizations and i love i love the discipline of the japanese i love how they have lots of philosophies and approaches and um you know i remember in the Rugby World Cup where you saw the Japanese spectators cleaning the stadiums before they left.

22:31And I just love that sort of aspect. But they have two concepts. One is called Kintsugi, which is around how you take something that's broken and make it more beautiful with the gold and that sort of stuff. And then Wabazabi, which is around acceptance of who you are. So we sort of made up a name. We took the Wabi and the Soogie and called it wabazugi so we got the wabazugi.com url as well which helps but it made it a little bit more interesting um so that was great and then within success factor we have some really great um leaders and teachers as well so um dave damon specializes in uh in teams elite teams so he's written a book around uh team foundations um about how to set your team up for success and how to then sustain high performance and the final book um that's in there is um no more boardrooms which martin is uh a killer facilitator so he's written about his experiences around how he gets the best out of meetings and all the very practical stuff and then the final book that i'm working on is really around we call it change bro which is a methodology of combining project management and change management and this concept your projects is developing a solution and the change management piece is around getting people to want the solution and we reversed it you know so you do the change piece first and then you build the solution so that's that's the in progress let's say.

23:49But yeah, they're all on the website. And, you know, they're very practical. It's not just a story. It's more about, you know, what you have to do to be successful. Graham Wilson, again, your website, thesuccessfactory.co.uk. Graham, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, it's been a pleasure. Fantastic.

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