Who Is Matt Brittin? | What We Don't Know

29:02Matt Brittin:The chance to kind of put free tools into the hands of people that was going to change their lives. And, you know, that's the purpose actually that kept me going. That's why I stayed for 18 years at the company. So take us back to day one at Google. I mean, that must have been an interesting experience. It was shocking. Day one at Google, I went to Dublin, which would by then at that point had about 200 people. It was the headquarters in Europe. And it started with a security briefing. I said, okay, right, you're going to get this is this is your laptop here are the security procedures and so on and so forth so what's this i was expecting it to start with you know a video of the two founders talking about the mission and and i was in a room with about 30 people hiring at quite a high rate even how big was it about roughly at that site i think google was about 2 000 people globally maybe three by the time i left it was over 200 000 um and of course and nobody knew that i was joining joining at a senior level so I was kind of making notes in this induction thing saying I think we can improve this so it's a bit of a shocking uh first day but then I really enjoyed joining and one of the things I was trying to figure out was like what was the job and um you know I could see all these really smart people running around doing all sorts of stuff and um it was very sort of dot dot com starty in those days 2007 and i'd sort of been hired because you know i had the consulting background i understood media i had management experience and trying to figure out like what am i trying to do here without damaging the culture but to sort of professionalize and what did that mean so that was that was kind of an interesting challenge i spent a lot of time listening to the customers listening to their colleagues and trying to figure out how to do that well and i mean that is an eye-watering scaling trajectory, isn't it?

30:50Yes. 2 ,000 to 200 ,000. Yeah. Tell us more about how do you tackle that kind of, you know, eating the elephant almost. Yeah. Because I think scaling is something will be of interest to many people. What can you abstract from that experience that's relevant to other people with scaling challenges?

31:10Matt Brittin:Most people when they're hiring don't spend enough time on it. it's the highest impact thing you can do is is finding good people and then putting them into into into positions and um actually i wrote this you know when you leave a company after a long time you've had this experience you try to write something that sort of captures a bit of the essence and i was reflecting on this i was doing my leaving note at google and i think the thing that i most learned at google was some advice from from larry page name drop bell uh the founder one of the two founders of Google. And early on, I met him when I was running the UK and I was sort of saying, look, it's complicated.

31:46Matt Brittin:I found about 30 different teams who I all need, I need them all to work together to make us successful here in the UK. And like only one of them reports to me. And, you know, he sort of laughed and said, yeah, well, that's why you're here. You've got to figure that out. But then the advice was, you know, what you've got to do here is put the best people on the most important work and get out of the way. And I want to unpack that a bit because I think for me it's the most fundamental lesson I learned it sounds simple doesn't it it does yeah but so number one who are the best people actually the best people are from diverse backgrounds whether that be cultures educational experiences or functional knowledge you know software engineers and marketers and lawyers and sales people putting the best combination of people together to do the sort of innovation of what you're trying to do.

32:38Matt Brittin:The most important work, I think one of the key jobs of a leader, is to clarify what the priorities are. There's so much you could do. You could spend 48 hours a day, 700 days a year, and still not have everything done. So clarifying what the most important work is, what is it we're trying to achieve, what are the outcomes we're looking for? You might not be certain of everyone, everything, and the world around us is changing hugely, but clarity on what we're trying to achieve, the most important work. And then getting out of the way, that sounds easy, doesn't it? For me, that doesn't mean doing nothing.

33:10Matt Brittin:It means ensuring the right accountability, responsibilities, and support for the team that's doing this stuff. So giving people a clear ownership and a mandate, and then saying to everyone else, your job is to help them. And one of the things I really try to do at Google is build a culture of ownership. And you say to people, act like an owner. Like, you know, you're the person, you know, you're in Spain, you're the only person who really understands what we should be doing in Spain. You've got to kind of recommend what that is. But when as a team, you can't possibly deliver everything this kind of complicated broad organization is doing.

33:44Matt Brittin:You need to ask for help and everybody else needs to offer help. And having a culture like that means that, you know, detailed playbooks and rule books and so on, you haven't got time to invent them. But having that clarity of values and ownership and accountability in a culture which is about helping each other, that was one of the ways in which we really tried to build something that could serve the users well and move fast and scale. So that's a really good example of, you know, one of your touchstones had enabled you to get stuff right. What did you get wrong during the scaling experience?

