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Hello, and welcome to beyond the Desk, the podcast where I take a deep dive into the careers of some of the most influential and inspiring leaders in the technology transformation and operations space within global insurance and insurtech.

I'm your host, Mark Thomas, and every week I'll be sitting down with industry trailblazers who are driving innovation and modernization within the insurance sector.

We'll explore their personal journeys, from their early backgrounds and the pivotal moments that shape their careers to the challenges they've had to overcome, the lessons they've learned along the way, and of course, the big wins that have defined their professional journey so far.

But it's not just about their successes.

It's about what you and I can take away from their experiences and the advice they have for anyone wanting to follow in similar footsteps.

Whether you're just starting out or looking.

To level up your career in the insurance or insurtech world, this podcast is packed with valuable insights and inspiration.

So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and let's jump into beyond the Desk.

David, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing?

Very well.

How are you?

I'm very well, thanks.

Thanks for joining us.

So I always get everybody to do a bit of their own intro.

Cause I'm sure you do a way better job than I am.

So if you could just kind of introduce yourself, current role, etc.

And then we'll go right back to the start, take it from there.

Okay.

I'm David Greenwood.

I am currently the chief operating officer of IQW Group, which is a Lloyd specialty underwriter.

We start up, we've been going about, I think four years now for that.

I was doing a lot of interim transformation jobs about a million years ago.

I was in consultancy.

Yeah, okay.

Right, let's go back to a million years ago.

So I go right, right back to the start.

So I.

I'm always really interested in how people first got into kind of technology and that kind of thing.

So were you into technology at kind of school, university, etc?

Like, what did the early days look like?

Oh, no.

So if you told me I was working in business when I was 21, I'd have laughed my head off at you.

So I'm an army child, so I went to, the way I describe it, I'd been to five schools by the time I was eight.

Right.

And so then went away to school.

And I think part of what that does and why that's important is it kind of makes you pretty independent.

Yeah, yeah.

And you have to get on with stuff.

And then the family Business has been for about 500 years working in the army and not always the British army.

And I thought that might be the thing I wanted to do.

It's a family business and.

And I went to Germany when I was 20 and it was really boring.

Really?

Yes, because it's 1980s and there wasn't anything.

And all I knew was it wasn't really what I wanted to do, but I didn't know what I wanted to do at all.

And I sort of went through university when all my friends were going to be lawyers and accountants.

I had no idea.

And I was doing a summer job after left university.

And it's for a sports organization.

It's very obscure of sports organization but runs a business within the state.

And I was dealing with like problems on the front desk and the chief executive walked down and said, you want a full time job?

And that's how I got my first time job which I became the chief executives.

Mr.

Fix it and that'll be a theme.

So I did about three years there and that's where I got interested in business.

Because you watch it's a business that was 150 years old.

All those legacy things that we'd all call no science but.

And just improvement.

And that's when I got interested in business.

Well, literally by a chance happening of just someone saying, do you want a job?

Yeah.

So what was that job?

What it looked like.

So I was think of a National Rifle association, which is the governing body of shooting in the uk.

It's nothing to do with the American National Rifle association, but it runs a big rifle range in Surrey.

And, and so it's basically the way I describe.

It's a sports club with the sporting complex attached.

Okay.

And it's like it'd been going since 1890, so you can imagine it was kind of old fashioned.

And so it's like everything.

So I did stuff like organizing lobbying because it's lobbying on behalf of shooters at a time when there'd been a lot of firearms legislation.

So dealing with the government, dealing with civil service, dealing with the police, processing legal stuff, organizing big events.

So the world's biggest rifle championships happens at this every summer.

Yeah.

So that was like a, a month of my year every year.

It was literally real variety.

And then we set up a clay pigeon range.

So if anybody has ever been to Bisley shoot ground.

Yeah, that I was there when that was opened.

The first baby steps in opening that.

And so it was great.

It was just.

I got to understand business, I got to understand how things Worked.

And I guess the thing that you'll see is a theme of I got pointed at things and can you go and fix that, please?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And just make it work.

So how did that evolve then into kind of getting into what you class more kind of enterprise level kind of businesses?

What was the first foray into, into that kind of world.

So at the time, and not everybody remembered this, there was a program on tv, one of those business programs called Troubleshooter where an industrialist called John Harvey Jones, right, went around medium sized business, small businesses, giving them advice.

So the famous one is Morgan Cars.

If anybody wants to look on YouTube, it's really famous where he said, it's like Henry Ford had never been invented.

Where they built the car, wheeled it down the factory, built a bit more, wheeled it back up the factory.

It was literally like that, Right.

I thought, I want to do that, I want to improve businesses.

Yeah.

So that was what probably when I was 23, I started looking then for jobs that would help me improve and I wanted to be in consultancy, but I knew that if I didn't go and get some industrial experience, yeah.

I would never get that job in consultancy because, you know, what does I have to offer?

3 years in a small business, Right?

Yeah.

So I was sort of applying to jobs, trying to work it out.

And then the job advert, this is quite true, came off in the paper that said, we're rubbish.

Come and work for us.

Wow.

So I applied for it because that was like, I.

I didn't realize at the time, but that was like meat and drink to me.

Yeah.

And it was literally that kind of thing.

And it turned out to be the RAW Mail.

And I joined the Raw Mail on a very special training course where you basically had six months, you taught all about the business and a special group of people and you had to do projects and you were assessed.

And it sounds very apprentice like.

Yeah.

Which is on you for the RAW Mail.

But again, it was about making great changes, trying to create a group of people who are become the senior management but make great change.

Yeah.

And I got through that and I did six years at the Royal Mail.

Wow.

And I dealt with trucks, planes, building warehouses, big distribution things.

So nothing to do with it, but just big pro, big complex problems.

And so was that kind of a project program manager?

Yeah.

So we evolved into project because it was a bit, if you put it into modern speak, it was like a bit of a BA job and a bit of a, you know, we started as a weird 1970s thing called a males network inspector which is of its time.

But it really evolved into being sort of a BA Project manager and then into program manager as the world changed around, you know, when those things became really in vogue.

But yeah, so that's how I made that leap because it was just basically same story, I want to fix something.

Yeah.

And there was an advert said come and help us fix something.

Yeah.

So I did.

Yeah, yeah.

That's, that's amazing.

You can remember that as well.

There's like real seminal moments.

It was, they were, they were just.

I mean I tell that story there because it literally I watched a TV program said I want to do that, how do I do that?

And then I actually didn't want the job.

I went to like a three day selection.

Yeah.

And I said I'm not sure I want this job.

I bet they offer it to me.

Yeah.

And they did.

And so I took it.

You know it's like the 1990s, the early 90s when the economy had just tanked and you went bird in the hand.

And so I took it and you know part of that job and that training which was very good made me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm very lucky.

So what did that and to I guess what I'm be good to get understanding is how did that evolve then?

So, so there's obviously a theme and I kind of obviously know this from knowing you anyway is that the kind of fixing things transformation.

But it sounds like you that you had an idea that that was what your, your calling was quite, quite early on.

How did that kind of evolve into.

Into kind of bit.

Was it just quite organic then?

It was project manager, senior project manager, program manager etc.

So I got.

You get the reputation for a safe pair of hands.

So I sort of ran a project that went well.

