Mansi [00:00:08] Hello, James, and welcome to the Rise of the COO Podcast, the series where we uncover what it really takes to thrive in one of the most demanding roles in business today. Now today, we're tackling a challenge I think every COO knows, the tyranny of the urgent. Why do organizations get stuck in firefighting mode? And how can COOs break that cycle? I'm so excited to explore that with you today, James. So thanks for joining us.
James [00:00:34] Thank you very much for having me.
Mansi [00:00:36] James, let's dive straight in. I would love to hear a little bit about your career and your role today. What's the one experience that's most shaped how you approach being the CMO at Close Brothers?
James [00:00:46] Started off life at Accenture, so management consultancy, and then did a couple of those consultancy roles and then went to Nationwide, where I was there for quite a chunk of time, focusing initially on delivery, transformation type roles, then moving through into operational resilience and innovation and then more laterally, I ran digital there at Nationwide and then moved across to Close Brothers about four and a bit years ago into the Ferraris Retail COO. It is a role that is endlessly fascinating and busy. And I think probably that kind of speaks to the heart of the conversation that we're having today. In terms of what the role involves, I see myself as accountable for our customers front to back from when they initially joined the organization all the way through the life cycle, whatever that looks like. And in doing so, I look after about 2 million odd customers, about 600, 700 colleagues across the UK and increasingly offshore as well. And as many COOs will know, my role in any given day ranges from massive strategic questions through to some issue that's blown up. And whilst I'm sure that every role in any organization would say, oh, I'm so busy all the time, I think that the COO is a role that is particularly kind of acutely at risk of that. Busy being busy, and this topic of the tyranny of the urgent, it's a term I use quite a lot with my team because it's almost a reminder to me that I think you can convince yourself that you're being productive, but you're not, you're just being busy. In terms of then, kind of what are the, the experiences that have shaped me and sort of how do I try and manage this, if I think back to those moments across my career that have really kind of punctuated the moment and really kind of the things that even many years on, you can remember. You can remember the room that you're in or the people around. They tend to be times of high stress or high risk. I remember really vividly a time around the Brexit vote when that had just come out and there was an incident with one of our systems and there was another problem and I can remember vividly he was sat around the table. I'm sure we can all remember. Things happened around COVID. And I think that what that can then do is it can really frame in your mind the big moments and you can associate big moments with how you get on. But the reality is that they represent the absolute minority of what you should be doing. And it can kind of perpetuate that need to almost get the sort of the sugar hits of the urgent and busy type activity really.
Mansi [00:03:37] Lovely, that resonates so strongly in some of what you described both at the outset around people getting that sugar hit and feeling busy. I see that so often and as you said I see COOs very much at that kind of crucial point of having to help their own organizations make some decisions around busy or strategic, which path do you take and how do you really navigate the organization through that. Now we've called this episode the tyranny the urgent, a phrase which I love. What does that really mean in practice and why do you think so many organizations tend to fall into firefighting mode?
James [00:04:13] There's a whole book on this and actually, then doing a bit of research, it was one of the origins of the, you know, the four by or the two by two matrix of the kind of important and urgent and not important and not urgent. And then the two and it's it's actually somewhere I must have listened to something or read something somewhere because it's obviously stuck as a term and a concept. And I guess to your question, how does it manifest really? I think the way that it shows up is. It's when organizations lose agency over what's happening, it's when they allow the situation to dictate what happens rather than the organization dictating what happens. And in some cases, things happen. An IT issue or a. Some external event comes in and you have absolutely no agency over it. And it is important and you just need to react and that's absolutely fine because you have the process and tools and models, et cetera. So just to handle it. The danger is though, that you take that model and then apply that to everything, yeah, if I had a fiber for every time I hear some derivation of. Do you remember that time in COVID? We got through so much stuff because dot dot dot, dot, and you kind of go, yeah, yeah, that's great because we essentially had one thing to do. Yeah. We needed to make sure the business would continue to operate given this big thing that happened, but it's not a model that either scales or is sustainable and I guess then that really constantly challenging yourself around what is truly urgent versus what is not, but is just as important. And unless it gets some of your time and attention. You will really create problems for yourself down the track.