34:14Matt Brittin:Well, I mean, the first thing I think is occasionally not hiring the right kind of person. And I think I learned really early, you know, you've got to spend this. So my first year, I spent literally 50 % of my time on hiring. Wow. Yeah. And you think like, you know, that sounds crazy, but we were trying to, more than double in size at that point. And Google has a sort of infamous almost approach to hiring. What did you find most instructive in the way that you were trying to determine whether somebody would be the right person for the particular role that you had? So when I started, the legend was that you have like 60 interviews to interview.

34:47Matt Brittin:And so obviously that's nonsense. So I sort of say, OK, for the teams I'm hiring for, by the way, I wasn't hiring for software engineering. I was hiring for kind of almost everything else. Let's have four interviews. And I want each interviewer to make a recommendation as though they were the only interviewer. So push the accountability down to the interviewer. We have very clear criteria based on what the founders had set out and what we were looking for around collaborative skills, specific role-related knowledge and so on. And sort of to have some real rigor in doing those things, but also to ensure that you set the candidate up to perform as well as possible in that sort of context.

35:22Matt Brittin:And then finally, and this is something that took me a while to put in place, to recognize the biases in a recruiting process. So when I started there, there was a huge reliance on academic credentials. So there was even a list of here are what we regard as top tier institutions and next tier institutions. So, of course, you know, where did that come from? The founders, when I started Google, it was when the dot-com crash was happening. And they'd observed that their Stanford friends were hiring their mates. And they started saying, we want to hire the smartest people. So they would put complicated maths problems out on the internet.

35:56Matt Brittin:And when you solve them, they'd say, hey, come and have an interview with us. So they had a reason for doing that. But of course, what that means is you get a really low level of diversity on some dimensions. So over time, we were able to sort of change that by using better proxies for people's intellectual capabilities. And then secondly, part of my job, because I was running Google in the UK and then Google in Europe, Middle East and Africa, we wanted nationals. you know, from those countries who understood those countries really well and could bring the best of those countries to Google and bring the best of Google to those countries.

36:29Matt Brittin:And so that was a really important part of it. And then finally, you know, on various parameters around diversity, you know, the most obvious one was female. So we had, I think, around 30 % women in the non-engineering kind of parts of Google when I started. By the time I finished, it was 50-50 in those areas at all levels. And, you know, 50 % of my directs were women and the country manager roles, which was a critical role for me. I had about 40 countries where we had people on the ground, was about 50-50 female as well. And that shift really changed a lot of the dynamics of how our teams worked.

37:06So that's a really helpful kind of picture of the role that you're playing in building the business, getting the culture and the kind of operational systems and things that an organisation needs to grow at that kind of breakneck speed. But over time, you also became someone known as a sort of almost human face of big tech. You were often put out there to talk in fluent human to the media and the wider public. How did that come about? Was that something you sort of self-selected for? Or was it something that you were really asked to do because people concluded that you were good at it?

37:39Matt Brittin:When I started, as I said, my job was running Google UK initially in 2007. And at that time, you know, Google was like the colorful company. People quite liked it. Search engine was popular. You might have had Gmail and Google Maps. Most businesses didn't know what Google was. So quite a lot of the job was to go and see businesses and say, hey, you know, see this internet thing. This is how you're showing up today. We could help you grow your business. Here's how. So there's building those partnerships. And most business leaders didn't understand the technology. So I was always trying to coach our teams in how to speak the language of business, how to stand in the shoes of the business leaders.

38:13Matt Brittin:But also in the UK, I think e-commerce was a higher share of retail sales than most other countries. We'd been early adopters here in the UK of the internet. Google was very popular. So we also started to get sort of more scrutiny. So my second year at Google UK, I think we became, if you measure by advertising, the biggest media company in the UK. Yeah. 2008, I think it was. It was the only country that Google had that was more than 10 % of revenue. So it was broken out. you could see the numbers there. And so that led to kind of more scrutiny. Are you paying enough tax, which I had lots of scrutiny on?

38:50Matt Brittin:What's the contribution you're making to the wider economy? So it started to be pulled into some of those political conversations as well. And I relished that. And also in industries that were being disrupted, you know, the newspaper industry is one. Newspapers, super critical of tech, because it's a shift in their power and a shift in the economics. And I felt my job, I said, my first rule of leadership is listen. And so I wanted to go to where the criticism was and understand it and try to understand, are there things that we aren't doing right or that we could do better, make us better? And secondly, understand the concerns that people had that weren't necessarily valid, where we should be explaining ourselves.