Ran a couple of other sort of more bigger programs.

They went well.

Got put on a.

Can you sort this emergency live operational thing out really quickly and then got put on a big program.

But I never lost sight of.

The only thing that I had in my head was I'd never lost sight of.

I want to be in consultancy, I want to do lots.

Okay.

And so why was that of interest?

What was it?

Just because I like this, I like I've, I, I have a, I want to be interested.

Part of what motivates me work is being interested.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm interested.

I was in one big company, remember it's in my second job, the variety and that whole thing of being able to go and do lots of Things, you know, I was.

I'd only been exposed to one real job and the Royal Mail was huge, but it provided variety.

But it is still the Royal Mail.

It's a big thing.

And you know, at that point when you're.

I Suppose I was 27, 28 at the time, you want to go and do some.

You.

You still want to.

What else is out there in the world?

So I never lost sight of it.

I not didn't.

It had grown organically and then through opportunity, through talking to someone.

Someone recommended me again to.

I wrote to PA Consulting.

Yeah, yeah.

And again, never forgotten this.

I wrote a letter to PA Wrote to the wrong person in pa.

A guy called David Walder, who.

I hope he's still alive, he's listening to this, who was in the recruitment arm, but he used to have a recruitment on pa.

Yeah.

He took my letter, read it, came and met me and then put me to the.

He said, I'm not impressed.

I'll put you in to the right people in pa.

So again, the kindness of strangers.

Yeah, I wouldn't be here if you hadn't done that.

Yeah.

And he put me into pa.

PA is a very, or was at the time a very methodical workman, like.

So it's not McKinsey, it's not that strategy house, it's a doers hat, it's a fix it house.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Or certainly was.

So I found kind of more by luck than judgment with a bit of guidance from a couple of people.

The right place.

Yeah.

So it seemed, you know, the natural fit.

So it seemed like that natural evolution, you know, it felt like the right place to go.

Yeah, yeah.

So it kind of fit with rot.

So that there was some.

An element of design in the sense you picked them because you knew what they were all about.

But.

But actually kind of the way it happened was.

Was kind of an element of luck.

Every pretty much always is with these.

These things.

Right.

And so did you stay there long?

I stayed there for six years.

So again, six years and part of that story come through the door pretty much you end up in public sector or financial services because they're the big hires of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, consulting.

I walked through the door, ended up on a financial services job, did other things which were amazing.

Did some retail, did a bit telecoms, but public sector, but primarily financial services.

Stayed there and again jobbing, generous.

So did project management.

Did sort of BA sort of analysis stuff and again grew through big jobs.

Just got a reputation as a very safe pair of hands and you know, some jobs in there that we can touch on, which were foundational in terms of experience.

The.

The growing realization what TikTok is realizing that consultancies are a sales, ultimately sales organization.

And like lots of people, that's kind of normal.

That's not my gig in terms of that.

And I'm not really the world's greatest thought leader either, either.

So you start to work out that I want to do more.

You're only going to get so far in a consultancy.

There's not going to kick you out.

But they're only going so far.

Yeah.

So I went to say, well, I had a good time in industry.

There were things I liked at Royal Mail, so I started looking in industry and that's what.

That's why I left.

And so those were perm jobs.

I know you obviously did a long stint of contracting, which is where we know each other from, but it was the.

Did you go into contracting straight away then, or was it there a few.

More kind of PA in those days?

Had contract practice as well?

Yeah, I kind of knew about interiming.

Yeah.

It's a strange verb where I interim everybody else.

Contracts.

Right.

Yeah, Yeah, I knew about it and I thought that might be interesting one day.

And that's my whole thing is I've sort of.

I don't have, like a dedicated plan where every year is planned, but that might like the consulting thing, thought interim.

Oh, that's a couple of bookmarks around of things that you might want to do.

Yeah, yeah.

So I then went to.

I went to somewhere, you know, the target was somewhere big in an industry that's got lots of challenges, because that's what the Royal Mail was.

Yeah.

And what have I done at pa?

Lots of financial services.

So I ended up at Barclays.

Yeah.

Okay.

Same.

Same kind of challenge.

You know, whenever you get a permanent job, they've got to buy something that you want to sell.

So.

So that was okay.

I did about three years at Barclays.

I think what that taught me was I had a good time and I learned a lot, you know, and never don't learn from a job, but if I look back on it, was I the right fit for them?

And it wasn't.

You know, I'd had a great time at pa.

The culture being good culture, being good at Royal Mouth.

I wasn't the right culture because it got on okay.

But, you know, you couldn't see.

I couldn't see myself being a lifer here.

Yeah.

So I was actually getting.

At that point I decided to bark because it's, you know, if you're not on a certain track.

It felt like I was an interim.

Yeah.

So.

So at that point.

Or contractor.

So that was actually the feedback I gave when I left.

I felt like I was a contractor, which is why I wanted to become one.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I'd had several bosses and everybody saw them, you know, ran program successfully, but it's kind of like once a month, year check in, say, how are you doing?

Yeah, yeah.

So I was going to be a contractor, but I met.

I phoned up someone for a contract, you know, to get that first contract using the network.

And he said, well, actually I'm about to start a consult or go and work for a consultancy.

Would you like to come and run that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I got high for a small con project management consultancy.

There are lots of the classic niche consultancy where people from, funnily enough, pa.

Yeah.

Had started a niche consultancy with some contractors and some firms.

Yeah.

And I went to be kind of a bit of the COO and a bit of an senior operator in there.

Yeah.

And that was like.

So that's my entrepreneurial for.

It's clearly being grown to sell.

Yeah.

And you were just trying to get in.

And that's what was the attraction about.

It wasn't just going and working with some people.

There was a point.

Yeah, yeah.

And it put me onto a management team rather than just necessarily just another delivery person, which is I've always wanted to do.

I always want to be in control of my own destiny, I guess.

So you.

And so were you there for a few years as well.

So they sold out to Cognizant.

All right.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so I didn't want to be part Cognizant.

That was, you know, that wasn't the part.

That appeal.

Yeah, that wasn't part of the appeal.

So as I said, that was like a three year pause on the objective to become an interim.

Yeah.

So when the deal was announced with Cognizant, I just went back to.

Right back to that bookmark of I was going to become one when I left Barclays.

Yeah.

Paused it.

So we'll just go back to being.

Go and give interim.

Go back to being an interim.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And I managed to do okay on my first two roles.

And once you've got your first two roles, everybody believes you can do an interim.

Yeah.

And away you go.

And then I worked quite hard on being in.

So having been in consultancy and understanding the concepts of pipeline future work.

Yeah.

And about how you Manage that exit and entry.

So you know, you don't sort of just wait squeeze the loss out of a lot a job.

You, you control it so that everybody's happy you leaving and starting.

So for the first 12 years of being an interim I had one and a half days off the clock which weren't holiday just by managing.

So I run it as a business.

I ran as a proper business.

Yeah, yeah.

I remember that when we, when we first came in because I was.

You were that very much the case.

So.

So also we won't go through every contracting job because there's obviously lots of them.

But then, but that from, from, from memory that was a kind of real mix of banking, some insurance, some life and pensions and there was a bit of variety in there.

And then, and then obviously more recently you've, you obviously ended up there at the iqw.

