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Leadership BITES
Leadership BITES
Brad Englert-Spheres of Influence
Summary
In this episode of the Leadership Bites podcast, Guy Bloom interviews Brad Englert, who shares his extensive career journey from Accenture to becoming a Chief Information Officer at the University of Texas at Austin.
They discuss the importance of building authentic business relationships, the role of trust in influence, and strategies for effective networking. Brad emphasizes the need for intentionality in professional relationships and the significance of customer retention for business success.
In this conversation, Brad Englert discusses the importance of understanding goals and aspirations in leadership, the significance of building relationships and managing expectations, and the necessity of creating a culture of openness and communication. He emphasizes the art of apology and accountability in leadership, and shares practical strategies for managing expectations effectively. The dialogue highlights the value of discretionary effort and the importance of fostering trust and collaboration within teams.
Takeaways
- Brad Englert has over 22 years of experience at Accenture.
- He transitioned from a successful career to a CIO role at a university.
- Building a culture of transparency and customer focus is crucial.
- Trust is the foundation of effective influence in business.
- Networking should focus on long-term relationships, not just transactions.
- Intentionality in relationships leads to better outcomes.
- Understanding others' goals is key to successful collaboration.
- Repeat customers are a sign of successful relationship management.
- Mentorship and continuous learning are vital in career development.
- Authentic relationships can withstand the test of time. Understanding goals and aspirations is crucial for effective leadership.
- People are not mind readers; communication is key.
- Building relationships requires vulnerability and openness.
- Discretionary effort comes from genuine care and interest in team members.
- Creating a culture of communication helps in managing expectations.
- The art of apology builds trust and accountability.
- Managing expectations is an ongoing process, not just annual reviews.
- Using techniques like 'Whoa' can help in managing urgent requests.
- Introverts can be encouraged to engage through structured processes.
- Fostering a supportive environment allows for innovation and challenge.
Sound Bites
- "Be strategic and intentional."
- "Networking is longevity of relationship."
- "Use your words."
- "People are not mind readers."
- "Discretionary effort is the difference."
- "It's a muscle memory."
- "You can still be somebody that people trust."
- "I will get to the bottom of it."
- "You have to wipe the slate clean with me."
- "Just saying whoa gives the space and time."
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Guy Bloom (00:01)
So Brad, it is absolutely, well, exciting to have you on this episode of Leadership Bytes. Welcome.
Brad Englert (00:10)
Thanks for inviting me.
Guy Bloom (00:12)
Well, you know, I have a privilege of...
If I didn't have a podcast and I just randomly sent you an email saying, could I have an hour of your time? I might get a no, who are you? So one of the beautiful things about a podcast is there's a reason to speak to people such as yourself. Now I always start the podcast in the same way, which is I clearly know who you are. I don't do an introduction, but it'd be great just to hear that overview of, know, if somebody met you at a barbecue and they said, ⁓ Brad, you know, what do you do? What are you about? What would you say?
and how would you talk about that?
Brad Englert (00:48)
Well, I was with Accenture for 22 years. 10 of those years were as a partner and my practice area was higher education. So I worked with ⁓ Ohio State, Michigan, Columbia, Vanderbilt, the big publics, big privates. I happily retired and two years later got a call from my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, and they needed some help with an IT strategy. Well, I'm perfect for the role, hour a week pro bono, so they're too cheap to pay me.
And that was in October. By March, I was halftime. June, full time. And I was there for eight years as the Chief Information Officer.
Guy Bloom (01:30)
remember now that he said that I did some work with Experian and I was in Austin, Texas at their data hub. I remember going into it and yeah so I and I remember leaving the hotel which was across from the data hub and the young person in reception said shall I get you a cab and
Brad Englert (01:36)
⁓ wonderful.
Guy Bloom (01:52)
being thinking British and tough and one minute I went no I can see where I'm going it's just over there and she went no I'll get you a cab I said no I can see it's just over there I'll walk over and I walked outside and of course with the humidity my t-shirt my shirt just went dripping wet I walked straight back in she said well you go and change your shirt I'll get you that cab I know I went okay I get it there I get it why everybody takes a taxi everywhere but anyway
Brad Englert (02:11)
⁓ that's funny.
Guy Bloom (02:19)
completely by the by. do you know, well thanks for that Brad. And I guess ⁓ what would be really nice is to get a sense of just that journey that you've been on that says, you you've written a book called Spears of Influence. So I'd like to talk about that as well. And maybe we just get a...
Brad Englert (02:21)
Ahem.
Guy Bloom (02:45)
sense of that overall journey about being in Accenture for example and an organisation of
significant size that most people will have heard of it in a significant role. And maybe it would be just nice to get a sense of some of that experience and that journey and what it's enabled you to talk about and what it's enabled you to go. I think that's given me a certain insight or wisdom or experience around certain topics. It'd be nice maybe to kind of get a sense of that.