39:28Matt Brittin:And so whether it was with the Royal Television Society or with the Society of Editors or with culture secretary at the time or with select committees explaining copyright or privacy or tax contribution. I was going out and doing all of those things. And you're famous for your metaphors, Matt. Am I? Every interview you've ever watched with you, you manage to pluck out these very memorable metaphors. Do you have any that you particularly cherish or remember fondly? We used to have this phrase at Google, like, in God we trust, everyone else must bring data, because it's an engineering company and it's no good sort of saying, well, this isn't very good.

40:07Matt Brittin:You have to sort of show why, which is good. But I sort of tweaked that to say, ideally, what you want is a great story backed up by data. And so early years, one of the things I was trying to do was tell people that e-commerce was a thing and you should sort of get online because you can actually grow your business. And we knew that businesses that were online were growing faster, exporting more and creating more jobs. So it was also a thing of real purpose nationally. And so what I would do is I would find a really cool case study that was memorable and talk about that. So one I remember was a donkey sanctuary.

40:37I did not expect that, right?

40:39Matt Brittin:Yes, a donkey sanctuary that had donkey milk-based cosmetic products. Who knew there was a market for that? But this company was able to sell their products around the world because people were looking for interesting kind of presents or their interest is in donkeys, and the search results could show them. The joy of search was you only pay when somebody clicks on a link and you only pay what that click is worth. So suddenly you could reach people all around the world. Perhaps a better example was a company called Scott Webb. They made Tartan in Scotland. And any time you wanted to buy Tartan anywhere in the world, they would come and you could buy it.

41:16Matt Brittin:You could never have done that by sort of buying magazine ads or whatever. So those kinds of companies were really the stories that I felt stuck with me. And you can tell I can remember them even after all these years. I'd like to stay longer dwelling in the metaphor space. But I've still got lots of questions for you, Matt, so we keep going. Staying with your role as a sort of, you know, the communicator, the friendly face almost of Google, did you ever feel uncomfortable with the positions that you were being asked to adopt or the stories that you were being asked to tell in service of the company?

41:46Matt Brittin:I very much believed in the mission and the values of the company, you know, organising the world, world's information for everyone, really trying to make it work for everyone. We invested lots in things like digital skills and making a contribution. So I think I almost always felt like I believe in what I'm doing. It's really helpful. And actually, also, as I was there for longer, and I was often one of the first people dealing with some of the tougher questions, I earned a bit of credibility with the teams on what we should be saying. So I remember a particular incident, people might recall this, about 10, 12 years ago or so, there was a beginning of sort of radicalization online.

42:26Matt Brittin:Violent extremists using video to try to radicalize people. And Google runs YouTube. And investigative journalists had begun to see this was happening. And there was a big sort of expose on, you know, YouTube is showing videos that radicalize people and it's carrying ads from big brands against those videos, which is obviously shocking. I had to, the day this broke, I think the day after this story broke, I happened to be on stage at a big event in London, big European event. And so over the weekend, I was talking to the product team saying like, what are we doing about this? And also, what do I say?

43:06Matt Brittin:and they sort of said look you know here's the lines which which you should use you should say that at youtube we believe in freedom of speech these are our values and i said look you know i just don't think we should be saying that i'm not comfortable saying that i'm not going to say that what i'd like to say is we're sorry you should expect better of us and we're going to fix this with your help and the sort of press comms team in the u.s was really unhappy that that wasn't the right thing to say that's not the kind of line and i always feel like you know you should talk about the people who are concerned and what you're going to do for them.

43:40Matt Brittin:So I called Susan Wojcicki, the late Susan Wojcicki, who was a fantastic CEO of YouTube. And I spoke to her and said, look, Susan, this is what I feel we need to say. And this is what I think we need to then do in this context. And she was super supportive. So I went out and sort of said those things. And then our teams had to go and explain and, you know, apologize to a lot of people who'd been affected by this and over time the company really made a lot of progress as a result so that's a good example I think of like you've got to face into these situations own your mistakes I suppose the other thing that had happened is I'd hired a great colleague a few years earlier called Peter Barron who was the former editor of Newsnight and he helped me I made every mistake you could possibly make in media interviews and he really helped me to think about how to communicate well in those settings.

44:30Matt Brittin:I'm still a student of that, but I think trying to, you know, not get phased by all the cameras and everything else and just think about what is it I'm trying to say? What's the audience need to hear? And making sure that, you know, you're able to do that with humility and also to kind of make sure the company is doing the right thing. And we've talked together about actually how much work goes into effortless communications. So the fact that you could look relaxed in front of a camera or a select committee or on a big stage isn't just because you're born that way. Part of how you create that feeling of space and naturalness in the communication is because you have thoroughly prepared beforehand.

