Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy. Welcome to A Job Done Well. A podcast about the world of work and how to improve the daily grind.

 Good afternoon, how are you doing?

I'm well, are you?

I'm fabulous, thank you very much. Well, the weather's a bit nasty to be honest with you. You wouldn't think it was the middle of July, would you?

it? We're so British, talking about the

us something to talk

In a month's time, we'll be too hot, we'll

Well,

about been too hot.

What are we going to talk about today then, other than the weather?

Other than the weather, this is the season finale. Oh,

we've got finale, have

Finale, it's like, is it French or Italian?

not British. It's sophisticated.

Today we are going to talk about some of the highlights and lowlights and insights from our our virgin foray into podcasting.

How many episodes have we done? We've

done 34,

And is there anything intelligible in there?

that. According to our audience, but we'll come back to that shortly. So we are going to give some highlights, a bit of the behind the scenes action. So, , you needn't listen to the other 34

We'll save you the effort, yeah.

yeah. Anyhow, what have you been up to?

 

So what have I been up to? Well, this morning I got out of bed at 4 o'clock in the morning.

, to take my, My 21 year old daughter and her boyfriend to East Midlands Airport so that they could fly to Bucharest.

So my daughter is having a

it was Budapest,

Budapest? Bucharest?

different places is like

dunno. Well, be honest with

saying Manchester or London

I had to get to East Midlands Airport. That's all I had to do. She's gone to or the other,

she's got her somewhere in Europe,

somewhere in Europe. . Oh yeah. She's out there at Galati and I'm talking to you on a podcast.

Remember as our old boss said to us once, you're one of life's winners

Yeah. Thank you. Feels that way. How about you?

Well my week has been overshadowed by the the news that my daughter 21 on Sunday went into work on Monday and was told that she might be made redundant. As you know James she's only been working there for six weeks this

recruiting her for?

This is an estate agent in West Bridgford. Who for now will be nameless,

Oh, we're going to drop them in later, are we? I

mean, how toy town is

What a bunch of

Take someone out. So take someone on six weeks later, making people redundant because the business is performing so badly.

they not know?

know. Can they not add up? Sure. You must've seen that one coming. Anyhow, needless to say, she's not very happy. Although I did. Brighten her day by recommending episode 20, whatever it was on living through redundancy.

bet she really wanted to listen to her dad prattle on about it for 30

said, she said to me, she said, why do, why do I want to listen to a podcast when I can listen to you live?

I said, it's cause you get James as well.

as well? So we are, short break for the summer. Apart

. We're going to have a short break for the summer. Apart from the fact that we're on holiday for a number of weeks. We saw at Christmas and at Easter, big drops in the audience numbers. So we figured that, , over the summer, hopefully the weather will be nice and people are having great holidays and they're not worrying about developing and improving their performance at work. So we will be back in September,

And where are you going on holiday then?

so I am going on holiday to two places,

Yeah, go on. How old are you?

and Ibiza.

So have got, I've got a very lively summer raving my way around

Whereas, I am driving my Volvo and my elbow patches all the way down to the south of France for a very middle class summer holiday.

and I'm going raving. There you go. Now we will

Napa. Oh for God's sake. There you

hear more about those holidays when we come back in September. what

And what are we going to talk about when we get back

Well , we have got loads of subjects and in fairness we are going to be recording some over the summer. We've got a great episode with a special guest talking about mood and the impact it has on performance . That's going to be brilliant,

we are going to explore the subject of chronic illness and energy limiting conditions and what they are, what it means for work performance, inclusivity and leadership. We've got one on how you get the most out of agile methodology lots of nonsense talked about that. But we're going to explore that subject with an expert because we are, we are neither agile or experts.

We are going to talk about why doing this. Operations and Ops is a considered a dirty word in many organizations but it's a capability that's vital for success and we are going to be talking about managing your career where we do a special episode with two younger members of our audience talking about how you manage your career us towards the twilight of our careers and there's at the dawn of theirs

good.

so plenty to look forward to

But,

we are open to any other suggestions on subjects or guests that our audience want to request.

so if there's anything you'd like to hear us opine about, bang on, then please do

then please do let us know. A

It's a posh word, mate.

prospero. Bollocon, more like. Yeah.

But before we do that, we'll go into the highlights of the series, so far. And just before you hit the pause button, if you have listened to all of this, I have to point out this is the director's cut and there is some new unreleased material towards the end.

But cunningly, we've put it at the end, so you have to listen to the grim and Bitter end..