Brad Englert (03:21)
Well, after undergraduate school, I went to Australia and taught high school for a year and a half, which was a lot of fun. And I knew I wanted to go to grad school. And I grew up outside of Chicago, so I knew I wanted to be warm. And as you know, it's pretty warm in Austin, Texas. And I heard of the university and enrolled in the graduates.
and fortunately did my research in the use of computers in government and I met a fellow who worked for Accenture and he asked what my studies were. I said, well using computers in government. goes, hell Brad, that's what we do. So ⁓ I was fortunate to ⁓ get hired and the culture of the firm, I did some research. They really focus on training, continual learning.
mentoring and coaching. So even as a senior partner, I was expected to teach in our learning center outside of Chicago at least once a year. I expected to be mentored and have mentees. And it was just part of the culture that you grew the team bigger. I started there were 40,000 consultants in the firm. Now there are 700,000 consultants at Accenture. So it's
Yeah, 40 years later.
Guy Bloom (04:49)
It's just bonkers, isn't it, in terms of...
Brad Englert (04:50)
But I just really enjoyed the
developing people. And I actually looked at all my annual reviews for 22 years. And I could say without a doubt, my partners really did a great job in guiding me in how to be a partner. So I wasn't the best programmer in the world, but they didn't hire me to be a programmer. They hired me to be a partner. And they often gave me stretch roles where...
I was a manager, but they put me in a senior manager role. I was a senior manager, they put me in executive role. And it was really a great way to learn because, you know, if you didn't, if it didn't work out, you know, they didn't hire you to do the role. So you can always, ⁓ you know, learn more and try it again. And so just the impact it had on me. ⁓
And they taught me from day one, the person you're working with, your peer, consultant, or your customer, 25, 30 years later, might be your boss, might be a customer, might be an equal of yours. And sure enough, the person I started with became a chief information officer of a huge organization the same year I did, 25 years later, which is pretty impressive. And then when I got to the university, I inherited
kind of a troubled organization, the central IT group, 330 people. Their culture was one of heroics and ⁓ rewarding ⁓ how you dealt with fire drills, which is the opposite of my style, which is, you know, I want to be proactively focused on customers. And so I had to work with my organization, my direct reports.
to articulate what are the values that we want to have as an organization. And we had feedback from the campus. They wanted transparency. They wanted truthfulness. They wanted consistency. They wanted customer service. All the things we weren't rewarding at the time. And of my seven direct reports, three of them fell by the wayside. So I was able to fill them with people who had more of a customer focus.
And we slowly changed the organization. One of my direct reports read the manuscript. said, Brad, you forgot my story. I said, well, which story? She says, when you demanded that I go out and meet with this person, this manager who hated us. Oh, yeah, now I remember I did it. I did demand that you do that. And I thought you were insane. Why would I go out there and meet with this person?
Well, they're mad at us because of past transgressions. We were not a good partner. And so I said, well, just go apologize and get meet with them once a month. And sure enough, after seven, eight months, that person became an advocate for us as we got better. She was able to build trust us more. Her boss, who also had bad behavior.
experienced bad behavior from the prior regime, he became an advocate. So I would meet with seven to 10 of my peers across campus. My direct reports would meet with seven to 10 of their peers and that created almost like a nervous system where we would get feedback on our services. We would tell them, you know, change is coming. We...
When in my first year, everything was on premise, meaning we had our own machines and they were old, eight to 10 years old. So over eight years, we moved as much as the IT services we could to the cloud. Learning management system, email, we had 140 email systems. Just ridiculous. Well, now we have one. Then, you know, ⁓
work day for HR payroll. all those services, each of those projects took two years. Well, that means you're irritating everybody at least once a year. You're changing out their phones, you're changing out their ⁓ email. And ⁓ so you had to have that communication, those open lines of communication. And that really helped build trust. I had a peer of mine who would call me up if he heard a rumor.
Brad, I heard a rumor that you don't have enough licenses for the students when they do their training to work in a lab. Well, we need that for federal requirements. You know, that's a great rumor. I'll go check. And fortunately, we did have enough licenses for the students. But had I not had that communication two-way, that could have festered and blown up into something big.
Guy Bloom (10:04)
So there's a real, first of all I have to ⁓ pause and go back to 700,000 associates, which I know is, that's just not a number I even begun to understand as, I mean obviously it's globally, but that's still just a huge number of people. So I know it's not necessarily what we're here to talk about, but I'm just like wow, that's just something. So in these experiences, this has led you,
Brad Englert (10:18)
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (10:33)
to have a, I guess, a line of sight on how to make things work, how to get people onside, how to create. And I do like that, you that you said it's like a nervous system, but she's seeing things like an ecosystem in some ways as a living, breathing kind of system, which I think I'm quite interested in. So you wrote a book, which we'll put the links to, but you wrote a book called Spears of Influence.
Brad Englert (10:50)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (11:03)
⁓ And ⁓ that's the how to create and nurture authentic business relationships. And I can hear that in the narrative of what you're talking about. And if somebody was to look at the book and go, ⁓ know, go on Amazon, everybody's got a book, right? Why would you want somebody to read yours? What do you expect them to gain from it? And why would you want to encourage people to say, you know what?