Mansi [00:05:57] One of the things I find in organizations is what's important doesn't give you that same immediate sugar hit that you described at the start. So it's so often easier to sit in the now, solve the next urgent thing that allows you to tick something off your box because we're in this world and environment of immediacy right now. Everybody wants things instantly, even at work those dopamine hits. So I think it's really important to really be able to spot the patterns of some of this behavior as well. Now, from your perspective as COO... In thinking about spotting some of those patterns, what are some of the early warning signs that an organization that is reward-aligned to firefighting can consider? How do you spot when urgency has started to become the default operating mode?
James [00:06:41] A fascinating question. I'm definitely not going to get a job in marketing ever, right? But I was thinking about this and I was going like, I think we always need to work out how we celebrate the dull. Because really what this is about is celebrating the dull, because right now you think about, it's so often across my career, the people that get the big high fives are the people who work through the night to solve some problem or wrestled some naughty IT system into production and they worked through the weekend and everyone's high-fiving and that's great. And like, you know, they absolutely should be recognized, but sort of success breeds success. And you'll have others going like, oh, I see. I see what I need to do to be able to get some of those plaudits. And it sort of creates that culture. So to your question, what do I think some of the early warning signs are? I don't know if they're early warnings, but they're definitely warnings. I think there'll be something around hours, working hours. I think they'll be some think around emails. There'll be, something around home, I think. So I guess if we just double click quickly, I mean, hours is kind of an obvious one, right? Generally I think organization that's really exhibiting these behaviors, you will see just the general level of working hours increase. Early mornings, late nights, weekends, emails, odd times. It breeds because suddenly you get an email and you feel duty bound to respond because that's the mode that you're in. And then it escalates and that as a COO, I'm really thoughtful around that because I'll quite often work at weekend and that kind of gets my choice and yeah, it means that I can catch up, but putting the time delay on the email so it doesn't get sent until Monday morning, it's a little thing, but it means then I'm not putting pressure on somebody to respond over the weekend. There's that sort of butterfly effect where I could ask a question and I know that then ex-people will be off then beavering away in the background to answer the question and validate that it's right and so on and so forth. So that sort shadow of the leader is really important in that. Emails, again, I think is one of the banes of modern work life. Like, and it's so incredibly valuable. And if, if any of our email systems were removed would become utterly helpless, but I too can feel, um, I can be incredibly guilty of going, yeah, success for a day looks like I've processed my emails. It's clearly not true, right? Just saying it out loud is ridiculous, but that is how people operate. And, and then if in a world where you get lots of emails, certainly you can just be in that kind of constant like, working your way through. And then the final thing that I think is tone, like tone is really pervasive. It's when things get urgent and stressed and busy, things like niceties can drop away and they're really important. And you can see like tonally in emails, you know, rather than, hi, Mansi, we'll just be Mansi. You know, there's just lots of little subtle things that can creep in. And again, it just kind of filters out and it will manifest in conversations and lots of ways that I just can amp up that sense to. Stress and urgency and busyness.
Mansi [00:09:52] I mean that resonates again so strongly and I'm going to save the let's banish email for a future podcast, which we might want to consider and explore. But some of what you described there, James, is so linked to volume of work and how visible volume of work drives satisfaction for people because it demonstrates commitment, workload, consideration for the organization in a moment of crisis versus for its future path, its medium term strategy that it might be trying to execute. Before we move on to how you perhaps break the loop, I'm curious to know maybe with a little bit of exploration into the psyche of this, why does it feel so rewarding for teams to operate in this mode? And for you in your role, what do you see as the hidden cost of that as well?