45:13Is that correct, Matt?

45:14Matt Brittin:I mean, I think, yes, for me, communicating takes time and effort, but it's worth doing it because it's the most human thing we can do. And if you're wanting to lead an organization at scale or deal with a crisis, the way you show up really matters. And so, yeah, I actually put time into that. And you mentioned sort of select committees. I should sort of touch on this as well. I did a number of select committees in the UK and I found them really difficult. By the way, I felt it was important that as a leader you show up. I think there's a bit of a fear about doing that. And they were uncomfortable.

45:45And just to say the select committees are these parliamentary committees that scrutinise anything to do with really the work of government. Yeah.

45:52Matt Brittin:And so my feeling is, you know, it's an important part of our democratic accountability process in the UK. And it's right that they can call leaders and scrutinize them. What's difficult is that they're sort of set up to feel a bit like a court of law. But then they can sort of table stuff that you've not seen and you don't know how to respond to. And they can ask you questions that sort of they're to knock you off your stride a little bit. And sometimes there aren't, you know, strictly questions that aren't strictly relevant to the to the topic. So I found sometimes that process quite challenging, but I still stick by the principle of, you know, you ought to be showing up and being held accountable and explaining yourself.

46:30Matt Brittin:I think, you know, since those days, we've started to see formats like this, you know, longer formats where you have more of a chance to explore the detail of things. It's really hard, particularly in technology. you know quite often there's a second or third level of complexity that you need to be able to understand when you're talking about I don't know you know for example how AI models work yeah and the headline kind of writes itself but often is very misleading from the detail and so if you haven't got the room to explain that or you know you're answering questions about a 17 ,000 page tax code it's quite hard to do that in a way that works in a sort of 30 second clip on news at 10.

47:09To kind of put a cap on your time at Google it'd be great to hear a little bit more about you know what you learned about yourself as a leader what you think other people learned about you know working with you as a leader and any particular personal standout moments.

47:26Matt Brittin:I had a few kind of leaving events and one was a dinner which was really well attended I was sort of slightly blown away by a lot of external people so sort of CEOs and journalists and others that I've worked with. And as I was thinking about what to say, I was thinking about the people in the room and very topical was large language models. And I sort of looked around the room and I thought I've learned something from everybody here. And so I sort of, you know, said, look, actually my kind of privileged position I've had is largely because I've been able to learn from all of you and you were in the room, right?

47:55Matt Brittin:You know, we can talk about some of the things that you taught me, but, you know, for example, Carolyn McCall, who I'd seen as the CEO of the Guardian Media Group and then of EasyJet and now of ITV. at EasyJet. She used to go up and down the aisles collecting rubbish and asking passengers their experience. And I was like that. So inspired by that. Every time I would run into somebody and they'd say like, what do you do? I'd say, I work at Google. What do you think of Google? You know, do you use any of the products? Getting that sort of feedback, being able to connect with, you know, the people who use the products.

48:25Matt Brittin:It's a great sort of thing that I learned. So I felt like I'd learned a lot from a huge array of people, but not just senior people. The other thing for me was I would always like Google we'd have cafes always sit next to kind of random people in a cafe and just like ask who you what you're working on what's up and really try to learn then so I I really love that kind of leading by listening and learning and it's part of the reason we're we're talking today I think is we share that sort of curiosity absolutely look in the rear view mirror now when you were at Google it was your job to focus also on the positives about the company.

49:00We're living in a revolution really now where technology is shaping every part of our lives. Have you changed your view or found yourself feeling differently about any issues relating to the role that big tech plays in our lives since leaving?

49:17Matt Brittin:That's a really good question. I mean I remain of the view that technology can be a hugely positive force. You look at the contribution to education and information and entertainment and collaboration. But also now, you know, colleagues at Google DeepMind that I work closely with won the Nobel Prize for their work on protein folding. So scientific breakthroughs, energy sources, there's huge amounts that technology can deliver. In the job at Google, I was always also aware of the responsibility to land that technology well. And we mentioned an example in the context of YouTube, but obviously there are huge concerns about that now i do think uh there is a moment of real backlash against social media and i understand why and you think you look at the evidence you start going okay there's a real point of disconnect in terms of particularly young people and their mental health and some of the things that go on there and i think there's a case to answer there and google was you know we're not really social media but you know some aspects of youtube youtube shorts i think have that element of addictive nature i got to know um uh tim Berners-Lee, another name drop, over the years.