If this is what you want to get from Vogue, this is why you should look at mine.
Brad Englert (11:35)
Well, my goal was to really help people grow in their careers, ⁓ either early in their careers or mid-career. And several people who read the manuscript gave copies of the book to their adult children who said, you won't get this in business school. This is really important to be successful, but no one's going to teach you this. And then the mid-career and people of my vintage would say,
Gosh darn it, I wish I had this book when I started 30 years ago. So it's just a way to focus on those relationships that'll help you be successful by helping your clients be successful, your boss be successful, your direct reports. And there are three principles I found when I finished the manuscript. There are three principles that applied to all the business relationships.
And one is understanding their goals and aspirations. You know, who doesn't want to have someone understand what your goals and aspirations are? Certainly as a boss, I welcome that question. ⁓ Second, set and manage expectations. So simple, but I was really bad at it early in my career and I got much better at it later in my career. And that can save you so much grief over time. And third,
genuinely care about their success. So this is way beyond networking, which is superficial and transactional. You know, I listened to your podcast on the craft of leadership. It's developing the craft. You know, it's a learnable skill, you don't have to be born with it. But a lot of people don't understand the importance and they just want to stay in their office and stay behind a screen.
and you can't be effective doing that.
Guy Bloom (13:35)
And I'm very interested in that, what you've just said there, I think there's something about... Some people may be more innately confident and they may be more innately gregarious and that's... so it's technically easier for them, I guess, as a starting point. But I get... but also, you know, when you move into roles in an organisation, it's not just about doing the things that you like doing or the things that you're instinctively good at. So that word craft to me means conscious...
Competence it means I've had to learn how to
Brad Englert (14:05)
Yeah, that's right.
Guy Bloom (14:08)
Do it we probably didn't all start off being able to read a PNL or you know, know, it is so you've you've you've learned that so If I look at just what it is that we're talking about there were spheres of influence the Sometimes that word influence can Maybe if it's misunderstood and tell me what you think about this people can think about it as being
Brad Englert (14:12)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (14:35)
influencing people, which is almost like a Machiavellian, you know, learn some neuro-linguistic programming and you can, you know, put people into a position where you can, you know, have influence over them through the language that you use or the way that you anchor certain ways. And I, back in the day, did some NLP training, got certified and I go, well, it's all very well. But there is a manipulation to it. There is, which isn't the same as, I love your phrase that, know, caring.
actually how do I influence you? Well actually if I actually believe that you have an interest in me and actually it's beyond just your gain then actually then I may feel comfortable with you which means I trust you which means it's not that you're influential in the sense of the way that you're...
Brad Englert (15:10)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (15:23)
operating but I'm willing to listen to you because actually you know I know you have me at the core of what you're thinking therefore it will have influence over me and I just wonder if I'm interpreting I'm layering my thoughts on what I've just heard is that what bring that to life maybe for me yeah
Brad Englert (15:34)
Mm-hmm.
that's absolutely, ⁓ that's absolutely. Well, you use the word
trust and that's the key. How do you build trust? And you don't build trust by thinking all about yourself and being transactional. So I had a vendor who showed up once a year for his check, which was always 10 % more than the prior year. They didn't care about us at all. And the vendor was supporting a learning management system.
which supports 54,000 students and 4,000 faculty. And they hated this system. It was clunky and slow. And so I worked with the vice provost who is responsible for curriculum. And she said, in order to move the university ahead, we need to get a new learning management system. So her team and mine worked with faculty and students.
And we evaluated 15 of these learning management systems and they picked this leading edge new generation learning management system that was intuitive to use, it followed standards, and it took us two years working together to make that transition. But the students loved it, the faculty loved it. There was a pull to the new system and they hated the old one ⁓ so much that
No one was saying bye-bye or worried about saying bye. And we celebrated when we finished. We had a big party. School actually has a bowling alley and we had cake and everything. We actually had a tombstone cake made for the old vendor and had rest in peace. And I was so happy to fire that vendor who never heard the bullet coming. I mean, it's so clueless.
And it's like he thought he had us over the barrel because we're so big, it'd be too hard for us to change. Well, guess what? We changed. Now the new vendor, sales VP, would call me every month to see how we're doing. That was cool. I still talk to him. Ten years later, ⁓ he cared. And we had things that needed to change in the product that he
worked with his organization to get it changed and guess what? He sold it to a number of Research One universities our size after that. So it was a win-win.
Guy Bloom (18:13)
It's really interesting actually, I've noticed that when I was younger, I would do things as a process. When I was managing an account, I would make a phone call to check in. But I was following a process, I didn't really care. And then as I got older, and I started to not chase an outcome, but actually try to be...
Brad Englert (18:26)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (18:42)
you know, call it off service or to add value, then actually what I noticed was it wasn't about whether I liked the person because...
Brad Englert (18:45)
Right.