Transformational Leadership

Right

So, highlights. the first one we selected?

well the first thing is a very recent episode actually, but all about transformational leadership. So let's have a quick listen to that.

that.

 

I don't wish to decry it, but this is what I would just call good management. What's really tragic is built up as this big thing, transformational leadership, because you don't see it that often. It's rare. Yeah.

I think you're right.

You could say it's , good management, but actually, , it's pretty unique to see

four. Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits Guide.

The

Guide. Yeah.

expression for this is Common sense.

but is it common practice?

So what did you think about that then?

, I thought it was an interesting episode. I think your point is always, , sure this is obvious stuff, but I thought Amanda's quote was a great one. But everyone is always looking for the flashy new thing, aren't they?

Yeah,

the next shining bullet, shining bullet, silver bullet.

Yeah, but it is interesting. I think a lot of what we talk about is an exercise in stating the bleeding obvious, but people don't do a lot of the basic things.

I think where the transformational leadership episode really helps though is Amanda does a good job of sharing a model that brings to life the leadership style really well.

So, pointing out the obvious is a useful thing to do?

Yeah,

, , we've made a career out of pointing out the

That's great. James Lovett points out the bleeding obvious.

So if you want to find out more about transformational leadership, Go back and have a listen to Amanda and us on episode 34.

Lovely. Right. In terms of , stating the bleeding obvious

I think our

conversation with Alex Alexander was priceless.

This was the conversation we had about artificial intelligence, which is really the next big thing, but how do you make artificial intelligence work in your business?

Oh, Alex was fantastic, wasn't he?

Yeah.

Artificial Intelligence

Yeah, I think I think spot on because having the right data and actually asking AI to operate within the context of your organization, what is it that you want it to do? But, , , I know you summarized it very well, James, in terms of five points that I mentioned into two points, which are actually correct, but actually I can narrow it down to one point

Oh, go on. Yeah. Even better. I like it. That'll work for me now.

to really make use of generative AI, you need to have data quality as a priority.

Because generative AI without high quality data is just fluff.

So what do you think about that then, James? I

Well, I thought actually that was a fascinating exercise because it's such a hot topic, but for me there were well there were three points from that and one I think actually the ability to summarize something down and really get to the heart of the issue is really quite important because you see, yeah, lots and lots of management stuff.

But really, what are they talking about? What they're trying to tell you? So that's the first point. And then the second bit for me, I think, which which Alex, given that Alex is a practitioner, but his point is just management fluff. If you don't have the data, I think it's really quite powerful. You see so many people running after and grabbing the next big thing when they haven't made anything else that they've got work first.

And I wonder how many of the people that are jumping on the AI bandwagon, which is, , for everyone, how many of them have actually got their data

straight?

of them have actually got their data straight? It's not the one I work for, I hasten to add, but I know for a fact that their data is really appalling.

So you've got these very senior people , proclaiming how they're going to use it, and then they don't know how to use it at all. And then the third thing for me, just a learning really when you're podcasting poor Alex, he did sound a little bit like Metal Mickey there. In fairness to him, he was sitting in Italy at the time, he sounded a lot better than us, but just maybe we need to work a little bit on our technology.

bit on our technology.

Yeah, definitely. Our sound quality and remote recording we need to improve, which we will figure out over the course of the summer. But yeah, I thought it was a fascinating discussion with Alex. I thought he summarized what Gen AI is all about how it works and how you set yourself up for success.

If you want to hear more from Alex on that, go back and listen Episode

episode

31 on artificial intelligence. What's next up, James?

The next one was our most downloaded episode ever and this is the conversation we had with Hugh Alley about continuous improvement.

, let's listen to what Hugh had to say.

 

 

Continuous Improvement

And part of looking after your people is developing them back to that job relations thing about make best use of people's abilities. We want to build those thinking skills.

Okay, so I get that now. So I haven't quite twigged that. That's really quite powerful. But it is, to your point, it's really about changing the way in which you approach it.

It's not about here's the method

They are helping you think it through , it's up to you, what's the next step you need to achieve.

Yeah, but the difference is your, your boss is your coach to help you figure out what's the next step.

Yeah, there's a, there's a lovely old, sorry, Deming quote, which is a goal without method is cruel. Yes. Yeah. What you've got is you've got the goal and you've got the methods.

Yes, exactly.

So what did you think about that one then?

Well, I think Hugh from Canada was a great guest, wasn't he? Again, our first step to a global domination.

international, yeah.