50:27Matt Brittin:And if you haven't read his book, This Is For Everyone, it's really good on both how he invented the internet, gives you an insight and his incredible sort of personality as well. But also his sort of map of all things that the web has delivered, lots of really positive stuff, research and search and websites and collaboration and so on. But there's sort of area of addictiveness, which is a challenge. And so, yes, I think that is something to worry about. And I also think right now the pace of change is so fast. We just don't know what's coming. And you've got to be experimenting with the technology to understand both the benefits and the risks.

51:01Matt Brittin:So I think it's a really intense time. We've never seen a pace of change like this, and it's only going to get faster. So whether you're a family, an organization, a company, a country, you've really got to make sure that you're using the technology to understand it and thinking about the right tram lines. And I think that's a very important part of what we need to do. So maybe that brings us on to the present. You've done a lot of stuff already. This year's provided an opportunity to try some new things. This podcast is one of them. We can maybe chat a bit about that. But what have you not done yet that's important to you?

51:36What's unfulfilled in you, Matt? You know, I feel like I've had this, you know, incredible good fortune in what I've been able to do.

51:44Matt Brittin:helping us put technology to work in service of society is something that really matters to me so I spent a little bit of time exploring some of those some of those topics in my little gap year with with sort of projects but I think this moment around understanding in a complicated and ever changing world and helping people to make their way in that world through education and through trusted information one of the big things I worried about a lot at Google was misinformation how you tackle that. I've spent time, you know, I've been on the board of The Guardian for the last year or so. And whatever the flavor of journalism, being able to get accurate information that's independent and you can trust from a variety of sources, more important than ever.

52:28Matt Brittin:And then the other thing at Google I did was launch a program on digital skills. How do you equip people, the kind of skills that are going to help them get the jobs of tomorrow? Ended up scaling to 100 million people who we trained, who went on to get better jobs or grow in their careers. And I think we have to equip people with the skills they need for the world of tomorrow. And that's hard because we can't be certain of that. So all of those things, you know, are on my mind as I think about what I might do next. You've had to have a lot of personal resilience. You know, you talk about those Google years in a way that makes it all sound quite straightforward.

53:03But day to day, that can't have been the the lived experience even one select committee appearance might have taken several years of your life I mean it's it's it's a high pressure high octane life you've led professionally what has helped you to sustain that energy level and to have the resilience to keep going and to still I think have fire in your belly for more well firstly I've got friends

53:28Matt Brittin:who are surgeons and so a bad day in an office job compared with a bad day you know when somebody dies that it shouldn't have is completely different order of magnitude i think there's an element just like recognizing you know what the what the stakes are although of course you know at times in in tech you're um you know helping people in ukraine get accurate information that can get them to safety or helping somebody with information that can save a life too so i think like keeping in perspective um second thing is as a leader and i think this is true for leaders at every level, having energy and having the mental capacity and the emotional capacity to deal with these situations is really important.

54:06Matt Brittin:So I worked for a time in consulting and the culture was to be dog tired the whole time. And how can that be good for anyone? Really, I really struggled with that sort of culture and ethos. Sleeping well, the foundation, like getting good sleep. I'm a big fan of Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep. It's a great book. Don't read it if you're a parent of young children but otherwise like getting good sleep foundational for everything for me exercise is a big part of my life still i still go and row with a bunch of now rather older folk um but but being able to be out in nature no mobile phone with other people doing something that's physically demanding where all your attention is there it's a great um sort of thing for me family and friends all those other sorts of things so i think keeping grounded in that and looking after yourself because as a leader you transmit you know you cast an enormous shadow or you can shine a beautiful spotlight on on things and so I think managing your energy and part of that is about having the you know the combination of diverse talents and interests around you that kind of spark innovation creativity support we did a lot of work when I was at Google around high performing teams and one of the key ingredients is that sort of psychological safety and trust.

55:16Matt Brittin:And in a complicated world, you know, we can't tell each other what to do in our jobs in detail. It doesn't work. You've got to sort of trust and bring out the best in each other. So that's a good segue into how did we end up sitting here in front of cameras with these lovely microphones in front of us, Matt? Should we talk a bit about that journey? Maybe we could just point out that, you know, we met really through a shared interest in that sort of, how do we use technology to improve representation? So why don't you tell that story? Yeah, so I was standing on a stage at Google and railing against the fact that we have a massive problem in the UK, certainly, but somewhat globally as well, around the highly gendered and outdated perceptions of who an engineer is and who engineering is for.