It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it?

Iq we call it iq.

It's easier.

The so and then, and then to my huge surprise, not so long ago you, you decided to move to.

Into a perm roll which I, I have known you for a while.

I never, I never, I never thought would actually ever happen.

But I've definitely tried to tempt you a few times in the past but so talk, talk us through like kind of again.

I don't want to kind of completely cross over it.

I know you did lots of loads of big transformation pros.

We'll get into some of them but what, what, what made you kind of flip over?

So I, I want to transform things.

I want to make a difference.

That's a very personal need of mine.

Yeah, yeah.

It's why I do this.

So programs were really a vehicle to do that and interim was because about being your own boss and the freedom to do it.

Yeah.

What I really want to do is transform things and I've got a view.

You know one of the things is if you work in lots of businesses you've got a view about how you want to run a business and that grows the more you see I'm an observational learner.

So the more you see the more you think well I want to have a go at that.

So there was always that drift I tried to become, you know, when I got to Barclays it was to try and get into a kind COO type role.

So again when I joined an ambition to.

That was always the ambition.

That was just again a marker rather than a.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just a marker in my head and that's why I took the job at pipc, the project management consultancy, because it had things other than just delivering the program, you know, managing the people, getting the process right.

A sense of getting lots of things working together.

So I'd kind of dipped in and out of trying to get the right.

But it's always been.

I'd always said I would go for the right perm job, not any perm job.

So I looked.

I kind of got through to a transformation transformation director of a loss to have a transformation director of one of the retailers.

And so it was always that kind of ambition.

And also because I want to do more and learn more and do bigger things.

What you find.

I did a.

I had a contract before where I am now IQ with a company called the Pensions Insurance Corporation.

And what you realize the regulator doesn't like interims.

So I had to become an ftc.

Oh, right.

Okay.

Because I was the senior management function and with the regulator.

So I kind of.

There's a bit of I want to do it and a bit of to do the stuff I want to do.

I have actually got to be an ftc.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it kind of, if you like, again, it was not a radical revolution.

I'd already been in FTC for 19 months and then that came to a natural end, which was fine.

That was always the deal.

And then I got a chance to replay that and the iq.

One of the things I'm very open about.

It's a company that I feel very comfortable with in terms of the management who I work with and the people on the floor.

They're absolutely great people.

And there's a great culture, suits me, everyone suits me.

And therefore you go.

There's a big opportunity.

I actually enjoy working with these people.

Yeah.

Perm is just a vehicle for reward.

Yeah.

To me, the things that I enjoy there.

And that's how I ended up.

Yeah.

So I don't think I'll be a perm everywhere.

Yeah.

It's.

But I'd be a perma IQ or firms like that.

Does that make sense?

No.

Yeah.

Makes perfect sense.

And it's interesting that you kind of.

Because I think I have a conversation with this.

Like this with lots of people.

Is that you.

You get to that point where you reach that ceiling that, that you think really to do the.

To.

To keep moving forward and do the stuff that you really want to do.

It's tough to do it as a.

As a.

As a kind of.

As a contractor or an interim.

And I think even with like more legislation now and stuff like that around kind of making it a bit more difficult, especially at the senior level, that you kind of reach that scene in where you thought, well actually I need to go into a perm role to really impact the business and get out of it what I wanted, what I want to really do.

Because you reach that seniority.

Exactly.

And that becomes, I think that lots of people find that once again.

So.

So how has it been?

How has it been the, the kind of, not necessarily the perm roll, but the first step into what is the kind of fully.

Because if I remember rightly, when we first spoke, you did you not.

You didn't join the coo?

No, I joined as interim Chief Transformation Officer.

Okay.

And one of my recommendations is we didn't have a COO was.

And I actually wrote a paper that gave me the, the senior executive of choice.

But I think we need a coo.

Yeah, yeah.

Because we were doing certain things and actually it was quite difficult to do some of the target operating model if you didn't know what the COO solution was.

So actually that was part of my job was to say we need a coo.

And there are some different flavors around that.

So.

Yeah.

How's it.

So, yeah, I joined as an interim and then stayed, which is great because I mean, you know, again, for any interim, it's.

If you're not sure that kind of going and getting your head around it.

Try before you buy something.

Yeah, it's great.

So how's it been?

Because I was always an interim that behaved like I cared about the clients.

Yeah.

That bit hasn't changed.

I think, you know that in any job when you're doing transformation, there are tough, tough things to do.

Right.

You know, insurance is a complex business, financial services, complex business.

And people are doing their best, but sometimes it kind of grates and all of these things.

And so there are some days, and I talk about this with people joining the firm.

You know, in a high growth entrepreneurial firm, not every day is easy.

And that's just kind of how it is.

And I think that thing of a perm, you know, that you can't, that you're there, that, that reminds you, you have to have, you know, in some of the days when things don't go so well, that conversation with yourself in the mirror, remember why you came.

Yeah.

And you've got to stick at this, which is great.

So that's been good.

So that's been a learning, I think.

Yeah.

There's always that thing I'm not very good at process and kind of all the corporate stuff now, one of the reasons I joined entrepreneurial firms is they don't do corporate so much.

But there's still some of that.

That still.

That still I have to be organized to do.

And that's just, you know, sometimes you find yourself.

That's a bit irksome, but it's what it is.

Right.

Yeah.

As in when you say pro, you mean obviously you, you.

There's.

There's elements of process that you're very strong at.

Given from a delivery perspect.

More.

It's like the administration process and some of those back office processes that don't work so well and you just.

Whereas an interim, you just cut the corner and find a way.

You have to.

There's sometimes where, you know, where.

Let's take something close to your heart.

Hiring.

Yeah.

Where before I just gone through the back door and got an agency somehow.

Oh, you know, now I'm on the X car.

I can't just bypass the entire HR function in the same way.

Got to kind of play the rules.

Yeah, yeah.

And not like.

Because there's a.

More.

There's a moral obligation about not pulling the rug from under people's feet as well because you're on the team as well.

You've got.

Yeah, I guess you've got to follow the.

Follow it through and get stuff done.

A bit more methodically rather than just.

Just find your eggs and get it.

Yeah, exactly that.

So you can't break quite as many eggs.

Yeah, yeah.

That's probably a good way of describing it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

So we'll go into that in a little bit more detail in.

In a bit.

But no, I wanted to.

I wanted to kind of just get your.

Kind of, kind of more holistically get your view on.

On kind of the insurance space at the moment.

What you're seeing, obviously there's.

For kind of CEOs and CIOs, etc.

The AI is a kind of big talking point at the moment.

So what's your.

I mean, you don't necessarily have to speak specifically about iq, but what, what's your kind of general view on.

On.

On where things are at now?

What the big stuff's going to be going in for you over the next.

Next kind of 12, 18 months or so.

So several things, I think.

First of all, we're in a softening market right now.

It's a good market.

This is the first thing.

It's softening from amazing to very good.

Yeah.

But with all those things, there's always that.

Okay.

Everyone's going to look at cost base efficiency.

You know, that classic thing on the up.

It's all about feel the fire on the down.

It's about how do I make sure that I'm still making my margin.

So there's.

That is always going to be on the agenda across the world.

Across.

But it's not just that because, you know, certainly I have this view that it's not just about.