James [00:10:39] And we've used the term already, like Shoghi, it's the best way I can describe it. And I think perhaps, yeah, with a lot of our, with a lot our roles, the consequence of your action is really hard to see often. Yeah, if you think about a lot of our worlds, we'll, we will make a decision at point X, that will have quite a long period before it actually makes any meaningful difference. And that can, it can be harder to get your satisfaction from that. Whereas... Dealing with something in the moment, you can kind of get that hit and that could become a little addictive and it can compensate for some of the, yeah, the, I guess what you don't get through normal, celebrating the dull type work. Coming in and looking at a report and going, well, I can see here that this team here has, has achieved a hundred percent QA, run all their processes, done all their audit actions, et cetera, et, cetera. It's incredibly important. And things like that mean that you. Dampen down some of that noise, but it's less obvious and immediate and perhaps in the moment satisfying. It's your question on long-term cost. You get this wrong over a sustained period. I think you can end up almost like rewiring the brain of the organization and it becomes deep-seated and cultural. You recognize the wrong behaviors. You promote people with the wrong behaviors. The shadow that their leadership cast then perpetuates. Before long, you end up with a short-termist-type approach where you're dealing with the now, but you're not worrying about tomorrow. That does not make for either long-term success or even really actually a good place for people to work because it tends to be associated with high-stress environments. It can tend to be probably associated with leadership styles that are more. Directive that doesn't make for a, I always come back to the kind of, is it, is it Daniel Pink, you know, what is it that really motivates people is, is autonomy, mastery and purpose. And I think it massively undermines any ability to kind of create that, that environment.
Mansi [00:12:55] Yes, I think that point just around the type of environment it creates is so true because it almost creates a very hero environment. Everything's a crisis and as you said that works well for certain leadership styles and then that becomes the amplified style in an organization and alongside the goals of the organization that you don't then deliver on in the medium term, you lose some of the talent that's broader, different in style as well. So Sir. A bit of a vicious cycle to have to get out of as well. Now, if those are the problems, James, what are the answers? As COO, how do you look at things like that and stop them in its tracks? What kind of techniques do you use to stem this?
James [00:13:38] I thought I'd come and talk to some trustee's advisors and get some answers.
Mansi [00:13:41] Very happy to.
James [00:13:42] Yes, I know what this is.
Mansi [00:13:44] So today's about you.
James [00:13:45] Okay. All right. Okay. Ultimately, I'd always start from a thesis of every failure is a failure of leadership, kind of full stop, no matter what the thing is, because it is the leader's job to make sure that the objectives are clear, to create the right environment for people to achieve that, and then to constantly reinforce that to allow people to be successful. So how do you break that is you need to then change leadership and leadership from, I guess, yeah, like me, but also the leaders that I have in my team to make sure that that's, yeah. Throughout the organization, we've got the right, the right behaviors, the right things being celebrated, recognized, um, and sort of really asking people to focus on the difference between haste and speed, it's took back to sugar hit, I mean, it was probably the difference between pleasure and happiness. You can use those terms interchangeably, but they mean very different things. And I think it's that, that's the kind of the key thing to, to pull at a couple of examples, they're very narrow through to the kind of more strategic and removing artificial deadlines. I think how many times I will hear in my, in my working week, you know, we need to get that thing done by the end of the week. Like, do we? Do we really? Or would another week be okay? There will oftentimes be then, you know, I will get pressure from various different places to get that thing done by the end of the week. It's somewhat arbitrary. And you can just pass that down and then people will beaver away and it then becomes the next most urgent thing. And it might not be very important. But as a leader, my job is to go, right, is that a valid you I will actually use my job here to kind of almost buffer and, and in that, yeah, how do you create the right environment again? No, actually, it won't be this week. It will be two weeks because there are these other things that need to be done or so on and so forth. So there's like absorbing some pressure to create the environment and space for people to operate. But the next thing I was, I think there's definitely something around reinforcing vision and