Guy Bloom (18:53)
that then may affect or even infect my reaction because you can't like everybody, right? There's a distribution curve for people that you gravitate towards. But actually when I started to it from a place of adding value, then it really didn't matter. My thoughts on the individual became irrelevant. And actually what I wanted to do was to add value. yeah, and guess what? People responded to that because it was genuine. And technically the process wasn't different, but my intention was different.
Brad Englert (19:08)
subscribe.
which is more rewarding.
Yes,
that's right. I had a professor, I have this professor I met with when I first got the CIO role and I've known him for years. We worked on a project 15 years prior, successful project, 40 year professor, really crusty, electrical engineer. And I said, okay, give me some advice. goes, get out of the office and tell people you give a damn. And that's exactly what I did.
Guy Bloom (19:25)
Does that make sense?
Brad Englert (19:51)
because my predecessor was the Imperial CIO, where you come to the ivory tower and supplicate. And it's like, I'm a humble practitioner. I need all the help I can get. And so my peers, like the VP for Public Safety, I met with them every month because it wasn't a matter of if something would go wrong, when it would go wrong, and how do we work together when it would go wrong.
Yeah, we had a bomb scare. We had a shooting. We had a murder. We had 100,000 people in the stadium every other Saturday in the fall. We our teams work together to make key people safe. And so it was ⁓ intentional. And that's what I. Talk people like coach, I said, be strategic and intentional. You don't have to have. Authentic relationships with everybody, you know, prioritize. You know your boss is obvious.
You want to have a good relationship with your boss. Direct reports, ⁓ Executive leaders, well, you better be prepared to work with them when you get the chance. All your staff, you know, what values are you communicating to all your staff? And that's the inner sphere of influence. And you have external customers, peers and influencers and strategic vendor partners, where you're probably meeting less frequently, but still you're seeking what are their goals? How can you help, as you mentioned?
And if you can't help, can you get someone who can help them? You know, sometimes you're not the answer. And finally, genuinely caring. The litmus test of a good authentic business relationship is 10 years can go by and you reconnect and it's like you never stop talking to this person. And I had a woman call me. She was a great client. Her son was applying for a job at the university.
He was an attorney. I knew her son when he was five years old. And I said, of course I can help. So I talked to him and I said, look, universities all share information. So they have this association of lawyers across the universities. Find their website, find out what all the issues are and you'll have a leg up. Because when I have a contract with
a large company like Google, I get a contract from University of California, Berkeley. I don't start from a blank sheet of paper. And he got the job. It was just awesome. But she hadn't talked to me in 10 years or 15 years, but she felt comfortable doing that.
Guy Bloom (22:33)
It's amazing how that happens actually how if you mentioned about, what's that word? God blimey, I've lost the phrase for it, is when you're networking. You know, this whole idea of networking, but actually, yeah, you can make introductions, but the truth of the matter is networking is longevity of relationship, which means people talk about you. And that's like having a
Brad Englert (22:46)
Hmm.
Guy Bloom (23:02)
landscape gardener come round or something like that or somebody to do some tiling they do a great job fine but then they engage with you and you you had a you know they're in your house which is your space and they treated it with respect and they wore covers on their shoes and they said hey listen don't worry I won't leave any marks and they're entering into your world and they're seeing your perspective and they're paying attention to it and then of course you spend the next 20 years going use this person
Brad Englert (23:23)
You
Mm-hmm.
Yep, that's right.
Guy Bloom (23:27)
You know, and that's, so
actually, you know, is it how many people can you network with? Well, it's probably not how many, it's how many people can have a genuine experience with you. Now that might be a lot less, right?
Brad Englert (23:36)
Right.
So in 40 years, in 40, I
want to ask you this question. In 40 years, I've never been to a networking event where I got a customer. I got some business cards. I mean, what a waste of time.
Guy Bloom (23:51)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and I'm sure every now and then somebody gets something because you just happen to be, ⁓ actually, I just happen to be looking for this. I guess there is that pot shot moment of like winning the lottery, really, isn't it? You you get that, but you're right. And I think...
Brad Englert (24:05)
Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I say be
strategic and intentional. If you want to sell to an organization, go to their website, understand their mission, their vision, their goals or values. And then there's a technique that I learned at Accenture called power mapping. Get out their organization chart and circle, you know, the obvious ones, but who else is influential in the organization?
The chief of staff at a large Research 1 University, similar to the size of UT Austin, of the chief of staff of the CFO is very influential. She was a 30-year employee, had the trust of the campus, all the business officers, and she and I worked together to change out all their accounting and payroll systems, which again, affects everybody, and we're very successful. Then I went to another Research 1 University.
I meet the chief of staff of the CFO and she literally says, I'm not that influential. I've only been here a year. You don't need to meet with me. It's like, awesome. That saved me a lot of time.
Guy Bloom (25:16)
isn't it? And I was just thinking about that in terms of just...
business works, is, yeah, you can, I can look at organizations and have an intention to make a connection with, but what I find actually is, know people. And if I let the people I know know that I'm trying to reach out or connect with, then generally speaking, somebody will offer me a route in, you know, and not always, you know, because I'm not.