It's not about cost saving, it's about market differentiation.

There's going to be business for people who are different.

So it's not about being cost, it's about being offering that market differentiation.

So actually there's still build that thing.

So if I thought all I was doing was cost saving for the next two years, that would be a difficult thing.

But it's not.

It's about building those things that differentiate us.

Okay, but you're in that market.

Right.

So you have to be cognizant of it.

It's not the same as it was a year ago or what we're seeing now.

It's difficult to guess the future with the economy.

Nobody controls the economy.

Let's be very.

It's kind of a series of, you know, geopolitical events.

So I've had lots of forecasts of what, you know, the economy.

I don't think it will be as bad as some people are saying because most governments take about three years to what they do to flow through.

Yeah.

If you have a big event and Covid's a big event that just.

I'm afraid that just flows through the economy and nobody's in control of those things.

There'll be stuff, you know, people trying to second guess the American administration.

So we don't really know what the economy's gonna do.

Whatever anybody tells you, you know, all economists, there's no certainty certainty, which is okay.

It's just kind of.

And what our CEO's job is to do is to be able to, as best as you can, create the flexibility that addresses uncertainty.

That's one of the things I'm quite passionate about, is don't try and guess the future.

Create the flexibility.

That means you can turn on a dime.

Yeah, and that's my big thing.

Because whether it's tech people, whatever, it's about how do I deliver service, deliver what people need and no matter what how.

There is a bit of scanning, but there's about building flexibility not just in the it, but obviously a lot of that's in the it.

So I'm obsessive about building it.

That isn't the.

The world beating functionality, but actually can turn on a dime on it because what was good today might not be good tomorrow.

Which brings us neatly to AI.

So there's a lot of talk about AI and there's a lot to learn and a lot to get our heads around.

But at the same time, you know, every technology boom which goes back to the railways.

I've got history degree which goes back to the railways.

It's never quite pans out how people tell you it's going to pan out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so it's for me that's.

It's using AI, getting familiar with it, not being scared about.

It's really interesting.

We were talking about some AI, AI stuff and everybody said, but what about.

But what, but what, but what was that classic reaction to new technology?

Well, we'll find a way because we can't not use AI, because then you're going to get left behind.

Yeah, of course.

But at the same time, is it going to suddenly cure all known world problems?

Of course it's not.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

And so it's finding a way through that.

And again, I've seen loads of businesses burn loads of money on new tech, you know, and jump on a fashion.

Again.

That whole thing of experience is, you know, follow the fashion.

Yeah.

You can get really drunk on that stuff.

Yeah.

And achieve nothing.

So for me, part of it is about how do we be clever about those things.

Yeah.

And not get at one end get left behind, but the other end gets suckered by the hucksters.

Yeah, yeah.

There's plenty of people selling things to do with AI right now.

Yeah.

It's interesting you say, because I had a Chief Data Officer on the podcast a few weeks back and.

It was.

A slightly different topic, but it was about AI.

His kind of view was actually he thinks things are coming back around in insurance to actually focus on stuff that people were focusing on kind of five or six years ago, around data, as in storage and stuff like that.

Because actually I haven't really managed to get that problem sorted out.

And now that's, that's becoming back more back more in the, in the, in the viewpoint.

Because actually if you don't get that sort out, it doesn't matter what you do with it.

And it's a bit like that with that.

I think it's.

You can.

My questions in was, how do you.

In that kind of role at the moment, how would you not get blinded by like.

Because, you know, I'm a bit of an early Adopter for tech.

And I always.

You always want the kind of new stuff, but you've got to be really careful.

You don't just kind of be a bit of a butterfly going around to one good, cool new thing to the other and not really achieving anything.

Yeah.

I mean, I have a.

Again, people who've worked with me now I have a question.

Ask everybody and it's what I call cos question, which is, how's this all going to work in real life?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just push that question.

Tell me how this really works.

Yeah.

Tell me what happens.

And again, that thing about how does it change my business?

Not interested.

If it works.

Yeah.

How does it make.

Ultimately, we are capitalist firm for the profit and the loss.

Tell me how I make money.

You know, I said there are only three business cases.

Make money, save money or stay out of jail.

There are only three business cases.

Yeah.

And that's what I'm interested in with all these things.

Show me how it really.

So we've done some AI with slip ingestion.

It's a public company called mia.

Yeah.

And we spent a lot of time being very thoughtful because it's a significant investment.

Because I kept saying, great.

Sounds lovely.

You know.

Automated slip ingestion.

Yeah.

Tell me why I should do it.

Yeah.

And we got to a great answer, which is not even a pound shilling and pence answer that you can prove.

Yeah.

But something that we all believe actually contributes to making the business go forward.

Yeah.

And it wasn't what people started.

It was actually people started at safe cost.

We ended up with a different reason and everybody went, that's a good reason.

Yeah.

And that's what drives me with all this stuff is if you, you know, having it means nothing unless you make money from it.

What is the point?

Yeah.

It's weird, actually.

I've got a similar saying which we used to use a lot at my old company and it's based on.

But have you ever read a book called Does it make the Boat Go Faster?

Yes, I have.

It's.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

And that.

We used to use that phrase.

I still use it quite a lot now.

It's the same kind of thing.

Is it like the amount of times people waste a hell of a lot of time on.

Yeah.

On stuff that doesn't really.

Doesn't really make the boat go faster.

But so.

And so what does.

What does kind of.

I'm interested to get into a bit of a kind of day in the life of what, a week maybe in the life.

Because my day might be a bit too narrow.

But what.

What's the kind of your remit now and what does that.

What does that typically look like?

And more to the other really key part to follow on for that is how does it differ from the kind of days that you were doing the interim delivery things?

So that's quite a long question.

So if I get lost, drag me back.

No, it's okay.

I'm just kind of breaking.

Asking three questions in one.

Break it up.

So I look after.

And I'll help people with this.

I look after Lloyd's underwriting operations, our data.

Which data operations and build out the data.

All our tech procurement.

Because a small business, we buy lots of things.

Yeah.

I look after the buildings, I look after business and operational resilience.

And then.

And this is really important as a coo, it's not to run operations, but actually I'm the person that cares about does the company work end to end.

Yeah.

So I'm.

If you're like the person that sort of looks across the piece going, does this all hang together?

Yeah.

So what's the difference?

I think I care about those things.

So there are delivery things, which is about, do you know the content?

And then, you know, as a leader, a lot of what your job is about is creating an environment for success and transformation.

And the way I describe it is, right, the plants, if the plants are going to grow, lots of people just sit there and watch the plants grow.

Where I worry about, are they got enough soil, are they in a big enough pot, have they got enough water?

Because then they'll grow.

Right.

Almost don't need to worry about the plants.

Yeah.

And so see why quite a lot my job now, because I'm so far above, I can't possibly know all.

I can't be an expert on all the subjects I just described is much more about the plants, sorry, the soil, the water and the pot.

So you know about how our finance works, how our risk talks, how we express our risk, how we report and explain.

We do very complex things in operations which in the nicest possible way, nobody really likes hearing about.

Yeah.

How do we explain all that?

How do we get people to understand what's required?

How do we take people on that journey?

So a lot more than I think from when I was in an interim where it was, you know, get this platform in place, make this change.

There's a single point outcome now.