strategy. Like in a very busy world. The idea of taking a team out for half a day can feel like an absolute anathema. Like, you know, what, what on earth are you doing? We're so busy. Why are you taking this team out? Well, okay. Let's flip this around the other way. Yeah. Unless we keep reminding ourselves about what it is that we're aiming for, then how do we expect people to make good decisions in the moment? And whilst it might feel like a luxury, actually, I would argue it's exactly the opposite. And unless you do it... You end up with people making bad calls, being busy fools and not making the progress. Um, and then I guess the most macro design, I feel macro point that there's really like a, there's not model question that you can either by design or by, by accident, you can create structures where, yeah, people have massive spans of control. They have a lot of decision-making points. They have real bottlenecks and it can create that make decision, make decision. It. You can you can almost in institutionalize that behavior. I think back to actually when I was at Nationwide and set up some agile teams. It real, like a real first principles thing. And it took a, took a while for them to, to really get going. And, and whilst they were coming up to the maturity curve, like it was quite nerve racking and some of the decisions they made, I wouldn't necessarily have made, but it didn't make them wrong decisions. And the outcomes were good, but from a leadership standpoint, it was quite, yeah, it's quite nerve racking because it was. Quite counterintuitive, but actually it created a much more sustainable operating model and actually the people working in there were just massively energized because they could make actual decisions and knew they had the autonomy and authority to make them and for them to be to be stuck to.
Mansi [00:17:49] Just given some of what you described there, James, are there a set of metrics that have either helped you drive some of that change in behavior across the organization to move towards some of the important versus urgent? And actually, are there any metrics that you've decided don't serve you well and that you have managed to discard?
James [00:18:08] So actually, in some respects, I think even the use of the term metrics is quite interesting in that one, because if I think back to times in organizations where things were more on the busy fools end of things, rather than the planful and strategic, there was actually probably less use of metrics full stop. I think probably an organization that uses metrics to really drive, perform, or understand and drive performance is an organization almost by definition. Copyrighted to come and so it celebrates the dull because essentially that is the organization that sits there and monitors, yeah, are you operating within SLAs? Have you got the right quality processes? Are your controls operating effectively? And they are all the sorts of metrics that I think then allow you to operate in that less heroic, I like that term, that's what it is, less heroic, more reliable, more consistent basis. I think the ones that are really important then are those kind of day-to-day ones that allow you to make sure that you're operating as you would expect. And then I'm a really big believer in really disciplined use of OKRs, making sure that you've got your view about what's over the next two to three years, how does that translate into annual, and ultimately how can you take that back to just good, tangible, costly goals because it it allows you to paint that picture. Over the period, and it then means that when you've got these teams that ideally you want to be operating with more autonomy, because that removes that need for lots of questions and lots of answers, it gives them the ability to make decisions and know that ultimately everybody's heading towards the same set of outcomes.
Mansi [00:19:56] I love that. And I think metrics serve a purpose in an organization. But one of the things you talked about earlier was autonomy. And I guess I'd just love to hear a bit about your perspective on the balance of those two. Do you think sometimes metrics can be over-indexed on by organizations and individuals versus taking the right decision for an organization?
James [00:20:20] There is definitely a risk that lots of metrics allow lots of people to have lots of opinions on things that they frankly don't need to have opinions on. And again, to my point around leadership, like good leadership should be making sure that set against that set of well articulated objectives, you've got an appropriate set of metrics, but you've also got the right sort of governance around that. So ultimately the the people that need to be monitoring those metrics and having opinions on what it means are doing it. Those that don't, frankly, don't because there's a sort of 10-year-old playing football risk here where everyone suddenly or something's red over here, everyone suddenly runs over there and red over there. That can kind of create that slightly busy, urgent type culture that I think is exactly what we're talking about here.