Brad Englert (25:45)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (25:52)
trying to conquer the world. But I think there is something there about, yes, you can map out and you can approach and that is the right thing to do. But at the same time, if you build relationships over a period of time, then the people you're trying to contact with will...
there will be an access route into them very often through the people that you know. Or they'll know, although, well, I don't know them directly, but I'll check with my network and I'll see if.
Brad Englert (26:15)
Mm-hmm.
Right? The real network.
Guy Bloom (26:25)
Yeah, exactly. And what do
they mean by that? Look, you know, you're a good egg. might, you know, there's the stuff in the emotional bank account with you. I'll ask around. But actually, I do know somebody that knows somebody that knows Bob. So actually, I'm going to make that introduction that way. Oh, OK. Thank you very much. You know, all of these things. I think maybe as you get older, you realize that the...
Brad Englert (26:33)
Okay.
Guy Bloom (26:47)
It's like when people talk about selling, go, build a sales funnel and become a thought leader and everybody, you'll be working on a beach in the Bahamas before you know it. Yeah, I don't think that's the way it goes. I think you need to...
Brad Englert (26:57)
You ⁓
Well, you know, one thing the firm
and you probably had this experience that 80 to 90 % of our customers are repeat customers. Well, why is that? Because you built that trust, you set and managed expectations, you delivered, you helped them be successful, you're successful doing that. And I had a company that I consulted with, their sales team had 50 % failure rate.
So they would sell, then lose half their customers. And it was a very expensive way to do business. And so I met with the manager of the sales team. goes, said, do they know their customers? They didn't know their customers. They had no clue. They didn't want to know their customers. And so we taught them how to prioritize. That's how you get a sales funnel and focus on the highest probability and then do your.
homework, you know, do your work. And then they got to 70, 80 % retainage. And of course, that helped their bottom line tremendously.
Guy Bloom (28:12)
Yeah, if you're always looking to fill the funnel at the top, that's expensive, isn't it? Versus, you know, and I think about myself even just right now and 90 % of what I do is through either somebody, somebody I know or somebody, you know, almost like somebody's said, you know, this is a good gardener.
Brad Englert (28:16)
Yeah, very expensive.
Yep. Yep.
Guy Bloom (28:34)
somebody's offered
me to somebody else, I'm looking for a coach, well I've worked with this fella, blah, blah. So I think you're right, I think that is the way through. In terms of, ⁓ I'm just looking at the titles in your book, chapters one to four, relationship with the boss, relationships with executive leaders, relationships with direct reports, relationships with all of your staff.
Brad Englert (28:40)
That's right.
Guy Bloom (29:03)
and you've put those themes there about understanding goals and aspirations and and managing expectations and caring about their success. As you go into that part one, that internal sphere of influence, is that the common theme, the three outputs or as I go into relationship with Boston, relationship with executive leaders, what am I going to get that's different in each of those chapters?
Brad Englert (29:11)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Well, are ⁓
subtle differences, but definitely with your boss and direct reports. A lot of people are scared to ask their boss what their goals and aspirations are. You know, it's not that hard. You just have to ask. And I had two phrases in the book that I found. ⁓ One, people are not mind readers.
So if you're the boss, your people can't read your mind. And if you're the other phrase was use your words. So if you're a direct report and you need something, you need to tell your boss, you know, they can't read your mind either. And the first 90 days started in a new organization, as I did at the university, I met with all the direct reports and said, what are your goals and aspirations? Some wanted to be a CIO one day.
Okay, when I go on vacation, you'll be the interim CIO. Others want to be purely technical. Well, by goodness, we need you to be, we need purely technical people. Great. And then, you know, setting and managing expectations every week, not once a year in the annual review, but I would meet with my direct reports in their offices every week.
for 30 minutes so I would get to walk across campus, bump into people, my peers, my customers. Their people would see me coming to their boss. So I'd show the flag, have a chat on the way, and...
you know, think that helps build their credibility. Part of that fire drill culture and ⁓ heroics reward was they were just bad at setting and managing expectations. So I had a new ⁓ director who was worried about this deadline he inherited from the prior director and
He was really nervous. He said, you know, I don't see how this can be done in six months. And I said, you know what? It's taken us 40 years to get this way. We can wait another couple of months, you know, just work it out with your team and come up with a new date. mean. But he had the courage to ask. He didn't just.
Guy Bloom (31:54)
So there's something here about
closeness, the willingness to be, to, as you say, not sit in the office and just manage remotely. And I'm wondering, I'm wondering for the people that are naturally, you know, if I think about people I know who just naturally, you know, they go to a party and they're just naturally outgoing and they naturally, well, you could argue that it's easier for them.
Brad Englert (32:05)
Right, right.
Guy Bloom (32:23)
So there is something here about, those that it is not a natural characteristic for people that are not maybe just as confident, because seniority doesn't mean confidence sometimes, even though it possibly should, there's really something about understanding that actually this is your route to...
not just having control through process, but having control through people wanting to work for you. That's where the discretionary effort's going to come from because they actually think that you have an interest in them. There's something there about realizing that you're going to have to, you know, if it's easy for you, fine, but if it's not, you're going to have to make yourself, call it vulnerable, but you're going to have to expose yourself so it becomes familiar, so it becomes normal for you.