It's much.

There's always about even to do those things you had to build the environment But I'd say the focus is much more now on building a successful environment for transformation rather than just focusing on that point.

Goal does that.

Because I can't control so much broad.

So much broader what?

Not just in regards to topic but in regards.

Because I can imagine like you'd be going in and delivering a platform of sorts then it's.

It might be a really big, hairy, problematic program and there's lots of facets to it.

But ultimately the goal is still the same.

Whereas your goal now is a lot more.

It's kind of a bit more of a holistic kind of.

It's enabling the company work and there's so many different aspects.

Exactly.

And my job is to make other people successful.

I'm very open about this.

And how do I do that?

Is it difficult not to.

Because I know necessarily you were, you were always in senior roles before but is it difficult not to get dragged into the detail in some of those?

Because I'd imagine in the, in the transformation, the program management type roles, although you weren't necessarily in the minutiae all the time.

Sometimes you'd have to deep dive into that and I guess you just don't have the time to do that in all those areas Now.

I do more than people think and that's because I've got that background.

Right.

But because I come from a transformation background and a business background, you know, I don't come from a tech background.

So it's great.

I've never understood the tech.

Yeah.

And because I've bounced around from industry to industry and job to job, what I've never developed is I'm not a deep subject matter in anything really expert.

So that's actually works quite well.

Because I don't understand that you're not really on someone's field on some, you know, on someone else's pitch.

There are.

Yeah.

I do get into detail because ultimately my job is to help the team rather than, you know, we're a fast growing organization.

So there's always a balance in a fast growing organization between that learning and actually getting the thing done.

And I have an obligation not to let them in.

That's possible way stitch themselves up.

Yeah.

So I do it.

But the good thing is I'm not really the SME in any of that.

A lot of what I do is by getting people to explain to me things logically.

Yeah.

And also to take them back to why are we here in the first place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So yeah, I would say I'll dive into the detail.

But you Just have to juggle it.

I'm as you know very well, I drive everything through my diary.

I've got an amazing EA called cat.

Yeah.

And basically we use meetings to drive that deep dive.

So the structure so I can allocate time.

So let's make it up.

I need to go and look at XYZ project.

I'll say I want in a week and a half time, guys, I need to sit down for an hour and a half with you and go through everything.

But it's scheduled, everybody knows and therefore it's controlled rather than just kind of dipping in and dipping out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

I have to manage my time.

That's the other if you want to know.

I have to manage my time ruthlessly now.

Yeah, I can imagine.

Yeah.

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Now let's get back to today's episode.

So what.

What.

What have you found is the kind of.

The.

The biggest kind of learning curves for you in.

And.

And there's in.

In.

I'm.

I'm more kind of trying to get kind of advice for other people like you.

You've.

You've obviously successfully made that transition from transformation delivery for 20, 20 odd years of doing that, that.

That role into a kind of a full on leadership position in a.

In a big credible firm growing firm.

What.

What have you found is the kind of the big.

In biggest learning curves of that you mean.

And.

And equally was there some of them that you expected to get and some that you didn't necessarily expect.

I think one of the things I'd say, and it's how I've done everything, is you've got to be open to learn.

You've got to accept that you gotta learn.

So.

And some of that is just asking other people.

I think there's certainly those things that make you good as an individual.

So applying all those things, like, you know, organizing my time is absolutely, really important, I think.

And I'm still working on that.

Even build it, you know, finding your own way.

So I build in time and I have to build relationships.

So I build time into my diary to build those.

Yeah.

It's interesting because I know how to do it well.

I keep missing it because you get dragged into things.

Right.

So I build time into my diary.

So I use my diary as a proxy for making me do things.

Yeah.

You know, so there's a bit of that and the inevitable lists.

Right.

So you've got a list and the plan.

So even though I don't do a project plan, I still have a plan for the next five, six weeks written down somewhere.

Just so.

Because if you come from a delivery role, what we good at, we're good at managing to a plan.

So it's using those things that you were good at to enable you to do, to.

To run your world.

Because everything's got delivery in it, right?

Yeah.

Even if it's just delivering the report to the board, that's still a plan.

Yeah.

So everything almost becomes a mini project in my head, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

So I use.

I guess there's lean on the techniques, whatever they are.

So not everyone's going to come up through a project robot, you know, lean on those techniques you've got before.

It's just about how do I use them effectively?

Because I think that's part of my experiences.

Those techniques you learn, say, you know, in the first 10 years of your career, you can apply them to lots of things.

They're not just the thing, you know, if you come from procurement, those techniques work just as well about how you organize yourself.

Yeah.

They are ways of getting things done.

You just have to say, okay, I got this different situation, but the outcome's pretty much the same.

Yeah.

How do I do it?

So I think that was.

It was applying things I'd learned before and applying them almost and just twisting.

Them to fit what you're doing now.

And then I think the other piece then in terms of the learnings, if I was saying anybody else is, as long as you're straightforward and genuine people are the kindness of strangers.

I think, you know, I'm very lucky.

I work in the culture with colleagues who are pretty straightforward and direct, which you come from a change, change function.

That's what you need.

Yeah, but I think being really open and saying to people don't understand this.

So I get on very well with one of the senior finance team and they explain to me, I go, I don't actually understand what we're talking about in the meeting.

Can you explain this?

And they'll lay it all out for me.

So.

And the same way I explain someone the sort of dark arts of transformation to them.

So your colleagues are quite happy to explain if you're open about, you know, I said meeting, say, I'm really sorry.

I don't understand all this insurance stuff.

Yeah, people are quite helpful with that.

Yeah, it's, you know, I'm very like.

I've had a career where I've never understood all of it and therefore we've got to be able to deal with that and say, I don't understand it, but I want to learn.

I think it's the want to learn thing.

Yeah, yeah, there's.

There's some.

I think sometimes people forget that actually.

Just like.

Because that's a really simple bit of advice, but I'd imagine lots of people don't, don't do it.

Yeah.

And there's some confidence, having the confidence to be able to ask something and know that, like.

And I guess you've been in lots of different environments so you know that someone's not just going to look at you and think he should know or he's an idiot or whatever.

And that's what people think, don't they?

I think people sit there and think, oh, like they're going to think I'm stupid for not knowing a.

Why something worked, doesn't work, but just having that confidence to be able to ask and push up to it.

What's.

So I guess if you had kind of two or three bits of advice for someone who was probably more so now I'm thinking of the person that is and I'm sure there'll be loads of people.

I've certainly spoke to hundreds of them over the years of people who are in senior roles.

They're, they're kind of contracting, doing interim and they're trying to get that, that, that next.

That move into, into the kind of exec type role.

What, what advice would you give them in regards to kind of maybe stuff they need to understand or they need to get on their CV or Experience or et cetera, to kind of get on, to get.

Get closer to that track.

So I think, firstly, it's definitely don't run your cv, run your network.

Yeah, yeah.

A CV will never get you anywhere.

I mean, I had several goes at this and everything that's come in, this has come through my network.

And of me going around and saying to people, I want to do this and lots of things, you know, I got to second in an interview for the retailer, not first.

Yeah.

And I learned something along the way about how I interviewed.

I got asked an interview question that I thought I'd prep pretty well for that interview.

I work.

And he went, oh, that's not gone well.