Mansi [00:21:15] Yes, I just think with so much technology, AI, so many different competing agendarizers, organizations are dealing with, there's such a risk that they forget to equip employees to have the autonomy to do the right thing for the business and have their own kind of personal leadership in there. I think that's really interesting in particular for large organizations that are growing at speed as well to not lose some of that ethos that sits in their organization.
James [00:21:45] Nothing on that as well. There's a little bit here about how you create an environment that allows people to take a bit of professional risk, but protect them from that. Because a lot of that is what this is about. So long as the controls in place, the worst case here is some kind of bounded problem, then you can let that happen. And that then means that we move people out from being automotrons into kind of intellectual beings that we can use then alongside all of the AIs of this world and what have you to really then add value. So I would agree with that.
Mansi [00:22:17] Some of that is about how, as a leader, you convey that, portray that, enable that in your organization. So let's touch a little bit on personal leadership. I'd love to hear, how do you get ready for the day, James? How do you getting ready for your role?
James [00:22:32] Confession time that I am definitely a, I like to start clean. The previous night or I'm quite often traveling because I live in the West Country, so I'll come into London, I have a couple of hours on the train in the morning. I sort of like to start clean where I, yeah, inbox is managed, yeah, guilty. But also like I know, like I'm reasonably disciplined at, I do use the kind of urgent, important matrix and make extensive use of OneNote and I plan my day, not down to the nth degree, but I will know what it is that I need to get done that day And I will make sure that. Against a bunch of big rocks, which are things that will take weeks or months to work through. I will make sure, it's probably a discipline point of going like, can I see how I'm making progress against these important things on a daily basis? It's nudging something along or checking in or whatever it happens to be so that I can start clean and then during the day, things will inevitably pop up, like it's just the nature of the role. But it means I can then know if I haven't got it done, I'll know what I haven t got done and I can re-plan accordingly. Planning probably would be the answer.
Mansi [00:23:46] Sometimes is the simplicity that enables you to really be effective throughout the day as well. So, love that you shared that, James, thank you for that. I'd love to just know, what's the one piece of advice you'd give other COOs who feel quite stuck in that firefighting mode?
James [00:24:02] Ultimately, it starts with you. Like it does. I remember talking to someone like, this is a long time ago now. And this was back in the days when people worked in a physical office. And they're saying, you know, you need to be thoughtful from the, from the moment that you walk into the front door, how you, how, you walk, how you convey yourself, how are you say hello to people or don't, because you're giving off signals all the time. And just being incredibly thoughtful about that shadow of the leadership that you are conveying. And are you conveying what you want to be conveying? Because if not, if there's a danger that you leak and you leak worry and urgency, it can perpetuate. And I think the shadow of leadership is one. And the second thing I would say is it's that whole celebrate the dull. How do you make sure that you Absolutely. The people that go above and beyond should be recognized. But how do you make sure that you recognize those that just do a really diligent job day in, day out, because they are the people that in the long term create that sustainable business that will take you towards your strategic goals.
Mansi [00:25:16] What a wonderful answer, James. I really liked that. And you touched on one of my other favorite topics, the shadow of leadership, which we don't have time to explore today. But it's been a fascinating conversation today, just about the tyranny of urgency. I love that phrase. I think it will probably resonate very, very strongly with our listening audience today as well. Perhaps if I was to share one of take ways, it would be, this feels like for someone in your role and in the COO role. Bit of a continual everyday thing you have to keep a watching brief on because it can seep in quite quickly given what you described at the outset, which is there is such a strong sugar hit around being in the urgent and the need for organizations and leaders like yourself to really amplify you described it as the dull stuff or the dull celebration. So lots of food for thought. Thanks so much for joining us today, James, and sharing your perspectives with us. I'm sure it's been really insightful to our listening audience as well.
James [00:26:13] Yeah, thank you very much for having me.
Mansi [00:26:15] And I'd like to close by saying thank you to our listeners as well. I hope you've enjoyed the episode and found something to take back to your own organization. We look forward to welcoming you to our next podcast. Thanks.