Brad Englert (32:55)
Right?
Guy Bloom (33:12)
And if you're not willing to do that, you're never really going to get past transactional management. You're not going to get to people having a care. And if you drop the ball, they're there for you. They're thinking about things at the weekend because they want to contribute. Because I think discretionary effort is the difference between things getting done and...
Brad Englert (33:20)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (33:36)
been genuine movement in an organisation when everybody's giving beyond the tasking. That feels as if that's one of the massive roots to it.
Brad Englert (33:38)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and my approach was ⁓ I'm a team player. I need all the best thinking to solve these some intractable problems. And, you know, I'll take all the help I can get.
Guy Bloom (34:03)
But do think that's something that people, ⁓ for some people, it's easy to talk to senior people, it's easy to offer their opinions, others maybe from a bad experience or just their lack of experience. It's not so much speaking truth to power, which is probably a slightly different thing, but it's that, know, do I have the permission to speak to somebody that's senior or, well, I've never asked before. And I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.
Brad Englert (34:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
Guy Bloom (34:33)
role of somebody who is somebody's line manager is you have to create an environment where it's not just that I say the door's always open. Actually if I'm not experiencing conversation coming back at me, curiosity coming back at me, challenge coming back at me, innovation coming back at me, then actually it may not be that
Brad Englert (34:50)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (34:57)
the environment is preventing it, but people don't believe they have the permission or they don't think it's an expectation or they might need the personal confidence. Because actually, if you are actually very approachable, but you realize you're not being approached, then it may not be what you're doing is per se a negative, but what it's not doing is developing people to have the wherewithal or the expectation to do so.
Brad Englert (35:12)
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (35:23)
And I wonder if that's something that you noticed that sometimes you were very easy to approach, but some people weren't. So you had to help them have that confidence or that permission to do it.
Brad Englert (35:33)
Yeah,
yeah. You know, you're introvert. ⁓ You know, how do I help my direct reports who are more introvert introverted? And I just said, use your calendar. Put this customer meeting on your calendar every if it if you're working with them closely once a month, just put it on the calendar. If you're working with them less frequently every six weeks, but just
put it on your calendar. Prior to that, have the reminder to send an agenda to them. Here are the things I'd like to discuss. What would you like to discuss? even my introverts found that helped them. You know, one, just forced the issue. They couldn't just let six months slide and never talk to their customer. And I would ask them to report back to the team. What did you learn?
You know, when you talk to ⁓ facilities, you know, and we're building a new building, you know, what feedback do they have? We weren't good partners with facilities before. I told the head of facilities, I want to be the best partner you ever had. I'm sorry for those best transgressions, but we have to work together. 16 million square feet of buildings, we have to work together and I want to work together. So, ⁓
My network engineer, handles, I'm one of the largest networks on the planet, quarter million devices hooked to the network every day. And he reminded me that when he had to go out and talk to customers, he not only had to know about his projects like voiceover IP, we changed 21,000 phones, but he needed to know about the learning management system project. He needed to know about the move to...
email. He needed to know what the other directors were working on. And, you know, he became more valuable to his customers. But he appreciated not being siloed into just being the network guy.
but just put it on the calendar.
Guy Bloom (37:49)
Yeah, so there's something there about the process, making it part of the system, making it part of the process, making it as in, you can't escape your own process, maybe, but normalizing it and making it feel familiar because actually that's what you do in that way. That feels as if that helps somebody because this is what we do. This is the job. This is the process. This is the system.
Brad Englert (38:15)
Yeah.
So back to my peer, the VP for public safety, our teams would get together once a year and do a tabletop disaster scenario. It could be an ice storm. It could be the power went out. It could be a hurricane, cybersecurity breach. And our teams would work together and we always learn something.
you know, a year after we did the power outage, the power went out. Now, we generate our own power. It's backed up by a utility. Both failed. Well, that's why we have copper lines for the phones in our emergency operations center, because you may not have a network, but we would practice that. it kind of, to your point, built that muscle of, you know, let's one, anticipate two.
even if we can't anticipate how will we deal with a crisis. So the bomb scare, I'm actually out on the mall with my phone. So I'm not at my computer. don't, you know, they wouldn't let me in the building anyhow. And we had a standard operating procedure. We all jump on a conference call, all my direct reports and all his direct reports. He's connected to executive leadership and we work the bomb scare.
out at the mall on my phone.
Guy Bloom (39:46)
I think that's what it is, isn't it? It's when you don't, when you have an uncertainty, it's what do the fire brigade do? They train, don't they? They train so the level of competence outweighs the anxiety. I'm so well trained that actually, even though I haven't come across this particular scenario, I've become so familiar with
Brad Englert (39:57)
Right.
apps.
Absolutely.