So there's.

Don't ever rely on Steve.

You've got to rely on that network, you know, to convince people, because it's always a gambler, you know, people don't want to see you.

So something.

You've got to get something more convincing than a cv because that's never going to get you across the line.

So.

And I, as you know, I network like absolute crazy because.

Not in a kind of cynical way, but just because I want to build relationships, because those relationships have helped me even when I was in an interim career.

So they're there to help you.

And again, people can give you advice.

So, you know, don't take one piece of advice in prepping the cv.

And the kind of jobs to go for is just talking to people about, I want to do this, how would I go about it?

So it was someone who really helped me was explaining that jump go for chief transformation Officer, because that's more credible, you know.

You know that.

I remember that again, a bookmark that was put in my head about seven years ago, so.

And that's just people will help stuff.

And, you know, I'm always happy to help people because, you know, that's how the world goes around.

I think the other bit then is the things you've got to show.

You've got to show business acumen.

Right.

The key bit, and a lot of change people or transformation, people don't really do this.

You've got to talk about the business outcome.

You know, I come back to, we're just a business.

Profit and loss.

Yeah.

And people have got to see that and they've got to see care.

The reason I probably get hired most is I care about the business and I care just.

Just, you know, I care about business outcomes and I care just.

And come across.

And sometimes, you know that getting that kind of reputation is really important.

You know, I've, I've actually turned contractors to perm since who's joined us and they, they wanted to stay because they like the culture.

They got stuff done, they got appreciated for being, you know, I put them into quite a controversial role.

It's quite difficult and there's lots of, oh, who's this person?

And at the end of it everybody's going, oh, they're brilliant.

They're brilliant because they did all the right things.

Yeah.

So, you know, part of being any kind of getting any kind of change agent job is you've got to get people, they've got to do more than just execution.

There's got to be something about people believe in you, trust you.

They might not like you, but they've got to believe and trust in you.

So that's part of that.

And then find ways, you know, I took an FTC.

I go, well, I'll take these FTCs where they go.

I took the job at Pick.

It was an FTC.

It got me a regulated role.

I was an SMF 24, one of the SMF 24s.

So you build, start to build those credibility.

It's quite difficult to do.

And like all the things I, you know, as I said to you, I wanted to be a COO and I was at Barclays and I left Barclays in 2007.

Yeah.

So it's having that marker in your head and building up that.

It's not something that just happens overnight, it's having the.

For me, what worked was always having it in the back of my mind, always having those things, talking to about it and building up experience that's relevant sometimes by choice or sometimes by maneuver once you were there.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely.

Interesting you said about the networking thing because I, I obviously I do that for a kind of for a living.

But the.

What's your, what's your take on the whole kind of post Covid remote working and stuff like that impact on that.

I've been listening to his bits.

I mean there's.

There definitely seems to be a bit of a move certainly in the insur.

Space to getting people back into the office.

I think that's, that's a fairly common, common theme.

It was moved from kind of the one or two days as more kind of three, four now and it's.

I don't know if it will go back to five, but it's certainly in the three and four bracket for the vast majority of people, which is a bit of a shift change, maybe 12 months ago.

What's your view on that versus from a.

More from a networking perspective, because people at home naturally not going to network quite as much.

Do you think that that will have an impact?

Yeah, I mean, I'm firmly the belief, you know, Covid is what it was.

But I believe that building relationships, you've got to meet someone face to face.

So when I've worked on global programs, I'd go and travel to the country once.

You can then do everything on a phone call.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And those people when we worked on the Lloyds banking integration, everybody would tell you all they can remember is conference call, off the conference call in a room.

But we'd all been there and met the people once you've somehow you've got to find a way.

And I think Covid makes no odds to me.

I do three or four days a week in London and I try, you know, if I'm building a network or someone's reached out, I will say, can we meet for 30 minutes?

Because when you ask them something difficult or want to ask a favor.

Yeah.

You know, depends on the relationship or what you're doing with them.

If you've never met them, that's much harder.

And even on screen.

Yeah.

It can be done.

I'm not going to say it can't be, but it's so much easier if you've had that personal conversation.

Totally agree.

Yeah.

So my view is, you know, it can't always run.

It's great.

We've got teams.

It means it's better than the phone call.

So I have this thing of, you know, go and meet them.

Teams is better than a phone call, phone calls, better than email.

Yeah, yeah.

And that kind of logic.

And I'll, you know, if I've got to make it build a relationship with someone over a phone, then we'll do that.

But I'd rather do it on teams.

And if I can't do it on teams, I'd rather do it on face to face, rather.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think certainly the.

The I think people now underestimate the sociable aspect of that as well, isn't they face to face?

There's always a little bit more of a social kind of thing of it, which naturally makes you closer to people and stuff like that, which I think is over.

What's.

What's I.

What are IQ doing on there?

We are.

We recognize hybrid working.

We're three days a week.

We're a relationship business because we're based on the Lloyds market.

Yeah.

So we also for my world teams working together.

I have several teams that need to work together.

So we want people in as much.

You know we encourage people to be in.

We recognize the need for hybrid working and that enables people to do things.

We ask that people are in three general.

It's not.

It's not a sort of universal thing but generally the content is three days a week and you know we've got our office pretty full so weirdly we've done that from the get go.

So our office has always been pretty full.

Certainly middle of it.

We now have.

We push those envelopes as we've encouraged people.

But middle of the week even when I first joined was very, very full compared to where I'd worked previously.

Yeah, we've always had that into.

Because it was set from the beginning.

Yeah.

Certainly since the end of lockdown we.

We.

I think we've done pretty well.

So it's.

It's kind of an acceptable thing to be in three days a week.

It's understanding that we're relation and it comes back to a relationship business.

Yeah.

We are the.

What's one of the best things about insurance in London?

Isn't it is the fact that everyone's kind of close to each other and stuff like that.

Like to erode.

That would be a real shame I think but.

And I think you're right actually setting it.

That's an interesting point you said about setting the stall out kind of.

Because actually from the start.

Because actually moving the goalpost is actually generally what people don't like isn't it?

It's not.

They're kind of doing it like having it plan when it's always been that way.

Normally pretty happy about it.

I wanted to move it on to talk a little bit about and I'm really interested to actually see which ones you pick out.

Obviously you've had lots of different jobs in big, big.

Some big roles and big projects.

I wanted to kind of focus a bit on the.

The kind of big wins and the stuff in your career that you think were like really pivotal moments like that kind of forged the next next stage of your career or were really just things that you learned from and then maybe one or two of the things that possibly didn't go quite so well and what you learned from them so ever.

I've been very lucky.

You know.

I now worked out if you include all the companies I've worked for it's 47 companies I've worked for.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

If you read all my consulting classes over the years look, it's really difficult because I've learned something from everything.

Yeah, of course, everything.

And I think that's.

I always talk about this.

There are jobs that you pick out as foundational.

So I was involved in running the overnight cutover of the RAW bank and NatWest cards integration way back in the day.

And that was.

I got to, again, huge problem.

I sort of stuck my hand up, said I've done this before kind of, and got to run an amazing thing and make a huge difference.

So, of course, that's been really important to me and set me up for life with a whole bunch of experience, you know, almost kill me.

But it's like, great, because you learned so much.