But he did a great job of just bringing to life that different leadership role, the leader as coach rather than, , drop a target, wander off and let people get on with it.

It really did change the kind of way you think about that role. I thought it was fascinating.

I really had an aha moment with that because I've been through all that six sigma and lean and all of that stuff, but it just misses the point. You can give somebody all the tools you want, but unless you're supporting them to deliver, then you really are wasting your time.

So it just reinforces how much of success in business is about culture. I think,

Well, it really changes. If you think that the leader creates or helps create the environment around individual, I Well if you're in there helping the individual, that environment is going to look completely different than if you're there just dropping targets in and beating people with a

. But we did two episodes with Hugh and I actually, I've gone back to his first one, which was all about TWI training with

the war, the war story.

Absolutely. But I thought that was quite interesting as well. Yeah, that's a very quick listen to that.

Managing Work

TWI started in the U. S. in just before World War II. The Americans were looking around at the world politics and saying, World War II is coming. And While the fight might not be on our soil our job is going to be to supply the material, , the planes and tanks and ships and stuff.

And the first pressing issue they had was that it takes way too long to train people using the conventional models for training. . And so they needed to resolve that. And the second pressing issue they realized was that all the people who were currently leaders in industrial settings were likely to enlist.

So the workforce would shrink quite dramatically.

Right. And so the people that were coming into the work for workplace to replace them had never been in an industrial setting before. Yeah. They had no skills. And not only did they have no skills. For the technical stuff.

They had no leadership skills either. .

So it was your classic sort of staff shortages, but on a major scale.

Exactly. And, it was a pressing issue to solve because there was a war about to happen.

Well James, as Huw's number one fanboy, what's your thoughts on that? And

I just thought it was really interesting. And the thing about that for me was, You know, we think we've got these problems and these problems are unique to us, but somewhere somebody has already had that problem. I mean, you know, you've got staff shortages.

We'll look at the Second World War. And I think really it's just a question of who else has had this problem before you and how have they solved them rather than trying to reinvent the wheel all of the time.

I think the trouble is so many organizations suffer from, wasn't invented here syndrome. So they all want a new solution. Their solution, they're unique.

Well, these things have been tried, tested, and work at scale. So learn, don't, try and invent all the

time. And then the other thing for me was, so all Hugh was talking about was just good supervision, how to be a good front line manager. And the results that people get just by getting their act together were quite phenomenal.

So that one is worth a listen to. What episode was that?

that? was episode number 29,

29. Right then, what's our next clip?

 

So next we are going to hear from Sean Keane who talked to us about the customer experience and the economics of customer experience and he talked really interesting about systems. Let's hear from Sean.

Sean Keane

 

And then the sort of killer for me is the is the management system, what they're focused and incentivized on doing. Are they actually given the time and the space to sort out what you as a consumer need to get it done? Or are they under some kind of pressure to get the, get off the call in, you know, within a certain period of time and get onto the next one? And then typically a lot of the improvements can be made without technology

So go on then, why did that one appeal to you? ?

Well,

I think it's great to hear Sean talking about the system as in the wider infrastructure, as opposed just the technology system. And it's something that's been a consistent theme in a number of our podcasts.

The importance of thinking about the system you create around your organization, around your teams, and that system so heavily influences the outcomes and how they behave.

Yeah. And the number of times I was always said in this podcast, repeat myself, but the number of times people think the solution is a technology solution, and you can get so much done without the technology.

Well, I reckon, and I know this is only hypothetical,

Sample of one.

we could challenge anyone on If we improve the system in our definition of the system versus the actual technology and you could race the two, I would place my sizable mortgage on the fact that we would outperform by improving the system versus the

technology.

, case in point, very nice.

We segued that that was

It's almost like we planned it.

Yeah, well, yeah, almost. But we didn't, yeah. So the next one is the conversation we had about the post office,

office. Ah, yes.

Yeah. Quick reminder on that one.

Post Office

Let's not go through everything, but

summarize your thoughts on

Are you really clear what you're trying to do for your customers? Cause if you start chasing the money, bad things will happen sooner or later, . The second thing, that really underpins that is this whole question about culture. Is your organisation open, honest and willing to learn?

 

And then the third thing, which is interesting. Yeah, I think you're, you're right, James, and, and overall, with all of these things happening,

 

I think you're, you're right, James

like most of all about that clip, it's the fact that you say, I think you're right, James, at the end of it.

That would be, that's typical, isn't it? There's a whole post office scandal and your big takeaway is,

I spoke, yeah, I spoke, Laura spoke.

you, you are right. Yeah.