Guy Bloom (40:12)
with my own internal process that I almost have a kind of autonomic response to it because I've trained it as a muscle memory. And I think that's very interesting what that is. And I think that's important because I think for some people this idea of relationships and this idea of just engaging people and influencing people is maybe some, well, I'm just not like that or well, I haven't got that kind of character or.
Brad Englert (40:18)
Yeah, it's a muscle memory.
Yeah.
Guy Bloom (40:41)
And maybe it's like a sport where, okay, some people may be instinctively better at a sport. That makes sense, I do martial arts and there are some people that I was never very gifted at it. There were some people that I would go, flipping heck, he only just got shown that and he's already better than I am. But from sheer hard work, I could become good at it. Right, maybe never quite as good as somebody that just had the innate skill, but I could be, I was good enough, you or could get to a good level.
Brad Englert (40:54)
You
Guy Bloom (41:11)
And I think that's what it is, isn't it? You don't always have to be world class. You don't always have to be, maybe they won't write a book about you. But actually, you can still be somebody that people trust, somebody that people feel comfortable with, because you build in a system of familiarity, of getting to know you, of spending time with you. And it's a process. that's, you know.
Brad Englert (41:18)
Well...
Well, and just
think, if you have 70,000 people coming to your campus every day, things will go wrong. That's just inevitable. So I worked on one skill, which is the skill of apologizing. And the art of apology, there's actually a book called The Art of Apology. And I made it a point that if there was an outage, we would communicate quickly.
Guy Bloom (41:36)
Yes.
Brad Englert (41:58)
Here's the outage situation. Here's what we're doing to fix it. Here's what we're doing to keep it from happening again. I'm sorry it happened. And over time that would build confidence that we weren't hiding from our problems. You know, we just, and my message to my organization was not if it'll go wrong, when it goes wrong and how we deal with it. you know, just sometimes.
People in the organization screw up, but you're still accountable, so you have to apologize. A faculty member sent me an email. His daughter got a letter from my organization saying that the discount on her computer would be $1. Well, that's ridiculous. And I did not know this letter went out from my organization. It had been approved five years prior by the other administration.
You know, first of all, thank you for letting me know. This is ridiculous. I will get to the bottom of it. I'm accountable and I will fix it. And, you know, please forgive me.
Guy Bloom (43:09)
that I think there's something about ⁓ if I recognize that something isn't right I don't necessarily have to own the entire process that got us there because it's like being in customer service you know well clearly I may not have done it but I'm the one that's answered the phone so you know I am your point of contact and actually you know people often I say this you know I get it or do you agree with me I may not agree with you but I get it
Brad Englert (43:26)
That's right.
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (43:36)
So
again, I can apologize for the fact that this isn't working. can recognize the fact that you're less than happy. I can acknowledge lots of things. I can do that. And sometimes we're at fault. But sometimes we may not be at fault. But I'll own you feeling better in 10 minutes.
Brad Englert (43:52)
Right. Well, in that case,
the computer store was outsourced to a third party vendor. I was still accountable. I couldn't blame them because they got the approval five years prior.
Guy Bloom (44:08)
There's a story about the guy that created Walmart. can't remember, maybe some Walton or something. I could Google it and find out. But the point is the owner of Walmart got a letter, the story goes, back in the day saying, hey listen, I bought these white wall tires from you and they're shocking and they've degraded and they're terrible and all this kind of stuff. So the story goes that he gets a set of new
white wall tyres delivered to his house with a letter from the owner going please find a new set of white wall tyres it's absolutely shocking that this has happened to you. P.S. we don't sell tyres.
⁓ Again, I don't know if that story is even true, but it's that ownership. It's that over, you know, it is sometimes you have to do something that's a bit, you do things that are a bit legendary and people go, well, they have accepted that. They've acknowledged it. He's not the, it's a third party. It's not even his responsibility, but he took ownership. You know, that's the bit that creates a narrative around you.
Brad Englert (44:57)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Well, and sometimes, sometimes people hold
on to bad behavior that's years, years ago, especially in higher ed. And ⁓ there's this one fellow who kept complaining about the situation. I went and met with him and I said, I'm sorry it happened 15 years ago. It was wrong. Would you please just forgive me and let it go? Because we're not going to do this anymore. And it's like, she finally let it go.
Guy Bloom (45:43)
You're somebody to press the reset button, aren't you? You're saying, if I accept your truth, I can't take the ownership of a thing I wasn't there for. But what I can take ownership of is what happens next. But if you won't let me be the best version of myself, I can't give you the experience you want.
Brad Englert (45:47)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Exactly. Yeah. Right.
what you want.
That's right. Yeah.
Guy Bloom (46:11)
So
I'll own it from this point on, but you have to wipe the slate clean with me. And that's really powerful.
Brad Englert (46:14)
That's right.
Yep, that's what I had to do. So, ⁓
setting and managing expectations. I wanted to share with you because I was really bad at it early in my career. So I'd just say yes to everything and work too much. Excuse me. And I want, I had this, type a personality boss and I was trying to leave a reasonable time to have dinner with my wife.
Guy Bloom (46:25)
Huge.