Another great job was I was change director for Tesco Bank.

That was a run role.

So that was a proper run role with a change team of about, right, 80, 90 people.

Right.

Even as an interim, that I remember, you know, running a team things.

I'd.

I've been deputy of a team in Barclays, but actually I'm running the team.

So that's that thing of I know how to do this and I want to do it well.

Yeah.

And that was great.

And that was based in Edinburgh.

And not only all the good things in terms of your cv, but I can walk down the Edinburgh street and still meet people from that team and say hello.

And that's just a phenomenal thing.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to think, you know, the.

The job at Pick was my, you know, first job on xk.

That's a really important moment in your life when you're sitting in an XK and you're not the guest.

Yeah.

You're actually sitting there and that.

That's a behavioral thing.

And, and this job, I, you know, in two years, I've learned so much, done so much.

I've never achieved so much because it's such a breadth.

Yeah.

So that, yeah, it's.

They're all things you take away.

And that's what I've loved about my career, as I've learned.

I guess what I've learned is I've enjoyed learning things that haven't gone right.

There have been projects where, you know, there have been a couple of contracts where we've said, you know, let's call time on it.

It's not working, you know, because this is a business transaction.

It's not working for you, it's not working for me.

I think this.

And so what was I done for that?

It's about having a mature conversation, not being scared of the fact it's just a thing.

Yeah.

It's not working.

So, you know, I don't think you're getting good value.

You don't.

It doesn't feel like can we have an adult conversation?

Yeah.

Because not, you know, hiring anybody either interim or permanent.

It's a very personal thing.

If it doesn't work, then let's kind of like have a look.

So that was good because that's quite a difficult conversation because you're basically at that point cutting your own throat.

Yeah, yeah.

But I've never regretted it because I managed, you know, managing outside, you start to do that.

Yeah.

So I think that's, you know, it gives you more of that confidence to be able to just make.

Have difficult conversations because it's pretty scary.

Someone say I'd like to resign and I don't quite know what I'm going to do next.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I wanted to because one of the things that I just picked out is just about kind of your career.

There's obviously been lots of variety in regards to different roles, different companies, but also lots of.

There's lots in financial services, but different parts of it as well.

Well, do you.

Again, kind of going back to the kind of bits of advice maybe probably more so somewhere early in their career now is.

Do you.

Do you think that is.

Has been kind of pivotal to what you've been able to.

To.

To achieve like that.

That variety and that kind of contracting.

Lots of different roles, lots of different projects.

Because you mean the, the amount of stuff that you've seen and experienced in 20 odd years is.

Is going to be significantly more than probably someone who worked in maybe five companies in that period of time.

So what it helps with is about.

Certainly when I was a contractor, it helped with the.

Well, you haven't really done anything.

I said well, I hadn't done anything in credit cards, I hadn't done anything in insurance.

I hadn't.

So that was my standard interview answer.

Yeah.

Which is.

Doesn't really matter because it doesn't.

You do have to have something.

You know, you can't go from sort of necessarily from one industry another without some sense of it.

But you can certainly the more variety you've got, you should demonstrate the ability that that becomes.

If you go, that becomes less important.

So that bit contributed massively to getting over that.

You know, all hiring contract or perm is a.

Is a buying moment, is getting over the buyer's fear of is that person going to be able to deliver?

You can say, well, I didn't know by Being able to say, I can deliver in all these different places.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it helps that.

It also helps.

I have this phrase again that I use is it's helped me actually do my job because.

Because I know I never understand everything because I'm not a detailed person.

I don't second guess the experts.

Yeah.

Which makes you ask a lot more questions.

I.

When I was an interim, I said I didn't want to do the same job twice, I want to do something different.

Yeah.

Because otherwise I thought I'd become expert in it.

So part of what was made is.

Makes me ask lots of questions because I don't understand it.

Yeah.

And then when you ask Dr.

Question seven says, oh, yeah, and.

And enables you to dig into things from a logic point of view, it makes you cure not knowing stuff.

Makes you curious.

Weirdly.

Yeah.

So it really helps.

I couldn't ever say that in an interview, but that's the reality of it.

Yeah.

Because you rely on other things.

And the third bit, I guess, is that Sherlock Holmes said that when you have the facts in 99 cases in front of you can solve the hundredth.

And what you see when you go to different companies with different people, that the problems are all the same.

Yeah, they really are.

And when people say, this is really complex and really difficult, you go, yeah, but let me tell you about this in a retailer.

Let me tell you about this in a logistics firm.

Does that sound familiar?

You go, yeah, so they will fix that and they might fix that 10 years ago.

Yeah.

And they will.

So particularly insurance, which is sort of the more historic end of financial services.

You know, I say, this is what it looks like in asset management.

Is that what we want?

Yeah.

So it's perfectly.

You've got.

Yeah.

Some case studies from different industries you can use.

Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense.

It's really interesting.

What about.

So the.

We spoke a bit about the.

The kind of different variety in.

In stuff there.

Do you think that has it ever in your career been a.

A negative?

Like, is it.

Has anyone ever used that as a kind of.

You're not an expert in insurance.

Oh, yeah, exactly.

So you get that at a credibility level.

Yeah.

And that's just something that, as you get more experienced, you just find a way to get credible.

So I get that even now, you know, there's a.

There's people, not necessarily in the firm, but there's a.

Oh, doesn't I just sit there and say, I don't understand this stuff and you get look on people's.

But I find the more experience you get, the more confident you get about being really open about it.

But yeah, there's a credibility issue.

But my view with all issues as again as I get more experienced is now it's all about managing through them.

It's not a reason not to do something.

So you just got to deal with it it.

So there is that credibility issue.

And then I think, you know, sometimes when you've got experts you're trying to one of the challenges.

Well, if I've got a single point expert, how do I know whether telling the truth?

Because I'm not an expert.

Let's take it right.

I don't come.

I run it.

I don't come through an IT background.

So you've got to work out, you've got to take the kettle.

How do I work out when I've got someone telling me something whether that's true or not?

Because what you get is not an expert.

So you get there an individual's expert.

Yeah.

So if you take IT security, no two people in IT security agree on anything.

Right.

And.

And that.

But that for me that's your job as a leader is you can't be an expert in everything.

Yeah.

So almost stop worrying about that and find a way find.

It's all about find a way for me find a way to deal with that problem rather than.

But yeah, those are things that you have to deal with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then I guess moving kind of to like towards the end of the night like this, this kind of bit is what's the.

What's the future for David?

What do.

What do you do you have kind of.

Do you think COO is the.

Not necessarily.

I'm not trying to create you a move out of IQ or any of that.

But, but the, the.

Do you think COO is kind of what you found your calling in that kind of role?

That's what.

That's where you're So I think ambitions to be CEO.

I want no ambitions to be CEO because again back to credibility.

Yeah.

You know, most CEOs come from a financial or an sales marketing background and that's the right thing because that's what the business is about.

Yeah.

That's not me.

I'm.

I've always been the person who fixes it for someone else.

You know, if I go back to my first job.

Yeah.

I'm.

It's still that answer.

I just now fix it for the CEO and the board rather than the.

Chief want that Person to fix their four.

Like to be able to buddy up.

With, you know, if I take the West Wing, I want to be the chief of staff.

I don't want to be the president.