56:04and the example I used was that when you did at that time a Google image search for engineer you saw a sea of universally men actually at that time white men in hard hats and hivers jackets where there was more diversity in the color of the PPE that they were wearing than there was in the faces of people wearing it and my point was that this does not help to reflect either the reality or the potential of engineering to be a career for everyone. And you, I remember seeing you pick up your phone whilst I was talking and validating that what I was saying was actually the reality. And I think that started a process of thinking about, well, you know, what levers do we have to open up opportunity to people to pursue different careers?

56:52And so that's my perception of where we started. Do you want to pick up on how that developed into a podcast?

57:01Matt Brittin:Yeah, so that's a great example of me learning from somebody and learning from you. And I think, and by the way, I think that, you know, we're in a world where there's a bit of a backlash against sort of DEI and representation kind of stuff. My view is the more representative your organisation is of the world around you, the better it can serve those people. And that's why for me, it's absolutely vital that you have that kind of mix of people in the room. It makes sense if you want to be a successful organization as well as it being the right thing to do. But thank you because your prompt did kind of open my eyes to some of those issues.

57:35Matt Brittin:But look, I think, you know, as we've got to know each other over the time, we share very different backgrounds and come from different worlds. But that sense of trying to understand the job of leading and the role of organizations is something that we're both fascinated by. And for me, you know, coming from the sort of the world of tech, which has been moving faster and faster and faster, I think there are some lessons I've learned that I take into anything around operating an uncertainty with velocity, which requires, I think, clarity. You know, we are doing these things, not those things. What are the priorities?

58:06Matt Brittin:The thing I mentioned earlier about Larry Page and the best people on the most important work can get out of the way. Clarity of purpose, but also creating a culture of collaboration, experimentation, partnership, and sort of navigating that uncertainty with speed through experimenting. going this works let's do more of it that didn't work that's fine it's fine to do things that don't work because we're moving in the right sort of direction so velocity you know speed in the right direction i think is super important for me and that's part of what i've learned i think there are some negative lessons you can learn um that we saw you know with elon musk i think um putting really smart people with no context into places and saying gonna just go and take out a load of cost not necessarily it might be the right approach so so essentially the the idea of doing this podcast together was that we've had some interesting experiences between us.

58:54We know some fascinating people, some of whom are well known already and some of whom deserve to be much better known than they are. And we felt that there was that opportunity to open up more of the reality of what it feels like to be a leader in this highly complex, highly uncertain, ever-changing world that we are now in. And we both had the experience of sort of almost, you know, the expectations and the shape of leadership changing from when we were appointed into our roles to the point we're at now. And, you know, that move away from very kind of directive leadership, confident, more alpha style leadership into something that was much more earned leadership, where you are starting on the basis of humility and openness, having to show you're learning and you're working along the way.

59:40Also trying to get used to the idea that you have to be the person that can provide clarity and confidence, but in a highly, highly uncertain context where it's very much about adapting and being flexible and being responsive.

59:54Matt Brittin:And can I just say on that, I mean, I think what we don't know is, for me, an important thing as a leader that you have to be able to own and say, if you can sort of say as a leader, I don't know all the answers, but you know what, or, you know, in my case, I had to lead teams with skills that I didn't have. And at some point in your leadership journey, if you go sort of up through the levels, You start to go from managing people who do what you used to do and you're better at it than them to managing more of those people. And you sort of lost touch a bit of that. So, you know, roughly what they're doing.

1:00:23Matt Brittin:But to sort of managing people who've got very, very different skills and those things require that sort of humility and authenticity. You've got to be smart enough to understand the issues and to listen well to them, but then to find ways of enabling that change. I agree with you on that. Yeah. And what we don't know, of course, is sort of emblematic of the fact that leadership starts from the premise of I'm here to learn. And I'm here to grow and I'm here to support others to do that. So it is reflective of the sort of humility that we hope to bring. But also your point, you know, about, you know, the world has changed.

1:00:52Matt Brittin:So the old alpha playbook of like, get in your silo, do your thing well, make the numbers slightly better this year than last year. I've got the plan. Don't worry about it. That just doesn't work anymore. And I think a lot of the training, quite a lot of the role models that people have in their heads. Also, you know, the people making the appointments to leadership roles. Absolutely. You know, have maybe less of that context. So I think it's a really tough job to be doing. And that's why having an open conversation about the stuff you might not know about leaders and what they've done and how they've managed that is really useful.