All right, go on then, so what did you take from

I

think just looking into that whole post office scandal was fascinating.

It was quite scary how badly these people have been treated. But there were definitely aspects of that case that I've seen in probably every organisation I've worked. So there's a little bit of, you know, there by the grace of God.

grace of God.

I mean, it was bad, but you can see how bad things happen. It's not unusual.

yeah.

you weren't, you weren't left in thinking that could never happen here.

It also does highlight the importance of learning when things go wrong,

wrong.

, in fairness, , we had some useful insights on it and how you get compensation paid quicker, which we then shared with the

government.

We,

hopefully that's helpful.

and Depeza, we went and we actually talked to the government about it , but anyway, let's not get into politics. And the next thing. Well, another nice little segue,

snippet is all about governance.

you were going to say the next snippet is workplace politics, episode

be a

That would have been the segue. Anyhow, if you want to hear more about the post office and listen to that fascinating story, episode 13, go and have a listen.

Yes but before you nip off to do that let's just to a little snippet from

Governace

And this bit actually I thought was quite interesting. It comes from the Greek term hang on, I can't pronounce this, verb, kubernetes.

verb, koubeinai.

What? Which means to steer, but fear not, because I did, I did a secondary bit of research, and somebody online has, very helpfully on YouTube, you can find out how to pronounce it. So here you go, listen to this.

Uber.

 

again for pronounce governance in Greek,

We now know how to pronounce governance in Greek. But there's 42 seconds of that. It's thrilling what you can find on YouTube. How Ah, it's beyond me.

 

We learned a lot about the wealth of information that is on YouTube, what what can we take from that one?

Well, I think first off we should thank Cheryl Richards for the suggestion of doing that episode because that was a, a request from, from our, our audience cover Governance And actually we got,

Gotta give a quick plug there. We are always open to suggestions

and, and we can always have either an opinion, do some research or get a guest to inform you

Oh, if, Find something on YouTube. And

I think we got a load of feedback about how helpful and pragmatic our advice was on, on governance and what good governance looks like.

The

best bit of feedback we got on that one was from one of my ex bosses. he told me that what was it? Governance should be fun. No, hang

governance is like sex.

If you're not doing it right. not fun,

If it's not fun, you're not doing it right. How is it? Jesus Christ.

you go. That says a lot about my knowledge of A governance and B sex.

Right, now we'll move on to something that I do know a lot about. Measures and targets.

Home ground now.

 

 

Measures

I've worked for a guy who was a great combination of bully and idiot all rolled into one, but I remember we were discussing a project, and I said that we could achieve such and such per cent of our target. , and he said to me, So, James, can you guarantee that you will achieve that in every area that you look at?

And I looked at him and said, Well, I'm afraid I can't. , because every area is different, but we will give it our best shot. And he said, No, James, you don't understand. Can you achieve that? Yes, or yes. And then he started banging the table. . And, , after I walked out of that, you can imagine it was a bit dazed, but I made sure that I told him we'd hit the target.

Whether we had or not is a different matter altogether.

That is a great example of lazy management, . a target and then just shout a lot until you get that target delivered. Whereas actually, real skilled leaders, have a set of measures that they know, , are linked into their purpose, and they will help and coach their teams to improve.

Absolutely. That's a great phrase, isn't it? . Deming quote, a target without method is cruel.

So in summary link your measures to a purpose. That's like a purpose, understand the drivers, is it the system, is it the people?

It's always the system,

Of course, of course. Don't jump to conclusions, James

Now that clip highlights one of my hot buttons, which is if you give somebody a target, they will hit it from whatever way they can and you just end up cheating. So if anybody's jumping up and down on people's heads, don't be surprised if they tell you the answer is yes.

God, you do love it, Devin. And quote.

It also highlights consistently through our podcasts, we have talked about some of the, best and worst people that we've worked with and for.

and

that will no doubt continue as we go through the future episodes, but the importance of learning and actually in your example , that was a boss that was definitely well worth learning how not to do

Absolutely. I do wonder whether he's listened to this. Anyway

the other thing that I think that just drags out is the whole conversation that we got to go around it but the whole thing about systems versus people and yeah I know we have different views on it but actually the two I think are inextricably linked you have to look at both

of

are, but I prefer to have that debate when Amanda's with us,

Oh, well, you've got your mates ganging up

Yeah, it's two against one when we

you're more likely to win. Right, now then we'll come on to our final clip of the episode. So I promised you this was the director's cut.