Yeah, yeah.
Brad Englert (46:46)
And the phone rings literally 5 p.m. and it's the boss. And she goes, I need a white paper, a white paper. Everything sounded urgent with her. Everything urgent, urgent. And just the day before I finished a book, which is called Managing Expectations, written by a psychologist who works in IT, and she had a technique, just say, well, don't say no, because that'll upset a type A personality person.
but say, whoa. So I was scared, but I said, whoa, when do you need this white paper? ⁓ let me check. I need it in two weeks. OK. How many pages should this white paper be? ⁓ three pages. I was thinking 10. Do you have an example of a white paper that you could give me? yeah, David, did one on XYZ Corporation 10 years ago. Well, guess what? I went home and had dinner with my wife. Now, before I learned to say, whoa,
I would have called her, canceled dinner, upsetting her and me. I would have stayed up all night. I would have delivered a 10-page white paper the next day and get yelled at.
Just saying whoa gives the space and time to really understand what is needed, especially with a hard-targing boss.
Guy Bloom (48:10)
And everybody's vocative, I sometimes notice that when I speak to people I go, look, this is guy speak, it may not be yours. You know, and there is something there about, know, be it woe or just, yeah, okay, let me just ask you a couple of questions. It's a buffer, isn't it? It's just, it's not having a triggered response. It's not being triggered by somebody's anxiety. It's knowing when, insert name here, but it doesn't, it's not even the individual, but when somebody comes at me like that, the manner.
Brad Englert (48:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (48:39)
My way of handling that is just to just acknowledge it and go, okay, so what do you actually need? Yeah, I love that. think that's because I like it.
Brad Englert (48:46)
Well, I had a direct report.
One of my direct reports reminded me, she read the manuscript and said, you told you taught us to slow down because I'm the hard, I'm hard charging. So I want to get in there and fix it. And you've made us take the time to understand what the problem really was. And instead of rushing off to solve it, you know, you'd make a stop and think about it. And sometimes it just resolved itself.
Guy Bloom (48:53)
Yeah.
I noticed this in sports where, when I'm with people that are of a very, very high level, they're often not, even though it feels incredibly fast, they're not incredibly fast, what they are is incredibly fluid. So they go at a certain pace, but as they go from movement to movement to movement,
It's just at a steady state. So you have this experience of them being quite fast. But people who are junior are trying to go fast. But it's a fast move gap, fast move gap. And actually it's quite hard work. And I think that's what this is. When you become more experienced, you realize there is a kind of, it's not a flow state per se, what I'm not thinking, but there is a flow.
Brad Englert (49:49)
You
Mmm.
Guy Bloom (50:08)
that you can operate in consciously. So not a flow state of just unconscious competence and I'm just doing it without thinking. No, we are doing it with craft, which is to recognize we're not going slow to be slow, but actually there's a pace and there's a tempo. And if we rush, we will stumble. We want to have pace, we want to be pacey, but let's not let the context overrule us.
Brad Englert (50:14)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Guy Bloom (50:33)
And that is the wisdom of a bit of experience and it's knowing that actually this moving in this way will get us there a lot quicker with our car. And when people watch us, there's a narrative around when you go and speak to these people, they have a tempo, they'll sort it out, they're very calm, they move at pace. I noticed that about...
Brad Englert (50:45)
Right.
Hmm.
Guy Bloom (51:00)
any high performing team when they get the tempo right, they're going, things get done quickly, but they may not always be moving quickly. If that makes sense, you know, I'm fascinated by that. So listen, I'm super aware of time as we approach an hour. You know, it's
people generally somewhere around 45 minutes to an hour that's enough for people and you know if i if i live down the road from you i'd be there all night sort of um talking stalking stuff and you'd be going it's time to go home going um so uh you bingo i'll definitely do that and uh i just where do people go um if they brad if they want to kind of get more brad where do they go and we'll put a link in
Brad Englert (51:32)
Well next time you come to Austin we'll have a beer.
I'm gonna send you
I'm missing. yeah, obviously I'm on LinkedIn ⁓ I have my own website ⁓ WWW bread englert calm But I'm gonna send you a link for your show notes that I'll send your listeners to a free sample the book how to buy the book and How do I get time on my calendar? So I'll send that to you right after
Guy Bloom (52:10)
and I'll make sure that that's in there. So listen, just thank you. I always know that somebody is ⁓ very competent and capable when it's just an easy conversation and you know they're not trying to push an agenda or...
know, sort of stuff. And there's just an ease of confidence around you that I have a sense of that kind of depth of experience and I value that. it's an easy to listen to, which again tells me that, you know, there's wisdom and knowledge in there. So I would advocate to people follow the link, get the book, think Spears of Influence, how to create and to ⁓ nurture. ⁓
Yeah, authentic business relationships. think that's a pretty good reason to read anything. So on that note, I'm going to say thank you. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for your time. just stay on while I just make sure everything loads up. But just for me and ⁓ everybody listening, thank you so much.
Brad Englert (53:03)
You
Okay.
Thank you.