1:01:22Yeah. And I had the experience as I became kind of better known, I guess, more prominent as a leader of suddenly finding myself surrounded by people and by networks, by opportunities that weren't available to me earlier in my career. And they helped me tremendously. I mean, you know, you're part of that. You opened doors for me that gave me access to fascinating people. But I feel passionately that if we can't open up that kind of support and access to the inner workings of leadership to more people, different generations, different parts of society, we're just going to take too long to get the kind of leadership that we need for this world that is crying out for people who come to the leadership table with the right values, with the right motivations, and with perhaps a different skill set and a different outlook to the people who have traditionally occupied those seats.

1:02:10So that's why we did the podcast. So the thing about doing this podcast, Matt, is that we've both done a lot of interviewing people on stages. But this is different, isn't it? And it's the two of us as well, often talking to other people, not just to each other. How have you found it?

1:02:25Matt Brittin:Well, it fitted into my gap year plans because podcast begins with P. So that was helpful. That's the only reason I'm part of your gap year plans. This is crushing. Now you tell me. No, of course not. I've always loved learning new skills. And like you, I really enjoyed interviewing people I sort of prepare. It gives me a reason to kind of read what they've done and learn a bit more about them. So I have that fascination and curiosity, which I think we both share. I think also, you know, I mentioned in this interview, sort of the media training bit of things and how you show up as a leader. And I think when we started doing this, one of the things I noticed that I was sort of in kind of news night or Radio 4 mode of like slightly defensively suitable for media clipping kind of conversation.

1:03:12Matt Brittin:And actually, of course, what you want from a podcast is to feel like you're eavesdropping on a chat between friends with interesting stories to tell and expertise. And so I hope that we've got better at that. And that's part of the journey of a different type of format. And I think that's one of the reasons people love podcasts. Yeah. And let's be honest, we didn't just come to that learning ourselves. The people who saw the early attempts told us that you've obviously been media trained. And that was not a compliment. So, yes. It's easy to think, of course, everybody should have a podcast. And I hope that people enjoy some of the conversations that we have.

1:03:47Matt Brittin:but also there's people behind the scenes that are really important in making these things work well and our producers Sonny and Tui and Jimmy helping us to understand how to create something that's got some some value and I think also you know we explored working with an array of different organizations and that was fascinating the more traditional media organizations are very much like well you know sounds interesting we might have a chance to talk about that in six months we've got a raft of things the other end of the spectrum the kind of crazy YouTube creators are like come in tomorrow and do a pilot and sort of all things in between.

1:04:19Matt Brittin:And I think I'd encourage people to like, if you're passionate about something, it's worth having a go and experimenting and seeing if it's got joy for you. And we'll see if it's got joy for the audience. Yeah, it was really interesting talking to all the production companies. And I felt so happy that we found a production company to work with that shares our values. So Boxlight have gone into this business motivated by the desire to do something really useful. and so for me that was a partnership that that felt differentiated from some of the others that we we had explored I agree and I think you know that's a thread through quite a lot of our interviews as well as we've all found our sort of path through the world of work is having values in common with the organizations and the people you're working with and I think you know we talked about the complexity of this moment and how difficult it is for people to make their headway and I think you know Jimmy's Jobs of the Future has set out to have conversations about exactly that topic.

1:05:12Matt Brittin:And we've set out, I think, with a very complementary lens on understanding how you can become a leader, who gets to become a leader, and what kind of leadership skills you're going to need in the future. So for me, it doesn't matter whether a million people see this, if a few people find helpful lessons or insights or inspired to maybe think of themselves differently as a result of some of these conversations, then that's the sort of impact you're looking for. Yeah, absolutely. We had that sort of tagline. We were trying to figure out what we might do earlier before we got to the what we don't know product of four leaders by leaders.

1:05:47And I do think that when I reflect on the conversations we've had with our guests, that spirit has very much infused those discussions. And so I hope that for the guests that we've spoken to, it's been a different premise in which to have a conversation about their leadership journey. And for the people who listen, that they will also see what happens when leaders who've lived it, been there, done that, talk honestly about what it felt like, what they had to learn that wasn't obvious to the people on the outside, the mistakes they made. so that spirit of openness and peer-to-peer conversations I hope has been something that makes this a little bit different from some of the other things yeah look and I think whether

1:06:27Matt Brittin:it's sort of the careers and jobs of the future or sort of leadership of the future it seems to me that the human experience is going to be more not less important and so how you connect with people I think a topic for me has always been you know number one rule of leadership is listen I think you know what I learned from you also is you think about empathy at the heart of leadership and I I think that's sort of listening and considering how to stand in the shoes of the people you're working with. I think that's fundamental. And those human capabilities around empathy, listening, communication and collaboration are going to be more important than ever.