Right.

If everybody's watched the Channel 4 program, you know, my ideal job was that, that, you know, so I'm not, I'm not applying to be Donald Trump's chief of staff.

Obviously, he's already got one.

But what I want is, it's.

We'll see where this goes.

What I know is I'm not the COO for incremental change.

That's not me.

I'm very open about that.

Yeah.

So there's a point at which the heavy lifting's done now.

Don't know.

I can't tell you when there are.

There's, you know, plenty, plenty in the tank right now.

And then I'm going to go and look, you know, if you can sense there's always that challenge, I'll go and look for another challenge that's bigger.

You know, I've learned a lot here.

Yeah.

You know, and it's been great.

And there's somewhere there'll be another challenge.

Yeah.

Now, if it's related to iq, that's great.

If it's not.

So.

But, but, but it's fine.

That other challenge.

Yeah.

But, you know, and again, I come back to being about being flexible.

Great.

If it's not the COO role, if that's not on the cards, though, where do I take the skills I've got to apply?

You know, I'd like it to be another COO type role because I kind of enjoy.

But it's that variety challenge, ability to make an outcome that, you know, job titles are interesting, but those things are important.

Yeah.

And what about for, for kind of IQ for the next.

What's kind of the top things on your agenda over the next kind of 12, 18 months, couple of years.

It's really.

I kind of touched on it.

It's continuing to deliver our strategy.

We're debt and taker debt data and tech led and, you know, delivering all of those things.

We've got a great team, we're growing.

Our growth is keeping that growth going, safe growth.

It's still exponential change, but it's more of the same rather than there's no right turn.

It's just coming back to building the thing that we set out to build in the first place.

Yeah.

And we'll see where we go, you know, opportunities as they present themselves.

We've got a view of what we want to do.

But there's no, there's no kind of hard and fast again.

We're going to do this and we're going to do that in the next year because there's always.

The world changes.

We've got a view of where we want to go.

Roadmap, but that's it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Well, look, we're coming towards the end.

I've got a couple of quick fire questions to throw at you.

So the first one is, which brand or company do you most admire and why?

Oh, I had to think really hard about this and I cannot think of a company because everything to me is about leadership.

Yeah.

And companies come and come and go.

So it's business leaders like Steve Jobs.

I've got to think of some now.

But it's.

It's really competent business leaders rather than the companies, because the companies, companies, they're companies that I buy into for a certain point in time, then they dip away again.

Yeah, yeah.

You.

I'm much more.

Show me a great business leader.

Yeah.

And it's not just Steve Jobs, but there's Stuart Roser when he was at M.

S.

Right.

You know, really good people who made a real impact and delivered a great business and a great set business outcomes that really, that really float my boat.

Okay, yeah.

Next one is, what's the one piece of advice you wish you had when you first started your career?

It's going to be okay because I think when we start a career, some people are really confident, Right.

But most of us just when we're sitting there and I say this, I remember even at sort of mid-20s, sitting there going, oh, my goodness, what is going on here?

And you're sitting there going, what's going to happen?

And actually get through it.

Yeah, yeah.

So I would say to people, I say, people, don't worry.

It might feel really scary right now, but it's going to be okay because it always is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a really good bit of advice.

If you could swap jobs with one person for the day, who would it be?

I cannot think of anybody because every other person's job is probably.

The grass is always greener.

And I cannot think.

I, you know, there's lots of challenges in my job, but I can't think who I'd swap for, you know, except for the job that paid gazillions and had no work and even that probably got a problem with it.

So I can't, I can't.

I keep telling people, for me, it would just be Donald Trump I'd just love.

I'd love to see what life is like through his eyes.

Just for a day.

But I'm not sure I'd want to be in full time, but.

Okay.

Best kind of business related book?

Non fiction kind of book.

Best non fiction book.

It's.

Are you a big reader?

Not of business books.

I listen to audible thrillers because they pass the time when I'm traveling.

But the best and it is not.

It's a military history book but every person in business should read it.

It's booked by a historian called Richard Holmes.

Used to be on the television called Firing Line and explains how people tick in battle.

And it's all about how people work, not about how countries invade things.

And it told me everything about how people behave and why they behave.

And it's a fascinating book.

What's it called, sorry?

Firing Line by Richard Holmes.

It's got a new name now, but it's probably.

It's the book that changed me.

I read that book when I was 20 and it actually made me understand how people work and given people do everything.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Amazing.

Next one is.

What's the best career decision you've ever made?

The next one.

Because there's always another thing so I don't look backwards.

You can't.

Project manager.

The past.

Yeah.

I've been very lucky with everything.

Yeah.

And so it's.

The next one's the best, do you think?

Not necessarily the best of it.

Do you think there's one in your.

Your career that was like kind of really pivotal to the next one thing you did?

No, because everything I go.

That was great.

You know, just taking a job on the spot was great.

Yeah.

Going to Royal Mail taught me loads.

Going to PA taught me loads.

Going to Barclays taught me quite a lot.

Going to that small consultancy's help being interim.

I cannot.

I just.

That's why I said the next one.

Yeah, just because the next one, you know, coming here.

The next one will be good.

Yeah.

Okay.

And who's the.

The kind of role model, the one person you kind of admire the most.

So I said the family trade was in the army and there's a particular general that people might not have heard of from the Second World War called Bill Slim.

And he was an amazing people leader and he achieved so much with so little and he fought the war in the jungles and he was just such a competent people leader.

Measured, logical, enabling rather than kind of like follow me.

And just a really skilled leader.

Very different from what people might expect.

A Military general to be.

And really, you know, he was, you know, because ultimately our job is, you know, as a leader is to get lots of people to do stuff, it's not to do it yourself.

Right, yeah.

And he's a very good role model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay.

And then the last one which I ask everyone is, what's the best thing about working insurance?

You've obviously not been insurance your whole career as well, but so I actually.

Asked two of our apprentices, we do the scheme where we've taken some apprentices in to run our operation, you know, where we've taken them from educational backgrounds where they wouldn't normally.

Yeah, yeah, think about insurance.

And so I asked them, I said, what was to this question, what do you think?

And they said, we like it.

It's really interesting because I said, you know, obviously insurance isn't what people jump at this.

It's really interesting.

And that is I like interesting, complex, hard things to do that challenge me and enabled me to make a difference.

Yeah.

And all of that is offered by insurance.

So they were, they were right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I totally agree.

Well, look, that's the end.

So thanks.

Thanks so much for, for making some time.

I know you're really busy.

I'm sure that you mean after you may have set yourself up for lots of networking.

I'm sure there'll be people that want to connect and stuff.

But is.

Are you okay for people to reach out and connect?

That's fine.

It's just people just to put an explanation.

So I know it's somebody that's actually interested in this, that would really help.

Just so I understand the reason why, but I'm always happy to help people because as I said, the kindness of strangers has helped me all the way.

Yeah.

And is LinkedIn the best place?

LinkedIn is the best place.

Amazing.

Well, look, that's brings us in.

Like, thanks once again everyone.

Keep listening.

Lots of, lots more episodes come in.

Like subscribe, comment, all the usual, usual stuff everyone gets you to ask.

But yeah, David, thanks very much.

Not at all.

Thank you.

And that's it for today's episode of beyond the Desk.

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