, which episode did we talk about making people redundant?

Alright, well

Alright, well here is the director's cut of Making People

of making people redundant. And it absolutely shows the power of editing.

Yeah, okay. I hope you enjoy it.

Redundancy

Yes, she always experienced you as being very posh, she said. See, I am very

Posh James. Posh

James. Common Jimmy, Good afternoon. What we're talking about today then. Will you shut up your sniggering? God's sake, that wasn't even

started, she started singing. I shouldn't have told I shouldn't have told her that. now it's like, it would probably have been alright.

launched into it. I'm away. I'm a professional. Right.

He's the he's the Northalliton Peter Kay. What have you been up to, James?

What have I been up to? I've lost my train of thought altogether

been training. See, focus.

 

And from a leadership development perspective, so leaders who are very often leading these programs or smaller conversations, it's often not something leaders are taught. There's a big variation in the experience of, of how this happens.

of

We could send everybody on a course.

This is one S, one sacking. Yeah. Is there a super sacking course?

Sacking

course. Sacking for

There's got to be a business opportunity in that. We've got it. We've sorted your future.

Sacking for dummies.

Advanced sacking. The F's back ,

right, there you have it. Lawther in full flow. I should be, I should be on the stage, mate. I've often fancied, you know, a northern working club. I could I could have beer thrown at me with the

best of them, I could.

And I think they probably would, James, unfortunately.

pretty sure. So, there you go. That brings us towards the end of this episode.

What

Oh

Here's my question. And what have you learned overall

then from everything that we've done over the past 30 episodes or so?

we've shared

today some of the clips and highlights, and I think as we've delved into subjects new and old, there

have been, little bits and pieces

that we've learned, but one overriding

thing I think kept on coming out in many episodes was just , often, the way of unlocking performance and improvement was down to being really clear on your purpose.

purpose

or the problem you're solving and then making sure that your system and your ways of working were all consistently lined up with that purpose. And it didn't matter whether we were talking about, , the post office, governance, politics, whatever it was, that rung true.

Yeah. We ought to change the the name of the podcast. We ought to call it the Get Your Shit Together Podcast, rather than their job doing well. But I do think you make a very, very valid point, right? There's nothing new under the sun here. Right? It's about being clear about your purpose and understanding what your customers want.

And although we are new to podcasting, so we've been learning furiously about stuff like promoting and editing podcasts,

So please remember that. It's just me and James here. There's no flashy studio, no professional editors. So we're just doing our best. When you compare us to some of the other podcasts, you listen to. But.

we were also trying to be really clear about our purpose as well, and what we were doing the aim of the podcast was to improve performance and enjoyment of work.

Yeah.

So in the interest of eating our own dog food, what do our customers think then?

Well, I think there's, there's two ways we had defined that would show us what our customers the audience thought of it. One was downloads. So the number of downloads we have. And the second one was, was feedback that we've got from people.

And how are we doing on them?

Well, on downloads, To be honest we started off, I think we said early doors. We were in the top 25 percent of podcasts globally for downloads, worldwide, which sounds fantastic, but it is a very, very low bar to a limbo underneath.

have we maintained that?

 

There's been some nice growth on some episodes, but as an example, the lowest download episode compared to the highest be four times. So, you the one is four times

Bigger than the lowest.

So there is quite variation, which would indicate some subjects are working better than others with the audience.

So I suppose there's a question, and if you managed to make it to the end of this and as a customer, we'd really welcome it if you gave us some feedback, tell us what you like, what you'd like to hear about and yeah, what works,

front.

You know, we have had you know, emails, texts, people that we bumped into.

Advice about sex.

Advice about sex even. But there has been a lot of feedback,. So yeah, we'd absolutely welcome your help on both those points.

One is you know, if you like the episodes, share them. And the second one is, yeah, get in touch, give us some feedback.

Super. Right then, I think that's us done then, over the summer. Enjoy your holiday. Ayia Napa, here we come.

And south of France, pool on down in our, our Pool

poodle down in the Volvo.

And hope everyone has a, fantastic summer, whatever you're doing.

And , watch this space and rejoin us in September for some fantastic new episodes.

Cheers now.

Thanks everyone.

We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast from purpose to corporate jargon, but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well, easier said than done. So if you've got. Unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck. If your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiraling and that big IT transformation project that you've been promised just keeps failing to deliver, we can help if you need to improve your performance, your team's performance, or your organizations.

Get in touch at Jimmy at jobdonewell. com or James at jobdonewell. com.