1:07:02Absolutely. It's all about human connection, especially in a technology enabled world.

1:07:10Matt Brittin:Bring it on. Give us your best. Just to remind you, we're looking for our answers of a word, a sentence, and I will ring the bell if we go too far in excess of that. So what was your first record? And I'm not talking sporting personal best. Every little thing she does is magic by the police. After a really gruelling day, what is your go-to activity to reset and recharge? It's either go and do a very hard session in the gym or a glass of wine with my wife. You've been an Olympic rower, a very successful business leader, and I can attest to the fact you are a truly nice guy. Thank you. So what are you bad at?

1:07:51Ball sports, DIY,

1:07:54Matt Brittin:pottery. Well, the list goes on. What trait in a workplace context do you find most irritating in other people and in yourself? Having a head down versus acknowledging people and saying hello. I think really simple things like being welcoming in a workplace make a huge difference to how people feel. And what's most annoying in yourself? I can sometimes feel myself getting irritated or frustrated about something kind of really minor that doesn't matter. OK. Dogs or cats and why? Dogs. We've just got a puppy at home called Brave Sir Robin and she is a toy poodle. What source of leadership, insight or wisdom have you come across that's maybe unexpected?

1:08:38Matt Brittin:I think actually kind of reading fiction, I find, is one of the ways that I relax and reflect on things. I'm not sure that there's a fiction book that I go, that's the kind of leader I want to be. What's your most embarrassing moment as a leader? From the micro moments of like just getting somebody's name wrong, the number of times I've spilled coffee on my shirt before going on stage. but probably real embarrassment is you know when I feel like I've let my team down or the organization down by not doing a good enough job in you know proposing something or you know in a interview or externally.

1:09:15Since you've left Google have you been tempted to buy an iPhone or start using ChatGPT as your go-to chatbot?

1:09:23Matt Brittin:So because Google's supposed to work across everything I've always been kind of pretty agnostic. I'm not tempted to buy an iPhone because I quite like my Pixel phone. But yeah, so you should always play with everything. This is a disappointing answer. Well, there you go. During your gap year, you have effectively become a part-time careers coach. So what is your go-to piece of advice, first of all, for people entering the job market, and secondly, for people at the midlife stage? This might be a longer answer, but forgive me. I mean, I think the key thing I've learned, which surprised me, is my advice to everyone is the same, which is that in order to advance your career you need to go and talk to people and you need to put time into it so my advice is you start something called project you and you treat it like a work project and you give it time every week and you think about who should I go and speak to and I want to ask them could you give me a bit of advice I'm thinking about this how would you see somebody like me is there anyone else that I could talk to and just putting the time into doing that having those conversations and following them up will open up all sorts of opportunities but you have to put the time into Project U.

1:10:26When do you find you're most nervous in a workplace context?

1:10:30Matt Brittin:Even now I occasionally get nervous before going on stage or representing the organisation and the team and I learned years ago that that is a good sign because it's your body telling you it's getting ready to do something. What's your favourite podcast obviously apart from this one or Jimmy's jobs uh i quite like the rest is entertainment to an extent because it's industry insiders giving you a glimpse into something that we all enjoy and love so that's a good example what's your guilty pleasure oh um i don't think i'm guilty about any of my pleasures what is something that you really enjoy that people wouldn't know about lemon drizzle cake i really enjoy baking lemon drizzle cake and also scones so if you come around to my house for uh afternoon tea i will have baked you some scones and it's great because it takes no time at all people really appreciate them and it's easy they virtually never go wrong what skill are you still working on ball sports and bearing in mind the name of this podcast what is it that you know now that you wish you'd known earlier.

1:11:36Matt Brittin:We can learn from everyone and listening well is the key skill so really understanding what's behind the stories and so I really love doing that. So that's what we don't know we've got some great guests coming out and lots of things that I've been learning from them that I think will help me be a better leader in the future. It's been a real pleasure and a really enlightening experience to get to know our co-host Matt a bit better than we knew him before. Don't forget to follow us on socials send us your questions and suggestions for who you'd like to hear from as well it could be rising leaders as well as some of the big names we've got some fantastic discussions coming up with some really really interesting guests which we hope you will enjoy thank you so much see you soon